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loquaciousquark · 2 years ago

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Exandria Unlimited: Calamity Wrap-Up (July 13, 2022)

Very belatedly, here’s the cast-full recap for Calamity. Everyone is here, including Brennan (excluding Matt) and Marisha is hosting-ish. Aabria wins her first game of rock paper scissors ever as part of the intro.

Aabria normally doesn’t care about optimizing characters, but Brennan’s alert that they would die she took as a challenge. Laerryn more than doubled Patia’s HP thanks to Toughness & her Arcane Ward. She did a lot of research to build the character as solidly as possible. Brennan’s direction to the cast to pick lots of magical items (in retrospect: OUCH) frightened Sam, who picked only a Wand of Smiles & a +1 Ring of Protection--and even that made him feel guilty. Luis asking for a Holy Avenger gave Marisha the freedom to ask for more. Brennan: “But there’s an element of verisimilitude to that though, right? These people, the movers and shakers of Avalir. ‘Can I borrow $20?’ No! These people would be fucking loaded!“ It wasn’t just a clever parenting ploy trying to wrangle children, it made sense in the world which doesn’t need an army, just a guy with a Belt of Storm Giant Strength.

Lou wasn’t as Calamity-infused as the rest; he was just excited to be on Critical Role & didn’t feel like he could just show up as a plain bard, so he did bard-sorcerer. (Sam didn’t want to do a plain bard since he’d done that before, but wanted to play something familiar at this high level. Brennan suggested the flavoring, and Sam picked his multiclass warlock patron from the first fey result on the CR wiki. Oh, Sam.) Lou used his Magical Secrets feat to get his dragon summon and the Cone of Cold, “’cause we never took a rest of any kind.” Brennan: “All the GMs out there, fuck a rest, all right? They don’t need ‘em.”

Nydas started as a sorcerer. Loquatius started as a warlock. Patia was a pure School of Enchantment wizard. She didn’t get to use a lot of her class features within the game, but the one thing she did get to clear with Brennan was that she got to use her vast library knowledge to have access to 10 extra spells.

Brennan: GMs & DMs shouldn’t be stingy when the character designs should allow for expansion. Find non-gamebreaking ways to expand character powers.

Travis walked into character creation with zero prep, despite instructions to come with ideas. He happened to be the last one at the table to describe his concept, and after everyone else was full magic, he & Brennan landed on the non-magical investigator rogue. Travis always builds characters by starting with an item. Fjord began with a pair of silver forearm bracers/greaves which he got from a costume shop. Likewise, Cerrit came from these very cool hawks (a type of handaxe) from a fighting system called Sayoc Kali in the Phillipines (wielded by a Navy Seal named Jack Carr). That turned into the Philippine Eagle, which came together beautifully with the Sightwarden elements.

Travis talks about being blown away in the first episode with how natural a rapport some of the characters had with each other (especially excluding him). He felt like he’d missed a meeting. However, it turns out there was indeed a secret meeting between Marisha, Aabria, and Lou in which they talked about their characters’ secret nasty histories with each other.

Brennan wanted to know all the ways that the 75% of the energy dedicated to the Replenishment was actually being misused, siphoned, or otherwise misdirected, and his few suggestions (lichdom, people extending their lives) paled in comparison to the players’ ideas (making the city capable of interplanar travel).

Brennan explicitly wanted members of the Brass Ring to be up to “asymmetrical amount of shady shit.” It was also funny for Brennan to hear these characters talking about how nasty they were as corrupt city officials at the same time he was emailing Luis to discover Zerxus was “not doing good. He’s like, ‘It could all burn. It could burn today, tomorrow, who knows?’“

It’s hard for Luis to be objective about a character he’s been inhabiting for so long. He wanted to challenge himself with a hard commitment to a full redemption paladin. He wanted to parallel his experience as the lonely First Knight with the connection of the Betrayer Gods’ experiences. He didn’t have any longstanding secrets--the dream happened that day. There were two times he wanted to talk to the rest about his issues: first right after speaking with Purvan, and second was during the Zone of Truth until Nydas scolded him. However, Brennan could see the desire to confess in Luis’s eyes and moved the story forward. :O Lou loved the dynamics of the conversation--Zerxus challenging others on their reticence only to be yelled at by his best friend.

Brennan loved how much Luis got into storytelling. His emails were full of notes about Zerxus’s strong convictions and ways he could be manipulated. Brennan likes that 5e moved paladins from wisdom to charisma casters because it allows for the examination of a morality system based on CHA. Zerxus took the universal truth of “everyone can be saved” and never questioned the following conclusion that “I am the right man for the job.” Luis deliberately built in this toxic trait: “I am going to change you.” However, he also felt it was important to have a fervent, unkillable hope. “Let’s have this person who is the most well-meaning, the goodest person in his own heart, and let’s give him this blind spot.”

Marisha talks about the dissonance between the players knowing the characters are being shady but having to justify them internally because they genuinely believe it’s for the good of the city.

Sam talks about Quay being the opposite: instead, he was a liar all the time; his flaw (figured out during the playing) was that he lied to himself more than anyone else. He couldn’t admit to himself that he just wanted simple things, “to be a gritty indie reporter” and to have a lady, and he hated the bending of truth required to be the Herald of Avalir.

Cerrit was a good dad for that day only--he had years of not being a good dad before this. The implication was that Wrayne and Cerrit were not doing well because he had his eyes everywhere except the house with his family. She took off looking for meaningful work and Cerrit just said, “Okay.” He put some of his fears about being a new dad into the character. Travis said he wanted to be Jor-El who got his kids out of there.

Everyone made character choices which elevated the story. The ties to Vespin & the Betrayer Gods were helpful, but everyone was corrupt in some way except Cerrit. Even Quay is introduced by influencing an election. Brennan didn’t want the viewers’ lesson to be, “that’s what happens when everyone’s bad. Not like me, who’s good.” Having a good character whose attention was just in the wrong place was also a great lesson. Travis found it fascinating that even when playing a good character whose entire job was to investigate at the end of days, he had a hard time pushing his friend the Herald on his obvious lies.

The kids being so cute destroyed everyone. Travis picked a dad character because he wanted collateral damage; the character needed stakes. His favorite superhero is Superman (correct) because he is omnipotent and still chooses to be good (also correct, and I’ve never felt so close to Travis), but he’s also been fascinated by Jor-el, who was so prescient he could see the planet’s impending explosion but couldn’t make a ship big enough to fit all three of them. He talks about building characters with priorities: if the first priority is the threat, the job, the enemy, the second is the family, implying you have then put something above the family. As a new dad, he doesn’t know how to do that: his heart is outside his body now. He wanted to explore that conflict of priorities in Cerrit.

Luis doesn’t have kids of his own, but he likes the pretense--he likes trying to access that part of his imagination. He wanted to have a kid that wasn’t his to parallel the relationship between the Betrayers & mortals (wow!). Zerxus’s child was staying with Nydas’s family (Lou’s idea).

Sam & Aabria very quickly decided they didn’t have kids. “There’s something slightly hilarious about exes who fucking hate each other, and there’s something not hilarious at all about exes with a kid who hate each other.”

Travis is incensed that he missed out on all these coffees with other players to pre-prep character relationships. There was early discussion about Laerryn being Elias’s mom with Evandrin, but it never got cemented. There was some idea of it coming up if Elias were ever orphaned in game.

The city put a lot of pressure on Zerxus to become First Knight because there weren’t many other good options after Evandrin died. They needed the eldritch knight-oracle power of Evandrin to study.

Brennan loves playing kids. “There’s a convenience to orphans” due to their lack of attachment. See: Luke on Tatooine. He loves familial relationships because people are like gems, and certain facets only show up in family relationships (Spy x Family vibes, tbh). Even characters who tried to avoid family still had critical moments: Eadalus and Nydas, Patia and her grandfather.

Nydas was based heavily on John Hammond from Jurassic Park. The goal is not just to make the city great, it’s to make it great and show it to the world forever for the recognition. “I think, in the moment where you killed us--”

Brennan: “I just wanna say something. Matt Mercer made up the Calamity, okay? Matt Mercer made it up, and I’m over here bad-copping it--” Sam: “So you gave birth to us, and Matt killed us?” Brennan: “In a way. I’m in the delivery room.” Lou: “Well, I specifically mean when you killed us with the tree. Which is you. The tree didn’t have to be that wild. It could have just split open. And then in the fourth episode for the first second, AKA two hours, you murdered us ruthlessly. That was you.” Brennan: “All I’m saying is that everyone loves it when Matt says two-thirds of Exandria’s gone, but when it actually starts to happen and we’re making saving throws for an hour of gameplay, all of a sudden people got some shit to say. That’s all I’m saying.”

The moment of death was when Nydas realized he had something of value to lose: a community of people doing great things. The slow moment of Laerryn casting Blight was his slow-mo realization of “uh oh, I might have been sitting on something really important” regarding the prophecy. After that, he had this single-minded impetus to try to mitigate the damage. Brennan loved seeing the prophecy incite a character to panic in real time without a saving throw. He thinks it reflects the differences in character backgrounds & Nydas’s grounded struggle in growing up on the earth vs. the elves’ air-based privileged upbringing.

Brennan thinks Cerrit’s decision to leave is right up there with the Blight & pulling the heart through the tree in terms of critical game moments. He could have completely shifted that fight or even persuaded them to stop. Travis thinks Patia & Laerryn were the no. 1 & 2 targets if he’d been there, with Zerxus behind at 3rd. He OOC thought it was a good chance for them to weaken each other before he had to come in to fight them.

The drive to get the Leywright done was because it was the best timing & would free her up to fix her marriage. “Once we get this done, we could do the little things” like visiting Quay’s home plane.

