#exucalamity

[cordership]

Why stop at fire, water, earth and air? We’ve got 14 other para-elemental, quasi-elemental, and energy planes floating around in the ether.

Start an Eiselcross-based EXU miniseries with “Ice.” Start some gothic western D20 side quest with “Salt.” because the first scene opens on spooky salt flats. Use your imagination, people!

Am I only saying this because I want to see a professional DM start a campaign with “Ooze.”? No, why do you ask?

[deramin2]

This exchange just happened on Twitter and I immediately thought back to this post.

Image of this Twitter exchange:

Dr. Emily Friedman @friede. 7h

I will say this for Actual Play: I don't go a whole fortnight screaming "my GOD why is EVERY company putting on a Divorce Play right now?!"

Retweet:

Dr. Emily Friedman @friede. 2h

And of course, the irony is that when Divorce Play Energy got into #ttrpg Actual Play I ate it up with a spoon AND SO DID YOU. (#ExUCalamity) Arguably because @quiddie & @samriegel zigged over into full retro 1940s screwball remarriage plot in the middle of a goddamn tragedy.

Aabria lyengar @quiddie 2h

Hand to god, the truth is that Sam reminds me *so much* of old Hollywood leading men like Grant and Stewart. Effortlessly witty and charming. A perfect ex-husband

Sam Riegel @samriegel 18m

"A perfect ex-husband" will be on my tombstone

End Image Description

Damn is deliberately creating deeply flawed characters who are both charming enough for you to invest in, and irritating enough that you can't always stand them, but there's still a good person there maybe despite himself that's worth knowing.

Sam deliberately straddles the line between characters you can vilify vs. valorize. Sam is very intentional about making his characters flawed, unhelpful, and a little annoying in very real ways that refuse to be put on a pedestal. But they're not actually bad people. They are actually heroic. They do the work too make positive change. They're there for people when it counts. They keep trying even when they want to quit out of fear.

And all of this is rooted in an exploration of the impulse to self-sabotage when you don't believe in yourself. Intentionally doing things that will alienate people and make them abandon you because deep down you feel like a liability anyway and the sooner your friends and family understand that, the better off they'll be. While simultaneously being terrified what you'll do without them and desperate to make up for your flaws. People who aren't just self-hating or desperate to be loved, butt both at the same time in constant conflict.

Loquacious learned to make time for others and to own up to the consequences of your or friends decisions.

And every time Sam's narrative is that people going through that are loveable and they realizing that you can love yourself and get out of your way. Scanlan learned sincerity and heart. Veth learned bravery and self-worth. FCG is learning to have faith in theirself and personal agency.

The coin represents FCG's infallibility to trust his own sentience and agency. It's too scary to feel like his choices matter so he's panicking and trying to make it someone else's decision. He needs to learn that not making a decision is even worse. Her needs to own his shit. Her needs to confront his own agency and his own personhood.

That's also why they push at prompting other people to do things like insisting Imogen should want to confront her father. They're not really expecting her to reconcile, just talk about their feelings instead of bottling them up. Because that's what books say you're supposed to do and they think other people are just too scared to confront things and need help they can offer. They don't really understand they're inserting theirself in unwanted ways.

But this is really just him projecting his own need to confront his feelings onto others. He desperately needs that modeled. He needs to know that other people will be okay if he's not okay and he's not responsible for everyone else's feelings. He doesn't need to constantly be useful to be lovable. And he isn't just someone else's tool. He's a person with his own heart and his own mind and his choices don't have to be perfect, they just have to be his.

Sam doesn't commit to these bits to be annoying, he's saying something every bit as deep as the other players.

Looks like Sam/FCG is getting on peoples nerves (fandom wise) the last few episodes. Saw someone say that FCG was hypocritical, and putting others in danger, relying on the changebringer too much. Someone was also annoyed with the FCG’s insistence on going to Imogen’s hometown when she clearly didn’t want to. It seems like I only see criticism and hatred to FCG and not to Imogen or Laudna or any other character when their being annoying or assholes.

You know, anon, fantastic timing on sending this because I've been debating whether I wanted to write something about this exact topic for a little over a week. Because, at least imo, I agree that I've seen quite a bit of...disgruntlement? anger? mean-spiritedness? over FCG's more (intentionally! it's part of the bit! and, like, his character development!) annoying traits, most recently his turn to blind faith with the Changebringer coin, but it's certainly something I've seen pop up other times in general. And I think it's interesting that FCG seems to exists within the confines of a sort of....conditional tolerance by a lot of people? And that condition seems be to whether he's supporting their favorite character (or, god forbid I talk about this, favorite ships) in a way that they like to see. It's like, as along as he's supporting who the viewers want him to be supporting in a way they see fit, he's fine. Hell, you even get the "fcg/sam riegel supremacy" comments sometimes if they do something the viewer particularly approves of. But the second FCG deviates from that and does something solely to further their own story, or even just, well, doesn't cast guidance on Imogen, it's like we're backtracking to this really strong point of negativity regarding them that really just seems to culminate in the idea that their behavior is plain on old annoying and could they stop, please?

