#and mn had downtime breaks which served a similar purpose letting them reflect

[arcadecoconut]

There's a lot of great meta about how Bells Hells never seemed to realise how powerful they became over the course of the campaign, and how this skewed perspective gave them a strange and at times hypocritical relationship to authority. There's also been a lot of discussion about how having a single-focus plot established early in the campaign was detrimental to individual character development, but I don't think I've seen much about how the single-focus plot is directly connected to their ignorance about their own power level. I think one of the key benefits of having various smaller arcs across c1 & c2 was not only that it supported individual character development better, it also gave the parties a sense of their own growing capability and power scale in the greater world. By having distinct arcs with enemies who were overcome and defeated, the PCs have concrete evidence of their own growth. Each arc follows a mini heroes journey too. For the MN, the Lorenzo and Obann arcs both involve PC characters being killed or overtaken early on, setting high stakes and establishing difficulty. Eventually, with persistence and planning, the Nein were able overcome and eventually defeat them. For Vox Machina, it's the Briarwoods, then the Chroma Conclave, then Vecna. At the start of each arc, every mission feels like an impossible task but again with persistence and planning, they conclude each arc in a stronger position - not just on their character sheet, but with concrete in-world elements too - the resources of Whitestone, key allies in powerful government positions, etc. These victories give each party a material sense of their achievement, which is mirrored by their internal acknowledgement, which is so natural it's mostly not explicitly acknowledged unless they're pointing out how they're capable of stepping up and helping more people. Bells Hells, by comparison, got very few distinct arcs. As a result, they never really achieved the same smaller victories to give them a sense of escalating power and agency over the course of the campaign. To be clear, it was possible this could have been achieved anyway, even within the constraints of the moon-plot. Defeating Otohan, defeating or flipping Lilliana, severing the alliance between the Unseelie Court and Ludinus, explicitly winning allies out of The Volition, or the Grim Verity, or Vasselheim and the Judicators - each of these could have been distinct arcs with victory conditions that would have served as markers of Bells Hells growing power. If they'd had concrete mini-goals to achieve along the way to dealing with Ludinus/Predathos, they could have taken time to focus and plan. In this way, we could have gotten larger investment into the world and NPCs. Imagine what it could have done for her personality if the party had to research Otohan’s role in the Apex War! Maybe if they needed to broker peace between the Grim Verity and Vasselheim to unite them against a greater threat, we could have seen Bells Hells establish their own authority in Exandria. Instead, all these potential villains and world building hooks ended up largely ignored or accidentally achieved along the path of some other muddy goal. By not giving the characters this sense of growth, BH and particularly Ashton and Laudna ended up with a very skewed perspective of themselves. They never realise their power grew well above average, putting them in a much more privileged position than the average Exandrian. It’s this skewed perspective - and their resulting attitudes towards various NPCs - which gave many viewers an 'ick' factor about their interactions. I also can't help but juxtapose this with exu: divergence, where the party's relationship to power (both their own and others') has been a core element. Their story has also been conducted over a very short time period in-world, yet their responses show a marked difference in awareness and empathy.