Sam reads his text history with Aabria. “Lorwyn is her first name. ... My first name is Loquatius Hambrick-Zucker.” Aabria had forgotten she’d named her something else first. Next text: “Maybe I should simplify my stupid-ass last name to something much more fey, since that’s where I’m from. How about Loquatius Seelie, implying that I’m from the Seelie court, like Elmenore. Wasn’t that something you did with Fearne on ExU?” They figured out the relationship timeline & number of years divorced, as well as the faults for the marriage. Aabria honestly thought this was just going to be a bit. They were planning to just be sniping at each other in the background for the campaign, but Sam kept coming at Aabria with genuine emotions. Sam had lightly discussed Quay discovering parts of himself with Brennan over the course of the story, but didn’t know what that would look like. Brennan had his hands off that relationship more than any other.

The scandal with Elena Tuvaris was the mark of the end of Loquatius’s reporter-y honesty.

The speech in episode 4 comes up, oh God. “The most beautiful woman in the world” makes Brennan choke up every time he watches it (apparently hundreds of times, God bless). Sam’s emotion in that moment was fully & completely honest. “I’m not a very good actor. I fell in love with her during the game.” Marisha talks about a conversation with Sam she had during C1 about roleplaying styles. She asked him about influences & callbacks, and Sam said he likes to remember what has already happened like rungs of a ladder. Marisha thinks the speech was a masterclass in being 100% informed by what had happened before. Travis reveals Sam wrote the speech in the shadows of the break in illegible chicken scratch on a legal pad. Brennan was blown away by the sheer gravitas of the speech coming from a character who’d only moments before made the deliberate decision to die, to go down with the ship--and then to transition into the Market of Wonders...

Brennan: “That is a perfect joke. I’ve been lucky enough to see a couple of them in my life. That is a perfect joke. There’s something that [Joseph] Campbell says: ‘comedy completes the realization that drama begins.’ I have not contradicted the depths of my sorrow. I have not contradicted the meaningfulness of my sadness, but I have introduced something profoundly absurd and wonderfully silly, and I am not uncommitted in the moment of doing it. It’s hysterical, and it makes it even more sad.”

Aabria volunteering to be the divorced partner of Sam was the best RPG decision she’s ever made. Marisha loved the sediment layers of trauma.

Marisha wanted Patia to be like a Kennedy. It was hard for her because D&D is built on scrappy ne’er-do-wells, and to be someone integrated in society was hard. Brennan thought she did an incredible job bookending her completely absent parents with “Happy Replenishment, Grandfather.” Brennan didn’t realize how alone Patia was until she said that Laerryn was her best friend. There was a moment where everyone was having connections with everyone and Patia was alone with a statue. That led to the in-game realization that somehow Patia’s parents had failed, which is why she’d erased (or someone had erased) them from her memory.

Brennan consulted with Matt before linking the Gau Drashari with the Ashari. He blew up Matt’s phone in his own planning. He had to negotiate balancing the stakes of Avalir with the Primordials’ historically canon focus on Vasselheim. Matt named the Gau Drashari when Brennan asked if there could be a druid group at the mountain the Betrayer Gods would want to destroy. Matt created the idea of the Tree of Names when Brennan came to him with a story beat he needed.

Sam praises Brennan’s balance of the need of the short-form story against Matt’s gigantically huge world.

Travis heavily commends Luis for starting the story off super strong. Lou had told Luis that Brennan likes to start off with character vignettes, and Luis knew of course that meant he wouldn’t start with him, ha! Luis had asked for an encounter with a Betrayer God, but expected it to be a big distance shadow, not something so intimate that resulted in him caring for the character. Zerxus establishes attachments very very quickly--unhealthily quickly. He fell in love with Evandrin immediately and loved Elias as his son immediately. Lou was agonizing over the PC vs. NPC knowledge of Luis having had this intense encounter with Asmodeus but not bringing it up in game. Luis talks about the crazy intimacy of the Lord of Hells looking like Evandrin, like Elias, being super receptive to everything Zerxus offered. Sam thinks it was a crazy unusual bold choice and he loved it.

Blighting the tree & pulling Asmodeus through the portal were key moments for Brennan. Travis could see Brennan’s face change with delight when that happened. Aabria loves how beautifully Luis played the scenes with Asmodeus because he never asked for anything, never insighted, never Zone of Truthed--he tried to do a bunch of things that Luis mechanically knew would never work instead, like Remove Curse. There were certain things he was willing to question and certain things it would never occur to him to question.

Brennan: “In terms of being a liar, the God of Lies--I don’t flimflam a person with a steel resolve. I do what real evil is, which is I find somebody who already wants to believe. You go, ‘Is there something you’d really like to be true?’ How much does the devil even lie in those scenes? You say stuff, you say, ‘The Prime Deities did this to you,’ and homeboy’s like, ‘Yeah, sure, man.’ It’s so much him just letting you walk to where he wants you to walk.”

Travis was very creeped out by the non-conniving, non-arch evil of the devil by way of Brennan. Marisha felt like she genuinely saw something new about what Brennan is capable of. She is horrified at how manipulative he could be when he wanted. Brennan says it’s important to have high cognitive empathy and low capability of caring when the target is hurt; you have to be very emotionally intelligent and aware of what others feel/want to be successfully manipulative. You just don’t care when they’re wounded by it. Asmodeus’s manipulation of Zerxus wasn’t that he lied to him, it was that he showed up to him wounded.

Brennan had a line if Zerxus had ever questioned Asmodeus on his lies: “Yeah, I showed up to you hurt, because you guys love it when people are hurting.” Luis: “Well, a savior needs somebody to save.”

Aabria was more scared that Brennan’s Asmodeus didn’t have an affectation or accent.

Brennan had so many contingency plans if the characters had failed to end the world. He had plans where the Septarion came after them in case they tried to get the city’s authorities on their side. Sans Blight/pull, Vespin shows up and is evil, the Taxmen turn & it’s a fight at the tree: boring options. Most of the contingencies in absence of hubristic folly involve brute force being responsible for the Calamity instead. Others for the final combat included the Taxmen overwhelming them, and contingencies for if Laerryn went down in the final fight: someone would have had to make an insane Arcana check to finish her work--probably Loquatius.

Travis could not have rolled the 31 without the inspiration, the buff, the teamwork. Cerrit had atoned and focused and killed the evil, but had one thing left to do to make things right. He couldn’t have succeeded without the Ring of Brass wanting to help him escape. “It mattered that we were friends.”

After the orb, Travis texted Marisha in game “What did you do to my daughter?!” because he didn’t realize initially what Patia had sent her. Patia’s knowledge hoarding came about because Marisha mourned the loss of the Library of Alexandria. She asks Matt often what’s happened to her orb. Brennan worries about it too: “The camera stops rolling, and suddenly canon leaves you! I immediately wanted to run and find Matt and be like, is the orb okay? I’m not--I don’t have any say anymore. It goes back to you now. Is it fine? The little library, where is it at?” Marisha loves the fan theory that the library going to the daughter of a master detective was the origin of the Cobalt Reserve.

Brennan would love to come back and play Kir or Maya as an adult. Adult Kir in his mind is huge & jacked.

It was really significant to Brennan that Laerryn used her leywright to save Exandria, and for Zerxus to get his cleansing redemption power to get Vespin back for a moment. He didn’t want the story to say that science, innovation, or compassion were bad; it was all a product of a single moment in a specific inspiration. He loved the bookending of these same focuses of failure being later used for a new, more selfless purpose to great success.

Bolo is dead. Matt is hereafter conscripted into doing Slavic accents for Aeorians. Or Bolo is hit by a wagon. Or Bolo was an Aeorian master spy who later worked on threshold crests. Or Bolo polymorphed into a dragon and flew away safely.

Marisha to Sam: “You were sleeping with a dragon, ha!” Brennan: “Dragon fucking! Thanks, folks!”

We end on a lovely thanks to the production crew, including the graphics team with the overlay degrading. The Calamity is here, but the Calamity is not here forever. Aabria: “So we’re alive?” Brennan: “Five of you are dead. That’s what the dice fucking said!”

And on that cheerful note, we’re out! Is it Thursday yet?

#critical role #critical role spoilers #exu calamity #calamity spoilers #talks machina spoilers #long post for ts #very long post for ts

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jq37 · 4 years ago

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The Case File – Mice and Murder Ep 4

The Case of the Puzzling Painting

Welcome back to Loam Hall where our Sylvan Sleuths are still hanging out in a room with a dead body. When we left off, Gangie had been snooping into Sly’s conversation about Fletcher Cottonbottom and now, he uses his Criminal Contacts feature to see what he knows, if anything, about a recent return. With a 26 he knows that his family used to be well respected but after the whole business with the insurance fraud and Sly busting it, the family kind of fell out of favor. So Fletcher was in a weird position where he was rich and a part of high society and had enough dirt on everyone to get them to do things for him but couldn’t actually show his face because he was disgraced. Gangie also knows that it’s rumored that Fletcher’s weapons running scheme was actually a front for moving art.

With regard to more recent news about Fletcher, Gangie was never in direct contact with him but he knows that 3-4 years ago, his most trusted henchmen started going missing--people attributed it to some kind of “Cottonbottom Curse” and that rumor is part of why Gangie decided to get out of dodge in the first place.

Buck does an insight check on the rest of the PCs and, with an 18, doesn’t clock anyone there as especially suspicious (Lars isn’t there but like..it’s Lars). Ian tries to give Squire Badger his last rites but ends up pulling the knife out, putting it back in, flapping blood everywhere with his feathers, and sending Constance into a badger rage. Buck tries to help smooth over things, claiming his big screw up was a new style of avant garde church ritual (Ian appreciates the support--who ministers to the ministers, you know?) and in the process sees his knife for the first time. Which, you know. He obviously suspected before but never nice to see.

While this is going on, Daisy sneaks off to try and check on the secret door and everyone sees her do it/eventually follows her but we’ll get back to her once we check in with Lars who is en route to the kitchen. Once in the hallway, they do a perception check and, on a 15, there are 3 doors and Ally gets to pick one. There’s a kitchen where Gilfoyle is talking to a group, a door where someone is crying behind it, and a door where they can hear nothing. Ally, the galaxy brained genius, goes for the quiet door. That’s the money door and with their ears pressed against the door, they can hear Edwina and Carolyn--the two mice maids that overheard Buck’s conversation with the Badger--whispering about what happened there and wondering if they should pay back the money they were paid to by Buck.

