Can you think of other examples where we can see this dramatic trope in action? Thanks so much to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video! Visit www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK to get 40% off any annual membership! www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike
I think this is on topic, but I love that scene in critical role, before the fight to retake Eman, where Sam asks "Don't you have a special Elite Task force or something ?" And the NPCs answer "We have, and it's called Vox Machina"
@@ACTION-RELOAD-DANGER it might be within episode 78 of the first campaign. "The siege of Emon" I'm searching right now A relevant part beggins at 27:00 of the episode. It's when Sam is first thinking that their allies might have an elite SWAT team that they could take along with them. I'll edit this aggain when I find the actual time code Ps you might wanna hear kyelih talking with Kash. 41:50. Same episode. Priceless. Needs to be clipped
@@ACTION-RELOAD-DANGER I'm stupid the timezone was already in the comments. Episode: "The Siege of Emon | Critical Role: VOX MACHINA | Episode 78" Time code of exact quote: 1:27:25 Time code of start of scene: 1:25:58 The NPC was Allura Vysoren
I love how the demystified videos are mostly about pointing out good examples of how to address common game aspects/problems, and when a larger lesson pops up you turn it into a stand alone. Really helps keep these videos easy to find and reference, and those videos focused on the series they're talking about
Brennan's monologue about the adversity between the character and the player on how to solve problems reminds me of how in CR C2 the Angel of Irons arc, the characters are trying to get Yasha back as soon as possible even though the players know this is a pointless endeavor because Yasha cannot rejoin the party until her player returns to the table.
And ther was also the whole "both sides are at war and I'd ether commits to helping without a truce the other might backstabbing and steamroller them" thing. It took multible appeals to the bright queen just to entertain the notion of not being at war with the empire entirely and instead focus on "these currpt jerks" and be willing to have a temporary cease fire to handle the possibility of the world ending.
So it's worth noting that Marvel comics has a really good solution to the "why don't they just call the Avengers" problem that they've been using for decades, and that DMs could emulate. In a nutshell, that strategy could be summed up as "sorry Spiderman, the Avengers can't come to the phone right now, Galactus just showed up and is trying to eat the planet again, you'll have to save New York from the Green Goblin's evil plan on your own." The Marvel comics (and the DC comics) have done a really good job of establishing their settings as a place with a *huge* number of potential threats that could pop up on any given day, and it makes sense that they might be things the Avengers would consider a higher priority than whatever the protagonist is dealing with. Every hero and team has a large and diverse rogues gallery, and since heroes usually prefer to put their bad guys in jail or drive them off rather than kill them, the audience knows that those bad guys could pop up again at any moment (contrast this with the movies, which more often than not kill off their villains in the same film they're introduced in). Thus, if a comic writer wants to explain why, say, Wolverine can't ask the rest of the X-Men for help with whatever he's dealing with this week, it just takes one cutaway panel to be like "yeah, Magneto's out of jail and trying to overthrow the government again, we can't help you until we've dealt with that." Of course, sometimes you want to write about your hero dealing with a threat SO dire that it would be ludicrous to say that other heroes wouldn't drop everything to go deal with it. One solution is to have it not be clear how much is at stake until the villain is close enough to enacting their big doomsday plan that there just isn't time to call in the cavalry. Alternatively, you could make the threat large and multi-faceted enough that even the Avengers couldn't plausibly deal with it alone. Maybe the villain's doomsday device has multiple components scattered across the world, and all of them need to be destroyed before he can set them off. Or maybe the villain has a massive army of minions that are currently rampaging, and the superhero team full of absolute powerhouses feel obligated to focus on that while the middleweight protagonist does the daring infiltration of the villain's main base.
The MCU could have done this pretty easily too, considering how those movies were written/filmed: have the last day of filming on the Avengers movie that ends the previous phase be spent filming the "away" messages. Like "sorry, I'd love to help but I gotta stop *Rogue who is not currently slated to appear* from doing *bad thing that happens in a comic that you aren't planning to make happen in a movie.*" They have 50 or 60 years of comics to choose from. It would literally take less than an hour to film.
I would say AtLA handles this aspect pretty well. Book 1 is all about they trying to reach a source of authority, which does end up helping them for a while. Book 2 especially as it starts with the gang being essentially betrayed by an Earth General which cuts off they resource as reliable, and ends with an extremely corrupt Earth Kingdom government that refuses to help and then winds up being taken over by the enemy anyway. Book 3 actually has them successfully gather a small host of allies only for the invasion to fail and force them to mostly rely on the ragtag group of heroes to save the day (and also the White Lotus gets involved basically by their own initiative which is cool to see).
The first proper 5e game I was a part of did this pretty fantastically when we got into the final arc, which was basically a civil war, with the aggressors being led by a former PC who was an "Exiled rightful heir" gone bad, while the defending king was his brother. We sided with the latter, and the DM kept us on our toes with some pretty clever tricks. 1) We couldn't just turn to the established powerful heroes, because they were stretched thin, leading multiple fronts in the war. Moreover, one of said heroes had fought the BBEG and lost, losing his life in the process. 2) In terms of everyone else, we were more powerful than them anyway, so they couldn't really do anything that we couldn't do ourselves. 3) The BBEG had a greater amount of supernatural aid- Most of his footsoldiers were Merregons, they had Fire Elementals as weapons, etc. In a pitched battle, they had the advantage over us. 4) They also had an infiltrator among our ranks who let them stay ahead, and went relatively unnoticed before we finally caught him during the final battle. This gave them a sizeable intel advantage. Meanwhile I was in another game that became the NPC show, and those NPCs blatantly only respected the one PC who was an Orc, so that didn't work out in any regard.
Your comment on the 5th Harry Potter book and how political groups can become obstacles themselves due to agendas reminded me of the premise I used to run Rise of Tiamat, what I told my players was: The council UNDERSTANDS that The Cult is a Threat, but there are so many people of different factions and opinions that they just CAN'T put those differences aside for the sake of the world, your job as "heroes" is to gain the trust and respect of as many councilmembers as you can so they will stop arguing and follow your lead, to where YOU wish to point them as a weapon
There's a corollary to this, I think, which is situations where the narrative tension is that the heroes on their own have no chance at success or even survival against impossible odds, and the goal is to succeed at calling in the cavalry and either escaping to rejoin them or survivng until their arrival. Ready examples of this would include everything in Star Wars canon involving the Deathstar plans.
A lot of RTS computer games have levels like this, with a time ticking away and you have to survive until reinforcements arrive or until your means of departure can be repaired or something similar.
This kind of thing can work but there's also a limit to how many times it works. Though if you double cross the players by doing this then taking their support away you can squeeze a double whammy in. Finally, it's also important to allow for rebuilding the support. I mean is basically one of the things that happens in the Vox Machina Chroma Conclave arc. They are given a chance not only to empower themselves but fix some of the broken Shards of their support structure. Each victory gives them a little bit back. The key is to make the players feel like the support was earned. That while yes Gilmore and Allura are protecting Whitestone so the heroes have a sanctuary, their actions are what brought Gilmore and Allura there to allow that.
I also want to mention the Guardians movies, specifically the first one. Most of the movie, the heroes are running from the government, the "help" against the main villain. The Guardians have a good reason to NOT call for help and the story is them finally realizing that they do need help. So when the final act comes around, they have the help from the Nova Corps, and still get destroyed. Guardians 1 completely twists around the story of getting help from those most likely to do so by having a reason for the heroes not to ask for help. And it works so well!
This can make campaigns into a bucket of crabs in a way. With Brennan's thing of players solving problems efficiently part of that is connecting with or building those support structures. Your adventurers will make friends with powerful people, build up their own systems, gain clout, etc which actively works against them needing to be the heroes on call. So you end up targeting their supports. Their powerful friends lose power or are secretly corrupt, assassins infiltrate their keep, their reputations are smeared, a conclave of dragons destroy their core city, etc. It's an interesting destruction to the status quo.
I just found your channel today and I'm already addicted 3 videos in. I am a new aspiring game master and I've never really written anything before, save a few short stories as a kid. You are proving to not only be an invaluable source of inspiration for me, but you're also really teaching me about concepts I would never have realized. I hope you get the recognition you deserve for these videos. Cheers!
This reminds me of Hot Fuzz and how the movie tells the main characters they are on their own in a funny way (just to look for another type of excuse less dramatic).
Isolation is always a big part of mysteries too. Like it’s a dark and stormy night is not just a trope because the tone is creepy and ominous but it means power and phone lines might be down, bridges washed away, a downed tree in the road blocking escape paths, trains/planes/boats canceling trips that could hold news/help/supplies due to weather and all that within one sentence. In that way the murder mystery also does isolation because if you don’t act yourself, you could be next!
The only reason Thor Ragnarok wasn't just Planet Hulk, is they (Marvel) didn't (and maybe still don't) have the rights to any Hulk movies, that's why there isn't a MCU Hulk movies after the one with Edward Norton, and why the movies he is in, he's not in the title.
I'm about to start Storm King's Thunder with my group of 6th graders. Looking at that module and asking the question "why won't the giants help/why won't any of the other cities help", is actually a really interesting thing to do. The Giants won't help initially because they are power hungry, and don't trust the small folk. The other cities won't help the situation because they don't like the giants and the relationship has never been good. I mean eventually the giants do help when the situation finally warrants their help, but I'm talking lower level. As always, great video. I really enjoy the scripts you write, the humor you put in, and the definitely not subtle political jabs. I am happy to have found your channel when looking for general D&D advice when starting my GM journey. I'm looking forward to the day where CR: Demystified is going to be a weekly thing.
I am surprised at the lack of mention of the classic "the authorities won't help you" story. The Mayor's Office of Amity Island would like to assure you that those three loudmouths in a boat are overreacting.
Love the video but just pointing out Cap 2 does have reason to not call in the other Avengers, in Cap's apartment Fury says 'Don't trust anyone.' not just shield. Black Widow spies her way into allyship and then he recruits Falcon due to the lack of connections and desperation. Sorry I just really love that film.
Oh, I love the movie, too, I certainly don’t think it’s an inditement of that film that it chooses not to call in the other Avengers, or that it doesn’t justify it as well as it potentially could.
@@SupergeekMikeI always want more Hawkeye so I was totally bummed when Natasha didn’t get her BFF in there for help. In fact I always wanted a Black Widow film to basically be a bad ass Bond spy movie where Hawkeye was her version of the sexy bond girl helper.
I believe creator of One Piece once said that his main characters don’t have parents because parents/mothers would never let their kids go out into danger or have adventures. And it’s pretty common that hero’s backstory’s have the parents be dead or out of the way. Meanwhile in like hero shows like Superman or My Hero Academia the hero is often encountered to be a hero or have adventures because it’s the right thing (or in my hero academia heroes are like the equivalent of movie stars so what parent wouldn’t want that success for their kids?) and it’s the hero that often chooses to distance themselves from their own family and that support them for their own families safety.
