My favourite part of this was Brennan being like "I'm only allowing this game breaking ass shit to happen because I have 5 days to figure out how to fix it"
As a DM, I've learned to embrace the chaos. Let the players drop bombshells at the end of a session, or drop some of my own, I've got a week to work it out lol
brennan's narration initially stuttering after the roll is what really gets me about this?? like his brain is just going so fast he doesn't know which angle to come at it from or something. well that and "if you had rolled a 19 you'd be fucking dead" is iconic.
I like how Brennan gives nothing away. Inside he's probably like "OH fuck Pete is about to die, and Ally has no idea." but externally betrays *nothing* and treats it like any normal roll
I feel like this is a super underrated moment because it happens before the roll, but yeah. That's what's scary about Brennan, he's just like "cool, give me a roll" without a TRACE of emotion about how this beloved PC is about to be randomly obliterated
Well he did warn them. He told them the DC was 21, and Pete's Wis save modifier is +1. It was quiet and understated, but Brennan was letting Ally know success would only occur on a nat 20. Of course he did a great job not letting slip death was on the line, but I gotta say... Taking on a strange BBEG alone with a nat 20 save DC? When I was listening that got the alarm bell in my head ringing
@@KCMMFBIt is great to know after the fact, cuz that is how it is sometimes in real life too. In some spots it's only afterwards that you realize what was actually on the line in that moment. Oh hey real quick I do wanna let you know before someone else tells you less politely that Ally uses they/them 😅
Reminder that Ally is they/them. It’s been mentioned on the thread several times. If you’re watching the new campaign on Dropout, it might be easier to remember because they’ve been on T for six months roughly.
I picture it more like the villain in the Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern movie, galactus maybe? Idk that movie sucked But an infinitely powerful planet eating super-being, and then this malnourished fuckin druggie just runs in and ROCKS his shit without missing a beat
Basically banished an Elder God single handedly. Normally these things like Yogg-satoth would not even notice people, them getting phased away is less intent and more accident but this ONE mortal hit it so hard with an Arcane Spell, something which in all it's untold aeons of existence has never happened. It has existed since before the universe was born, before the very stars themselves came into existence, it existed in the swirling mass of darkness before everything and this once...a mortal made it flinch.
@@luketfer We have the scene from Brennan’s perspective (“Well, you would have died if this hadn’t worked, that’s where we’re at”), but consider it from -N/A- ‘s perspective. Strolling through Nod, get a tug on the spider’s web, say “Hi” to a caught bug. Oh, the bug’s not caught, it’s coming at me, just have to not miss OH NO I MISSED IT’S GONNA TOUCH ME AAHHHH” Like, end of the day, -N/A- is still what it is, but also received a controlled shock for its troubles.
As a lifelong DM I can say with certainty that this sort of game ruining is literally the best case for a DM. Players doing something insanely cool, and making you rewrite everything to account for it.....that is the juice right there. It is why we DM, instead of just writing a novel. It is the sort of thing that makes D&D special.
I desperately wish my DM shared this view. They've made a world with barely any agency in actually making it interesting to my party as players. They have actively been trying to get their own decades old PC into the game to essentially fuck our shit up and take over his own campaign. It has been making a couple members of our party wonder why he doesn't just write a novel, as he gets actively pissed off when we do something that changes his storyline. We had even recently gotten a new 4th player into our party and spiced up our RPing to try and make it interesting, but our DM's style of play, up until I discovered Dimension 20, had completely killed any interest I had in DnD.
Ally is always a fucking chad. They always go "hey can I do this thing that will destroy this entire game?" And Brennan is like "only if you roll a nat 20! Haha!" And they ALWAYS hit that 20.