Gilfoyle walks out and sees Lars snooping but on a Nat 20 deception check, Lars is able to play dumb and skate by suspiciousness. Also, with a dirty 20 perception check, when the mice maids leave, Lars sees that they’ve been stealing silverware.

OK, back to Daisy who is getting to the séance room as quickly as possible. She has two rounds before people catch up to her so she’s trying to make the most of it by Investigating the painting she noticed was bolted to the wall earlier. She first rolls an 11, getting no new information. This is so frustrating to her. She’s good at this dammit! But being around Sly is rattling her terribly. She has feelings for him--strong ones. But she isn’t herself around him. How can she be with him if he makes her so unlike herself? Her introspection is enough to earn her advantage from Brennan on her second roll and boom! 25! Daisy is back.

With that roll, she notices that the eyes in the painting actually move and can be used as a spying post on the other side. Then Sly runs in and they start bickering immediately. Daisy throws a crystal ball at him and absolutely brains him on a nat 20--the first combat roll of this very RP oriented season.

Buck and Ian are still in the room with the body for the moment and Buck asks Ian about the first few names on the list Gangie gave him. There were a bunch of members of the Burrows family--a working class family that all died of a consumptive illness. And then the Diggories who died in a carriage accident. The connecting thread? All badgers. Buck then zooms away to follow Daisy, Ian follows, and Lars, seeing them as they leave the kitchens, also follows.

So all the PCs are in the séance room now and they kinda have the sense of, “OK y’all, we’re all screwed but we’re al screwed together so we better throw our lot in with each other and start working together so we don’t die because no one else here is on our side.” Buck proposes an alliance and they all agree to share info. Sly asks about Buck’s knife and Buck admits it’s his but says he didn’t do it. Sly believes him--not because he wouldn’t do it but because he has no motive (that he knows about anyway. Buck doesn’t spill about the contract).

Gangie shares the list of names from before with the whole group.It’s like half badgers and then some other critters (full list here). Sly doesn’t share any of his secret info Grant got texted. Daisy and Buck don’t share about the key (though Sly you’ll remember sat her steal it). Buck does however mention his suspicion about the fact that Gilfoyle wasn’t around when Squire Badger gave his speech and Daisy does the same about the fact that he said he would call the cops but the cops haven’t arrived yet. Lar’s remembers that Jez’s husband is gunning for at seat in parliament and wonders if this is related somehow. Daisy mentions the eyes in the painting and everyone is like way to bury the lede dude! Especially when they’ve just all spilled their secrets. Everyone checks on the painting and with a 25 Gangie can intuit that this is probably used to spy on rich people when they’re mid-séance and vulnerable and spilling secrets (which he doesn’t share but Daisy comes to a similar conclusion on her own). Buck on a 23 can smell ledgers (idk how but the DM said so and I’m reporting it) and guesses that that’s where the Squire’s real office is which means that’s probably where the contract he needs to find and destroy is too.

The group makes a list of their loose ends which are what’s on the other side of the painting, what’s up with Fletcher, and the smell of ozone. Plus Ian remembers that the date on the bust in the study is wrong and shares with the class.

Lars tries to get to the other side of the room by ripping the painting off the hinges with a very impressive 26 but there is fully a wall behind it and the noise brings Gilfoyle, Harding, and the Badger kids running. Lars notes that in the stone behind the painting it says “⅓” and then hurriedly puts the painting back. Daisy thinks that might refer to a secret third floor or basement accessible by the elevator (but my first thought was that there were 2 other spying paintings in the house somewhere).

Everyone in the room hears the Gilfoyle and co. coming and try to act natural. There is a group stealth check that they all tank so heavily that all the suspicious staff and kids need to do to suss them out is roll above a 5.

AND THEY ROLL A TWO.

With that, Lucretia appears, totally buys that they’re doing very important spiritual work in there, and in fact guards the door for them. They use the privacy bought by their very vigilant sentry to plan their next steps. Sly, Daisy, and Ian will check out the study while they rest of them check out the elevator. As they exit, Lucretia asks if they got the answers they needed out of the spirits.

Oh yes, says Daisy, echoing Lucretia’s nonsense prediction from last episode. Either something good or bad might happen. Either way, I’m excited!

Case Notes

How baller of a player move is it to say a line so poignant that the DM is forced to let you roll with advantage? I have been on the other side of that as the DM and it’s so great. MAD respect to Rekha for that. AND THEN THE DICE COOPERATED. You simply love to see it.

The other best Rekha line is Daisy to Sly upon being called out about stealing the key in his normal, coy, quippy way: You saw me bitch.

Shout out to Grant also for being constantly on as Sly. The guy is on point always. Impeccable.

I am SO SO SO happy Daisy and Sly are on the same mission team. If I was friends with either of them I’d be like, “This is a toxic relationship, they make you too crazy.” But as an outside viewer I want them to be within crystal ball throwing distance always.

The question I’m sure we’re all asking: Is Brennan enough of a minx to invoke the butler did it trope? I know everyone at the table is thinking it even if none of them have said it outright. I figured the reason the cops haven’t showed up yet was the storm but who knows?

Two pieces of housekeeping, only Buck and Gangie know what the room behind the painting is with their high rolls and, after the bit of passing it back and forth with Buck, Daisy has the key.

I really can’t do the bit about Gangie’s mom justice. I wish there was a comedy Emmy for actual play DnD shows so D20 could get the accolades it deserves just for that bit.

Brennan indicated that the conversation between the mice maids was the most interesting info (Gilfoyle convo to staff was too public to be juicy/they could get the info from one of the many gathered staff people and crying is info on its own--though I am curious about who the crying person was) but I’m wondering what he meant by that. Because the fact that Buck paid them might be interesting if Buck did it. But we know he didn’t. Is it the fact that they were in the room at all? Again, info that the party knows if not Lars specifically. The fact that they were stealing silverware? What’s Brennan’s game here?

#dimension 20 #dimension 20 spoilers #mice and murder #mice and murder spoilers #the case file

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young-bev · 5 years ago

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An essay abt Fabian Aramais Seacaster

This is the essay that i wrote for my greek myth class. The assignment was to find a contemporary example of Hubris and Nemesis.Understand that some story elements are simplified and glossed over bc this was only supposed to be three pages and i wrote five. Idk like one person on tumblr wanted to see it and a few ppl on twitter as well. So enjoy??

In recent years there has been a rise in popularity in TableTop Role Playing Games (RPG), this is due to shows like Critical Role, The Adventure Zone, Not Another DnD Podcast and Dimension 20. These shows have amassed large followings and have even gone and performed live around the world. Viewed as a collaborative storytelling medium, using dice to define the success of one's actions, it is only reasonable to wonder if the traditional storytelling devices seen in classic mythology translates into this medium. Examining the plot to Dimension 20 Fantasy High a clear example of hubris comes to mind. This hubris is shown by a Player Character (PC) named Fabian Aramais Seacaster in the second season of Fantasy High. To understand the significance of the hubris and Nemesis, one must understand Fabian’s personality in the context of this show and how that relates to the situation he was placed in. Understanding Fabian as a character will also allow the viewer to understand how cruel Nemesis was to him. Nemesis’ cruelty can also be examined as a part of games mechanics and reflected in the relations between Dungeon Master and Player.

For ease of understanding, I will first explain the context in which Fantasy High takes place. In the introduction to the show, the Dungeon Master (DM) Brennan Lee Mulligan explains that: “Now we can answer the age-old question of; What if John Hughes ran a tabletop RPG game?” The show follows a group of heroes who call themselves the Bad Kids as they attend the Aguefort Adventuring Academy: the world’s premier training ground for would-be Heroes. It is the first episode of the show that Fabian is introduced. He is a half-elven fighter raised by infamous pirate Bill Seacaster and Hallariel Seacaster. Played by Lou Wilson, Fabian is: “Everything [Lou Wilson] wanted to be in high school; rich and hot.” as he stated in an episode of Fantasy High: Extra Credit. It is here in Fabian’s very first scene that the viewer is given a key insight into Fabian’s hubris. While talking to his father before the first day of school, Bill Seacaster says to Fabian; “You’re my son, you’re a direct reflection of me! You and your glory is the same as mine and my glory! That’s how we relate to each other!” (Mulligan, S1 E1). This statement is important because it will directly play into many of the choices Fabian makes in the following episodes. In the very same interaction, Fabian is gifted by his father an Auguefort Owlbears letterman jacket, as Fabian hopes to make it onto the team with the tryouts happening later that day. The jacket becomes a great symbol for both Fabian’s hubris and identity as he does not initially make the team but still decides to wear the jacket to school nearly every day. As hubris is defined as someone viewing themselves as either above or below their true social rank. hubris is also seen as acting out of an overblown sense of importance. In a society where a social ladder is clear, Jocks and cheerleaders ‘rule the school’ and the nerds find themselves at the bottom, wearing a letterman jacket for a team that you are not a part of is very much believing yourself above your true position on the social ladder.