While I'm not a horror guy either, one of the few I enjoy is the first Terminator and there they deal with the "calling the authorities" issue by having the "slasher" be a robot assassin from the future who's WAY out of anyone's league. (And also one of the heroes can't exactly tell people "I'm a time-travelling soldier from a future ruled by robots sent to fight the robot they sent back in time to kill one specific person" and be taken seriously.) I've been thinking of how my some of my favourite game franchises handle this issue, and it's... interesting. Firstly, Persona. It's a magical otherworld story where conventional authorities don't know about the otherworld and the few that do are corrupt and/or antagonistic. But also, there's an ironclad lore reason why only the main heroes can stop the threat of the week: only Persona-users can harm Shadows. This isn't Harry Potter, where Muggles could theoretically fight magical threats if they knew about them, anyone without a Persona can't help even if they wanted to, and the very act of gaining a Persona literally turns you into a main character. What tends to happen is the heroes will, willingly or unwillingly, get ONE outside authority involved in the conflict, who gets dragged into the otherworld and happens to overcome their personal demons and gain a Persona. But by that point they're not an outside authority anymore, they're part of the main cast. There's a couple of non-empowered characters of authority who end up helping the heroes, but they can only give them resources and get them out of legal trouble, because they couldn't fight the threats even if they wanted to. Next, Pokemon. Part of why Black and White are my favourite Pokemon games is the Gym Leaders actually help against the Evil Team, but in a way that doesn't rob the player of agency. BW was the first Pokemon game to make the Gym Leaders feel like actual people in the world with responsibilities, rather than one-off obstacles for the player. (it's not a coincidence that most of them have actual JOBS, like Lenora running a museum, Skyla being a cargo pilot, Drayden being the literal mayor of the town he's in. Meanwhile you couldn't name what Brock and Misty do for a living outside the anime) Finally, Fire Emblem. Most of these stories take place during a continent-spanning war, so the various monarchs and high-ranked generals on your side can be busy fighting on other fronts or keeping their nation from collapsing without straining believability. They typically do join the playable forces for the final chapter in something called the "Gotoh Archetype", but by that point them directly fighting alongside you feels earned and you've often caught up to them in power level.
I love how different Batman writers deal with Batman not calling in his justice league buddies…from Batman thinks meta presence will escalate things, to disproving his urban legend status, to not showing knowledge or the corruption (you can’t bust THAT gang because then THAT mafia family will move in their turf and be worse ect). , to Gotham literally being cursed and it will screw with non Gotham interference. But!! It’s okay if Batman gets help from his bat family because all of them see themselves as alone but in a group and since they are all kind of your kids you shouldn’t depend on them too hard.
I think the plain and simple reason is Batman feels the city is his responsibility and that dragging in the big guns will ultimately undo his primary method of control. Is the big scary bat going call for Super Daddy? Also, I think DC and Marvel can easily establish that the other characters are simply busy with similar threats. Like at any time they could have name dropped a member of Iron Man's rogues gallery to explain him not being present. Though that could cause a completely different problem. Though it also kind of points out the real issue of people just not being able to suspend their disbelief and just enjoy what they are watching. Just assume that the other heroes are dealing with their own things or that the current hero just isn't able to call for help. Half the problems is we look for plothole in places we don't need to be looking for them. Lord of the Rings had the whole why not use the eagles thing. Twice. People didn't just think that after the movies, they also asked Tolkien why they didn't. And he was like I never thought that was a possibility. And if you read the Hobbit the eagles flat out refuse to put themselves in danger. Dark Forest with a necromancer nearby, nope not flying over that. Too dangerous.
Reminds me of my first campaign I played in, a Sky High type setting. The poor DM kept having to figure out reasons the teachers (NPCs) couldn't just solve the student's (PCs) problems. Sometimes it was 'the teachers will handle the most dangerous part of this attack on the school, but they need you all to handle this bit', but it often felt contrived.
We had a guild we were a part of in one of our D&D campaigns, and after a HUGE twist, the head of the guild stepped down and shifted the power to our group. We had access to the whole thing, but we also had to figure out how to run it and use our resources. If we didn't actively have the guild doing something useful to help us, it just existed as it was and kept going on it's own steam. Personally, I found it a good way to give us support while still having us make all the tough choices
OverlySarcasticProductions figured why the MCU films have this prevalent issue of "why can't other superheroes help?" that the Marvel comics do not. Because the MCU was based in films! The nature of the film is you wrap up the conflict with the villain each time. Whereas, in comics, conflicts are ongoing. So, comic superheroes can each feel inundated with missions, so much that they can't easily take on another superhero's workload. Film superheroes, on the other hand, are freed after and before each film, making them feel more culpable for not helping out in other stories. What the MCU needed was a greater sense of what superheroes do offscreen. A few montages at the beginning and end of each film probably would have solved these issues. You could even have a few cameo jokes with trying to call another superhero for help but they're in the middle of their own noodle incident action! Likewise, you can explain a lack of help in TTRPGs by authorities being busy with other crazy stuff. For low-level parties, they might have all sorts of missions and monsters they're already dealing with. For high-level parties, they could be tackling some other great aspect to the world-ending force! "You tackle the main demon army while we protect towns all over the world!"
Another way to remove support structures is to allow your players to leverage the powers that be to gather some sort of support for the players. Then wipe out that support in front of the players by the forces of your BBEG. Highly effective, always dramatic, would recommend.
Fab video! A really good, & focused, example of this is The Mummy movie (1999). Imhotep methodically picks off the heroes allies to build power and then when he's got his pieces in order he launches an all out attack on the sanctuary of the heroes in an effort to sweep them off the board all at once.
I don’t even remember the exact way it was explained, but I remember finding it very believable the way this problem was handled in C2 when I watched it. All the people they went to didn’t exactly dismiss them, they even took them very seriously, but they also couldn’t drop everything else they were doing to help
Return of the king gives a great answer. Frodo and Sam do have allies with armies, the fellowship goes with the Rohirrim and the rangers to Gondor and along with the forces of Gondor they all march on the black gate. Aragorn and co have a force large enough to do useful things like relieve the siege of Gondor and but they are still too badly outnumbered to conquer Mordor alone, yet they still help Sam and Frodo get to mount doom by drawing the attention of Sauron. Then when Sauron's power is removed with the destruction of the ring and the orcs are sent into disarray the tide is then turned and the armies of the west are part of the force that can then destroy them. I use a similar format regularly if answers like their resources being stretched too thin doesn't apply. The players call on the help of allies who raise a force of troops who can take on an enemy army. But there is a task that a small group of skilled warriors could complete while the main body of the army takes on the main body of a large enemy army.
I hadn't even realized it, but, I have already done this as part of my campaign world's backdrop, well, on the one continent, at least. The empire is crumbling, mostly figuratively. Towns aren't being protected, the army and guards are overtaxed, apathetic, and/or corrupt. I know this isn't a "Critical Role Demystified" video, but, one of my occasional pet peeves on the part of the players is trying to get others to help with, or even take over, the challenge they're facing.
I ran Rise of Tiamat a while back with a couple of friends who were interested in trying DnD for the first time. Two of them kept trying to get help from the Council to stop the Cult of Tiamat, citing the same reasons you stated: "There are people trying to _SUMMON DRAGON SATAN._ Help us!!!" They were told that the Council understands the threat, but the armies and town guards already had their hands full trying to quell mass panic and riots, keep the Cult from infiltrating the government, and protect towns and cities from attacking dragons and cultists, and it's not going well. However, since this _was_ their first time playing DnD, I did throw them a bone and had a Commander from a garrison they had saved and befriended help them out by giving them supplies and a small supporting cast of soldiers. So they had a finite supply of backup they could call on for certain important objectives. But, once they had played for a while and gotten to know more and more of the NPCs in the garrison, they grew attached to them and started relying on them less and less due to wanting to keep them safe from harm (a few of them had already died helping the players out). So the problem just sorta solved itself after a while.
Thank u for this! I am taking away my pc's support structure @ the end of tonight's game sesh while trying to get them to escape a insurmountable evil. These tips definitely helped me smooth out my rough spots 💯😎💪🤞🔥
My favorite example of this is Halo Reach; strap in, I'm doing a plot summary. At the start of the game, you join Noble Team and are at the peak of your power. There's no big conflict on the planet and the UNSC have clear control over everything. Even when the Covenant shows up, Noble still has access to all their support tools and can basically do whatever they want. Once you find the enemy base, you storm in with a fuckton of troops and topple their comms tower. Immediately after it falls, the Grafton (the ship responsible for taking out the tower) gets a hole punched through it by a super-carrier, explodes with minimal effort, and everything goes to Hell. Less than 32 hours later, we find Noble Team squatting in a cave trying not to be seen by enemy forces... with the knowledge that backup won't show up for two more days. With only a batshit crazy plan in their back pocket, they take out the super-carrier, but not without a heavy cost: a hyper expensive slipspace engine is used for the explosion, the Savannah (the ship that provided said engine) is eradicated in the firefight, and Jorge, the closest thing you have to a real friend on Noble Team, stays behind to trigger the bomb. Sadly, that's the good news; the bad news is that it was all for nothing. Mere moments after the super-carrier is taken out, the REST of the Covenant fleet arrives to finish what the first ship started. And when you wake up back on Reach after a fall from orbit nine days later (you walk it off, don't worry), you find yourself in Super Hell. With the entire planet under siege, you work your way through New Alexandria, saving civilians and soldiers where possible, while trying desperately to find your team. Watching the civilian ships get shot out of the sky while I can do absolutely nothing to stop it still gets me. When you do finally manage to meet up with Noble after completing the worst mission in the game, things are very dire. So dire, in fact, that entire Spartan teams are being assigned to civilian evac duty instead of trying to reclaim the planet. I think tech master Kat puts it best: "I know we're losing! I want to know if we've lost." Suddenly, the team gets orders to move into enemy territory for a torch-and-burn operation related to some archaeological research. With a giant plasma beam knocking on their door, they begin the mission... but not before Kat gets domed by a sniper and she dies instantly. After completing the mission and scooping up a surprise Cortana cameo, pro sniper Jun performs his "dying is gay, I'm out" meme and leaves the plot to go train Spartan 4s in a graphic novel. With a surplus of Covenant on their tails, the last half of Noble begins the charge towards the Pillar of Autumn to set off the events of the original game, with nobody backing them up. Throughout the trek, your C.O. Carter sacrifices himself to get rid of a plasma-breathing Scarab tank and a ton of straggling soldiers die while keeping you alive. It's one final sprint to the ship and you have entered Ultra Hell. Just as you prepare to board the ship and leave, weapons expert Emile stays behind to provide cover fire in an Anti-Air cannon for your departure off-world... and gets stabbed to death for his troubles. As the last member of Noble on the planet, you man the AA gun and provide the cover needed for the Pillar to leave, marking you as one of the last humans on the entire planet. A few hours later, you are a lone wolf in a barren wasteland, with nobody by your side as you fight until your literal dying breath. As you can tell from the length of this comment, this game means a lot to me and it just so happens to fit this video's topic perfectly. You start the game with quite literally all the support in the world. As the only planet that comes close to matching the importance of Earth, you get a lot to work with. Even if the missions have you working with only a few other soldiers at a time, the reality is that the UNSC is still present. However, as the game goes on, your support (and more obviously, your team) gets progressively smaller and smaller until the only person you can count on is yourself. Given the presence of an entire alien invasion, your slowly dwindling list of supplies is justified as it gets spent on evacuating civilians instead of on counter-ops. And finally, when all is said and done, it's just you and the glassy remains of a shattered world. Carter really bookends the whole game splendidly; in your first interaction, he says "that lone wolf stuff stays behind." At the start, you're part of a new team with active communication with command; wandering off on your own complicates the mission. In contrast, his last words, "You're on your own, Noble. Carter out." show just how bad things have gotten. The top brass is either dead or off-world, your commanding officer just exploded, and your last ticket off the planet is about to leave WITHOUT YOU. And there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.
