#I’d probably get sucked into coming up with critters for them to share their world with though ngl

[blueper-saiyan]

I’m overanalyzing something that’s canonically not meant to be thought about, for fun, so here’s a speculative Saiyan biology question: how often do they actually need to eat? I’ve sort of joked about the possibility that it’s like large predators irl where they gorge themselves occasionally and then wait until the next big kill. This would balance out the amount they’re eating to closer to a normal human, just a surprising amount in one sitting, and dodge the thing I’m about to go off the deep end about. But I think they’re probably supposed to need that amount frequently? Which is like, rodent levels of frequency and portions, but unlike a small mammal, a huge amount of actual food consumed. It’s fine if there’s only a handful of Saiyans on a whole planet but how did that work when there was a lot of them? That’s a massive amount of food, where is it coming from? Are they mostly feeding their army by taking food from conquered planets? They’d still need to be producing enough for their homeworld. Is it being farmed automatically and that’s how they can have the majority of their whole species be soldiers? But like, Gine has a job processing meat, so it’s clearly not entirely automated. Stuck thinking about Saiyan agricultural production and supply logistics help.

Unfortunately, I can also say that almost immediately after finding out the amount that Saiyans eat, the back of my mind did jump to “how fast do they starve?” Like, is that a much bigger threat for them than a human or do they have about the same amount of reserves, even if they’re eating more? If it is way faster, how does that affect how they view food/hunger? As a fun irl example, hummingbirds have such an insane metabolism that they would potentially starve to death if they slept at night. So they don’t sleep like normal, they enter a state that’s more like hibernation to slow their metabolism down enough to survive. Many hummingbird species are fiercely territorial because they need access to their food source or they starve. I imagine a theoretical hummingbird society would be thinking about food differently. And because this is my indulgent post where I get to talk about animals, I’m also going to bring up vampire bats, which could also potentially starve if they can’t feed within two days or so (I did not go deep into scientific literature to find original numbers and sources for this estimate I’m sorry true bat fans. Actually same goes for the hummingbird estimate but I know more about birds.). Unlike the more territorial hummingbirds though, vampire bats roost together during the day in colonies, with the same other bats repeatedly. And their food source can’t be guarded like a flower patch can, so there’s less purpose to territoriality. So they can form long term friendships with each other by interacting in ways like grooming each other. Within these friendships, when one bat gets a meal during their few-hour-a-night feeding window, but the other one doesn’t, the one who got enough food will often share with their friend to keep them from going hungry. Then their friend returns the favor when their roles are reversed, keeping them both alive, along with the rest of their friend network.

So those are some very different responses to needing food nearly constantly. If I were deeper in ecology mode I could probably try and come up with explanations based on the types of food source and territory and other factors for why, but I’m here to apply this to Saiyans lol. Honestly, a cooperative strategy would make more sense given that they’re pretty human-like, but that’s certainly not the sense we get given of their society. Were they always super individualistic or is that a recent development? Are they even actually individualistic or is that fully a societal role thing (elites are different from lower class warriors)? Or is the idea that they don’t cooperate partly a lie made up after their deaths anyway? Speculative biology for intelligent species get the extra layer of culture just to make things more messy and fun. We also know pretty much nothing about their original home planet and the actual context that shaped them, so I don’t get to apply other factors, like how easy it is to defend food sources or how important it is to stick together. We probably won’t ever get to know anything more about their original homeworld/Sadala, which is disappointing given that we got hints about it, but it does leave more room for speculation.

[zsweber-studios]

As the campaign is wrapping up this week, I would like to take a moment and talk about how much Critical Role, and specifically this game’s story in particular has meant for me.

I’m a fairly new Critter. I didn’t get into the show until last year--I’d heard about it, here and there, and actually tried picking it up back in mid-spring of 2018. I’d thought the characters were fantastic, but the intro to the first episode was a bit rough, and the sound quality was off, so I tuned out.

