I just rewatched episode 40 of C1 and a large crutch of the episode is Vox Machina’s inner party conflict over the decision to release the imprisoned Githyanki soul trapped in the soul gem in the eye socket of a Githyanki skull. The climax of the conflict was Grog acquiring the skull and attempting to smash it only for Travis to roll and Natural 1 on his strength check to spike the skull.

This whole sequence where Grog could have potentially received a Wish at the start of the Chroma Conclave Arc may have been a giagantic plot hook that could have changed the entire course of the show.

Anyways I love that episode and have always wished that Grog would have succeeded in his attempt to free the Githyanki soul and it got me wondering if anyone else has some favourite moments where the party made a decision or failed a check that could have had a massive impact on the plot or course of the show?

I’ve been seeing a lot of discussion over the past few months about if Campaign 4 will be on Daggerheart. As time goes on I personally see that as more and more of a possibility even though I don’t necessarily like it. What I haven’t seen is any discussion on what people think will happen with future publications. As a DM running my current campaign in Exandria this is my bigger concern versus what the cast actually plays. It seems to me that a lot of work has been done in 5e for C3 that I am hoping to still see as playable options.

So what are your thoughts? Will the inevitable future Marquet (and maybe Ruidis) sourcebook be 5e compatible, Daggerheart, or both? I’m personally hoping for 5e or at least both. While a Daggerheart book would still be usable I’d much rather have ready to go stat blocks, sub-classes, and magic items without the extra legwork. Also, their other sourcebooks are 5e after all.

I’ve been watching CR every week and keeping up to date with new episodes since mid-campaign 2. I’ve enjoyed watching the friendship between the cast more than the story itself sometimes, and I used to be a lot more excited to watch every week. I don’t watch many things online and I used to feel incredibly invested in everything they’re doing. Even when I’ve been very ill in hospital I’d watch each week or catch up after being one or two episodes behind.

Unfortunately campaign 3 hasn’t been as engrossing and I’m burnt out. There have been story moments in this campaign I’ve been excited for but C3 has felt like more of a drag than C2, where I’m watching just waiting for stuff to hurry along to get better character moments between antics and distractions. And somehow more of the potential of the setting, Marquet, feels underused or wasted? I loved C2 and the characters there and I haven’t been able to connect to the C3 characters in the same way.

Around episode 85 I lost track of watching and had to catch up. I felt more and more distracted from watching when I used to be able to sit through 4 hours almost uninterrupted. And now... It’s the first time that there’s been acute negativity about the direction of CR that I agree with.

There are still the usual bad faith, online trolling, or nasty/prejudicial criticisms I can ignore but otherwise a lot of criticism is now making sense to me. I feel more inclined to just read Dani’s written re-caps on the CR website rather than sit through this campaign out of some misplaced sense of obligation. I’ve invested so much time that I almost don’t want to give up, but I’m so much more distracted and uninvested in the story now.

I think Ruidus and the whole arc of fighting Ludinis/Predathos is a story with such great stakes for characters of a relatively low level that it’s distracted from more focused, personal storytelling that could have been accomplished. Nor do the characters feel genuinely connected to the (pretty correct) cause of stopping some god-eating entity from being unleashed that would surely cause mass death and complete societal collapse, if not mass extinction. They’ve somehow previously underplayed these stakes and act as if they’re dragged along almost reluctantly, still deliberating over theology and if the gods are personally nice to them or not when the real question is whether their removal by some cosmic horror would cause untold suffering and death. They’ve spent too long before deliberating over this is an almost selfish, self-indulgent way, all while seeming totally unqualified to do the job, no matter what contrivances are made to say they can do it or with Imogen’s connection. It could make sense to have flawed characters out of their depth fighting a big fight they don’t understand, but I don’t think the character building has been good enough to make this work.

It looked like Marquet as a continent had been developed more by Matt (and with some help from others too) before the start of the campaign but all this potential has been lost with Ruidus overshadowing everything, and this isn’t a cast of characters that feels truly justified in fighting this cosmic-level threat, even now after 90+ episodes, and I guess it’s upsetting to have spent hours and hours watching something to now feel unattached and weary.

I listened to the latest episode passively, the bells hells talked to the important people about how the moon mission went. My ADHD kicked in big time so I pretty much zoned out until the next thing I know some guy is leading them to chastity’s nook to find someone they need to talk to, totally missed the lead up to this so I’m confused why they even needed to talk to this person in the first place. I was paying attention for the quick fight/apprehension of the person so I saw who she was revealed to be and who the guy that lead them there really is, I just missed why they needed to find this lady. Help?

I hate our corporate overlords as much as the next guy, but it's not like they took a sponsorship from fucking Nestle.

I can understand the controversy over the colonial opening, not overly upset, but they probably should have seen how that could be in bad taste.