I keep remembering their rolls during the cafeteria fight in the beginning of FHS. It was literally badass or "you fall on your ass trying the vault a table". Ally is always good for a laugh or a cheer
"I run up and kick godzilla in the nuts" *Rolls Nat 20 Annoyed DM "So it's mating time for Godzilla and his nuts were swollen, so when you kick him in the perfect spot the vomits, and passes out"
@@lunatheluma3804 in Dimension 20 they treat every nat20 as a critical succes and nat 1 as critical failures, so yeah, you could say its both ally having enough with modifier and getting a nat20
@@jacker2110 As someone who's not familiar with D20 outside of references to it from other sources, I'm also guessing that Pete has a WIS mod of +1, meaning that Brennan chose the DC of 21 specifically to require Ally to get a nat 20.
I remember feeling my heart going into vertigo the first time I heard this with how cool it is- I also love entities with mass defying physics, so as a writy person this was like psychedelic
@@hariodinio Stupidity is a gift in and of itself, knowledge itself is a poison that ruins all, the aspiration to seek knowledge is but a step away from absolute madness. And Madness, well, I can't judge it yet, I'm far to dumb to discern it.
Don't let the Zoom quality fool you. Once you get used to it, Unsleeping City Chapter II is peak D&D storytelling. It's worth the Dropout subscription.
@@Joe99520 To be fair, Emily's shenanigans generally end up being her own maniacal little sidequests that don't actually change the course of the story. Ally is the one who usually fucks up Brennan's shit.
I'm fairly new to D&D, but I can already tell that crafting a campaign is a fine balance of having a structured plan, but also leaving just enough flexibility for when shit like this happens
Exactly that. That's why there's dice at all really, so we don't get too precious about control, and we give ourselves room to fail, and for the unexpected to occur. We take just enough of it out of our hands to let the magic happen. The more you fight that, the more you lose the magic, but if you give in to it too much, it ends in complete chaos. Being a good DM is helping your table find that balance, which often means being able to alter your plans at a moments notice. Brennan's ability to both redirect the incredible creative energy of his players, and know when to just ride the wave is one of the things that makes him so good.
Thank goodness actual play shows exist now, because it sometimes would take years for a DM to grasp what you just summed up. Too controlling of the story and it feels railroady, too hands off and it just feel like pointless entropy where nothing matters. Brennan's great at finding the sweet spot between the two.
@@skelitonking117 A fair warning, but I have never seen ran or played in a game that doesn't houserule nat 20's for out of combat stuff. If you can look that excited player who just rolled a nat 20 in the eyes and just give them a basic "you succeed' then we are playing for entirely different reasons, and I wish you well from a very distant table.
For those worried, in the Talk-Back for the episode, Brennan revealed that, while Ally rolling that Nat 20 did mess with his plans and make him rewrite a fair bit of the upcoming campaign, what would have absolutely destroyed the campaign is Ally running into the figure and rolling a 19 or lower, because honoring a Nat 20 was the only conceivable way for Brennan to justify NOT immediately killing Pete. Brennan wasn’t expecting Pete to run at the shadow, so Ally rolling the Nat 20 saved him as much as it did them.
@@LeakyTrees Not if that Character, the Vox Phantasma is one of the key parts of your whole plot and the main connection to dreaming that the party have.
It's for cases like this that by RAW you cannot crit on skill checks lol As much as I'd love to reward my players for this, my improv isn't good enough, and I might have to resort to relying on the rules of the game, where a 20 is the best possible outcome, but not necessarily a success, cuz this shit's insane lol
@@user-xb5bz4fu9o while yes, that was the whole point of that check. Banishing a lovecraftian deity like that isn’t exactly gonna be an easy check, and tbch, the DC should have been higher. After all, a 21 refers to a “difficult task”. Not a very hard one, not an impossible one, just a hard task. Banishing a deity on the scale of Null is past “difficult”, it’s past “very difficult (dc25), and it’s past “nearly impossible (DC30). Beings like Null are beyond powerful. Reminds me of what’s said about the reapers, of mass effect, which in turn is a reference to lovecraftian deities and their influence on reality, which is about the same level as how Brennan describes Null. “But even a dead god can dream. A god - a real god - is a verb. Not some old man with magic powers. It's a force. It warps reality just by being there. It doesn't have to want to. It doesn't have to think about it. It just does”. stopping that bad boys gonna be tricky lol Also that said, it’s never as cut and dry as “the player has a +1, so a dc21 check is a 5% chance of success”. If you’ve got a bard in your party, or an artificer, cleric, etc, you automatically have to throw out the idea that you even know if your players CAN beat your DC lol
I think about this scene a lot. The ENTIRE campaign would have been different if Ally had rolled lower then that Nat 20 and that is so wild. They were being set up to have to search for Pete for the rest of the run AND BEARDSLY COULDN’T HAVE THAT
Nat20ing a state-sized, formless, massless behemoth from beyond the depths of time and space into non-existence might be the best dice roll in the history of DnD.