That all changed in 2020, though, when I was working two jobs, fourteen hours a day for five days straight, didn’t want to run my music taste into the ground, and had already listened to TAZ and Lore podcasts so many times I could quote any moment flawlessly. I needed something new--and with a little more provocation from some friends here on tumblr, I finally decided to give Critical Role a try.

I started on July 13th. By November 4th, I had listened to all of Vox Machina’s story and caught up with the Mighty Nein. At the start of the new year, I started staying up on Thursday evenings to watch the new episodes live, and I’ve been here for every step of that journey, from Lucien ‘welcoming’ the Mighty Nein to travel with him, to their hasty escape, to the run from Trent, to the race through Aeor, and now to the final battle.

The thing about Critical Role, though, is that it’s a story...and I’m a firm believer that stories come to us when we most need them. And in 2020, I desperately needed it. I was two months into living on my own, not sure where my life was going to be going from here on out. I was surviving, yes, and making good money with the two jobs I was juggling...but I was unhappy.

No. Unhappy isn’t the right word...I was Empty.

That emptiness faded, though, when I started listening to Critical Role. I listened to the antics of these eight dumbasses sitting around a table and playing make-believe, and for the first time in so long...I was laughing. Truly, happily, joyfully laughing. Something inside me was lit with a spark of excitement and joy and happiness, and I found something to keep me.

It wasn’t long thereafter that I started drawing again--I hadn’t drawn in probably a year or two, but in 2020 I started drawing all the time. And the first big piece I ever did, the first thing I felt I was proud of, was the first piece of fan art I’d done in years...and it was a picture of Yasha, screaming into the storm, while two bolts of lightning crashed behind her like her skeletal wings.

I’ll be honest, it kind of sucks now that I look at it again--perhaps someday I’ll return to it and give our lovely Orphanmaker the justice she deserves.

Critical Role filled my empty soul with a vibrant life that I’d sorely been lacking, and with it I began to look at myself, and question who I was, and what I wanted. I didn’t want to work these two jobs all the time, I wanted to spend more time drawing and working on my art. I wanted to follow my passions--even if they never gave me wealth, at least they’d give me joy, and that’s what I so desperately needed.

I had let circumstance and situations dictate my life for so long--and I found reason to stand up and let out a mighty “NEIN!” at what my parents viewed as what was best for me. I was going to find out what was best for me, even if it meant getting a bit hurt along the way. I could handle that. Because in a way I could never explain to them, I knew that I was strong enough to handle it.

Thursday, June 3rd, the final episode of Critical Role Campaign 2 airs. My birthday is June 4th. I’m going to be 25. I’ve reached a point in my life where my destiny is truly in my hands, and I can do practically whatever I want with it. And because of this show, regardless of what I do, I choose to live a life of joy, and to spread goodness wherever I can--to make the world better than I found it. Critical Role gave me a spark again, and I’m more than happy to share it if I can.

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Three Flaws

I made a City of Heroes level. It’s a neat idea, but it’s not...uh...good.

There are three basic things that stop it from being good. They all can be fixed. Let’s give them a look!

So it’s a story in which there are lizard people and a creepy hypnosis undertone a lot like the cuckoo plotline of Sandman. There are members of the species whose job it is to make nearby humans docile so they just sit there while the lizards rip them up for food.

The basic story is:

1) A witch tells you that her familiar has informed her of people being killed in her homes. She is under the effect of this hypnosis already, but gets around it because she’s just repeating what her familiar reported. You go to an office complex at the familiar’s direction and find citizens being accosted by lizardfolk. Also a lot of piles of human bones. When you rescue citizens they don’t run for the exit or follow you; They just say, “Nice day isn’t it?” and proceed to eat donuts and wander around the office where there are still lizards.

At the end of this mission you meet a lizard that looks different from the others and “rescue” it from a group of other lizards. It explains (counter to all your physical evidence) that the lizards are fine and nobody in the office building was hurt. This is a huge relief! It asks you to meet it at the pier later. You promise you will.