The one biggest exception to this rule is if the heroes specifically determine that the support structure is the only way to solve the problem, and so the hero's journey is about finding how to solve whatever obstacle prevents this support or find new allies that can give them the help they need.
I've somewhat done this in my current campaign. The monarchy, along with the nobles, have been replaced with shapeshifters(the party knows this). The mage's college is being helpful finally, their power has been capped at effectively level 10 due to story plot reasons until just recently. The temple though is at odds with one of the characters, therefor all of the characters, for summoning a necromancer from psuedo death. The one wanting to be the hero in the end was a great help to this and knew that she was likely evil due to other information. All in all, they have help but that help is also somewhat at odds with the other help.
Very good video. It's also a good demonstration about how things work differently in different genres. The Mission: Impossible show was more cerebral and less overtly action oriented, with a lot more emphasis on outthinking the opponents. If the stakes rose significantly, it was something the team had to deal with immediately, so if they wanted to call the cavalry (which was rare) there wasn't time. (it was also the late 60's early 70's, late 80's for the revival, so much less instant communication/mobilization) But for an action oriented movie/game, the stakes also need to feel higher almost from the start, increasing the odds of wanting to call in support as well as increasing the dramatic tension of not having it.
An interesting point about Brennan's explanation of the problem: it isn't enough to have one overarching reason why the authorities will never come to help. Every threat, or at least every type of threat, needs a separate reason. There are certain things that they're legally barred from helping with; something else they'd like to help with, but lack the specific ability; yet another thing is blocked by their boss, who they don't realize is corrupt and helping the villains; then the next time there's somebody pulling mind control tricks on them; then somebody makes them think the party have done something awful so they aren't allies until that's disproven; and so on. The campaign can't rest on just one or two explanations. Just as the DM has a list of monsters to draw upon, they also need a list of reasons why the authorities and other heroes don't come to the party's aid. I'm sure there are a few of those lists online already since this is a decades-old problem.
The had been a few occasions I'm my game when the party became too reliant on others to solve problems for them, or make it much easier, which had to be resolved one way or another. Great points in the video! Keep it up!
I wonder if Matt Mercer is building to a big avengers end game scene where the other campaign heroes all show up to help at the end of this season of Critical Role. It feels like he would, especially if this world is going to be like reset or something after this campaign. He could prob pull it off by enlisting A few guest DMs like brenden and Abrea to help track what the other heroes are all doing. That’s is literally called an epic right when there are multiples dms running players for one game? Or alternatively there could be special or two that shows vox and mighty nein getting to the big show down and why they are there right before the showdown happens so everyone is on the same page.
At the very least do one of those Non Canon Battle Royal one shots but with the adventure parties instead of individual characters, or have characters be grouped by player
8:12 That actually was my toughest challenge to overcome when writing my book. I knew not what to do, how to overcome this. On one hand, I did not have something for the hero to loose (that he knew of and would be valuable to the reader) and on the other I wanted a story which you felt Mattered. And I honestly have no way to confirm right how if I've done a good job or not, because none of my family knows any English in order to read the book, and those who do don't want any spoilers or don't have the time to read it. Put that aside, I think that I've done a job that is at least OK by turning the plot into something that the Main character wants to do in order to impress "the authorities" The problem in here wasn't His to solve and calling for backup would defeat the point of the operation. The complete result weaves in some reason why the story would batter to the MC but my main trick was to make the plot into a a story them proving their worth. In the second one I aim to do something similar in making the Main group into a part of a bigger mission accompanied by the big army and stepping the story off of the success or failure of that mission. Granted I'll be handling that big army as faceless NPCs instead of Main characters, but that might be excused due to narrative reasons extended that "proving their worth" part on the second book as well. After those first two adventures I aim for the main group to be strong enough to be considered an elite task force, or at least a self confident one, and find no need for extra support. If there ever is an event big enough to threat the world, then I'll make sure that team is strong enough to be above any kind of help the NPCs could provide. Does this sound good? Ps, the Authorities here are a group that liked to help when possible, but not to get involve
That ad was actually related to the content, and I actually sat through and watched it. I've seen WorldAnvil before but never really knew what it was. Good job on the ad!
I solved this problem in one of my campaigns by making the PCs essentially secret agents of a government that will deny any sort of connection or involvement with the PCs (taken from James Bond, I think? Some big spy thriller, in any case), so, yes, they have a support structure - in downtime between missions/adventures, so they can prep, get gear, even customized stuff (to a degree, of course), advice and intel from NPCs, all that good stuff. It falls away the minute they set out on the mission itself; they're fully on their own then. In time, they *become* the sort of intervention task force that is send to deal with huge threats and the 'deny everything' part becomes irrelevant once they start dealing with threats outside the carefully maintained Cold War-like power balance, with admittedly tremendously more support, but by that point, they fight things that make Smaug look like an average iguana.
I dud this for a murder mystery. I increased the victim count to the point the guards were overwhelmed with all the crime scenes. The chief inspector is a Lestrade type character who is confidently running down the wrong theory. By the time they solve the case, there is a ticking clock and the players decided there'd be no time. Plus they wanted to show up the self-important constable.
I intially had the same problem in the campaign I'm currently running, but have now come up with a way to utterly break the support structure that the player characters have built up. Not that the support structure in their main city has been particularly helpful so far
I feel this applies heavily to CR C3 *Spoilers Ahead* It feels like the party is always seeking the help of their former characters. Keyleth in particular with the way liam tied Orym to her. Keyleth has become their one stop teleport shop for them to go globe trotting, and when an issue arises its like "what about those people in Whitestone?" "What about the Voice of the Tempest?"
In the campaign I'm running the party did try to get the local help only to be laughed out. Nobody took them seriously because there hasn't been any major threat in centuries in fact there hadn't been anything even remotely threatening for so long that people had grown addled about it. Then again the setting I run is a very grim dark setting hidden behind a thick facade of fairy tails. Everything is amazing but don't look too close.
Mass Effect, for all its faults, has a ton of examples to pull from for this sorta thing. Like just going from ME1 to ME2, Shep can't get much direct support from the council for several reasons: 1) they literally died and the crew scattered to the winds as a result, 2) they were resurrected by and are actively working with a known terrorist organization, 3) the council is actively covering up the threat of reapers to keep the peace and don't want to walk that back, 4) Shep spends most of ME2 operating outside the council's jurisdiction where it would cause a lot of political drama and galactic war if they intervened directly, 5) if Shep let the old council die then the replacements aren't going to be very trusting. The point is that having an NPC with authority use dismissive airquotes when the PCs try to explain a threat **will** technically explain why they won't help, but be ready for that NPC to never live it down
I completely sidestepped this problem early on in my campaign with two big plot beats- the adventuring party got sucked into a group of vigilantes immediately, session 2, and as such their activities while good intentioned are at all times quasi-legal at best. Second, I made a massively powerful political organization within the world allies of the campaign's main villains, so while the whole system isn't corrupt there is enough rot in place to make appealing to the authorities for help a very risky prospect. (As an aside- none of the superhero stories you mentioned are going to imply the government or the police are themselves corrupt because they're shot up to the eyeballs with pentagon money. They're not gonna bite the hand that feeds, especially not to make social commentary that rings a lot more true to life for most of the population today than it did when the Batman comics were writing about corrupt cops twenty-plus years ago and it was a pecularity of Gotham instead of like... the status quo of modern policing. Marvel movies are not going to make an entire arm of the US goverment corrupt and political because then they would lose their corporate sponsor money. )
This is a very different problem depending on the style of the campaign. In a heroic campaign it's easy enough -- the NPCs aren't as powerful, so the heroes can't rely on being rescued by their own personal Gandalf. Easy. If it's a more old-school campaign, though, then the DM needs strong authority figures to keep the murder-prone, thieving, grave-robbing wanderers from wrecking entire villages and towns. That's when you run into the problem of, "If this town's defenders were able to put us in jail until we paid our fines that one time, why can't they deal with these fiends that just showed up?"
"Maybe you've forgotten how Batman stories function." Yes. Thank you! Police corruption is such an integral part of why Batman is Batman instead if just a billionaire play or philanthropist.
I love that comparison you made "In The Purge, you can't call the cops because for 12 hours all crime is legal and emergency services are unavailable. In Get Out, you can't call the cops because you're a black man in America."
I really don't like Mr. Mulligan's quote there, because I frequently don't want that as a player. I like looking around and figuring the rules of how this place works. I don't want a narrative arc; I want a world that feels real.
I’ll use this to help me think more on why all the factions in SKT aren’t doing more to help the party. Which might be something WotC could include in future adventures- possible tips for why factions don’t/can’t help
It’s funny you mentioned Storm King’s Thunder, another commenter referenced that same module and how they had found ways to explain the factions’ non-involvement by basically saying they either don’t care early on (“Why would we help giants,” etc.) or they’re spread too thin to dedicate resources and forces. (I’m sure the actual comment has more useful information, this is just what I remember from seeing it earlier lol)
I thought the Ethan Hawke movie from the thumbnail that you'd be referencing would be Daybreakers, a film where the heroes support system is also destroyed if I remember rightly.
Most authority figures are motivated by their own concerns and perspectives--which can be wholly at odds with the PC's, or not. If they are, they are a problem, either because they do not trust the PC's, or see them as a threat. If they are not (which I actually think is more interesting), then they will help the PC's, but the problem will be big enough that without the PC's intervention, their success might be limited or impossible. I think if you are going to make a threat big enough to threaten a place, then it has to be serious enough that the powers there cannot meaningfully act, or their solution will be desperate and undesirable. Thus the "heroes" have to intervene. They can be more flexible, or they have a special connection to what is occurring. Or the Powers tried, and failed, and that has changed the circumstances enough that the heroes can be the solution. It's not that the Powers that Be fail to act (though that can be done well too) it's that the situation is so bad, that the Heroes are the thing the barely tips the scale enough to make the difference. Give the powers something to do, but make the problem scale appropriately to the environment. Big problems mean there's enough room for the Powers to seem competent, but not be able to solve everything themselves. Also, many stories, both in myth and history, hinge on being able to get secure communication to the right people in time to act. It might mean altering how some spells work, but an entire adventure could be just about getting to the Sleeping Demiurge who can stop the Dread Lord, and there's no one but the heroes who can reasonably pull that off while everything is going on. Make the people in power able to do things the PC's cannot, and vice versa. The Queen and her Witch of the White Flame can't be running around trying desperate solutions, because if they take off the whole situation will fall apart, and the PC's cannot defend the entire city on their own, nor can they command entire armies (unless they can, which means your characters *ARE THE POWERS THAT BE* which is a whole different scale of play.) E.G. The PC's, while adventuring, discover there's an army of the dead encroaching upon the land (bonus points if it's unwittingly their fault), so the PC's talk to the Queen (a whole arc in and of itself), who seeks evidence of the cause. She sends them and one of her agents to find the source. They find it's The Dread Lord of ages past, and she sends her armies to stop the army of the dead. The army fights, but the individual necromancers can keep replenishing their numbers, the PC's (and other agents) need to hit those necromancers while the army deals with the undead force. After a significant battle, one the heroes could never have won on their own, but the army may have totally lost without their aid, the Queen sends her champions to the tomb of the Sleeping Demiurge, for only they can face the Dread Lord in battle. They go on a quest, while the army tries to hold back the dead. When they attack the Dread Lord's Tower, the army fights (with the Pc's involved) and manages to hold back and subdue the Dead, while the Demiurge and the Dread Lord duel in the sky. The army drives off the dead, but they are exhausted and the toll was so high that they cannot take the tower, the Demiurge smote the Dread Lord from the sky, but was wounded or slain themselves. The Dread Lord retreated to his Tower, it is up to the PC's to enter it, before the weakened Dread Lord unleashes his super weapon in a counter attack. Pc's have support from the Powers, but things are so desperate that without them, the Powers would not be able to win. OR, you downscale the conflict so there isn't an infrastructure around, and that's what the PC's come to represent. OR, you combine them so that things got so desperate that the infrastructure is stripped away, and now the PC's have to replace it.