It's an interesting dichotomy. And, like, this isn't really about whether people actually like or dislike FCG as a character (a person's opinions about him as a character is actually not the point here!), it's the fluctuation of the opinion that stands out to me. The loud approval if he does something the audience deems as "good" and the loud dismissal if he does something the audience deems as "bad" or "annoying." Hence "conditional tolerance" is sort of the phrase I've landed on to describe the phenomena. This is something I think has shown up in shades with other Sam Riegel PCs as well, though to be fair I wasn't active in the fandom pre-90s in the M9 campaign. But I feel like something similar did happen with Veth in parts of the M9, as memory serves. I feel like it has to have something to do with people's inability to look past the "bit" and see the deeper character work that seeded into those bits. If the audience member is assessing the character's actions as nothing more than a silly bit that's getting in the way, perhaps they become quite aggravated by it? (Also, I'm not going to get into the specifics of how people's christian-centric view of religion is absolutely affecting the way they're responding to the "blind faith" thing, but. You know). Like, there is something to be said here about people not wanting to actually delve deeply into the character work happening in Sam's PCs, I'm sure. It's a...unique way of engaging with his characters that is simultaneously so annoying to me as fan of Sam's PCs and also, like, weirdly fascinating as someone who did reception studies in grad school? Like, it is genuinely a unique, if irritating, aspect of the fandom discourse.

[suraelis]

Cast of EXU Calamity

Don't get attached, we all know how tragedies end

[blocodibujo]

Zerxus Ilerez, First Knight of Avalir

(reupload because it wasn’t showing in any of the tags)

[0310cottage]

my contribution after watching episode three

[pjoneedstherapy]

I think it was always gonna be really hard for this season to be horror. For starters horror needs railroading. It’s really hard to be a good dm and railroad your players without them getting sick of it. It was probably easier in EXUCalamity because perma death was always on the table and the players wer VAs first not Comedians. With him adding multi universal elements there’s no real fear in dying because life gets harder but it can’t exactly get that much worse, yk? Also it being a philosophy season adds another layer of difficulty. BLeeM isn’t really using psychological horror, at least none that’s really stood out to me as scary, so no one being “wrong” takes away from the horror of it (execution of their ideas aside, their actual philosophies aren’t evil or bad).

It sounds bad, but I think there too much going on for this campaign to be scary. It’s still a good campaign don’t get me wrong, but we know so much and there’s not a lot that’s hidden or ready to jump out at our hero’s. Plus the players aren’t really working with the medium. When they get scared they lean hard into the bit so it’s avoided. So scary isn’t really something that dimension 20 can pull off imo

Question regarding Neverafter: how much do you think Brennan is trying to do horror? The players and the format are working against him, but what do you think of the world he’s created? I honestly can’t tell how much he wants them to commit or not.

yeah i guess at this point it sort of feels like he's let the horror go lol. it seems like he's been pulling his punches a lot; the biggest example is letting pinnochio be his own warlock patron but also giving tim the power to put people in the book without confronting him with the ethics of it and even going so far as to be like. sure, they're happy in there :) there's also just a constant undercurrent of like. letting players give help actions and have advantage, or not imposing disadvantage even when the roleplay calls for it. this is EASILY incorporated into the horror -- the realization that the story prioritizes your life over that of minor characters and so contact with you is often fatal for them is terrifying -- but it's reflexive rather than intentional and so it's left unremarked upon and works against the tone of the season rather than for it. most recently when they got to the tundra and had levels of exhaustion and then he just FAST FORWARDED THROUGH IT... ill tell you right now if that was a naddpod episode someone would have died of exposure and rightfully so.

a lot of the horror seems to happen offscreen (elody: i found your body in the other world) or in character backstories that the players often don't take the time to explore; overall it seems like the horror at this point is largely confined to combat which is like. just how any normal season of d20 works. like there are always scary villains.... its not enough to have an extra scary boss if theyre just going to beat it in 3 or 4 rounds... AND he keeps putting in these like. cheat codes into the fights so that they dont even have to BEAT the bosses they just have to like. break the wolf's chains or outlast the dogfish or whatever. THE PARTY HAS ONLY DIED ONCE and even then they all died together so there was no like. player that had to face death alone OR player that was the only one left alive and had to go on living alone... there is no reason that we haven't had another death by now! acoc showed that if he wants to kill a party member he absolutely can.