2) The witch’s familiar, frustrated with her, demands she casts a spell called Nightmare’s Invocation of Truth. She doesn’t see why, because clearly nothing is wrong, but she likes the idea of sending a bunch of capes to rough up her rivals in the Cabal, so she decides to humor it. She more or less tells you this outright; that she’s using you and that this mission is for a kind of petty reason. But if you’re a hero any excuse is good enough for beating up Cabal; They kidnap citizens and suck their souls out as a matter of course, so fewer on the streets is always better. And if you’re a villain you might think being this petty (or just being violent) is fun/amusing.

In any case, you go beat up some evil witches and return with urns of mystic powder.

3) The witch is casting her spell. Your memories of the pier are suddenly rushing back. You play through a memory where you recall killing a bunch of police officers with the lizards at your back. The lizard used you as a weapon to take over a tanker ship.

4) Nightmare’s Invocation has fortified your minds, at least temporarily, against the lizards’ hypnotics. You, in-character, are suddenly aware of everything you the player knew was wrong. However there’s evidence that the Queen is laying another brood and will swiftly produce another army - one that might be able to overcome your new defenses and enslave you anew.

You fight your way through waves of lizards, deal with an ambush when you break the first of the eggs, and finally destroy the Queen and break every egg in the cave.

5) Weeks have passed since the extermination. You find out that Crey Biotech kidnapped the lizard that hypnotized you at the office and it wasn’t there when you slaughtered the rest. The witch predicts that it has probably become another Queen on psychically sensing the existing Queen’s death. Due to Crey’s unscrupulous use of their existing tech, it doesn’t really matter whether they could control her hypnotic power or not. If they can’t there’s a Crey facility full of lizards now, and if they can Crey is probably developing a new mind-control tech that will let them take over the world without a struggle. Either option is awful for anyone who isn’t a Crey executive or a lizard.

You go to the Crey facility and it’s the worst of both: The new-formed Queen has already birthed a new brood using Crey’s incubators and they’ve been collaborating with Crey Biotech with the Queen taking the helm of the company. You have to fight your way through Crey and the brood both and slay the new Queen.

As you kill her, she laughs and tells you she was already a Queen back when she had you take over that pier for her. Her body may not be invulnerable but you can’t really kill her, because her eggs have already been safely delivered to tens of other ports.

She promises she will see you again, very soon.

Problem 1: The original idea was just to make a farming level; A zone with mildly interesting monsters that had anti-combos. That is, they’d have a bunch of abilities (allowing them to give full xp as a creature of their rank) but the abilities wouldn’t work in concert or actually make the fights substantially harder. At this I failed utterly. Mainly I think I underestimated the power of healing and defense. I gave a bunch of little target-ally heals to the mooks because I was playing solo when I was testing. I could either kill the healer lizard first or kill their target with a surprise attack before they could get there and then that power was useless - the target-ally heals do not allow target-self.

That’s great and all, but, uh, if you play with 8 people you get to deal with big crowds of these little twerps. And Bosses will appear. Oh yeah, and I gave my bosses crowd control powers as their power set. This means there are units with buckets of health - you can’t instantly burn ‘em down - AND they’re being healed by the crowd of minions.

They wiped the floor with us. Their team had ridiculous synergy. Part of it is that as I was making the enemy group I got away from the original idea and started making creative critters.

Solution 1: Basically I need to go back and focus. At this point the story is an actual story, not a farm, so I should make them thematic. Focusing them around a theme will also make them easier by and large, because it gives them things the faction is bad at, holes in their team composition you can exploit. One thing to consider also is that not all enemies have to hit the “100% XP Value” mark in terms of the number of abilities I give them; It’s okay for some enemies to be low-priority targets because they’re not as powerful.