I actually get demoralised sometimes by this story Beat because I want my identifying character to be believed and taken seriously and it feels disempowering to have him or her all alone needing to take on the world with no help.
Great Video, again. I'd point out tho that, in HP, the government is not slow and obtuse as a commentary on how government can be, but as a result of the author's political beliefs. She's a hardcore neo liberal, and in her mind, the government is bad because the leader is incompetent. The moment the leader changes, the whole structure changes. In Rowling's mind, there's no systemic issues, just good or bad individuals who take good or bad action based on the morality assigned to them. The universe is also incredibly not subtle about suggesting bio-essentialism. There's a great podcast by Shaun, available on UA-cam too about all that.
So yeah, although it is possible to interpret an interesting observation about governing bodies in HP, it is purely interpretation, and definitely not the intended message.
Depends on the character, and their experience of the system and/or authority figures, on if they'd want to call the authorities or not. Like - My last character grew up on the streets. He was _not_ going to involve the guards unless as an absolute last resort, because he grew up in a situation where he'd have direct experience of cops = bad news. Not as extreme a situation as in Get Out, but... Fundamentally, 'the rational move is to call authority' is a very white, middle/upper class, cishet, able-bodied, point of view and you don't have to be dealing with the levels of systemic racism of modern-day America to build a character who rightfully distrusts the systems of authority they might otherwise think to turn to. Sure we've seen an IMF at full capacity. The TV show the film franchise was based on (Where they also can't go to said authority because it's a black ops organization where, once the mission gets going, it's agents can have zero appearance of working with the government. They're an agency where if things go south, the agents are entirely on their own, because the entire point of the agency is it does things that would create Problems if it became known the government is doing those things.) I think one thing that is outside the brief of the video is that there's a difference between player-built infrastructure over the course of a campaign, where the players have access to this stuff because they've been building it throughout. Leading the army you yourself have constructed is just a different sort of power fantasy to going in there and ripping the demon, dragon, whatever a new one with your strength or your magic, and calling the nation's army on your enemy and external to the PCs which... Basically comes down to "Why don't the eagles fly the ring to Mordor?"
depending on your setting a lack of high level help can also be explained with politics. Sure the barbarian clan would love to help you fight tiamat but the moment they start moving forces the local knights will see that as a chance to strike thus or simply as a provocation of war. As such the barbs can only send a bit of help. on a morbid note the current war in Ukraine could be drawn on for how a larger power might either be too slow on providing aid or be unable to provide everything due to not wanting to start a bigger conflict.
Interesting topic! How do you avoid the very rightly mocked “Star Trek Syndrome” where even a few days out from Earth, in the heart of the Federation, Enterprise is apparently the only ship that can handle to issue of the week. For low level characters, it is quite plausible that the authorities either won’t take them seriously, or have “higher level” threats to deal with. If you destroy the power structure above the characters, or worse yet the whole community they belong to, you remove a lot of the characters’ incentive to actually solve the situation (and may give them an incentive to join the “bad guys” and take a step up in the world), depending on your players. It’s better to isolate the characters from the power structure in some way - they (or the authorities) find themselves in another continent or plane of existence, a storm prevents the pony express from reaching the capital, the magic telephone goes suddenly dead. If the players aren’t sure whether or not the community and authorities are safe, let alone aware of the characters’ predicament, it’s even better for ratcheting up the tension. Framing the characters does work too, but you mustn’t overdo it - it really does feel far too contrived even the second time around. Making the authorities *not* be a super-powerful unified agency of some sort is vital! In a medieval society, even with magic available, a super-powerful unified agency does seem a bit less likely, so that helps. You can also frame the authorities, so that the characters don’t trust them, but once again, you can’t pull this trick too often (or the characters either see through it, or have no incentive to help the “good guys”).
I have to say that this hole ''well... we can't help you" kinda got to the point where it turn into this 30 sec. cutscene at beginning of the game to quickly give you runndow of the story and then forget about it until end credits. Like it itself isn't a problem but the fackt that it's used so often just to be there turn it from how to say it state of disadvantage (pleyers previously could count on their allias or some other help) to "Ok so some cultist wants to summon a deamon to kill everyone or somethink like that i don't realy care. So now you tell us why you can't possibly deal with this so we can have this behind us and we can get to the fun part". Put in somethink more, some purpose, not just "no", even if in the end effect is the same (i mean they are left on their own) it's more intresting in my opinion when Heros/Players decide to engage batalin of orc's to give good guys army time to preper for battle or let civilians escape rather then making grup of NPC's and making players wonder why they should interract with them
Isn't that bad in a long long run? So, the players will try to build support systems because, well, it feels great to have them. Now, they can be taken away, like by obliterating them, but if player starts to feel like they are taken away BECAUSE they are so great and BECAUSE of the player ... why would player still care to erect them in the first place? This would quite limit stories you can tell because now player can only get stories that are only starting or are far away or just too hard, so this would limit their ability to set roots. It feels different if dragons in Vox Machina attacked the city because dragons wanted to do it or heroes triggered it than if it happened because your heroic actions worked too well, so people around you "had" to be sacrificed for your enjoyment, not you as a character but you as a player. Those people would be better of without you. It feels personal, if you would just leave the story soon enough, the tragedy could be prevented. It also feels like "I have that cool ability my DM never lets me use it." repackaged.
this is a very helpful video, and I will def be rewatching it a few times to take in all the aspects of removing support systems. Can you give some thought to the opposite problem? It's much more nich so I don't know that it would warrant a video but you might find you do have some things to say about it. I am running a game in the Dragon Age universe. It started shortly before the big blight of the first game. At some point, they will catch up to the plot of the games, and there is no way they won't want to help in that situation, but obviously, I'm not here to just recreate the games. Luckily the in-universe plot is actually someone short all things considered so I wouldn't have to 'distract' them for long, but is there a good way to give them a way to contribute in a way that feels meaningful and heroic when they can't be the one to kill the Big Bad of that moment without having to just recreate a bunch of the games? I know I brought this upon myself but I can't be the only one who has started a game in an exciting universe people like without realizing that it makes for an awkward moment with the plot.
You’re right, that section should have been more clear. My feeling at the time was that I’ve already made a video (linked at that point in the video) where I make my feelings on J. K. Rowling very clear, she’s truly despicable: ua-cam.com/video/rXVB39SUfxU/v-deo.htmlsi=e4gB8-JVVHs_eUqo And it was important for me to make that video before I made any references to HP on my channel, to make sure that people know where I stand on that subject. Harry Potter is a useful point of reference that I’ve almost entirely avoided referencing for the past year and a half on this channel, because of exactly the reason you referenced in your comment. Of course, I hope it’s clear that we can find useful examples from people who we do not think highly of. For example, I also referenced the first two Avengers films, yet that Rowling video also heavily discusses my loathing for Joss Whedon as a person. That being said… all of that probably should have been in the video. I certainly don’t want any members of the trans community to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome watching my channel, so this is not a mistake I’ll make again whenever I next make a meaningful reference Harry Potter in the future. Any of my videos might be someone’s first, and someone might not follow the link and watch the video (because they’re under no obligation to give me the benefit of the doubt, so why would they follow a random link? That was foolish of me). For the record: I believe we need to be able to discuss what these creatives did well, and how we can replicate it in our own work, because not only does it help us improve our craft, but it also helps to rob these creatives of their reputations as “geniuses.” I don’t think any of us are about to be the next Rowling or Whedon, but I do believe that we can discuss the pros and cons of their work while still clearly and consistently denouncing them (and, in Rowling’s case, her ideology). BUT… I can almost certainly do a much better job of expressing that whenever I next make a significant reference Harry Potter, and I’ll make sure to do so in the future. Thank you for your comment. I’m really sorry that this moment in the video made you feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, and I hope you know that wasn’t my intention. I’ll do better next time.
@@SupergeekMike Came here to speak up about this. Very reassuring to see you addressing it so reasonably. It IS a good example of what you're explaining here, but any form of reference to her work without adressing the TERF elepant in the room is...problematic. Seems you're on top of that going forward though :)
Delaneo Martin was killed for sleeping in a stolen car on March 18, he was 17. Jawan Dallas was killed on July 2 for being Black in the same city as an unrelated burglary. Jarrell Garris was killed in a supermarket. Ricky Cobb II was killed for pulling away from a traffic stop, something that famously leads to high-speed pursuits when the perp is white, but got him shot because he was Black. Brandon Cole was killed because the cops thought the black marker in his hand was a knife. Ta’Kiya Young and her unborn baby were killed because she insisted she didn’t steal anything, and turned her steering wheel (again, if she were white, they’d have shot the tires). Dhal Pothwi and Lueth Mo were killed in their car. And those are just from this year. So, yeah, SOMETIMES the cops face SOME consequences, there have been a few times this year where officers have been charged for killing Black people (I didn’t list those above, which means from what I can tell, these police weren’t arrested or charged). But there are also plenty of times where the cops just don’t get in trouble, there are no consequences. In fact, I’d guess that the cops who DID get in trouble assumed they wouldn’t, because historically, there have been little to no consequences for police murdering Black people. If they thought they were going to get in trouble, they wouldn’t have murdered anybody. If you take issue with my comment from the video, maybe it shouldn’t be that my statement was too general because I didn’t say “sometimes” or “in the filmmakers’ opinion” - seriously, grow up. You should instead take issue with the fact that this happens at all, because that’s a REAL problem, not the semantics in a UA-cam video. “Some cops DO go to jail” is very much an “all lives matter” style rhetorical response. Sure, it’s true, but all it does is try to change the subject and make the person bringing up the legitimate concern seem like they’re being unreasonable for pointing out that, maybe, cops shouldn’t murder ANY Black people. (And notice, we’ve only talked about murders, and not non-fatal police brutality.)
Can you think of other examples where we can see this dramatic trope in action?
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I think this is on topic, but I love that scene in critical role, before the fight to retake Eman, where Sam asks "Don't you have a special Elite Task force or something ?" And the NPCs answer "We have, and it's called Vox Machina"
i would love to get an episode number and time code for that, its been so long since i watched campaign one i don't remember that at all!
@@ACTION-RELOAD-DANGER it might be within episode 78 of the first campaign. "The siege of Emon" I'm searching right now
A relevant part beggins at 27:00 of the episode. It's when Sam is first thinking that their allies might have an elite SWAT team that they could take along with them. I'll edit this aggain when I find the actual time code
Ps you might wanna hear kyelih talking with Kash. 41:50. Same episode. Priceless. Needs to be clipped
@@ACTION-RELOAD-DANGER I'm stupid the timezone was already in the comments.