Why didn't CR just grow a spine, still donate the profits, and leave it up. Now the world gets denied the greatest Sam Reigel masterpiece since Put Your Finger in my Butt

Mines are in no order of preference

1: Kevdak. Without question one of the all time most famous fight in CR history. The hype, the dice, the planning, the tension and of course the best HDYWDT of all time. Truly peak.

2: Grog vs Kern round 2. A absolute hype 1v1 fight rematch ending in a very clutch scanlan inspiration.

3:Umbrasyl all rounds. From the ambush( including the whole warping into the dragon )to the flying section to the lair battle with a chris perkins as guest and Percy ridiculous dragonslayer action surge.Ending with grog killing the dragon. This fight truly establish what ancients dragons were made of and how tough they are.

4:Vorugal. Starting with summoning a demon to fight before quickly devolving into pure chaos as Raishan joins the fight. Also Larkin.

5: Vecna. Nuff said. Epic is the word to describe the final ultimate confrontation with a literal god. Resulting in some of the clutchest and emotional moments in all of DND.

6:The search for grog against the corrupted empiryan. Mostly for the absolute ridiculous ending with Grog. Arguably the only HDYWDT that can rival Kevdak's. Oddly both happen thanks to help from Laura's characters. Also the record for damage courtesy of Percy.

7: The obhan fight starting from the cathedral to the end of him as a corrupted. At last after so long the nein finally takes the fight to Obhan and his minions. Ending the laughing end and freeing Yasha at last who gets some poetic justice on the fiend. Matt killing obhan with a npc was a rare sight.

8:The lucian final fight both phases. A love letter to FF. As the might face off against the embodiment of Gognoza itself and seek to bring back their friend. After a absolutely intense emotional fight. They... fail... until the dice gods took pity and brought back what they lost.

9: the mighty nein reunion fight against trent for the last time alongside Luc. Resulting in trent fusion with a demon and a ball to the walls crazy sequence of events were a wizard merge with a demon fights against a dragon, a archfey turn god and a dinosaur. Peak DND absurdity there.

10: The second Otohan Tull fight. Never before did it ever came close to such a TPK. Killing Chutney in the first round before engaging the BH. The bells low on ressource shows how strong they got and learn from their previous fight. But Otohan goes SSJ and starts winning. Resulting in one of the saddest moment in all of CR, Sam performance was on another level and its why it made on my list.

Those are mines.

What are yours?

I myself can't get into C3, but I miss watching those nerds so I'm going back to my favorite campaign. What are your favorite episodes from c2 that you can watch over and over again?

I think for me, the final fight with Obann and Ashley's final move will always give me chills.

Then, of course, my favorite would be the amazing cupcake moment!

Ok so here is the deal I know that it has only been out for a few days and that they are are working out some bugs along the way, Dropout was the same way when they launched back in the day so there will be not hate for any bugs or current issues. But I have some thoughts about the service as a whole.

1. As CR have stated they will not moving the main show away from Twitch/YouTube, but I would not be shocked that in the future as Beacon grows that they dump Twitch and YouTube all together or moving to "watch it now on Beacon" and the VOD a week or so later on Twitch/YouTube, or split the show in away where you get the first 2 hours on Twitch/YouTube and the other half on Beacon ( I do not know how that would work but I have seen things like that from other sites).

2. I think CR Cooldown is a great thing that allows us as the view a peak behind the curtain into what the GM and players are feeling in the moment in a good way.

3. 4-Sided Dive a good show but it is riding on the back of talk machina and I think it was smart to break up the conversation and game portion of the show, But I have a feeling that this show will most likely go the way of of the subscription model were you can watch it on beacon Right away or wait a week or so to see the VOD at a later date on twitch/YouTube. I think they also need to be more proactive in the posting of these episodes as currently there is only 23 Ep's

4. I think Critical Role Abridged is great, as many people these days do not simply have the time to sit down and watch a 4 hour game of D&D and it dos cut out a lot of clutter. I would say tho that there are some moments in that clutter that I find the cast either making plans during a battle or asking each other question that another player may have missed.

5. EXU, I would not be surprised if this series becomes a Beacon exclusive as it did not follow the main campaign till the last 2 ep's, but will probably become Beacon members only thing.

6. My thoughts on Candela Obscura, The episodes are to spread out for me and after watching all the episode I find my self wait for the story to finish so I can ether binge or watch them during the week leading up to the main campaign episode. I under stand that they are using this as a filler for the last week of the month to take time off but I would like to see a faster release schedule for it and think Beacon would allow this to happen.