Problem 2: Plot holes. Right now there’s a bit of weirdness at the beginning: If the “everything is fine” aura is so pervasive, why do the heroes fight in level 1? Why do they kill a bunch of the lizards before they meet the master hypnotist? It can’t be that she has to target you; too many people would raise the alarm anyway (the security guard looking at footage from blocks away, the neighbor across the street, etc). Also, in the writing as it currently exists the witch congratulates you for saving the world as her text at the end of level 5, when the game is supposed to be ending on a spooky note.

Solution 2: For the beginning, I think a line about you coming in from out of town does it. You haven’t been here long enough to get lulled. (It’s not like players need a TON of explanation, here; Anything that can hand-wave it should be fine) As for the end, the congratulations speech can be moved to the end of level 4 and a new spookier ending written for 5. No sweat.

Problem 3: Level 3. Level 3 suffers 2 problems. First of all it’s on a map I hate. It’s the sprawling inside of a tanker and it’s easy to miss one of the officers you’re supposed to take down. Second, it was originally supposed to be a farming level so I gave you a bunch of allied units to help you kill stuff faster, but CoH staff thought of that; computerized ally units take a share of xp. So it’s worth hardly anything.

Plot-wise I need there to be a nautical theme to the zone you attack. But it should be easier to navigate if at all possible. And if it’s going to be worth little xp it should be quick. I like the idea of the allies because the whole idea is you’ve been recruited to help the lizards. I’d have had a whole sequence where the lizard was your quest giver while you were enthralled, but within a single story you’re allowed only 1 quest giver in the mission architect.

Solution 3: See if there’s a dock zone to use. Worst case I can just declare one of the warehouses a shipping warehouse at the dock. As far as the allies, I think I can set the lizards up as a neutral group that happens to be fighting your enemies. If you get to enemies and land a hit this should mean you get full xp. If you don’t land a hit before they fall you don’t get xp but this should make the level much faster. Either way it works.

I was really demoralized when my story turned out to be not good. Not fun for groups, janky plot-wise to run solo, not good even to grind for xp. First drafts be like that, yo. They can be fixed.

[clonerightsenthusiast]

I’ve been so frantically trying to cram in more hours of content than was possible in under two days so that I could catch up (at least enough) to watch the 100th episode live that I haven’t paused to even like. think about the fact that this is the 100th episode tonight until like. right now. Like holy shit. I started watching at the very end of the Whitestone arc (like literally post-finale... the first episode I watched live was either Denouement or Winter’s Crest in Whitestone, I honestly can’t remember which) and have been watching since then mostly regularly, sometimes in fits and starts, staying up until 2 am every Thursday night for over a year now.

I’m gonna put the rest of this post under a read more because hot damn I rambled on for a while but basically... this show means a lot to me.

And like... I feel like I’m sort of weird, because I was into D&D streams long before I was into playing D&D. I’d been doing play-by-post roleplaying since I was maybe 11 and first discovered the internet (in fact I think it’s fair to say my first experience with other people on the internet was me stumbling into an rp forum and going ‘guess ill do what theyre doing’ and made a character), but I’d never even heard of tabletop roleplaying. I first found out what D&D was by finding a link to the recordings of a campaign by a handful of like D-list internet celebrities on TV Tropes when I was in... late middle school? Early high school? And I followed that down a rabbit hole that led me to more and more and I would download the audio and listen to them during class because I was a lazy student (and listen y’all if anyone out there reads this and watched the Wyrmwick campaign... hmu bc I still think about those assholes sometimes and lose my shit over “Plan A: Yoink” and Dhother eating a vampire apple) and eventually I ended up at a D&D Twitch stream every Friday where maybe 15 of us would show up and hang out and joke with the players and name every single animal that showed up in the campaign and refuse to refer to them as anything but our chosen nicknames. That game was the first time I experienced the type of community that D&D builds, the inside jokes and funny anecdotes and bonding experiences that come from hanging out together and watching a story unfold in real time in the most unpredictable fashion possible. (And if by some infinitesimal chance any of y’all from the Two Worlds game read this... extra hmu. I miss you guys.)