Episode: "The Siege of Emon | Critical Role: VOX MACHINA | Episode 78"
Time code of exact quote: 1:27:25
Time code of start of scene: 1:25:58
The NPC was Allura Vysoren
This was SO BADASS, I really hope I can get a moment like this in the campaign I run when they are a bit higher level...
@@lefterismplanas4977 I see you and I appreciate you
I love how the demystified videos are mostly about pointing out good examples of how to address common game aspects/problems, and when a larger lesson pops up you turn it into a stand alone. Really helps keep these videos easy to find and reference, and those videos focused on the series they're talking about
Thank you!
Brennan's monologue about the adversity between the character and the player on how to solve problems reminds me of how in CR C2 the Angel of Irons arc, the characters are trying to get Yasha back as soon as possible even though the players know this is a pointless endeavor because Yasha cannot rejoin the party until her player returns to the table.
But they recognized that their characters would not just idle as their friend was in danger.
And ther was also the whole "both sides are at war and I'd ether commits to helping without a truce the other might backstabbing and steamroller them" thing.
It took multible appeals to the bright queen just to entertain the notion of not being at war with the empire entirely and instead focus on "these currpt jerks" and be willing to have a temporary cease fire to handle the possibility of the world ending.
So it's worth noting that Marvel comics has a really good solution to the "why don't they just call the Avengers" problem that they've been using for decades, and that DMs could emulate. In a nutshell, that strategy could be summed up as "sorry Spiderman, the Avengers can't come to the phone right now, Galactus just showed up and is trying to eat the planet again, you'll have to save New York from the Green Goblin's evil plan on your own." The Marvel comics (and the DC comics) have done a really good job of establishing their settings as a place with a *huge* number of potential threats that could pop up on any given day, and it makes sense that they might be things the Avengers would consider a higher priority than whatever the protagonist is dealing with.
Every hero and team has a large and diverse rogues gallery, and since heroes usually prefer to put their bad guys in jail or drive them off rather than kill them, the audience knows that those bad guys could pop up again at any moment (contrast this with the movies, which more often than not kill off their villains in the same film they're introduced in). Thus, if a comic writer wants to explain why, say, Wolverine can't ask the rest of the X-Men for help with whatever he's dealing with this week, it just takes one cutaway panel to be like "yeah, Magneto's out of jail and trying to overthrow the government again, we can't help you until we've dealt with that."
Of course, sometimes you want to write about your hero dealing with a threat SO dire that it would be ludicrous to say that other heroes wouldn't drop everything to go deal with it. One solution is to have it not be clear how much is at stake until the villain is close enough to enacting their big doomsday plan that there just isn't time to call in the cavalry.
Alternatively, you could make the threat large and multi-faceted enough that even the Avengers couldn't plausibly deal with it alone. Maybe the villain's doomsday device has multiple components scattered across the world, and all of them need to be destroyed before he can set them off. Or maybe the villain has a massive army of minions that are currently rampaging, and the superhero team full of absolute powerhouses feel obligated to focus on that while the middleweight protagonist does the daring infiltration of the villain's main base.
The MCU could have done this pretty easily too, considering how those movies were written/filmed: have the last day of filming on the Avengers movie that ends the previous phase be spent filming the "away" messages. Like "sorry, I'd love to help but I gotta stop *Rogue who is not currently slated to appear* from doing *bad thing that happens in a comic that you aren't planning to make happen in a movie.*" They have 50 or 60 years of comics to choose from. It would literally take less than an hour to film.
I would say AtLA handles this aspect pretty well. Book 1 is all about they trying to reach a source of authority, which does end up helping them for a while. Book 2 especially as it starts with the gang being essentially betrayed by an Earth General which cuts off they resource as reliable, and ends with an extremely corrupt Earth Kingdom government that refuses to help and then winds up being taken over by the enemy anyway. Book 3 actually has them successfully gather a small host of allies only for the invasion to fail and force them to mostly rely on the ragtag group of heroes to save the day (and also the White Lotus gets involved basically by their own initiative which is cool to see).
The first proper 5e game I was a part of did this pretty fantastically when we got into the final arc, which was basically a civil war, with the aggressors being led by a former PC who was an "Exiled rightful heir" gone bad, while the defending king was his brother. We sided with the latter, and the DM kept us on our toes with some pretty clever tricks.
1) We couldn't just turn to the established powerful heroes, because they were stretched thin, leading multiple fronts in the war. Moreover, one of said heroes had fought the BBEG and lost, losing his life in the process.
2) In terms of everyone else, we were more powerful than them anyway, so they couldn't really do anything that we couldn't do ourselves.
3) The BBEG had a greater amount of supernatural aid- Most of his footsoldiers were Merregons, they had Fire Elementals as weapons, etc. In a pitched battle, they had the advantage over us.
4) They also had an infiltrator among our ranks who let them stay ahead, and went relatively unnoticed before we finally caught him during the final battle. This gave them a sizeable intel advantage.
Meanwhile I was in another game that became the NPC show, and those NPCs blatantly only respected the one PC who was an Orc, so that didn't work out in any regard.
Your comment on the 5th Harry Potter book and how political groups can become obstacles themselves due to agendas reminded me of the premise I used to run Rise of Tiamat, what I told my players was: The council UNDERSTANDS that The Cult is a Threat, but there are so many people of different factions and opinions that they just CAN'T put those differences aside for the sake of the world, your job as "heroes" is to gain the trust and respect of as many councilmembers as you can so they will stop arguing and follow your lead, to where YOU wish to point them as a weapon
There's a corollary to this, I think, which is situations where the narrative tension is that the heroes on their own have no chance at success or even survival against impossible odds, and the goal is to succeed at calling in the cavalry and either escaping to rejoin them or survivng until their arrival. Ready examples of this would include everything in Star Wars canon involving the Deathstar plans.
And the Battle at Helm's Deep.
@@joeo3377 Great example.
A lot of RTS computer games have levels like this, with a time ticking away and you have to survive until reinforcements arrive or until your means of departure can be repaired or something similar.
This kind of thing can work but there's also a limit to how many times it works.
Though if you double cross the players by doing this then taking their support away you can squeeze a double whammy in.
Finally, it's also important to allow for rebuilding the support. I mean is basically one of the things that happens in the Vox Machina Chroma Conclave arc. They are given a chance not only to empower themselves but fix some of the broken Shards of their support structure. Each victory gives them a little bit back.
The key is to make the players feel like the support was earned. That while yes Gilmore and Allura are protecting Whitestone so the heroes have a sanctuary, their actions are what brought Gilmore and Allura there to allow that.
I also want to mention the Guardians movies, specifically the first one. Most of the movie, the heroes are running from the government, the "help" against the main villain. The Guardians have a good reason to NOT call for help and the story is them finally realizing that they do need help. So when the final act comes around, they have the help from the Nova Corps, and still get destroyed.
Guardians 1 completely twists around the story of getting help from those most likely to do so by having a reason for the heroes not to ask for help. And it works so well!
This can make campaigns into a bucket of crabs in a way. With Brennan's thing of players solving problems efficiently part of that is connecting with or building those support structures. Your adventurers will make friends with powerful people, build up their own systems, gain clout, etc which actively works against them needing to be the heroes on call. So you end up targeting their supports. Their powerful friends lose power or are secretly corrupt, assassins infiltrate their keep, their reputations are smeared, a conclave of dragons destroy their core city, etc. It's an interesting destruction to the status quo.
I just found your channel today and I'm already addicted 3 videos in. I am a new aspiring game master and I've never really written anything before, save a few short stories as a kid.
You are proving to not only be an invaluable source of inspiration for me, but you're also really teaching me about concepts I would never have realized.
I hope you get the recognition you deserve for these videos. Cheers!
Welcome aboard!
This reminds me of Hot Fuzz and how the movie tells the main characters they are on their own in a funny way (just to look for another type of excuse less dramatic).
Isolation is always a big part of mysteries too. Like it’s a dark and stormy night is not just a trope because the tone is creepy and ominous but it means power and phone lines might be down, bridges washed away, a downed tree in the road blocking escape paths, trains/planes/boats canceling trips that could hold news/help/supplies due to weather and all that within one sentence. In that way the murder mystery also does isolation because if you don’t act yourself, you could be next!
The only reason Thor Ragnarok wasn't just Planet Hulk, is they (Marvel) didn't (and maybe still don't) have the rights to any Hulk movies, that's why there isn't a MCU Hulk movies after the one with Edward Norton, and why the movies he is in, he's not in the title.
I'm about to start Storm King's Thunder with my group of 6th graders. Looking at that module and asking the question "why won't the giants help/why won't any of the other cities help", is actually a really interesting thing to do. The Giants won't help initially because they are power hungry, and don't trust the small folk. The other cities won't help the situation because they don't like the giants and the relationship has never been good. I mean eventually the giants do help when the situation finally warrants their help, but I'm talking lower level.
As always, great video. I really enjoy the scripts you write, the humor you put in, and the definitely not subtle political jabs. I am happy to have found your channel when looking for general D&D advice when starting my GM journey. I'm looking forward to the day where CR: Demystified is going to be a weekly thing.
I am surprised at the lack of mention of the classic "the authorities won't help you" story. The Mayor's Office of Amity Island would like to assure you that those three loudmouths in a boat are overreacting.
Love the video but just pointing out Cap 2 does have reason to not call in the other Avengers, in Cap's apartment Fury says 'Don't trust anyone.' not just shield. Black Widow spies her way into allyship and then he recruits Falcon due to the lack of connections and desperation.
Sorry I just really love that film.
Oh, I love the movie, too, I certainly don’t think it’s an inditement of that film that it chooses not to call in the other Avengers, or that it doesn’t justify it as well as it potentially could.
@@SupergeekMikeI always want more Hawkeye so I was totally bummed when Natasha didn’t get her BFF in there for help. In fact I always wanted a Black Widow film to basically be a bad ass Bond spy movie where Hawkeye was her version of the sexy bond girl helper.
I believe creator of One Piece once said that his main characters don’t have parents because parents/mothers would never let their kids go out into danger or have adventures. And it’s pretty common that hero’s backstory’s have the parents be dead or out of the way. Meanwhile in like hero shows like Superman or My Hero Academia the hero is often encountered to be a hero or have adventures because it’s the right thing (or in my hero academia heroes are like the equivalent of movie stars so what parent wouldn’t want that success for their kids?) and it’s the hero that often chooses to distance themselves from their own family and that support them for their own families safety.
While I'm not a horror guy either, one of the few I enjoy is the first Terminator and there they deal with the "calling the authorities" issue by having the "slasher" be a robot assassin from the future who's WAY out of anyone's league. (And also one of the heroes can't exactly tell people "I'm a time-travelling soldier from a future ruled by robots sent to fight the robot they sent back in time to kill one specific person" and be taken seriously.)
I've been thinking of how my some of my favourite game franchises handle this issue, and it's... interesting.
Firstly, Persona. It's a magical otherworld story where conventional authorities don't know about the otherworld and the few that do are corrupt and/or antagonistic. But also, there's an ironclad lore reason why only the main heroes can stop the threat of the week: only Persona-users can harm Shadows. This isn't Harry Potter, where Muggles could theoretically fight magical threats if they knew about them, anyone without a Persona can't help even if they wanted to, and the very act of gaining a Persona literally turns you into a main character. What tends to happen is the heroes will, willingly or unwillingly, get ONE outside authority involved in the conflict, who gets dragged into the otherworld and happens to overcome their personal demons and gain a Persona. But by that point they're not an outside authority anymore, they're part of the main cast. There's a couple of non-empowered characters of authority who end up helping the heroes, but they can only give them resources and get them out of legal trouble, because they couldn't fight the threats even if they wanted to.