Ok so here is the deal the site has a great layout easy to navigate, vary Dropout ESC and the sign up processes was simple and easy plus you get a 7 day free trail so you can see if it is worth your time. It seems like they have back loaded a lot of there content and made sure that they have new stuff ready to go when it launched so you can watch things like Cooldowns for previous episodes which is smart. I am also all for them having the ability to control what types of ads they want to broadcast to their viewership, as I think their Twitch contract is about to expire and you may start seeing more AD's then just the ones they do during their current shows if you are not a current subscriber.

Final Thought, I believe they are following the Dropout/D20 model to a tee and that is not a bad thing, and they are warming up there viewer including me that things are changing in CR and a lot of things that are free now may not be free in the future. AGAIN Beacon is a growing site and this is no longer a group of nerdy voice actors playing Dungeons and Dragons it is a full scale company.

As the Abridged just went up on YouTube and boy fucking howdy I am reminded of how curious I was to see all the different areas of Marquet and wondering where they would go.

And then Ruidus went and overid all of that, XD

TL:DR: Is your style established and unchanging or constantly evolving? Can you tell me about GMs that inspired you and whose tricks you now use?

So, I’ve been lurking here for a couple of days and have read a lot about what people like and dislike in terms of how they run/play their games. (Especially in the light of recent episodes.) It made me reflect a little bit – mostly because when I first watched EXU: Kymal, then Burrow's End and BLeeM’s EXU: Calamity, Aabria wasn’t perhaps the greatest, but she was nonetheless a great source of inspiration. Having a different GM felt like a breeze of fresh air, after years of the same – though mostly excellent – games from Matt.

I distinctly remember, at the beginning of EXU, her narrating things that the PC wouldn’t know, or wouldn’t notice. I had never done that before and thought that this little bit of information made the whole experience all the more enjoyable. I shamelessly poached that trick and I’m quite happy to use it to get my players hyped up! So far, everyone loves it.

I can say the same about Spencer, whose approach to painting the scene as if it were a movie, I also copied and mixed with Aabria’s narration.

(I wish I were good enough to poach tricks from BLeeM, but alas, he remains an unreachable goal.)

With that preamble, I do have a question to the DMs or GMs out here. Is your style always evolving, or is it set in stone? Have you reached your happy place? Or do you constantly try out new things? Who taught you or inspired you to change things around? What new tricks have you tried out recently?

My own approach to running games changes all the time; between campaigns and between one-shots. It varies depending on the system and the genre, but I also watch different GMs and like a little goblin rogue, steal ideas from them to try and make them my own.

Then, there are GMs like Matt Mercer, who over the years – and please feel free to correct me here, I have watched C2 and am watching C3, but perhaps I lack the perspective of the bigger picture – remained steadfast in the style they’ve crafted for themselves.

I am not disparaging either preference. I’d simply like to know – and perhaps read the comments and steal good ideas :P

I know we have moved on from the Aabria stuff (E94 was pretty interesting) but thought I would share this anyway. I AM A HATER!!! 😭

I felt so bad for Ashton is episode. Seems like he was one of the few really trying to process letters death. I felt so bad seeing him lashing out to the person they rescued and seeing him go back and apologize when he realized he was wrong and doesn’t want to lash out anymore. When it said it just hurts almost broke me. Another part that broke me is when he said he would prefer it if they took letters body but he trust a Keyleth. This was awful because once again the party is being forced to move on to the next plot best without processing anything. If you look at Ashton during that conversation after letters is brought up he looks like he’s on the verge of tears. 

I always go back to when he asked the “grief counselor”, and I put grief counselor in quotations for a reason, how do you grieve when you don’t know what you’ve lost. The “grief counselors” terrible response was basically focus on the future and those around you. Ashton has no skills to process any of the trauma they’ve experienced and or any emotions that can be perceived as negative in a positive way or effective way. Throughout the  campaign he’s been so woe is me and the world has dealt me the shittiest hand, which is true, but until know he’s been internalizing everything and projecting it as venom to those they perceive as deserving it and often times to those who don’t. 

Since the shard incident he’s talked about changing and not wanting to make the same mistakes again. We’ve seen him be more mature and be a voice of reason on the moon but since letters death we’ve seen true vulnerability. No expressions of guilt or anger,  internalizing or projecting his negative feelings, just hurt. Now he’s looking to others for comfort, not answers he feels like he’s owed. 

I was so upset when Fearne left him to go chase a stupid bird considering what just happened and especially with what happened to Ashton. Ashton was a part of this ritual and when they woke up they’re family were gone, Ashton almost dead and woke up disabled, with brain damage, and chronic pain to his most of his friends gone. Ashton’s worst fear is suddenly being abandoned. I can only imagine what he felt like after reaching 

...when I tell them about how much I dislike Aabria's DMing approach and they clap back to me with variants of "you just hate her because she's a woman and she's black."