While the jacket is a minor display of hubris in the first season as Fabian does eventually find his way onto the Owlbears, it is not until Fantasy High: Sophomore Year that Fabian’s hubris is met with Nemesis. In sophomore year, the Bad Kids find themselves on a quest to retrieve the crown of the Nightmare King. Their journey leads them to the pirate city of Leviathan. Here the city is made up of ships roped and assembled together, it floats in the Celestine Sea. On their first night in Leviathan, Fabian separates himself from the party and heads off, now pensive as this city reminds him of Bill Seacaster. On his own, he meets members of his father’s cult. Warlocks who have given patronage to Bill Seacaster as he is now causing chaos as a devil in the nine hells after dying at the end of freshman year. Initially, these pirates praise and celebrate Fabian as he is their patron’s son. They believe Fabian their saviour. Their reaction changes, however, when they ask Fabian to describe how he defeated Bill Seacaster in combat. These warlocks believe Fabian to have killed his father in a grand and epic battle. Although, in actuality, Fabian killed his father in an act of mercy after their home was attacked by mercenaries. Fabian tries to explain this to these pirates and they immediately become frantic and fearful of the lack of potency and power of their patron. They believed Fabian a powerful enough swordsman to defeat Bill Seacaster, thus powerful enough to defeat one of Bill’s long standing rivals, a man named James Wicklaw (Mulligan, S2 E5). With a hurt pride and desperate to prove himself, Fabian declares: “I am perfectly capable of leading an army, Alright? I am my father’s son through and through. And I am as good as he is...” (Mulligan, S2 E5). It is here with wounded pride that Fabian sets out to prove himself in the eyes of his father’s cult. He leads them in an attack against James Wicklaw. Fabian’s hubris here comes from overcompensating for his hurt pride. He goes above his social standing, believing himself powerful enough to defeat Wicklaw on his own. This is however not true, as Dungeons & Dragons is a game where antagonists have challenge ratings and players gain levels in certain abilities. It is up to the Dungeon Master to balance encounters and choose antagonists appropriately. James Wicklaw was a Mind Flayer, listed in the Monster Manual as a level 7 challenge rating. Fabian at the time was a level 8 Fighter (Perkins, p.222). While this seems balanced, Fabian was immediately grappled and stunned, leaving him unable to do anything but watch, while Wicklaw and his crew slaughtered the 20 followers he had brought into battle. Nemesis comes to Fabian by removing his sense of identity. As Chungledown Bim, one of the warlocks says to Fabian before dying; “Ye ain’t no pirate and Bill would spit in your eye…I’m gonna shit in your mouth” (Mulligan, S2 E5). Ultimately these words would affect Fabian so much that they will come to haunt him in later episodes. Punishment in Dungeons & Dragons does play out differently then it does in classic Mythology. Where the gods of the pantheon are near impossible to reason with and are cruel and unforgiving in their punishments, the ones in control of the world of D&D are you and your friends. A good DM is on the side of their players but it is their job to react as the world in which their players find themselves. In this situation, Lou Wilson made a series of dangerous and reckless decisions as Fabian but these decisions were exactly the decisions that Fabian would make. He is prideful, he is overconfident, he is selfish and ultimately insecure when his pride is threatened. By losing his sense of identity, Lou and Brennan made the decision away from the table to push Fabian’s punishment past simply a character choice and into the mechanics of the game. At the table, we see Fabian shed his father’s eyepatch and sword along with his letterman jacket. These items are obvious symbols of Fabian’s sense of self. It isn’t until a later episode that the viewer sees the true effect that losing his identity has on Fabian. He suffers from exhaustion and pneumonia in the following episode and seems to have fallen into a depressive state. In episode 8, the Bad Kids go to face Wicklaw again, this time together as a team. It is here that the viewers and the other players learn that Lou and Brennan decided to remove all classes and feats Fabian had taken throughout the campaign. This leaves him with a single attack. Talking about this decision in the Fireside Chat, Brennan and Lou said: “[Lou Wilson]: A lot of it is a relationship and trust between you and your DM; in that your DM sees you make that choice, the less strategic choice…and meets you in the middle...It was so much more fun because...Brennan rewarded my choices with the reality and groundedness they deserve...’[Brennan Lee Mulligan]: ‘I think there comes a moment when playing D&D, where you can say: ‘I can really blow it and tell a better story’...I need to honor the danger Lou has put himself in and I need to put consequences here and I just can’t be vindictive.” This quote highlights the main difference with how hubris is treated in this media. Nemesis and the other Greek gods do not care, as characters, if their punishments are juste. They are particularly vindictive and often do not care if you die because of your hubris. Athena did not care about the importance of storytelling when cursing Arachne for boasting of her weaving skills, she simply cared that Arachne be punished for her hubris (Buxton, p.80). In opposition to this, a Dungeon Master and their players are more similar to the poets composing the myths. They make choices while considering the narrative, they enforce nemesis in a way that adds to the narrative. Using Nemesis allows the DM to enforce consequences onto the players allowing their decisions to feel more significant and raise the stakes. However, because of teamwork between player and DM, Nemesis will be much more forgiving to a Player Character then a Non-Player Character (NPC) or those showing hubris in myths. In conclusion, hubris and Nemesis still find their place in the world of RPGS. Fabian Aramais Seacaster is a clear example of this. He boasts of his abilities, believes himself a captain, when in actuality he is at his best when working in a team. Nemesis removes his sense of identity and confidence, forcing him to face his enemies without the skills he had honed in the past few years. She forced Fabian to realize that his true strength comes from the bonds he has with his friends and not borrowed from another's reputation. Nemesis forced Fabian to face his insecurities for which he was overcompensating, playing a key part in the larger elements of Fabian’s journey to becoming his ‘own darling man-boy’.

#dimension 20 #dimension 20 fantasy high #dimension 20 live #dimension 20 spoilers #this is the second school project ive done about fantasy high #fabian aramais seacaster #Fantasy high #Lou Wilson #brennan lee mulligan #an essay

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cringefaecompilation · 5 months ago

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hi, hello, op here. this is astrid becke, upcoming subject of the Complicated Women podcast as run by wanda childa. she is an antagonist npc tied into the backstory of a player character in the second campaign of critical role (aka d20’s cousin)

astrid becke was a teenage girl that was allowed into a magic school that trained its students to be evil wizard cops. she was beaten, tortured, starved and isolated from the outside world for years with only her two other friends (another npc and the pc) to keep her company. she and her friends graduated by slaughtering their own parents. the pc however snapped and attacked her in the process, leaving her with a massive scar to remember him by as he was framed and locked in an asylum, blamed for being a crazy serial killer who murdered everyone’s parents to keep both her and the other pc from getting caught.

astid is now fully an adult evil wizard cop in the present day of the campaign, but is still deeply rattled by what happened to her. she’s a threat, sure, but the pc talks about her with such reverence and kindness you forget that. and even when we see her threaten him one-on-one at a party, the dm describes her leaving the party and then immediately sobbing because she’s overwhelmed with emotions from seeing him again. even when she works directly with the bbeg to try and murder the party they never once treat her as just as bad as the bbeg and the worst they act is being mildly sassy at a dinner party that the beg invites them to. astrid even fights alongside him in the final battle, but she changes her mind and helps the party imprison him.

but then what? is she murdered in cold blood after that because how dare she work with him? no, she’s comforted. the other party members pull her aside and while she does get punished by having to clean up the mess they’d made of a sacred temple (long story) they have empathy and extend kindness towards her. one of them even says she’s a good person and they believe in her.

and when another party (played by the same cast sans one) stumbles across her hiding from the law, be it either the fact that the players have zero ill-will towards her and understand where she’s coming from or the fact all of their new characters have no clue who she is, the only reason they’re opposed to her is that they were told she might have information on the current villain they’re facing. they aren’t trying to kill her or punish her, and once they get the info they need, they leave her in peace.

astrid becke was in 9 episodes of critical role, and in those 9 episodes had been given more grace than i think all the ratgrinders had combined. but fandom fucking hated her ass because she worked for the bad guy and gets in the way of shipping the pc with another unrelated male npc who arguably did waaaaaay worse shit and apologized/made up for exactly zero of it. but hey, at least the people that made the show acknowledge that both of them kind of suck in the exact same way!

it’s times like this i’m reminded of a tag i saw on a post that read "every time matthew mercer/critical role screws up people forget brennan isn’t white" and oh boy did it show in a lot of the meta posts i saw floating about. dude’s not perfect and he can fumble a story just as much as anybody else. obviously it doesn’t make him an awful person for making a dissatisfying story, but it doesn’t mean you can say he’s a decolonial philosopher just to defend the story because you liked it.

she's so crazzzzzzzy! love her!!!

#🍃#to my followers i apologize if it's weird i didn't name any of the other characters but a lot of d20 fans dgaf about cr #so you know keeping it light with only one character name to keep track of

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utilitycaster · 5 years ago

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what do you think are the different strengths of the GMs in the various actual plays you watch?

This is a good question.

The actual plays I watch or have watched are:

Critical Role (caught up)

TAZ (caught up, so I’m going to use Griffin as the GM since Travis is newer to it - I think he’s doing a good job, it just feels weird to judge him based on four episodes).

Relics and Rarities (finished...hopefully they do a second season?)

Dimension 20 (caught up on Fantasy High/Fantasy High Live, finished Escape from the Bloodkeep, am still relatively early on in Unsleeping City)

[I also just started listening to Rusty Quill Gaming, but I’m like 4 episodes in and right now they’re still sort of getting used to the Pathfinder rules so it’s going a little slowly; I’m not including Undeadwood for a couple reasons, but mostly it was short, I don’t know the rpg system used very well, and I never watched Deadwood so its harder for me to judge a couple aspects of Brian’s GM-ing but I did really like it]

Anyway:

Critical Role - I mean, it’s kind of established fact that Matt Mercer is exceptionally good in pretty much all ways at DM-ing, so I’ll focus on some things he does particularly well.

He’s the only DM/GM here for whom I can’t think of any examples where I was like “that seemed kind of railroaded”. Like, I’m sure he’s done the DM trick of “both paths lead to the same end”, and I don’t blame other DMs for doing this - it’s tough when people get super chaotic - but it’s definitely admirable and something I really appreciate because while it means things can go very badly, it also puts the plot in the hands of the players.

To that end I think the reason he can have such an open world is because of how built out the world of Exandria is. And again - I love the worldbuilding the other GMs I’m going to talk about have, and this is more a recognition of how incredibly detailed and thorough his world is.

TAZ - So I think all the GMs on this list do a great job with NPCs and making us care deeply about them, and all of them do that through having the NPCs clearly have lives even when the camera isn’t on them, so to speak, but I believe this is absolutely one of Griffin’s strengths and worth recognizing.