Next, Pokemon. Part of why Black and White are my favourite Pokemon games is the Gym Leaders actually help against the Evil Team, but in a way that doesn't rob the player of agency. BW was the first Pokemon game to make the Gym Leaders feel like actual people in the world with responsibilities, rather than one-off obstacles for the player. (it's not a coincidence that most of them have actual JOBS, like Lenora running a museum, Skyla being a cargo pilot, Drayden being the literal mayor of the town he's in. Meanwhile you couldn't name what Brock and Misty do for a living outside the anime)
Finally, Fire Emblem. Most of these stories take place during a continent-spanning war, so the various monarchs and high-ranked generals on your side can be busy fighting on other fronts or keeping their nation from collapsing without straining believability. They typically do join the playable forces for the final chapter in something called the "Gotoh Archetype", but by that point them directly fighting alongside you feels earned and you've often caught up to them in power level.
I love how different Batman writers deal with Batman not calling in his justice league buddies…from Batman thinks meta presence will escalate things, to disproving his urban legend status, to not showing knowledge or the corruption (you can’t bust THAT gang because then THAT mafia family will move in their turf and be worse ect). , to Gotham literally being cursed and it will screw with non Gotham interference.
But!! It’s okay if Batman gets help from his bat family because all of them see themselves as alone but in a group and since they are all kind of your kids you shouldn’t depend on them too hard.
I think the plain and simple reason is Batman feels the city is his responsibility and that dragging in the big guns will ultimately undo his primary method of control. Is the big scary bat going call for Super Daddy?
Also, I think DC and Marvel can easily establish that the other characters are simply busy with similar threats. Like at any time they could have name dropped a member of Iron Man's rogues gallery to explain him not being present. Though that could cause a completely different problem.
Though it also kind of points out the real issue of people just not being able to suspend their disbelief and just enjoy what they are watching. Just assume that the other heroes are dealing with their own things or that the current hero just isn't able to call for help. Half the problems is we look for plothole in places we don't need to be looking for them.
Lord of the Rings had the whole why not use the eagles thing. Twice. People didn't just think that after the movies, they also asked Tolkien why they didn't. And he was like I never thought that was a possibility. And if you read the Hobbit the eagles flat out refuse to put themselves in danger. Dark Forest with a necromancer nearby, nope not flying over that. Too dangerous.
Reminds me of my first campaign I played in, a Sky High type setting. The poor DM kept having to figure out reasons the teachers (NPCs) couldn't just solve the student's (PCs) problems. Sometimes it was 'the teachers will handle the most dangerous part of this attack on the school, but they need you all to handle this bit', but it often felt contrived.
We had a guild we were a part of in one of our D&D campaigns, and after a HUGE twist, the head of the guild stepped down and shifted the power to our group. We had access to the whole thing, but we also had to figure out how to run it and use our resources. If we didn't actively have the guild doing something useful to help us, it just existed as it was and kept going on it's own steam. Personally, I found it a good way to give us support while still having us make all the tough choices
Big props for your subtitles! I've never had them on before so I didn't notice how good they are. You've got *emphasis markers* and punctuation!
Thank you! I’m always glad to see that they’re being well-received :)
OverlySarcasticProductions figured why the MCU films have this prevalent issue of "why can't other superheroes help?" that the Marvel comics do not.
Because the MCU was based in films!
The nature of the film is you wrap up the conflict with the villain each time. Whereas, in comics, conflicts are ongoing.
So, comic superheroes can each feel inundated with missions, so much that they can't easily take on another superhero's workload.
Film superheroes, on the other hand, are freed after and before each film, making them feel more culpable for not helping out in other stories.
What the MCU needed was a greater sense of what superheroes do offscreen. A few montages at the beginning and end of each film probably would have solved these issues. You could even have a few cameo jokes with trying to call another superhero for help but they're in the middle of their own noodle incident action!
Likewise, you can explain a lack of help in TTRPGs by authorities being busy with other crazy stuff. For low-level parties, they might have all sorts of missions and monsters they're already dealing with. For high-level parties, they could be tackling some other great aspect to the world-ending force! "You tackle the main demon army while we protect towns all over the world!"
Another way to remove support structures is to allow your players to leverage the powers that be to gather some sort of support for the players. Then wipe out that support in front of the players by the forces of your BBEG.
Highly effective, always dramatic, would recommend.
Fab video! A really good, & focused, example of this is The Mummy movie (1999). Imhotep methodically picks off the heroes allies to build power and then when he's got his pieces in order he launches an all out attack on the sanctuary of the heroes in an effort to sweep them off the board all at once.
I don’t even remember the exact way it was explained, but I remember finding it very believable the way this problem was handled in C2 when I watched it. All the people they went to didn’t exactly dismiss them, they even took them very seriously, but they also couldn’t drop everything else they were doing to help
Return of the king gives a great answer. Frodo and Sam do have allies with armies, the fellowship goes with the Rohirrim and the rangers to Gondor and along with the forces of Gondor they all march on the black gate. Aragorn and co have a force large enough to do useful things like relieve the siege of Gondor and but they are still too badly outnumbered to conquer Mordor alone, yet they still help Sam and Frodo get to mount doom by drawing the attention of Sauron. Then when Sauron's power is removed with the destruction of the ring and the orcs are sent into disarray the tide is then turned and the armies of the west are part of the force that can then destroy them.
I use a similar format regularly if answers like their resources being stretched too thin doesn't apply. The players call on the help of allies who raise a force of troops who can take on an enemy army. But there is a task that a small group of skilled warriors could complete while the main body of the army takes on the main body of a large enemy army.
I hadn't even realized it, but, I have already done this as part of my campaign world's backdrop, well, on the one continent, at least. The empire is crumbling, mostly figuratively. Towns aren't being protected, the army and guards are overtaxed, apathetic, and/or corrupt.
I know this isn't a "Critical Role Demystified" video, but, one of my occasional pet peeves on the part of the players is trying to get others to help with, or even take over, the challenge they're facing.
I ran Rise of Tiamat a while back with a couple of friends who were interested in trying DnD for the first time. Two of them kept trying to get help from the Council to stop the Cult of Tiamat, citing the same reasons you stated: "There are people trying to _SUMMON DRAGON SATAN._ Help us!!!"
They were told that the Council understands the threat, but the armies and town guards already had their hands full trying to quell mass panic and riots, keep the Cult from infiltrating the government, and protect towns and cities from attacking dragons and cultists, and it's not going well. However, since this _was_ their first time playing DnD, I did throw them a bone and had a Commander from a garrison they had saved and befriended help them out by giving them supplies and a small supporting cast of soldiers. So they had a finite supply of backup they could call on for certain important objectives.
But, once they had played for a while and gotten to know more and more of the NPCs in the garrison, they grew attached to them and started relying on them less and less due to wanting to keep them safe from harm (a few of them had already died helping the players out).
So the problem just sorta solved itself after a while.
I love the spoiler alert at the start
Thank u for this! I am taking away my pc's support structure @ the end of tonight's game sesh while trying to get them to escape a insurmountable evil. These tips definitely helped me smooth out my rough spots 💯😎💪🤞🔥
My favorite example of this is Halo Reach; strap in, I'm doing a plot summary. At the start of the game, you join Noble Team and are at the peak of your power. There's no big conflict on the planet and the UNSC have clear control over everything. Even when the Covenant shows up, Noble still has access to all their support tools and can basically do whatever they want. Once you find the enemy base, you storm in with a fuckton of troops and topple their comms tower.
Immediately after it falls, the Grafton (the ship responsible for taking out the tower) gets a hole punched through it by a super-carrier, explodes with minimal effort, and everything goes to Hell. Less than 32 hours later, we find Noble Team squatting in a cave trying not to be seen by enemy forces... with the knowledge that backup won't show up for two more days. With only a batshit crazy plan in their back pocket, they take out the super-carrier, but not without a heavy cost: a hyper expensive slipspace engine is used for the explosion, the Savannah (the ship that provided said engine) is eradicated in the firefight, and Jorge, the closest thing you have to a real friend on Noble Team, stays behind to trigger the bomb.
Sadly, that's the good news; the bad news is that it was all for nothing. Mere moments after the super-carrier is taken out, the REST of the Covenant fleet arrives to finish what the first ship started. And when you wake up back on Reach after a fall from orbit nine days later (you walk it off, don't worry), you find yourself in Super Hell. With the entire planet under siege, you work your way through New Alexandria, saving civilians and soldiers where possible, while trying desperately to find your team. Watching the civilian ships get shot out of the sky while I can do absolutely nothing to stop it still gets me.
When you do finally manage to meet up with Noble after completing the worst mission in the game, things are very dire. So dire, in fact, that entire Spartan teams are being assigned to civilian evac duty instead of trying to reclaim the planet. I think tech master Kat puts it best: "I know we're losing! I want to know if we've lost." Suddenly, the team gets orders to move into enemy territory for a torch-and-burn operation related to some archaeological research. With a giant plasma beam knocking on their door, they begin the mission... but not before Kat gets domed by a sniper and she dies instantly.
After completing the mission and scooping up a surprise Cortana cameo, pro sniper Jun performs his "dying is gay, I'm out" meme and leaves the plot to go train Spartan 4s in a graphic novel. With a surplus of Covenant on their tails, the last half of Noble begins the charge towards the Pillar of Autumn to set off the events of the original game, with nobody backing them up. Throughout the trek, your C.O. Carter sacrifices himself to get rid of a plasma-breathing Scarab tank and a ton of straggling soldiers die while keeping you alive. It's one final sprint to the ship and you have entered Ultra Hell.
Just as you prepare to board the ship and leave, weapons expert Emile stays behind to provide cover fire in an Anti-Air cannon for your departure off-world... and gets stabbed to death for his troubles. As the last member of Noble on the planet, you man the AA gun and provide the cover needed for the Pillar to leave, marking you as one of the last humans on the entire planet. A few hours later, you are a lone wolf in a barren wasteland, with nobody by your side as you fight until your literal dying breath.
As you can tell from the length of this comment, this game means a lot to me and it just so happens to fit this video's topic perfectly. You start the game with quite literally all the support in the world. As the only planet that comes close to matching the importance of Earth, you get a lot to work with. Even if the missions have you working with only a few other soldiers at a time, the reality is that the UNSC is still present. However, as the game goes on, your support (and more obviously, your team) gets progressively smaller and smaller until the only person you can count on is yourself. Given the presence of an entire alien invasion, your slowly dwindling list of supplies is justified as it gets spent on evacuating civilians instead of on counter-ops. And finally, when all is said and done, it's just you and the glassy remains of a shattered world.
Carter really bookends the whole game splendidly; in your first interaction, he says "that lone wolf stuff stays behind." At the start, you're part of a new team with active communication with command; wandering off on your own complicates the mission. In contrast, his last words, "You're on your own, Noble. Carter out." show just how bad things have gotten. The top brass is either dead or off-world, your commanding officer just exploded, and your last ticket off the planet is about to leave WITHOUT YOU. And there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.
The one biggest exception to this rule is if the heroes specifically determine that the support structure is the only way to solve the problem, and so the hero's journey is about finding how to solve whatever obstacle prevents this support or find new allies that can give them the help they need.