Maaan I just finished watching this ep and the amount of time I paused after Brennan said that, and yeah taking in the weight of Ally rolling the one probability between Pete's life and death- IS. FUCKING. INSANE.
If Ally was as disruptive as Emily, I’m confident that they both combined would just destroy Brennan’s mind and motivation. 😂 The only thing that balances it all out is when Brennan gets to have fun with Ally’s occasional terrible rolls. 😂
Ally's luck with Emily's Emily's shenanigans would probably have completely derailed the entire campaign within 2 sessions flat. Hands down, no question about it.
@@solidmoon8266 I would add Murph's strategies. People forget because he has TERRIBLE luck with dice, but Murph can achieve the same level of champain breaking when his plans works... it just, almost never happens
"Endlessly creative, so fun to play with, she was also sent from Hell, to kill me" If only Brennan had realized that Emily wasn't the only one that he had to worry about lol
most DMs would frantically try to rationalize why the nat 20 wouldn't work out like this. but Brennan respects the dice no matter how much it ruins his planning.
dude’s everywhere mansplaining dnd… my guy there is a reason why you’re not a professional DM and brennan is. he bends the rules enough to keep it fun while still playing the game. if you only ever strictly follow the rules no one wants to play with you. yeesh.
@@El_Ingobernable1 just that he’s played for 20 years and you only crit (nat 20 or nat 1) on attack rolls. just generally shitting on brennan. it’s technically sorta correct, but considering that everyone DMs different, you can’t shit on something that also technically follows rules. if brennan (the DM) says the dc is 21, he is allowing the characters a tiny chance. that’s his prerogative to decide. getting everyone hyped about a crit roll, even if it’s not super by-the-book is a great way to up the enjoyment of the game, which is why that guy deleted his comment. it’s meant to be fun, more than anything else, which he appeared to have forgotten.
I've watched hundreds of hours of CR, and they are incredible people, and legends, but Ally is my favorite player. Only they could be an Atheism Cleric, and punch a cthulu in the nose.
"favorite story teller." I believe you mean. In this video no one is actually playing a game. Nothing about what is going on makes any sense. How does Ally's character know where an invisible person is to run towards them? Why are they making a saving throw to use a spell that requires an enemy to make a saving throw? How can they garget something invisible with a spell that requires you to be able to see your target? Why is something that is on its home plane banished and doesn't return after a minute despite that being what the spell does? I like Dimension 20s story telling but the idea that they're actually playing a game is at the very least misleading.
@@Wolfie-gj9ch because you are missing the context. Brennan described the "invisible person" as a silhouette where the color was missing on the background... basically you can't see the creature, but if you see through it what's on the other side, it seems to be in shades of gray (and if I remmember correctly, Ally's character was able to see that shadow after a perception check). The saving throw wasn't for casting banishment, was because an ability of the creature that activated when Ally's character got close to it. The spell was focused on the silhouette and that's how it was able to work. The creature didn't came back because is NOT on its home plane... they are in Dream, the creature is from Deep Dream; Dream use to be conected with Deep Dream but it was separated for safety reasons. Dimension 20 is an actual play show, the players have said that their decisions some times are taken by taking in consideration what would be more coherent with the story, but that doesn't mean those decisions are not linked to what the die says. Just because you don't like how the play, it doesn't make it less correct
This is amazing, I love that Ally just was like "fuck it, let's do something crazy" and Brennan just does the thing that makes them such a great DM, he rolls with it and the players having fun is the thing that is most important.