I also think he’s had probably the most unique worlds in terms of structure - I also love extraplanar weirdness as a setting and were I to run a serious, long-running game that’s something I’d want to incorporate.

Relics and Rarities - I mentioned this before, but I think Deborah Ann Woll did the best job of running a game that could make another GM say “Oh, I could do that!” - and not in the sense of her DM-ing not being very good and experienced, but rather it was episodic, and the props were for the most part home-made (which is something she specifically talked about being a goal). Don’t get me wrong, I love a giant battle-map, and I should note that TAZ probably doesn’t use fancy maps being a podcast and played over skype, and that CR used graph paper until the Chroma Conclave arc, but I loved the homemade puzzles and thought they were really creative and yet accessible. As for being an episodic game - it’s a particular style, and it works well if you run a game for beginners or if you can’t meet that regularly, both of which are true for me. It’s hard to make a story that works both as a series of one shots but with a through line as well, and she did an excellent job with it.

She also did, as some of those episodes, some very good self-contained mysteries. All the GMs here did a great job of having characters uncover mysteries, but it’s really hard to run a mystery in a couple of hours, rather than over the course of a long-running game.

Dimension 20: As the explicit comedy one, I have to recognize the amazing improv in this game. Several of the most iconic NPCs or funniest scenes were almost entirely made up on the spot. I think to be a really good and flexible DM you either have to be like Matt Mercer and already have almost every answer thought out, or you just need to be excellent at rolling with it, and Brennan is so good at the latter.

I also think it’s a great example of using heightened versions of real settings in a fun way - it works especially great in comedy. Using an 80s high school movie or a magic New York or a thinly veiled parody of Mordor are great ideas for a D&D game, and he does a great job running it.

Finally, this is something the Escape from the Bloodkeep commentary episodes cover (I don’t listen to Adventuring Academy regularly but I’ve watched a few episodes specifically about the shows) but I really like the way he’s handled villains both when they were the protagonists (Escape from the Bloodkeep) and in-game normally. There’s a reason we cheer for the Escape from the Bloodkeep team and for Gortholax and not for the actual enemies in the story, and it’s that they’re like “well yeah we kill people but we wouldn’t like, be racist, or lie about killing people”. It’s something most D&D games have as an undercurrent, but the comedy comes from it being so openly out there.

#d&d #dungeons & dragons #dimension 20 #critical role #the adventure zone #taz #relics & rarities #Anonymous

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johnl · 3 years ago

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Best summation of where we are at just now -a twitter thread by @martyrmade

I think I've had discussions w/enough Boomer-tier Trump supporters who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent to extract a general theory about their perspective. It is also the perspective of most of the people at the Capitol on 1/6, and probably even Trump himself.

Most believe some or all of the theories involving midnight ballots, voting machines, etc, but what you find when you talk to them is that, while they'll defend those positions w/info they got from Hannity or Breitbart or whatever, they're not particularly attached to them.

Here are the facts - actual, confirmed facts - that shape their perspective: 1) The FBI/etc spied on the 2016 Trump campaign using evidence manufactured by the Clinton campaign. We now know that all involved knew it was fake from Day 1 (see: Brennan's July 2016 memo, etc).

These are Tea Party people. The types who give their kids a pocket Constitution for their birthday and have Founding Fathers memes in their bios. The intel community spying on a presidential campaign using fake evidence (incl forged documents) is a big deal to them.

Everyone involved lied about their involvement as long as they could. We only learned the DNC paid for the manufactured evidence because of a court order. Comey denied on TV knowing the DNC paid for it, when we have emails from a year earlier proving that he knew.

This was true with everyone, from CIA Dir Brennan & Adam Schiff - who were on TV saying they'd seen clear evidence of collusion w/Russia, while admitting under oath behind closed doors that they hadn't - all the way down the line. In the end we learned that it was ALL fake.

At first, many Trump ppl were worried there must be some collusion, because every media & intel agency wouldn't make it up out of nothing. When it was clear that they had made it up, people expected a reckoning, and shed many illusions about their gov't when it didn't happen.

We know as fact: a) The Steele dossier was the sole evidence used to justify spying on the Trump campaign, b) The FBI knew the Steele dossier was a DNC op, c) Steele's source told the FBI the info was unserious, d) they did not inform the court of any of this and kept spying.

Trump supporters know the collusion case front and back. They went from worrying the collusion must be real, to suspecting it might be fake, to realizing it was a scam, then watched as every institution - agencies, the press, Congress, academia - gaslit them for another year.

Worse, collusion was used to scare people away from working in the administration. They knew their entire lives would be investigated. Many quit because they were being bankrupted by legal fees. The DoJ, press, & gov't destroyed lives and actively subverted an elected admin.

This is where people whose political identity was largely defined by a naive belief in what they learned in Civics class began to see the outline of a Regime that crossed all institutional boundaries. Because it had stepped out of the shadows to unite against an interloper.

GOP propaganda still has many of them thinking in terms of partisan binaries, but A LOT of Trump supporters see that the Regime is not partisan. They all know that the same institutions would have taken opposite sides if it was a Tulsi Gabbard vs Jeb Bush election.

It's hard to describe to people on the left (who are used to thinking of gov't as a conspiracy... Watergate, COINTELPRO, WMD, etc) how shocking & disillusioning this was for people who encourage their sons to enlist in the Army, and hate ppl who don't stand for the Anthem.

They could have managed the shock if it only involved the government. But the behavior of the corporate press is really what radicalized them. They hate journalists more than they hate any politician or gov't official, because they feel most betrayed by them.

The idea that the press is driven by ratings/sensationalism became untenable. If that were true, they'd be all over the Epstein story. The corporate press is the propaganda arm of the Regime they now see in outline. Nothing anyone says will ever make them unsee that, period.

This is profoundly disorienting. Many of them don't know for certain whether ballots were faked in November 2020, but they know for absolute certain that the press, the FBI, etc would lie to them if there was. They have every reason to believe that, and it's probably true.

They watched the press behave like animals for four years. Tens of millions of people will always see Kavanaugh as a gang rapist, based on nothing, because of CNN. And CNN seems proud of that. They led a lynch mob against a high school kid. They cheered on a summer of riots.

They always claimed the media had liberal bias, fine, whatever. They still thought the press would admit truth if they were cornered. Now they don't. It's a different thing to watch them invent stories whole cloth in order to destroy regular lives and spark mass violence.

Time Mag told us that during the 2020 riots, there were weekly conference calls involving, among others, leaders of the protests, the local officials who refused to stop them, and media people who framed them for political effect. In Ukraine we call that a color revolution.

Throughout the summer, Democrat governors took advantage of COVID to change voting procedures. It wasn't just the mail-ins (they lowered signature matching standards, etc). After the collusion scam, the fake impeachment, Trump ppl expected shenanigans by now.

Re: "fake impeachment", we now know that Trump's request for Ukraine to cooperate w/the DOJ regarding Biden's $ activities in Ukraine was in support of an active investigation being pursued by the FBI and Ukraine AG at the time, and so a completely legitimate request.

Then you get the Hunter laptop scandal. Big Tech ran a full-on censorship campaign against a major newspaper to protect a political candidate. Period. Everyone knows it, all of the Tech companies now admit it was a "mistake" - but, ya know, the election's over, so who cares?

Goes w/o saying, but: If the NY Times had Don Jr's laptop, full of pics of him smoking crack and engaging in group sex, lots of lurid family drama, emails describing direct corruption and backed up by the CEO of the company they were using, the NYT wouldn't have been banned.

Think back: Stories about Trump being pissed on by Russian prostitutes and blackmailed by Putin were promoted as fact, and the only evidence was a document paid for by his opposition and disavowed by its source. The NY Post was banned for reporting on true information.

The reaction of Trump ppl to all this was not, "no fair!" That's how they felt about Romney's "binders of women" in 2012. This is different. Now they see, correctly, that every institution is captured by ppl who will use any means to exclude them from the political process.

And yet they showed up in record numbers to vote. He got 13m more votes than in 2016, 10m more than Clinton got! As election night dragged on, they allowed themselves some hope. But when the four critical swing states (and only those states) went dark at midnight, they knew.

Over the ensuing weeks, they got shuffled around by grifters and media scam artists selling them conspiracy theories. They latched onto one, then another increasingly absurd theory as they tried to put a concrete name on something very real.

Media & Tech did everything to make things worse. Everything about the election was strange - the changes to procedure, unprecedented mail-in voting, the delays, etc - but rather than admit that and make everything transparent, they banned discussion of it (even in DMs!).

Everyone knows that, just as Don Jr's laptop would've been the story of the century, if everything about the election dispute was the same, except the parties were reversed, suspicions about the outcome would've been Taken Very Seriously. See 2016 for proof.

Even the courts' refusal of the case gets nowhere w/them, because of how the opposition embraced mass political violence. They'll say, w/good reason: What judge will stick his neck out for Trump knowing he'll be destroyed in the media as a violent mob burns down his house?

It's a fact, according to Time Magazine, that mass riots were planned in cities across the country if Trump won. Sure, they were "protests", but they were planned by the same people as during the summer, and everyone knows what it would have meant. Judges have families, too.

Forget the ballot conspiracies. It's a fact that governors used COVID to unconstitutionally alter election procedures (the Constitution states that only legislatures can do so) to help Biden to make up for a massive enthusiasm gap by gaming the mail-in ballot system.

They knew it was unconstitutional, it's right there in plain English. But they knew the cases wouldn't see court until after the election. And what judge will toss millions of ballots because a governor broke the rules? The threat of mass riots wasn't implied, it was direct.

a) The entrenched bureaucracy & security state subverted Trump from Day 1, b) The press is part of the operation, c) Election rules were changed, d) Big Tech censors opposition, e) Political violence is legitimized & encouraged, f) Trump is banned from social media.

They were led down some rabbit holes, but they are absolutely right that their gov't is monopolized by a Regime that believes they are beneath representation, and will observe no limits to keep them getting it. Trump fans should be happy he lost; it might've kept him alive.