I've somewhat done this in my current campaign. The monarchy, along with the nobles, have been replaced with shapeshifters(the party knows this). The mage's college is being helpful finally, their power has been capped at effectively level 10 due to story plot reasons until just recently. The temple though is at odds with one of the characters, therefor all of the characters, for summoning a necromancer from psuedo death. The one wanting to be the hero in the end was a great help to this and knew that she was likely evil due to other information.
All in all, they have help but that help is also somewhat at odds with the other help.
Very good video. It's also a good demonstration about how things work differently in different genres. The Mission: Impossible show was more cerebral and less overtly action oriented, with a lot more emphasis on outthinking the opponents. If the stakes rose significantly, it was something the team had to deal with immediately, so if they wanted to call the cavalry (which was rare) there wasn't time. (it was also the late 60's early 70's, late 80's for the revival, so much less instant communication/mobilization) But for an action oriented movie/game, the stakes also need to feel higher almost from the start, increasing the odds of wanting to call in support as well as increasing the dramatic tension of not having it.
An interesting point about Brennan's explanation of the problem: it isn't enough to have one overarching reason why the authorities will never come to help. Every threat, or at least every type of threat, needs a separate reason. There are certain things that they're legally barred from helping with; something else they'd like to help with, but lack the specific ability; yet another thing is blocked by their boss, who they don't realize is corrupt and helping the villains; then the next time there's somebody pulling mind control tricks on them; then somebody makes them think the party have done something awful so they aren't allies until that's disproven; and so on. The campaign can't rest on just one or two explanations. Just as the DM has a list of monsters to draw upon, they also need a list of reasons why the authorities and other heroes don't come to the party's aid. I'm sure there are a few of those lists online already since this is a decades-old problem.
The had been a few occasions I'm my game when the party became too reliant on others to solve problems for them, or make it much easier, which had to be resolved one way or another. Great points in the video! Keep it up!
I wonder if Matt Mercer is building to a big avengers end game scene where the other campaign heroes all show up to help at the end of this season of Critical Role. It feels like he would, especially if this world is going to be like reset or something after this campaign. He could prob pull it off by enlisting A few guest DMs like brenden and Abrea to help track what the other heroes are all doing. That’s is literally called an epic right when there are multiples dms running players for one game? Or alternatively there could be special or two that shows vox and mighty nein getting to the big show down and why they are there right before the showdown happens so everyone is on the same page.
At the very least do one of those Non Canon Battle Royal one shots but with the adventure parties instead of individual characters, or have characters be grouped by player
8:12
That actually was my toughest challenge to overcome when writing my book. I knew not what to do, how to overcome this.
On one hand, I did not have something for the hero to loose (that he knew of and would be valuable to the reader) and on the other I wanted a story which you felt Mattered.
And I honestly have no way to confirm right how if I've done a good job or not, because none of my family knows any English in order to read the book, and those who do don't want any spoilers or don't have the time to read it.
Put that aside, I think that I've done a job that is at least OK by turning the plot into something that the Main character wants to do in order to impress "the authorities" The problem in here wasn't His to solve and calling for backup would defeat the point of the operation. The complete result weaves in some reason why the story would batter to the MC but my main trick was to make the plot into a a story them proving their worth.
In the second one I aim to do something similar in making the Main group into a part of a bigger mission accompanied by the big army and stepping the story off of the success or failure of that mission. Granted I'll be handling that big army as faceless NPCs instead of Main characters, but that might be excused due to narrative reasons extended that "proving their worth" part on the second book as well.
After those first two adventures I aim for the main group to be strong enough to be considered an elite task force, or at least a self confident one, and find no need for extra support. If there ever is an event big enough to threat the world, then I'll make sure that team is strong enough to be above any kind of help the NPCs could provide.
Does this sound good?
Ps, the Authorities here are a group that liked to help when possible, but not to get involve
That ad was actually related to the content, and I actually sat through and watched it. I've seen WorldAnvil before but never really knew what it was. Good job on the ad!
I solved this problem in one of my campaigns by making the PCs essentially secret agents of a government that will deny any sort of connection or involvement with the PCs (taken from James Bond, I think? Some big spy thriller, in any case), so, yes, they have a support structure - in downtime between missions/adventures, so they can prep, get gear, even customized stuff (to a degree, of course), advice and intel from NPCs, all that good stuff.
It falls away the minute they set out on the mission itself; they're fully on their own then.
In time, they *become* the sort of intervention task force that is send to deal with huge threats and the 'deny everything' part becomes irrelevant once they start dealing with threats outside the carefully maintained Cold War-like power balance, with admittedly tremendously more support, but by that point, they fight things that make Smaug look like an average iguana.
I dud this for a murder mystery. I increased the victim count to the point the guards were overwhelmed with all the crime scenes. The chief inspector is a Lestrade type character who is confidently running down the wrong theory. By the time they solve the case, there is a ticking clock and the players decided there'd be no time. Plus they wanted to show up the self-important constable.
I intially had the same problem in the campaign I'm currently running, but have now come up with a way to utterly break the support structure that the player characters have built up.
Not that the support structure in their main city has been particularly helpful so far
I feel this applies heavily to CR C3
*Spoilers Ahead*
It feels like the party is always seeking the help of their former characters. Keyleth in particular with the way liam tied Orym to her. Keyleth has become their one stop teleport shop for them to go globe trotting, and when an issue arises its like "what about those people in Whitestone?" "What about the Voice of the Tempest?"
In the campaign I'm running the party did try to get the local help only to be laughed out. Nobody took them seriously because there hasn't been any major threat in centuries in fact there hadn't been anything even remotely threatening for so long that people had grown addled about it.
Then again the setting I run is a very grim dark setting hidden behind a thick facade of fairy tails. Everything is amazing but don't look too close.
Mass Effect, for all its faults, has a ton of examples to pull from for this sorta thing.
Like just going from ME1 to ME2, Shep can't get much direct support from the council for several reasons: 1) they literally died and the crew scattered to the winds as a result, 2) they were resurrected by and are actively working with a known terrorist organization, 3) the council is actively covering up the threat of reapers to keep the peace and don't want to walk that back, 4) Shep spends most of ME2 operating outside the council's jurisdiction where it would cause a lot of political drama and galactic war if they intervened directly, 5) if Shep let the old council die then the replacements aren't going to be very trusting.
The point is that having an NPC with authority use dismissive airquotes when the PCs try to explain a threat **will** technically explain why they won't help, but be ready for that NPC to never live it down
I completely sidestepped this problem early on in my campaign with two big plot beats- the adventuring party got sucked into a group of vigilantes immediately, session 2, and as such their activities while good intentioned are at all times quasi-legal at best. Second, I made a massively powerful political organization within the world allies of the campaign's main villains, so while the whole system isn't corrupt there is enough rot in place to make appealing to the authorities for help a very risky prospect.
(As an aside- none of the superhero stories you mentioned are going to imply the government or the police are themselves corrupt because they're shot up to the eyeballs with pentagon money. They're not gonna bite the hand that feeds, especially not to make social commentary that rings a lot more true to life for most of the population today than it did when the Batman comics were writing about corrupt cops twenty-plus years ago and it was a pecularity of Gotham instead of like... the status quo of modern policing. Marvel movies are not going to make an entire arm of the US goverment corrupt and political because then they would lose their corporate sponsor money. )
This is a very different problem depending on the style of the campaign. In a heroic campaign it's easy enough -- the NPCs aren't as powerful, so the heroes can't rely on being rescued by their own personal Gandalf. Easy. If it's a more old-school campaign, though, then the DM needs strong authority figures to keep the murder-prone, thieving, grave-robbing wanderers from wrecking entire villages and towns. That's when you run into the problem of, "If this town's defenders were able to put us in jail until we paid our fines that one time, why can't they deal with these fiends that just showed up?"
"Maybe you've forgotten how Batman stories function." Yes. Thank you! Police corruption is such an integral part of why Batman is Batman instead if just a billionaire play or philanthropist.
Please give us a standalone video showing us how to do this in dnd!
I love that comparison you made "In The Purge, you can't call the cops because for 12 hours all crime is legal and emergency services are unavailable. In Get Out, you can't call the cops because you're a black man in America."
I really don't like Mr. Mulligan's quote there, because I frequently don't want that as a player. I like looking around and figuring the rules of how this place works. I don't want a narrative arc; I want a world that feels real.
I’ll use this to help me think more on why all the factions in SKT aren’t doing more to help the party. Which might be something WotC could include in future adventures- possible tips for why factions don’t/can’t help
It’s funny you mentioned Storm King’s Thunder, another commenter referenced that same module and how they had found ways to explain the factions’ non-involvement by basically saying they either don’t care early on (“Why would we help giants,” etc.) or they’re spread too thin to dedicate resources and forces. (I’m sure the actual comment has more useful information, this is just what I remember from seeing it earlier lol)
The Purge, and the first sequel, are really good movies you should definitely watch.
Great vid, as always!
Ohhhhh good points!!
I thought the Ethan Hawke movie from the thumbnail that you'd be referencing would be Daybreakers, a film where the heroes support system is also destroyed if I remember rightly.
Not me citing a new Mike video as reason for late work 👀
My wife was sent into hysterics about Black Widow when Avengers Endgame being good at completing character arcs was mentioned xD
Oof fair point
You mentioning batman is such a weird coincidence, but the commisioner keeps telling me I'm not allowed to believe in coincidence anymore
Most authority figures are motivated by their own concerns and perspectives--which can be wholly at odds with the PC's, or not. If they are, they are a problem, either because they do not trust the PC's, or see them as a threat. If they are not (which I actually think is more interesting), then they will help the PC's, but the problem will be big enough that without the PC's intervention, their success might be limited or impossible.
I think if you are going to make a threat big enough to threaten a place, then it has to be serious enough that the powers there cannot meaningfully act, or their solution will be desperate and undesirable. Thus the "heroes" have to intervene. They can be more flexible, or they have a special connection to what is occurring. Or the Powers tried, and failed, and that has changed the circumstances enough that the heroes can be the solution. It's not that the Powers that Be fail to act (though that can be done well too) it's that the situation is so bad, that the Heroes are the thing the barely tips the scale enough to make the difference.
Give the powers something to do, but make the problem scale appropriately to the environment. Big problems mean there's enough room for the Powers to seem competent, but not be able to solve everything themselves. Also, many stories, both in myth and history, hinge on being able to get secure communication to the right people in time to act. It might mean altering how some spells work, but an entire adventure could be just about getting to the Sleeping Demiurge who can stop the Dread Lord, and there's no one but the heroes who can reasonably pull that off while everything is going on. Make the people in power able to do things the PC's cannot, and vice versa. The Queen and her Witch of the White Flame can't be running around trying desperate solutions, because if they take off the whole situation will fall apart, and the PC's cannot defend the entire city on their own, nor can they command entire armies (unless they can, which means your characters *ARE THE POWERS THAT BE* which is a whole different scale of play.)