This is like that cheat code developers sometimes put into video games that skips the whole game and takes you straight to the end credits. Initially it's "hah, I can't believe that worked!" followed immediately by "wait... Does that mean I can't play?"
the way brennan responds to this unexpected success is incredible. he's rewriting his whole thing, but even still, he's able to communicate how vastly incredible the thing they're fighting is. originally he wanted to demonstrate its power via action. instead he demonstrates it with incredible description
These are the kinds of moments that are so memorable and epic. I remember my old gaming group played a Deadlands game (old west magic/horror setting) where the big bad guy was this demon possessed scarecrow that just wiped the floor with us in battle. We managed to drive it off but didn't come close to killing it. Later we're investigating things and after some lucky rolls find a scarecrow in a field - no indication that this is our big bad guy, it's just a scarecrow in a place you'd expect to find a scarecrow. We say "Fuck it, better safe than sorry" and burn the thing down. Campaign over, we win, the big bad guy turns into an actual normal scarecrow during the day. DM's like "welp, didn't expect you to find that guy, or just set him on fire like that." Short campaign but very fun and memorable.
I kept seeing this video title, and refused to watch it because I hadn't seen S2 quite yet. Just got to this moment in the show and Immediately knew that this was the moment the video was going to be referring to lol
Wasn't Ally's character arguably the most important one for the plot to continue? Behind that smile Brennan was probably thinking, "S***. Ally had better make an Ally Roll™ right now."
i wonder why brennan keeps letting ally do these crazy game breaking rolls lmao, like they always get the nat20. brennan should do backup "ally branch" story parts for big moments in future campaigns for the likely scenario they get the nat20.
brennan is amazing, everybody looks so shook - I am so shook - at the cost and everything of what just happened (in a game) because he is just so good at getting everybody into it - and he creates this amount of tension after the thing happened. the legend.
"I cast banish on them." Congratulations, you just did the equivalent of walking up the stairway to heaven, drop kicking open the pearly gates, and telling God "Get up, get out, that's my chair you're sitting in." Anything but a Nat-20 would have you thrown down the floor of the abyss. But you rolled a 20, so now you get to banish God, note the capital G. _Damn. _*_Literally._*
This moment is why I always have backup bbegs for just in case the players somehow get lucky, *banishes main bad guy* “huh, ok, time for plan B I guess? Turns out that guy was just a minion for the bbeg” like holy shot ally is a god at that shit.
Truly it was an Insane move for ally to just immediately rush at a suspicious powerful figure that has overtaken Nod so thank God they rolled that 20 and didn't beef it
Well yeah, he explained that they did something incredibly "brave" (read: stupid), and was only saved from the consequences of their rash decision because of a nat 20
In DnD, “you can try” and variants of don’t mean “you have to”. It means “you will die if you try this”. So no not at all. Ally just did it and was gonna be faced with the consequences.
It was as Brennan said, they made a choice to do something very dumb and got super lucky. Like leaping off a boat to punch a shark in the nose. They weren't meant to die they were meant to not sprint at the super big bad alone and attack. In D&d, much like in life, your choices can have deadly consequences, but you can luck your way through surviving terrible choices as well.
Something similar happened to me where my party found this mysterious dust found at a cultists campsite, no one knew what to do with it, so I had the bright idea to lick it, because what could go wrong right? Well after that I had to roll a death saving roll and i had to roll all 3 times and if I failed even once I’d die, but the first roll was a nat 20 and it teleported me to a dream world like thing where I talked to the BBEG, I also got addicted to the dust because I wanted to talk to them often
You know, now I'm thinking Brennan planned the rest of the campaign to finish without the Vox Phantasma. I wonder how much harder it would've been to find out what Null is and all the deeper dreaming aspects wouldve been without Pete...
k i have another comment floating around here but this thought is getting its own: assuming i've got my info right... brennan *could've* used that nat 20 (which i think also might've been necessary for pete to even hit that dc??), since it was a wisdom saving throw, to give the wisdom of "don't fucking do that," or just have there be no (or less) serious consequences, but he chose to *let* ally do this crazy awesome shit instead and fuck up his whole plan - and this is even more speculative, but i think something like that might've been the actual alternative (bc having a break being "the only reason i'm ruining my whole game right now" implies that had there not been a break, he would've done something else) and i just... ugh i love them all so much, y'know?