#@martyrmade

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princezukohere · 7 years ago

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Welcome to the prank wars *Colby Brock*

*Requested by https://letowolfie.tumblr.com/ *

hey, could you make a Colby Brock one shot where the reader is his girlfriend and the two of you prank Sam? :) thank you:))

A little long but in a way imagines and one shot are sort of the same thing.

"What's up it's s- wait wrong channel," Colby said making you laugh. "Hey guys it's Colby and I'm here with my girlfriend (Y/N). We're going to be reading comments on her pictures and my pictures and then we're going to go through each other's DMs." He explained handing you his phone while taking yours. "You know the relationship is real when you guys have each other's passwords and a thumbprint." You said as you unlocked Colby's phone. You showed the camera his lock screen. You guys had fallen asleep on the couch during movie night and Aaron took a picture to send to Colby because he said it was too cute to just ignore. "Comment number one." You started, "I really need Colby to realize how much I love him and how he's changed my life so much." You read. "Awee, I love you too," Colby said. "I love all of you, you guys are amazing and without you in wouldn't be in this room filming this video." He added with a smile. "The next comment is, Colby is daddy asf but we all know we're not the only one calling him that." You read. "Who else is calling you daddy Colby?" You playfully asked. "Brennan, Nik, Corey...the fans hopefully you." He listed. You pushed his arm rolling your eyes. The questions went on for awhile until you guys finished the video, he switched the SD card placing that one by his computer before starting his camera. "Okay guys, so as you know Sam and Kat pranked us last week so we decided revenge was in store for this. (Y/N) and I have a really good relationship. We don't fight that often and when we do they're the smallest arguments that we fix right away. Now normally she's over every single day until she either has to work or she has other plans so we're going to set up a fake argument and she's going to storm out and not come around for a few days and then when she does she's going to text Kat and ask if they can meet up or something. She's going to say some things and hopefully, Kat will tell Sam and Sam will tell me." Colby explained. "Also I feel like this is more of a prank on us because we have to be careful about facetime, phone calls and texts because I see Colby every single day which might sound excessive but we're just so used to it being that way." You started to explain. "But if Kat doesn't tell Sam, then I'll tell Sam the same thing because we know Sam tells Colby pretty much everything." You finished as you stood up. "Here we go, guys," Colby said before turning the camera off. He kissed your cheek before heading downstairs. You followed after him waving at everyone as they were in the game room. "How did filming go?" Sam asked. Colby gave him a shrug before going into the kitchen. "It was fine." You told him before following after Colby once more. Colby was filming on his phone so he made sure the screen wasn't showing as he stopped to turn to you. "It was fine, that's what you call it?" He asked. "It's not even that serious Colby, we could have talked about this upstairs in front of everyone." You told him keeping your voice low. "That way you can keep this perfect imagine in front of all of them?" "Colby it wasn't a secret! I wasn't hiding anything." You continued. "COREY!" He yelled, "I have a question." He said as headed to the game room. "Colby I swear to God, don't bring them into this. Can we handle this like two adults because that's what we're supposed to be adults." You fired at him. You could see Aaron and Elton's face, they were obviously both uncomfortable and confused. Sam looked shocked because you two didn't yell often, Devyn and Kat looked anywhere but at you and Corey....poor Corey looked as if he said the wrong thing he'd be screwed. "If Devyn got a dm from some guy and he was being sexual and she was like I'm not interested but he kept going you'd want to know right?" He asked. Corey nodded. "What about you Sam? You'd want Kat to tell you right?" Sam nodded as well. "Well I'm not Kat or Devyn and you're not Corey and Sam. I don't need you fighting my battles or bringing our friends into this." You yelled at him.

"Why? Something you need to hide?" He asked you. "Are you, I'm going home." You told him as you headed back to the kitchen to grab your phone. You left shortly after feeling proud of the setup. Now it was just time to wait. As you predicted the wait was the worst, you fell asleep with him on Facetime every night unless he was out with Brennan so the fact that even when he was at home you couldn't do it was a little stressful. In a way the week without Colby was also good for you, you hadn't realized how much time you spent with him and his friends, you didn't exclude your friends, you just hadn't spent much time with them recently. The plan came full circle and instead of talking to Kat first you and Colby decided to just go to Sam. Colby had said he was hanging out with Brennan and Nik so you took advantage and called Sam and asked if you could talk to him. "Do you want to talk in my room or down here?" Sam asked as he let you in the house, you motioned to go upstairs, he nodded leading the way even though you knew where everyone's room was. "So what's going on? You and Colby haven't talked since that whole argument?" "I've tried to call but he won't answer." You said as you sat on Sam's bed. "I think he's done with me." "He's in love with you." Sam started but you stopped him. "Don't say that...it'll make me feel worse. I love Colby I do, he's so sweet and kind but I don't think I'm in love with Colby." You tried, "I think I wanted to be in love with him so bad that this break made me realize that I'm not." "Well, that's bad news," Sam mumbled. "You're going to tell him right?" "How do I do that? How do I look him in the eyes and day hey, I'm not in love with you...I can't do that Sam." "You can't just lie and say that you do...it would be better to just be honest." "And break his heart and ruin that smile that everyone loves to see?" You said quietly, the actual thought of you hurting Colby destroyed you. "How about you stay here and when Colby gets back the three of us can talk?" Sam asked. You had texted Colby and told him to get back to the house as quick as possible which was a lot faster than you would have thought. The three of you sat in Colby's room, silent. Sam was the one to break it. "I've never seen you two argue like that...I thought you loved each other." "What do you mean? I do love her." Colby finally spoke. "I love you too Colby...I'm just not in love with you." You said quietly, Sam stood up. "There's also something I need to say to you," Colby told Sam. "WELCOME TO THE PRANK WARS BROTHER!" "Oh my God! I was worried about your relationship. YOUR relationship guys!" Sam laughed as he fell back on Colby's bed. "Hey, we did a lot for this prank." "What pretend to be apart, I knew I heard you facetiming someone but I wasn't sure if it was (Y/N) or Brennan," Sam added as he got up. "I'm leaving, I'm getting you guys back and it's going to be a living hell." Sam finished before leaving. "Let's never do that again." You said as you wrapped your arms around Colby. "You should stay the night. Movies and popcorn because it's been five days." He said with a smile, you nodded in agreement.

#colby brock #colby brock imagine #sam and colby #sam golbach #welcome to the prank wars #Corey and Devyn #corey scherer #elton castee #aaron doh #youtubers #youtube #youtuber fanfiction #youtuber

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jq37 · 5 years ago

Text

The Report Card – Fantasy High Sophomore Year Ep 5

The One With Garthy O’ Brien

Welcome back you guys and a special shoutout to all of y’all who are fans of FH and CritRole. I don’t know about you but Matt and Brennan basically shaved a full year off of my life between Wednesday and Thursday with their DM machinations. Now we don’t have time to unpack all of that, but we can at least tackle the FH stuff so let’s jump right in.

Last we left off, the gang had just arrived at the floating pirate city of Leviathan. Pirates immediately start hauling them in and everyone turns to Fabian for a cue on how to react (at the exact same time, hilariously). Fabian tells them all to be mean and he makes a pirate cry immediately. Wild.

They meet Jemina Joy who is a very cool Warforged (living automaton) pirate and also the boatswain of the city (pronounced “bosun”, they’re the boss of the crew and all the stuff on the boat, I was very into Monkey Island as a kid). One of her arms is a cannon and I need you to know that. Anyway, Fabian name drops his dad to try and get them some respect. It goes pretty OK but not as well as Adaine simply pointing out Cathilda’s presence. Jemina fully takes the knee and calls her, “Cathilda the Black, Terror of the Celestine Sea.” Fig helps Cathilda disguise herself so she doesn’t draw any unnecessary attention. Despite the clout, Jemina still says she’s seizing the boat (it seems like they do this to get materials to keep the city afloat). Fig tries to move her with the power of rock because of course. She hits at 23 on a 20 DC check for that because of course.

While she’s doing that nonsense, Adaine and Riz are--as always--trying to keep the party alive. Riz rolls a high perception check and noticed a pretty boy tiefling watching Fabian looking all hero worshippy.

Thoroughly swayed between the name dropping and the rock and roll and the Cathilda of it all, Jemina offers to let them buy the Van-Boat back. Fabian, as always, is ready to throw any amount of cash at the problem and Adaine, as always, is trying to be responsible with their cash. After a hilariously long sidebar (which includes Fig, who introduced herself as a very famous rock star, saying they should “Act the part of the pauper,” which is a wild turn of phrase to just drop out of nowhere) the tiefling from before shows up and pays for the Van for them. He introduces himself as Alistair Ash and tells them that he paid with rocks magick’d to look like gold for ten minutes so they better book it. They have another long sidebar about whether they should pay or not with Adaine and wildly Fig on the side and of paying. They pay and Alistair agrees to take them to see Garthy O ’Brien (the pirate Bill had been dealing with).

On the way to see Garthy, the gang finds out that Allister is a warlock, his patron being none other than the damned madman himself--Bill Seacaster. Hilariously, Bill doesn’t take his charges souls. He makes them do microtransactions for their spells and recruit others like it’s a pyramid scheme. I don’t know what he’s gonna do will gold in HELL but it is on brand, I’ll give him that.

A random dwarf calls Riz a slur so Fig and Kristen get him to jump to his death by turning into him and telling him he’s been dead for ten years, respectively.

Normal D&D stuff.

Anyway, they make it to the Golden Gardens which is Garthy O’ Brien’s casino/brothel/resort (“Pirate Moulin Rogue” is how Brennan described it) and we learn that Brennan specifically made this character to F with the chat because they are this beefcake, non-binary, aasimar/half-orc, tatted-up, succubus. My chat is usually on like a couple of seconds lag and I could have timed exactly how long the lag was by glancing over and counting off the seconds until the horned up comments started flooding in. You knew exactly what you were doing here Mr. Lee Mulligan.