After the Two Worlds campaign ended and school got more serious and couldn’t make the Friday night streams anymore because I was busy and tired and the internet in my house sucked, D&D sort of... faded from my life. I never had any friends in high school who would be at all interested in it and every so often I would go back to that channel and find some of the highlights that were still saved and I would listen to them and wish that I could have that sort of thing back, because D&D is such an unparalleled storytelling device and as hard as it is when you’re into a TV show or book series that doesn’t have a huge following--imagine what it’s like when what you really care about is random strangers playing a tabletop game on the internet.

And then came Critical Role.

I am forever grateful that someone I followed (who I won’t @ just because I don’t really talk to them and I don’t want to give them a notification for a stranger’s long rambling post lol) started reblogging a lot of gifs of CR because I was. immediately interested. I never really lost my interest in D&D, I just lost access to it, so as soon as I saw images of people rolling dice and cheering about crits I was into it. It took me a little while to find out what it was and where to get it but when I did I blew through it, over 30 three hour long episodes, staying up past 3 am every night even though it was fucking reading and finals period, and watched the entire backlog up to that point (a third of what it is now, but pretty considerably even so). The three-hour-long videos were familiar to me, though the live action format was not (every stream I’d watched was through an online program rather than in person, so I’d only ever seen character tokens and heard voices).

Critical Role came at exactly the right time. I found it at the end of my first semester at Wellesley, where for the first time I’d found people who shared my interests and were every inch the geeky loser I am. I was finally in a place where I felt comfortable exploring my most out-there interests more publicly, and while I didn’t find my first in-person fan until this year (shout out to @wingedscribe for talking to me for over an hour about what an idiot Vax is when we first met), or at least the first one I didn’t make myself (thanks Susie, and I see you reblogging CR posts still), I did find enough people willing to try out roleplaying with me. I finished bingeing Critical Role just in time for winter break, I grabbed an old fantasy world I’d built ages ago for a different forum RP group, and I drafted a campaign. I was the DM, because we tried another person and it was an unmitigated disaster, and because I knew the most about how the game worked--again, solely because of my years of watching D&D streams and just sort of absorbing the rules (tho they had all been 4e, so I definitely was still learning).

That campaign doesn’t exist anymore because I definitely threw myself way in over my head with it and burned myself out, but Critical Role still kickstarted my creativity and imagination and that stuck with me. I talked some friends into trying a Star Wars RPG with me and we’re having a hell of a time, and I’m trying out D&D as a player and fucking loving it (god I miss both those games right now though, the downside of summer is splitting up our group). I wrote fanfiction for the first time in my entire life, and started to actively participate in a fandom on a wider basis for pretty much the first time ever, because of this show. I bought (and wear, very often, because that hoodie is my favorite article of clothing ever) fandom-related clothing for the first time because of this show. That’s how much it means to me: I, who am perpetually embarrassed to talk about literally everything that interests me, walk around with the Critical Role logo and How Do You Want To Do This emblazoned across my body on a regular basis.

Critical Role, more than anything, has made me feel what it is to be part of a fandom community. Just like those 15 people showing up every Friday night to hang out and watch some strangers play D&D, but on a massive scale. There’s something so incredibly engaging about watching a story unfold in real time, especially when the cast is so eager to engage with the fans themselves. Seeing Laura Bailey as ready to fistfight Sam Riegel as I am on a daily basis is a powerful thing when it comes to making me feel connected to the show, and seeing everybody else on this site also ready to square the fuck up has made me feel more connected to the Critter community as a whole. And maybe it’s because it’s a relatively small fandom, or maybe it’s because of the medium of D&D in general and Critical Role more specifically, or maybe (probably) it’s some combination of the two, but I am so glad I found this show and this community at a time in my life when I was actually ready to be a part of it.

This is real fuckin long and I’m not sure I even said what I wanted to, but basically: Thank you, Critical Role. Thank you, Matthew Mercer and the rest of this incredible cast. And thank you, Critter community. Y’all mean a lot to me.