I’ve watched several various clips from these dnd guys… I hav to say something about these fantasy green screen backgrounds make this feel SO immersive. It’s hard to describe but it like separates them from the “real world” in my mind, and it’s really cool.
I mean, rules as written for D&D 5E, critical successes and failures only count for death saving throws and attack rolls. However, it's way more fun to play this way, even if a saving throw or skill check you were counting on failing ends up coming out critically successful. Makes it more fun for the players in the long run.
I can not believe in one roll they ruined his whole campaign. Thank God for those five days because they killed the baddie of the season. Ally's rolls are wild. They are always story changing rolls. They are either super great or super super bad. This is also in the same vain as asking, "Can I roll a nat 20 and be alive?"
Some magic was lost in the Zoom era, for sure. But in this format, you can still get great edits, like when it expands from the Brennan/Ally shot to show Emily and Siobhan both covering their mouths in the exact same way. Quietly one of my favorite moments.
God damn I know that feeling. It's a mix of "what the fuck I'm suppoed to do know?" but you also feel happy for your players... They are going to talk about this moment for a long time xD
My favourite part of this was Brennan being like "I'm only allowing this game breaking ass shit to happen because I have 5 days to figure out how to fix it"
As a forever DM, I feel that. "... Okay, yeah sure, I've got a weekend to figure shit out"
++
Emily’s maniacal laughter after Brennan says this is the best
As a DM, I've learned to embrace the chaos. Let the players drop bombshells at the end of a session, or drop some of my own, I've got a week to work it out lol
That's me after every session.
Oh, the infamous Ally rolls. So poetic and so disruptive for Brennan's plans as always. *Chef's kiss*
There's epic rolls, there's pathetic rolls, then there's Ally's rolls, which completely fuck Brennan's plans up.
"can i roll to be alive on a nat 20?"
@@traviscummings9178 yeah, as long as it serves the story in the most dramatic way, they are known to have had multiple nat ones too
anyone else feel like these ally ex machina rolls are planned?
@@Mwarrior1991 Not Brennan, that's for sure.
His ability to improvise after Ally absolutely rocked his shit is so good.
The classic "repeat the player words to them to buy time"
He expects it
Have you seen the “I have solved your labyrinth puzzle master” rant? That’s his default setting.
Ally’s rolls are either absolutely awful or literally game changing, no in between.
They are truelly chosen by the gods
Aren’t those the same thing?
Occasionally both.
They might as well just get a coin with a 1 and 20 on either side
In between goes off the table, literally
brennan's narration initially stuttering after the roll is what really gets me about this?? like his brain is just going so fast he doesn't know which angle to come at it from or something.
well that and "if you had rolled a 19 you'd be fucking dead" is iconic.
I mean, he did get [REDACTED] eventually.
Nick and Jess are badass.
for every ally nat 20, a die must fly off the table. this is the cosmic balance.
So mote it be.
You guys… are they the antithesis of the Will Wheaton dice curse…
@@emmahacker4020 Ally is the reason why Wil Wheaton rolls so badly
@@aidenmiller3832 did...did Ally steal the good rolls? O.o
S
I like how Brennan gives nothing away. Inside he's probably like "OH fuck Pete is about to die, and Ally has no idea." but externally betrays *nothing* and treats it like any normal roll
I feel like this is a super underrated moment because it happens before the roll, but yeah. That's what's scary about Brennan, he's just like "cool, give me a roll" without a TRACE of emotion about how this beloved PC is about to be randomly obliterated
Well he did warn them. He told them the DC was 21, and Pete's Wis save modifier is +1. It was quiet and understated, but Brennan was letting Ally know success would only occur on a nat 20. Of course he did a great job not letting slip death was on the line, but I gotta say... Taking on a strange BBEG alone with a nat 20 save DC? When I was listening that got the alarm bell in my head ringing
@@KCMMFBIt is great to know after the fact, cuz that is how it is sometimes in real life too. In some spots it's only afterwards that you realize what was actually on the line in that moment.