Garthy invites them in for drinks, drugs, and use of the facilities where Kristen accidentally takes the drink of a mindflayer (think, humanoid Cthulhu-monster). He’s James Whitlaw, Captain of the Crimson Claw and enemy of Bill Seacaster. The group tries to smooth things over but Fabian Sparta kicks him in the chest after he drags Bill. There’s a bit of a tousle but Garthy shuts that down before it can get out of hand.

Post fight, the group questions Garthy and here are the highlights of that discussion:

They were supplying Bill with Palimpsests. Doing dead drops like the group assumed.

The last time they were at the hotel, they got told by the new staff (ie: the demons in disguise) that Bill wasn’t coming and when Garthy wouldn’t play ball with them, the demons attacked them and took their pouch of gems. Garthy says the demons were probably there to ambush them for their gems. They especially wanted the Sapphire but was useless to them because it already had a Celestial inside of it.

The demons had been summoned and bound to the material plane by someone very powerful.

Garthy doesn’t usually get gems from the Red Waste.

Garthy has heard of the Shadowcat. They can’t see the Shadowcat in the pic (just Pok who they say is cute). Alistair also can’t see Kalina.

Garthy tells Fig that, like they already knew, it would be super hard to break Gorthalax out. It would be hard for them to do, even considering curse breaking is one of their specialties.

The crown of the Nightmare King passed through the Gold Gardens recently, brought by--surprise, surprise--Adaine’s mom. Adaine’s mom was coming in to get a curse broken--one placed on her by the crown. With it broken, she’d be able to handle it more easily. She tricked Garthy into doing it without revealing exactly what the curse was and was kicked out once it was revealed. Garthy’s not sure where she went but they know she was frustrated that she couldn’t just teleport there (because she hadn’t been there before and didn’t have a description of it). She left on a Falinel-bound ship.

Garthy says Gorthalax is likely in a lot of pain in the gem he’s in.

The demons needed the gem for some kind of ritual sacrifice (namely, the one with Riz and Fig).

Also, Kristen is fully drunk for all of this.

Post info-dump, Van-Boat (whose actual name is Zathriel btw, more info from Garthy) mindlinks with Gorgug to tell them that a fight has broken out. Gorgug has the Van drive towards them. The group pays for a suite and then Riz, Fig, and Adaine fly over to the Van (with Tracker following in her spectral wolf form). Riz jumps in the front seat, takes the wheel from Gilear, and commits a ton of vehicular manslaughter. During the fight, Sandra-Lynn gets shot and falls off of Baxter. She almost goes down but Tracker catches and heals her.

They all make it back and proceed to reenact the house party scene from that one John Mulaney sketch (“a bunch of drunk toddlers”). People are getting wasted. People are getting tattoos. People are doing drugs. Kristen is riding Tracker like a horse (the G rated way, tyvm).

Then, uh, something not super chill happens.

Sandra-Lynn gets totally wasted and decides she’s gonna teach Fig (who is a little cagey about if she likes anyone by the by) how to flirt without the use of disguise self and such. She decides she’s gonna demonstrate on Garthy which she does. Successfully. Sandra-Lynn who is in a relationship that is monogamous as her request.

The drunk toddlers are herded into a room by Fig and Kristen. Kristen has Tracker cast the Moon Haven spell on the room and Fig and Adaine go to Garthy’s room to make sure Sandra-Lynn isn’t in trouble or anything. She’s not in trouble (yet) but, based on the way she’s clearly hastily redressed, she’s clearly about to run into some. Fig books it out of there, mortified.

Fig and Adaine lie about where they’ve been to Gilear and then they report back to the group. Tracker--who is pretty out of it at this point--sleepily asks who Sandra-Lynn’s been kissing. Everyone realizes, Oh no, Jawbone is poly but the relationship is supposed to be monogamous. Big yikes. Kristen feeds Tracker a mumbly lie about how Sandra-Lynn is kissing Jawbone that I really hope doesn’t blow up in her face because then it will be the hat trick of main relationships imploding in as many episodes. Kristen and Riz go back to Garthy’s room because Kristen wants to cast something (Detect Good and Evil, the result of which we don’t see this ep--though I feel like it would have to ping Garthy since they have celestial blood, right?) and Kristen notices that someone cast Clairvoyance on her and Riz, meaning someone knows they were outside.

Meanwhile, Fabian sneaks off to Crow’s Keep to be an emo pirate boy and talk to his dad while staring out into the sea. He’s suddenly surrounded by cloaked figures. Brennan rolls a bunch of dice, triggering Lou’s fight-or-flight, before revealing the cloaked dudes are just Alistair and the rest of his warlock friends who are all huge fans of their patron’s son. And we don’t get to find out what, if anything, they want from Fabian until next ep because that’s where Brennan ends the ep.

Detention

Sandra-Lynn for Cheating on Jawbone

OK, there’s a lot to unpack here.

I’ll start by saying we technically don’t know if she went through with it or not since Fig interrupted her before things could very far but we know she got naked which is more than far enough to be a betrayal imo.

And it’s so wild because she for sure could have been in an open relationship. She’s the one who stipulated monogamy.

On the one hand, I appreciate that Brennan is playing these NPCs as human (“human”) and failable and realistic but on the other hand, man I can’t stand cheating. And it’s not like she hasn’t cheated before. That’s, like, a major plot point. But it’s easier to gloss over something that happened a long time ago and we didn’t have to witness in real time.

Like, this isn’t good. It’s not gonna be good for the group. She forced Kristen into a position where she has to lie to/keep secrets from Tracker potentially. Also, Tracker is a wolf. There’s a non-zero chance she’s gonna be able to smell what happened. Do you really want one possibly both of the healers on the team mad at you? And they weren’t just dating They’re LIVING TOGETHER. And not just together. Together with like five--pending six--children (and pending one adult). That’s a lot of people that are gonna get forcible sucked into your drama.

And poor Jawbone. I know he’s a trooper and he’s def been through worse but just because you can deal with something, doesn’t mean you should have to.

Anyway, Adaine said it best: Sandra-Lynn is both more and less cool than I thought she was.

Honor Roll

Riz for His Driving Skills

I couldn’t tell you why but the phrase, “vehicular manslaughter” is so inherently funny to me. Riz hitting a nat 20 to just mow down all the attackers in his path was hilarious.

Note: I also could have given this spot to Garthy but I’m a little ambivalent on all the enabling of awful but hilarious life choices.

Random Thoughts

Adaine trying to blend in by saying ahoy to everyone and getting a tricorner hat from her jacket was so good (big props to everyone who drew that, especially y’all who also gave Boggy a hat). Also, I’m glad she’s been using her jacket more in general so she’ll be more likely to remember it in an emergency.

@jamiebluewind made this really useful post with the descriptions of all the new characters and the tats the Bad Kids got which you can find here.

Also, @ttttttterrence shouted me out during the livestream so I’m returning the gesture. What’s up man!

I like that when the group is discussing how to split the cost of the suite, Fabian is just like, “I got it, don’t worry.” He clearly takes pride in being able to throw money around for his friends.

Fabian, who has for sure seen Cathilda in action during a fight: Maids can’t kill.

Ally’s amused disbelief at the phrase, “Act the part of the pauper,” was sending me.

Adaine: There’s no way you’re an only child.

OK, this isn’t totally related to this ep, it’s more a point about FH in general that I don’t think I’ve brought up yet. How does a fantasy high school work in a world where races age at vastly different rates? Like goblins have a max age of about 60 and reach adulthood at 8. Meanwhile, elves reach physical maturity at the same age as humans but because they live to be like 700+ years old, they’re not considered adults until, like, the age of 100. At first I thought they were ignoring racial aging differences (like I do when I write fantasy I can’t be bothered with the implications usually) but in this and last ep, they were brought up. And I thought it might be that we were saying what everyones’ ages were in human years but, based on the info we’ve heard (like how far back Pok died for example) their ages have to be in normal years. Which brings me to theory 3: everyone ages physically and mentally at the same rate as humans to adulthood and then some races just decline more quickly than others afterwards.

Fig: I sink into a deep depression.

Alistair has an adorable cockney accent and he might be a little bit of a sociopath but let’s put a pin in that until next week. Oh, also, I was so sure he was gonna be Fabian’s brother too, just like half the table.

Brennan so good at adding things in for flavor to make the world cooler. What prompted this comment is him saying that as Tracker travels in spectral wolf form, a forest path appears at her feet briefly. Very cool attention to detail.

Bill running a MLM warlock system where you pay by the spell is so, so funny. I actually am not sure if the MLM aspect of it was planned or if someone (one of the girls I think) said it as a joke and Brennan ran with it but that’s extremely funny.

I know how leveling works in the above-game for balance but, in game, I feel like there’s no reason Bill and Gorthalax shouldn’t give everyone a level of Warlock. That would get them all 2 cantrips (eldritch blast, mage hand, and chill touch are options) and 2 level one spells (charm person, hellish rebuke, and charm person can be clutch).

Speaking of, I almost feel like this episode was setting up Fabian and Gorgug to multiclass. Fabian’s dad being a patron is a prime opportunity for him to get some warlock levels (and it would be very good for his aesthetic. I mean, magic pirate? Hell yeah). And Gorgug later in the episode says something like, “I could fix the van so fast if I had magic.” I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets a level in a caster class soon.

“Did you learn your magic in a book?”/”Yes!”/”Oh, lah-dih-dah. I can read.”

Fig: Adaine is the best at armies!

Forget if I mentioned this before but I’m very pleasantly surprised that Adaine’s mom is such a driving force this season. She’s one of the characters we explored the least last season which was a bummer for me because I really wanted to know what was going on in her head. Looks like we’re close to getting some insight soon. I’m guessing we might have another ep or half ep until we get there unless something else happens to sidetrack the group.

I glossed over it in the actual recap but Fig casting disguise self on herself to look like the dwarf who was picking on Riz was just some peak Emily with an assist from chaos monster Ally. Here’s the scene. What’s funny is I thought I knew what Emily’s thought process was (If he sees himself, he’ll very likely be thrown off his rhythm) but then she was like, “I wanted to be someone from the area and he’s the only guy I’ve met.” Lol, bold of me to assume I have any idea what’s going on in her head.