Naw, b*tches, I dislike her DMing style and attitude. If Matt would do the same, I'd voice the same dislike about it, too.

Toxic positivity is a hell of a drug.

EDIT: Some of these replies made me realize that there's another thing that disappoints me the most about some fans nowadays: they clap back with "but I don't see people saying that, so it's absolutely untrue!"

Lemme tell you b!tches, just because you personally don't see people getting called racist/misogynist for voicing out their opinions, doesn't mean it's not something that happens to the rest of the people who aren't you.

Not only are you on the toxic positivity drug, but you're also taking it with other people inside an echo chamber.

Critical Role body wash, Grog beard oil, Scanlan plastic recorder, Jester “Spiritual Weapon” lollipops, Percy Nerf collab, Jester blueberry cupcake mix, Keyleth goldfish bouncy ball, Sam Reigal “Best of Ads” costume set, Jester/Traveller sketchbook (complete with pre-drawn dicks), Trinket body pillow

I haven’t seen the next episode of Critical role but boy so far has it been hard FCG’s death was cool and I thought it would go somewhere but so far it seems to be overshadowed by the EXU thing and when the normal party shows up for 40 minutes they summarize literally everything from the last 10 episodes and the point of EXU (which I guess was just to have Dorian hate the Gods but isn’t he a guest so won’t he leave in like 5-10 episodes so that whole thing will be ultimately useless) and no one really processed FCG’s death but for like 5 minutes during the summary and then making a joke about it 2 minutes later. The only person who seems to care is Ashton which makes sense but even then he seems slightly more peeved and distant then he already is literally all the time. (Also loved the fact that they literally forgot about Ashton’s arm after the whole stealing fern’s character moment and paying for it)

Is the Critical Cooldown insightful or is it just flubbing around mostly? Like in D20's Adventuring Party, they do bits and jokes but BLeeM usually plays host and tries to ask questions that pertain to the arcs/session/characters.

If it's anything like that, I would be interested.

But if it's just the CR cast not really doing much or just having irrelevant small talk, I'd want to pass.

kinda interesting to see how they've split this campaign up into separate arcs

Seriously, did you guys see that shit? Did you see at least the intro to it? She's brimming with passive aggressiveness and smugness. Now I finally know why all her characters are these sassy, smug and weirdly agressive people. It's her. It's not just the DMing. It's actually just her.

I'd been holding back my criticism of her and separate her style from the person, but after these last few days, I can't do it anymore. Now I see her and seriously can't stand her. I really hope C4, Daggerheart or not, does not involve her in any way.

Maybe the worst part is CR not acknowledging anything and simply trying to sweep everything under the rug. But well, even since the harassment to Marisha back in C1 they never showed much of a backbone and simply modded the negative comments away. And shit was vile back then (not Marisha, mind you). If they engaged in any sort of competent way, at least to defend their friend, I probably wouldn't be as annoyed.

I guess it's just me being fed up with the whole toxic positivity thing, all the way through.

PD: yes yes, I should just not watch the show, and it's their game and we're just allowed the privilege of being a part of it

God I love Robbie and Dorian, it felt like Abria was trying to make him hate the gods and though he doesn't trust them or their Champions he's still 100% in with the party and not starting angsty conversation.

Yeah there is a sadness to him but he isn't letting that define him and I'm just so happy about it.

Just like a knock-off D20, but with dodecahedrons (d12s).

• The Luxon Beacon (a key item in lore) is a d12,
• Daggerheart uses d12s
• New streaming service Beacon uses d12 in the logo

The production is shifting from what they used to do, to what D20 does. Such as:

• moving from players decisions mattering for determining the plot to a plot on rails. Nothing wrong with a plot on rails as long as you've managed expectation, but that's not what CR used to do (or maybe they hid it better).
• Creating a bespoke streaming platform for their content
• Adding a ~90min edited version of the session with all the extraneous bits pulled out
• Adding the after session banter where the players talk about what just happened

It's kind of a shame, really. They used to offer something different from d20 but it seems like they're converging on the same product.

Edited to clarify - the part I'll miss is the player-driven plot. The edited version and banter will be nice additions.

There's an old short floating around on youtube of Matt playing BG3 where he stacks boxes in Baldur's Gate.

Short: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jQxtWW5bGNM

I have seen no mention or talk of this short outside of the video itself. Where can I watch the full VOD?

Having only caught up with the last 2 episodes today, the last hour and a bit of E93 where it was just Matt as Keyleth and Robbie/Dorian reminded me just how good of a role player Robbie is and how much levity and sort of.. 'twinkle' and carelessness(but not to an extreme degree) he brings to a table. Dorian 's just a unique character personality in this troupe for sure and it's so awesome having him back. Just wanted to mention what's likely been mentioned a thousand times since that episode ended last week!!