Oh hey real quick I do wanna let you know before someone else tells you less politely that Ally uses they/them 😅
Just a casual "DC 21"
Reminder that Ally is they/them. It’s been mentioned on the thread several times.
If you’re watching the new campaign on Dropout, it might be easier to remember because they’ve been on T for six months roughly.
I always thought of the craziness of this as " Pete basically just traveled to hell and BANISHED THE DEVIL"
I think it's more "Pete basically just traveled to heaven and BANISHED GOD".
@@PrismariLaura infinitely better
I picture it more like the villain in the Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern movie, galactus maybe? Idk that movie sucked
But an infinitely powerful planet eating super-being, and then this malnourished fuckin druggie just runs in and ROCKS his shit without missing a beat
Basically banished an Elder God single handedly. Normally these things like Yogg-satoth would not even notice people, them getting phased away is less intent and more accident but this ONE mortal hit it so hard with an Arcane Spell, something which in all it's untold aeons of existence has never happened. It has existed since before the universe was born, before the very stars themselves came into existence, it existed in the swirling mass of darkness before everything and this once...a mortal made it flinch.
@@luketfer We have the scene from Brennan’s perspective (“Well, you would have died if this hadn’t worked, that’s where we’re at”), but consider it from -N/A- ‘s perspective. Strolling through Nod, get a tug on the spider’s web, say “Hi” to a caught bug. Oh, the bug’s not caught, it’s coming at me, just have to not miss OH NO I MISSED IT’S GONNA TOUCH ME AAHHHH”
Like, end of the day, -N/A- is still what it is, but also received a controlled shock for its troubles.
As a lifelong DM I can say with certainty that this sort of game ruining is literally the best case for a DM. Players doing something insanely cool, and making you rewrite everything to account for it.....that is the juice right there. It is why we DM, instead of just writing a novel. It is the sort of thing that makes D&D special.
this is a book that writes itself
I mean I will hate you for it, but also love you for it.
And then you’re up at 3 am, staring at the ceiling thinking “How the hell am I gonna make the next session make sense”
@@Exvilness Yup. And then spent an entire weekend writing nonsense.
I desperately wish my DM shared this view. They've made a world with barely any agency in actually making it interesting to my party as players. They have actively been trying to get their own decades old PC into the game to essentially fuck our shit up and take over his own campaign. It has been making a couple members of our party wonder why he doesn't just write a novel, as he gets actively pissed off when we do something that changes his storyline. We had even recently gotten a new 4th player into our party and spiced up our RPing to try and make it interesting, but our DM's style of play, up until I discovered Dimension 20, had completely killed any interest I had in DnD.
Ally is always a fucking chad. They always go "hey can I do this thing that will destroy this entire game?" And Brennan is like "only if you roll a nat 20! Haha!" And they ALWAYS hit that 20.
Between them and Emily, I don't know how Brennan DMs without losing his goddamn MIND.
"can I come back from the dead?"
I keep remembering their rolls during the cafeteria fight in the beginning of FHS. It was literally badass or "you fall on your ass trying the vault a table". Ally is always good for a laugh or a cheer
@@Oleandra-13 i remember their roll at the ver end of season 1 of adventure academy where they rolled a nat 20 to create a new god?