Adaine and, by extension, Siobhan just casually knows what a forecastle is (it’s “a raised deck at the bow of a ship”). Also, Brennan uses the word susurrous which means “full of whispering sounds”. That’s twice I had to reach for my dictionary (by which I mean Google).

The whole concept of Garthy is extremely cool and I’m specifically talking about race. I’ve never heard of a half-orc aasimar because in fantasy books it’s usually the humans getting it on with everyone and making half-whatever babies but there’s no reason a half-orc couldn’t have celestial ancestry. The idea of a risen devil is also very dope and something I’ve only seen once (and as art, not in an RPG context--Edit: Actually, I’ve seen in twice. In one chapter of Ah My Goddess, Hell sticks a demon onto the main goddess to try and corrupt her and she ends up purifying the demon which was wild when I read it in high school but you’re not here for me to go off about my comfort manga so let’s keep moving). The idea that there are “bad” gods and so their opposition, their “demons” would be essentially angels is very clever and something I hadn’t really considered. Also the phrase “The job is the fuck people into being decent basically,” is really A+. Well done Brennan.

Also, my knowledge of CR Campaign 1 is very spotty so this may be very off but I feel like Brennan watched a bunch of Gilmore scenes and then snorted a line of coke before he created Garthy.

Kristen: I’m proud of the choices I make.

Emily: They eat brains but also drink beer?

Captain Whitlock has a peg leg tentacle on his face that he tries to face touch Kristen with and Tracker is not having ANY of that. “Under no circumstances.”

Poor Fabian, giving an awesome speech to Captain Whitlock and then rolling a 1 on his Sparta Kick. Luckily, Gorgug hit a 26 on a DC 25 challenge to give him the help action so Fabian didn’t eat it.

Sidenote, we learn there used to be a pirate king but Bill killed him. Sounds about right.

I’m even more convinced that the rule is people who have seen Kalina before can see her in the picture after the conversation they had about it in this ep. Glad they decided to puzzle it out some more--even though I think it’s a little iffy to be spilling all your info to a pirate you literally just met (especially Fig--closed book my ass).

Garthy mentions again that the NK defies categorization--something that came up in Adaine’s research. I’m wondering how that’s gonna come into play later.

“I could tell you a very sweet lie, which is more my style.” I really like Garthy and I hope that continues to be the case.

Gorgug: That would be pretty disruptive...Yeah.

“Your name’s Van-Boat.”/”No!”

Riz, right before a nat 20 to commit Vehicular manslaughter: Get out of the way Gilear. I’ve killed people before, it’s fine.

I loved everyone being like, “Gilear you killed people! You’re officially an adventurer!”

Gilear, with the intensity of someone a firefighter has just pulled out of a burning building: I need the frog.

Tracker does like a crazy blood-brother type ritual for healing which is interesting because you’d think that would be bad what with the werewolf-ism but I guess it’s just through biting.

Fabian and Ragh peer pressuring Riz to do snuff, Ragh actually getting him to do it with a hippie speech about mind expansion, and Riz getting high as hell and getting Memento tats all over his body (NIGHT YORB--also, Sklonda is gonna LOVE this I bet) is such a wild series of events.

Kristen casts a spell on Gilear so she’ll take all of his damage and he starts getting hurt the second he’s out of her eyeshot. Wild.

“I cast friends on Gilear.”

I am going to murder Brennan for that cell tower gag.

Sidebar: I don’t have a picture of the Leviathan map but if someone has it someone I’ll post the link here for anyone who could use it.

And while we’re side tracked, shoutout to the dude who made this song based on Gorgug’s last ep. The line, “My girlfriend's really mad and she's also a goat” is truly golden.

Oh! And someone randomly gifted me a twitch subscription to dropout! If you’re on here, thanks somePloops!

Kristen and Tracker getting neck tats of each others’ names is just so so much.

Also, let’s pour one out for the fan-artists of FH that are also fans of CR and had to watch half the cast of both getting tatted up in back to back weeks, making any canon drawing that much more complicated.

I don’t think I fully realized until this ep when Adaine was the only sober one of her friends in a bar reading a book how closely she’s tracking my high school/college experience. Her, “Everyone is drunk by which I mean everyone but me is drunk,” killed me because I have said that verbatim on so many occasions. Watching Siobhan play Adaine is like, therapy by proxy for me.

“I am a child.”

Adaine, lying badly: I have also taken drugs.

Kristen has a stealth of -3. Woof.

Fig, Adaine and Riz each got nat 1 20 this ep. Fabian, Gorgug, and Adaine each rolled a nat 1 but Fabian’s was cancelled by Gorgug and Adaine’s was on initiative.

#fantasy high #fantasy high live #dimension 20 #fantasy high spoilers #dimension 20 spoilers #report card

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jq37 · 5 years ago

Note

IDK IF YOU'VE SEEN IT ALREADY BUT THERE'S A BEHIND THE SCENES FOR BLOODKEEP WHERE THEY TALK ABOUT SOME STUFF THAT COULD HAVE HAPPENED. Please share your thoughts

**spoilers for just like, all of bloodkeep**

***also, finale thoughts are coming, I had technical difficulties w/ the dropout site this weekend when I sat down to rewatch for notes***

OK, wow, I was NOT expecting the BTS video to THAT illuminating. I thought it was gonna have some cute cast stuff (which it did; I loved all the stuff with Matt and Rekha especially). Not, like, wild behind the DM screen plot twists. OK, taking it chronologically:

I can’t IMAGINE Rekha in Fantasy High. The energy of her and Emily at the same table would be so much. I will always be haunted by the knowledge of what could have been.

Trapp buying monster manuals as a kid had big Sohkbar energy. Also, mad at myself that I never made the Hagrid connection because that is so what he’s doing all the time.

“That’s Knife backwards and she’s very proud of that and so am I.”

It never occurred to me that Maggie has a full name tbh.

“Murderous Rodney Dangerfield.”

Matt can’t even even stop RP’ing during his interview.

I can’t believe this was a TWO DAY SHOOT. I thought it was at least 3 days. And, for some reason, I thought it was weekend shoots, not back to back days (prob cause my group is weekly). That means this was mostly super off the cuff. There wasn’t a lot of time to mull over strategy on the car ride home or whatever. This was such a roller coaster stretched over 6 weeks. Imagine it in 2 days!

Brennan at the camera with absolutely no prompting: Hell yeah!

THE BATTLE

Ooooh boy

So, in case you didn’t watch the video, what was SUPPOSED to happen was they would go down to the evil basement and then only one of them would be able to go on the boat. In order to get on the boat to hell, they would need to get a blessing from one of the statues. Four statues, six PCs. Brennan tried to lead them to a PvP endgame. THE PLAN WAS ALWAYS A PVP ENDGAME.

WHAT?

There is just SO MUCH to unpack here!

Like, OK. These guys are evil, right? Like, they casually talk about genocide all the time. That’s USDA Grade evil. BUT. They’re not mean. (OK, to the odd NPC but I’m speaking generally). When they all start off, the only real animosity in the group is Sohkbar towards Leiland for not being great with the wyverns and then there’s a little cattiness between Leiland and Maggie. But that’s it! And, like, Efink and Lilith read as straight up besties from ep 1! I NEVER felt the game leading towards any kind of group dissonance. From episode 1 there was a, “We’re all in this together,” vibe. They decided that so early on and they stuck to it. (In fact, they MADE MORE FRIENDS on the way!)

It’s like, Brennan told them, “You’re evil,” but he never said, “You don’t like each other,” and that made all the difference.

Like, even in the pregame interview, Amy says something like, “I get to play someone evil whose ultimate goals will still help the people around her.”

When you’re playing with players who are decent people irl and who haven’t been given a good story reason or the explicit direction to go turncoat, I feel like most peoples’ natural inclination isn’t to do that.

AND. AND.

Knowing that the game was supposed to end with a Super Smash Bros Free for All, the fact that episode 5 was all epiphanies and hugging and feelings is that much funnier. That wasn’t the boatman telling him to stop hugging. That was Brennan, the DM that knew his sick plans just got jossed to hell.

I love that Brennan said that the sweet character moments were completely unprompted by him but, as a viewer, they play as the most logical actions by these players. I was like, “This ISN’T what you wanted to happen?????” They felt like totally planned arcs! Brennan is so good at rolling with the punches. I feel like he must have accepted it by that point in ep 5 because, the way he was describing those falls (except for maybe Lilith’s looking back) read 100% to me like people who were having a near death experience that was going to bring them *together*, not the other way around. And, if it wasn’t, that’s how 6/6 of them took it so…

There was way too much time for these PCs to bond for this to end in PvP. The opportunities for backstabbing would have had to be planted WAY earlier for it to maybe work, imo. Or some kind of gollum/crown mechanic for craziness to spur a betrayal.

This also explains why Bren kept prodding Lilith about how the crown should have been hers. Lol, and instead of staging a coup, she called dibs on the godmom position. BLESS.

IMPORTANT EDIT: I was thinking this so hard that I thought I wrote it but turns out I didn’t. If Brennan had forced them into a Thunderdome situation, I am 100% convinced it would have ended with everyone (except maaaaybe Markus) just bowing out to let Maggie win. Lilith and Leiland for sure at the very least and they for sure would have enough firepower to fight off everyone else if need be. (Efink would be next on that list after her near death moment of clarity.)

Brennan mentioned how wild Maggie and Leiland’s collective arc is and he’s right and I wanna talk about it more later.

THE GHOST FIGURINES. Oh man, that would have been dope. I’m glad about how it ended, but that could have been cool.

HOT SCORPION DAD.

Nevermind, this is the bad ending, we were robbed.

#asks #anon #dimension 20 #a-salty-alto #bloodkeep #escape from the bloodkeep #imagine planning a fight to the death #and instead your 6 darth vaders have an impromptu episode of #my little villains: friendship is magic #amazing

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