i also agree with others who have said that there's just too many moving parts for things to really feel tight and well-executed. the stepmother and the fairies who were omnipresent threats at the season's start are now apparently unable to reach the party for basically no reason at all which removes a lot of the fear. you're not supposed to say the authors' names or there will be grievous consequences but nothing has happened even though they've slipped up multiple times. they destroyed a wing of the lines between and there was no effect on their dimension. they also left npcs in there e.g. little miss muffett and it was apparently just fine. we haven't heard from scheherezade or aesop or any other dimensions in weeks. i appreciate that brennan wanted to give the party options and build a fleshed-out world AND that with improv some level of discontinuity comes with the territory but it really just lowers the stakes when villains or horrors only exist if they're on the party's mind and fade to the background as soon as the party becomes interested in something else. what's horrifying about a world where you have to actively seek out the horror?

he was saying in the last adventuring party like 'oh i created all these factions and had no idea what you all would gravitate towards in the season.' so it seems like most of the 'horror' was in the design of the world and the backstories of the characters etc and then he just let players loose within that framework to do whatever they want rather than intentionally injecting horror into the rhythms of play, game mechanics, plot structure, etc. we have all said over and over again that this is largely what comes of insisting on using d&d no matter the genre or season concept, despite the fact that there are tons of indie ttrpgs out there specifically designed to facilitate horror.

and then of course there's conrad's insight about like. what registers to brennan as violence and what remains obscured by the genre; he's done some work to problematize particular fairy tale conventions and render them horrifying, particularly the treatment of women and children, but then has not taken those things to their logical conclusion, namely by making explicit the implications of child and sexual abuse. he continues to take fairy tale plots like 'put to sleep for a hundred years' or 'forced marriage' at face value rather than reading the rape allegory that is implied by such tropes. it reads weirdly in a season that was marketed as like. no holds barred, we're going grimdark and digging into what it actually means to be victimized. if these things are deemed inappropriate or 'too much' even in a horror season, where can they be aired and explored?

i'll be really interested to see how the season wraps up because there is absolutely still room for a horrifying ending but it's feeling less and less likely and more and more like the party is going to be allowed to just fully win and fix everything. we shall see!

[dnd-shows-have-my-soul]

Doing the math, the Apogee Solstices occur every 120 years. Theatrically, the next Solstice would occur on 840 PD.

However, we don’t know how long the Calamity lasted. So it is very possible that after Age of Arcanum, the year count did not immediately start at zero. (P.D does stand for Post-Divergence after all.)

So it is very possible that in year 843, during the adventures of Bell’s Hells, we will witness the next Apogee Solstice.

[gammaalanna]

You can actually pinpoint the second when his heart rips in half

[criticalsnow]

i am in pain full on crying at work why did i go on the exu calamity tag

[notreallyuseless]

Just started ExU Calamity :)

I already knew about the ...first character introduction but omg am I excited to watch it for real. I’ll try to not post every 10minutes but like... if something good happens I *will* let you know haha. So like, if you dont want spoilers or you find me annoying, I will tag my post with these : #exuCalamity #notreallywatching #exu Calamity Spoilers #cr spoilers I’ve never like... liveblog watching something as big as Critical Role before (i think?) so i’m kinda nervous so if i do/say something wrong just let me know haha  :) I am so scared Edit: I’m 50min in, the characters so far are so so cool. Zerxus introduction is way more gut wrenching than I previously thought wow. I’m taking a break but so far, i’m really enjoying it :D

[emerysarchive]

I wonder how will Zerxus react when he needs to visit Everlights followers

[artists-guild-of-exandria]

Merry Critmas Nerds! My contribution to #JingleHells run by

@ExandriaArtists is my interpretation of Krampus and Saint Nicholas. I took inspiration from old postcards and... well. You guessed it. -----------------------------

From Twitter:

User- @pryingblackbird (Twitter an Tumblr) Artwork Link- https://twitter.com/PryingBlackbird/status/1598401205696598017

[enjoymorestuff]

Brennan is killing it, of course. This is definitely going to get some eyeballs on Dimension 20.

[costumerdelight]

"In the kiss, I'll cast Cure Wounds on you." Just one

@samriegel making @quiddie and all of us cry in the face of the Calamity. Bonus mini Nydas yelling STFU at Sha'korzhan for Lou Wilson

[suraelis]

[Read Left to Right ]

From ExU Calamity Episode 4 Finale

In which Roy from FMA burns down his family home and make me cry

[blocodibujo]

Zerxus Ilerez, First Knight of Avalir