@@moonlight2870 The God of "Why?"
pete: so i banished an unknowable eldritch horror
"I run up and kick godzilla in the nuts"
*Rolls Nat 20
Annoyed DM "So it's mating time for Godzilla and his nuts were swollen, so when you kick him in the perfect spot the vomits, and passes out"
He said dc 21 and with modifier i believe that ally made the roll, it wasnt because it was a nat 20, it was because the total was high enough
Ally would never do that to Godzilla 😂
@@lunatheluma3804 in Dimension 20 they treat every nat20 as a critical succes and nat 1 as critical failures, so yeah, you could say its both ally having enough with modifier and getting a nat20
@@jacker2110 As someone who's not familiar with D20 outside of references to it from other sources, I'm also guessing that Pete has a WIS mod of +1, meaning that Brennan chose the DC of 21 specifically to require Ally to get a nat 20.
@@pyrrhusnikos242 Agreed. He said, "if you had rolled a 19, you'd be dead."
The inverse of “Ally? I’ve got good news for you: you make it to the ground WAY before Anguine”
I remember feeling my heart going into vertigo the first time I heard this with how cool it is- I also love entities with mass defying physics, so as a writy person this was like psychedelic
Ally can be the dumbest player sometimes and frankly i love it
@@hariodinio Stupidity is a gift in and of itself, knowledge itself is a poison that ruins all, the aspiration to seek knowledge is but a step away from absolute madness.
And Madness, well, I can't judge it yet, I'm far to dumb to discern it.
I've only seen the first season of the Unsleeping City but this 100% tracks for Pete since Ally rolled crazy good a good portion
Same, but Pete is a fucking amazing character. His intro in season 1 was absolutely legendary lol
Don't let the Zoom quality fool you. Once you get used to it, Unsleeping City Chapter II is peak D&D storytelling. It's worth the Dropout subscription.
Season 2 is amazing, seriously. Maybe the best dimension 20 season of all.
@@HenriqueErzinger hey may i ask, is chapter 2 come before starstruck odyssey?
Emily laughing at the end really brings this clip together
It's frankly not a Fantasy High/Unsleeping City clip without the Emily Cackle.
@@vaderwalks Emily cackling is my serotonin dripfeed.
She’s laughing cause some maniac pc just ruined all of the dm’s plans and for once it wasn’t her
@@Joe99520 To be fair, Emily's shenanigans generally end up being her own maniacal little sidequests that don't actually change the course of the story. Ally is the one who usually fucks up Brennan's shit.
Just casually cast banishment on a deity like being
“It just works”
In this world, a being STRONGER than a deity. The creature was from the origins of thought itself, and eities come from dreams and hopes... but yeah
@@RonquixoteDIII it just works, little lies, stunning shows
I'm fairly new to D&D, but I can already tell that crafting a campaign is a fine balance of having a structured plan, but also leaving just enough flexibility for when shit like this happens
This crew went from nearly dying to corn cuties in the very first Dimension20 to fucking up Brennan's plans on the regular. I love them all.
Exactly that. That's why there's dice at all really, so we don't get too precious about control, and we give ourselves room to fail, and for the unexpected to occur. We take just enough of it out of our hands to let the magic happen. The more you fight that, the more you lose the magic, but if you give in to it too much, it ends in complete chaos. Being a good DM is helping your table find that balance, which often means being able to alter your plans at a moments notice.
Brennan's ability to both redirect the incredible creative energy of his players, and know when to just ride the wave is one of the things that makes him so good.
It's like Leonard Snart said: "make a plan, follow the plan, expect the plan to go wrong, throw away the plan."
Thank goodness actual play shows exist now, because it sometimes would take years for a DM to grasp what you just summed up. Too controlling of the story and it feels railroady, too hands off and it just feel like pointless entropy where nothing matters. Brennan's great at finding the sweet spot between the two.
@@skelitonking117 A fair warning, but I have never seen ran or played in a game that doesn't houserule nat 20's for out of combat stuff. If you can look that excited player who just rolled a nat 20 in the eyes and just give them a basic "you succeed' then we are playing for entirely different reasons, and I wish you well from a very distant table.