E.G. The PC's, while adventuring, discover there's an army of the dead encroaching upon the land (bonus points if it's unwittingly their fault), so the PC's talk to the Queen (a whole arc in and of itself), who seeks evidence of the cause. She sends them and one of her agents to find the source. They find it's The Dread Lord of ages past, and she sends her armies to stop the army of the dead. The army fights, but the individual necromancers can keep replenishing their numbers, the PC's (and other agents) need to hit those necromancers while the army deals with the undead force. After a significant battle, one the heroes could never have won on their own, but the army may have totally lost without their aid, the Queen sends her champions to the tomb of the Sleeping Demiurge, for only they can face the Dread Lord in battle. They go on a quest, while the army tries to hold back the dead. When they attack the Dread Lord's Tower, the army fights (with the Pc's involved) and manages to hold back and subdue the Dead, while the Demiurge and the Dread Lord duel in the sky. The army drives off the dead, but they are exhausted and the toll was so high that they cannot take the tower, the Demiurge smote the Dread Lord from the sky, but was wounded or slain themselves. The Dread Lord retreated to his Tower, it is up to the PC's to enter it, before the weakened Dread Lord unleashes his super weapon in a counter attack.
Pc's have support from the Powers, but things are so desperate that without them, the Powers would not be able to win. OR, you downscale the conflict so there isn't an infrastructure around, and that's what the PC's come to represent. OR, you combine them so that things got so desperate that the infrastructure is stripped away, and now the PC's have to replace it.
I actually get demoralised sometimes by this story Beat because I want my identifying character to be believed and taken seriously and it feels disempowering to have him or her all alone needing to take on the world with no help.
Great Video, again. I'd point out tho that, in HP, the government is not slow and obtuse as a commentary on how government can be, but as a result of the author's political beliefs. She's a hardcore neo liberal, and in her mind, the government is bad because the leader is incompetent. The moment the leader changes, the whole structure changes. In Rowling's mind, there's no systemic issues, just good or bad individuals who take good or bad action based on the morality assigned to them.
The universe is also incredibly not subtle about suggesting bio-essentialism.
There's a great podcast by Shaun, available on UA-cam too about all that.
So yeah, although it is possible to interpret an interesting observation about governing bodies in HP, it is purely interpretation, and definitely not the intended message.
Rewatching this after the politics video is excellent. Very thoughtful & useful series!!
Depends on the character, and their experience of the system and/or authority figures, on if they'd want to call the authorities or not. Like - My last character grew up on the streets. He was _not_ going to involve the guards unless as an absolute last resort, because he grew up in a situation where he'd have direct experience of cops = bad news. Not as extreme a situation as in Get Out, but... Fundamentally, 'the rational move is to call authority' is a very white, middle/upper class, cishet, able-bodied, point of view and you don't have to be dealing with the levels of systemic racism of modern-day America to build a character who rightfully distrusts the systems of authority they might otherwise think to turn to.
Sure we've seen an IMF at full capacity. The TV show the film franchise was based on (Where they also can't go to said authority because it's a black ops organization where, once the mission gets going, it's agents can have zero appearance of working with the government. They're an agency where if things go south, the agents are entirely on their own, because the entire point of the agency is it does things that would create Problems if it became known the government is doing those things.)
I think one thing that is outside the brief of the video is that there's a difference between player-built infrastructure over the course of a campaign, where the players have access to this stuff because they've been building it throughout. Leading the army you yourself have constructed is just a different sort of power fantasy to going in there and ripping the demon, dragon, whatever a new one with your strength or your magic, and calling the nation's army on your enemy and external to the PCs which... Basically comes down to "Why don't the eagles fly the ring to Mordor?"
To put my thought out there i want to see what is the storys socials structure and how that becomes unavailable.🤔
depending on your setting a lack of high level help can also be explained with politics. Sure the barbarian clan would love to help you fight tiamat but the moment they start moving forces the local knights will see that as a chance to strike thus or simply as a provocation of war. As such the barbs can only send a bit of help.
on a morbid note the current war in Ukraine could be drawn on for how a larger power might either be too slow on providing aid or be unable to provide everything due to not wanting to start a bigger conflict.
Interesting topic! How do you avoid the very rightly mocked “Star Trek Syndrome” where even a few days out from Earth, in the heart of the Federation, Enterprise is apparently the only ship that can handle to issue of the week.
For low level characters, it is quite plausible that the authorities either won’t take them seriously, or have “higher level” threats to deal with.
If you destroy the power structure above the characters, or worse yet the whole community they belong to, you remove a lot of the characters’ incentive to actually solve the situation (and may give them an incentive to join the “bad guys” and take a step up in the world), depending on your players.
It’s better to isolate the characters from the power structure in some way - they (or the authorities) find themselves in another continent or plane of existence, a storm prevents the pony express from reaching the capital, the magic telephone goes suddenly dead. If the players aren’t sure whether or not the community and authorities are safe, let alone aware of the characters’ predicament, it’s even better for ratcheting up the tension.
Framing the characters does work too, but you mustn’t overdo it - it really does feel far too contrived even the second time around. Making the authorities *not* be a super-powerful unified agency of some sort is vital! In a medieval society, even with magic available, a super-powerful unified agency does seem a bit less likely, so that helps. You can also frame the authorities, so that the characters don’t trust them, but once again, you can’t pull this trick too often (or the characters either see through it, or have no incentive to help the “good guys”).
I'm embarrassed to say I almost clicked out of your video 1/2 way through the ad read, till I saw the rest of it.
Sorry
I have to say that this hole ''well... we can't help you" kinda got to the point where it turn into this 30 sec. cutscene at beginning of the game to quickly give you runndow of the story and then forget about it until end credits. Like it itself isn't a problem but the fackt that it's used so often just to be there turn it from how to say it state of disadvantage (pleyers previously could count on their allias or some other help) to "Ok so some cultist wants to summon a deamon to kill everyone or somethink like that i don't realy care. So now you tell us why you can't possibly deal with this so we can have this behind us and we can get to the fun part". Put in somethink more, some purpose, not just "no", even if in the end effect is the same (i mean they are left on their own) it's more intresting in my opinion when Heros/Players decide to engage batalin of orc's to give good guys army time to preper for battle or let civilians escape rather then making grup of NPC's and making players wonder why they should interract with them
Isn't that bad in a long long run?
So, the players will try to build support systems because, well, it feels great to have them. Now, they can be taken away, like by obliterating them, but if player starts to feel like they are taken away BECAUSE they are so great and BECAUSE of the player ... why would player still care to erect them in the first place? This would quite limit stories you can tell because now player can only get stories that are only starting or are far away or just too hard, so this would limit their ability to set roots. It feels different if dragons in Vox Machina attacked the city because dragons wanted to do it or heroes triggered it than if it happened because your heroic actions worked too well, so people around you "had" to be sacrificed for your enjoyment, not you as a character but you as a player. Those people would be better of without you. It feels personal, if you would just leave the story soon enough, the tragedy could be prevented.
It also feels like "I have that cool ability my DM never lets me use it." repackaged.
this is a very helpful video, and I will def be rewatching it a few times to take in all the aspects of removing support systems.
Can you give some thought to the opposite problem? It's much more nich so I don't know that it would warrant a video but you might find you do have some things to say about it. I am running a game in the Dragon Age universe. It started shortly before the big blight of the first game. At some point, they will catch up to the plot of the games, and there is no way they won't want to help in that situation, but obviously, I'm not here to just recreate the games. Luckily the in-universe plot is actually someone short all things considered so I wouldn't have to 'distract' them for long, but is there a good way to give them a way to contribute in a way that feels meaningful and heroic when they can't be the one to kill the Big Bad of that moment without having to just recreate a bunch of the games? I know I brought this upon myself but I can't be the only one who has started a game in an exciting universe people like without realizing that it makes for an awkward moment with the plot.
>complimenting the HP franchise
Aaaaaaaand now I'm uncomfortable. C'mon, Mike.
It's not complimenting the entire franchise to point out the one plot point it objectively did well.
You’re right, that section should have been more clear. My feeling at the time was that I’ve already made a video (linked at that point in the video) where I make my feelings on J. K. Rowling very clear, she’s truly despicable: ua-cam.com/video/rXVB39SUfxU/v-deo.htmlsi=e4gB8-JVVHs_eUqo
And it was important for me to make that video before I made any references to HP on my channel, to make sure that people know where I stand on that subject. Harry Potter is a useful point of reference that I’ve almost entirely avoided referencing for the past year and a half on this channel, because of exactly the reason you referenced in your comment. Of course, I hope it’s clear that we can find useful examples from people who we do not think highly of. For example, I also referenced the first two Avengers films, yet that Rowling video also heavily discusses my loathing for Joss Whedon as a person.
That being said… all of that probably should have been in the video. I certainly don’t want any members of the trans community to feel uncomfortable or unwelcome watching my channel, so this is not a mistake I’ll make again whenever I next make a meaningful reference Harry Potter in the future. Any of my videos might be someone’s first, and someone might not follow the link and watch the video (because they’re under no obligation to give me the benefit of the doubt, so why would they follow a random link? That was foolish of me).
For the record: I believe we need to be able to discuss what these creatives did well, and how we can replicate it in our own work, because not only does it help us improve our craft, but it also helps to rob these creatives of their reputations as “geniuses.” I don’t think any of us are about to be the next Rowling or Whedon, but I do believe that we can discuss the pros and cons of their work while still clearly and consistently denouncing them (and, in Rowling’s case, her ideology).
BUT… I can almost certainly do a much better job of expressing that whenever I next make a significant reference Harry Potter, and I’ll make sure to do so in the future.
Thank you for your comment. I’m really sorry that this moment in the video made you feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, and I hope you know that wasn’t my intention. I’ll do better next time.
@@SupergeekMike
Came here to speak up about this. Very reassuring to see you addressing it so reasonably.
It IS a good example of what you're explaining here, but any form of reference to her work without adressing the TERF elepant in the room is...problematic. Seems you're on top of that going forward though :)
Had me till "get out"
How so?
Delaneo Martin was killed for sleeping in a stolen car on March 18, he was 17.
Jawan Dallas was killed on July 2 for being Black in the same city as an unrelated burglary.
Jarrell Garris was killed in a supermarket.
Ricky Cobb II was killed for pulling away from a traffic stop, something that famously leads to high-speed pursuits when the perp is white, but got him shot because he was Black.
Brandon Cole was killed because the cops thought the black marker in his hand was a knife.
Ta’Kiya Young and her unborn baby were killed because she insisted she didn’t steal anything, and turned her steering wheel (again, if she were white, they’d have shot the tires).
Dhal Pothwi and Lueth Mo were killed in their car.
And those are just from this year.
So, yeah, SOMETIMES the cops face SOME consequences, there have been a few times this year where officers have been charged for killing Black people (I didn’t list those above, which means from what I can tell, these police weren’t arrested or charged). But there are also plenty of times where the cops just don’t get in trouble, there are no consequences.
In fact, I’d guess that the cops who DID get in trouble assumed they wouldn’t, because historically, there have been little to no consequences for police murdering Black people. If they thought they were going to get in trouble, they wouldn’t have murdered anybody.
If you take issue with my comment from the video, maybe it shouldn’t be that my statement was too general because I didn’t say “sometimes” or “in the filmmakers’ opinion” - seriously, grow up. You should instead take issue with the fact that this happens at all, because that’s a REAL problem, not the semantics in a UA-cam video.
“Some cops DO go to jail” is very much an “all lives matter” style rhetorical response. Sure, it’s true, but all it does is try to change the subject and make the person bringing up the legitimate concern seem like they’re being unreasonable for pointing out that, maybe, cops shouldn’t murder ANY Black people. (And notice, we’ve only talked about murders, and not non-fatal police brutality.)