For those worried, in the Talk-Back for the episode, Brennan revealed that, while Ally rolling that Nat 20 did mess with his plans and make him rewrite a fair bit of the upcoming campaign, what would have absolutely destroyed the campaign is Ally running into the figure and rolling a 19 or lower, because honoring a Nat 20 was the only conceivable way for Brennan to justify NOT immediately killing Pete. Brennan wasn’t expecting Pete to run at the shadow, so Ally rolling the Nat 20 saved him as much as it did them.
No? He would've just killed Pete, then ally would've made a new character. It's how dnd works, cruel but true.
@@LeakyTrees that would've also killed the vox phantasma of the city though, which would've been quite bad!
@@Har1eywood not as much work fixing that as if is rebuilding your whole campaign
@@LeakyTrees Not if that Character, the Vox Phantasma is one of the key parts of your whole plot and the main connection to dreaming that the party have.
Which talk back episode was it? I really really want to see it, I just got to this episode and holy crap! What a roll!
Brennan is actually so insane tho. If I were GM’ing I’d just be stunned but the shock and awe he displays on the unlikeliest rolls is incredible.
Every straight roll of the dice is equally unlikely. You have a 5 percent chance to roll a 10 and a 5 percent chance to roll a 20.
@@thesaltybeard1793 Sure, but in this case it was a matter of "Roll 20 or you fail". So a 5% chance of success, and a 95% chance of failure.
It's for cases like this that by RAW you cannot crit on skill checks lol
As much as I'd love to reward my players for this, my improv isn't good enough, and I might have to resort to relying on the rules of the game, where a 20 is the best possible outcome, but not necessarily a success, cuz this shit's insane lol
@@_b1ack0ut4 but this was a DC21 check, and Ally had a +1. Brennan specifically created this DC to say: hey, Nat20 or you die, you know?
@@user-xb5bz4fu9o while yes, that was the whole point of that check. Banishing a lovecraftian deity like that isn’t exactly gonna be an easy check, and tbch, the DC should have been higher. After all, a 21 refers to a “difficult task”. Not a very hard one, not an impossible one, just a hard task. Banishing a deity on the scale of Null is past “difficult”, it’s past “very difficult (dc25), and it’s past “nearly impossible (DC30). Beings like Null are beyond powerful. Reminds me of what’s said about the reapers, of mass effect, which in turn is a reference to lovecraftian deities and their influence on reality, which is about the same level as how Brennan describes Null. “But even a dead god can dream. A god - a real god - is a verb. Not some old man with magic powers. It's a force. It warps reality just by being there. It doesn't have to want to. It doesn't have to think about it. It just does”. stopping that bad boys gonna be tricky lol
Also that said, it’s never as cut and dry as “the player has a +1, so a dc21 check is a 5% chance of success”. If you’ve got a bard in your party, or an artificer, cleric, etc, you automatically have to throw out the idea that you even know if your players CAN beat your DC lol
I think about this scene a lot. The ENTIRE campaign would have been different if Ally had rolled lower then that Nat 20 and that is so wild. They were being set up to have to search for Pete for the rest of the run AND BEARDSLY COULDN’T HAVE THAT
The progression of Ally’s face while Brennan is explaining their near death experience sends me every time. 🤣🤣🤣 Ally is one heavy-hitting wildcard
I love how low-key Brennan just says, "Okay", FULLY BELIEVING that Allie was running straight into utter oblivion and perma death. Perfect poker face👌
What a dope sequence. I love D20 and watching Ally accidentally rickroll this campaign is hilarious.
I think you mean Ally accidentally rickrolling EVERY campaign
Maybe the most underrated nat 20 in the series
Nat20ing a state-sized, formless, massless behemoth from beyond the depths of time and space into non-existence might be the best dice roll in the history of DnD.
Might not have been a nat 20, but that bend luck on the very last episode though (not gonna say anymore because of spoilers)
dude exactly why i posted it
Maaan I just finished watching this ep and the amount of time I paused after Brennan said that, and yeah taking in the weight of Ally rolling the one probability between Pete's life and death- IS. FUCKING. INSANE.
If Ally was as disruptive as Emily, I’m confident that they both combined would just destroy Brennan’s mind and motivation. 😂 The only thing that balances it all out is when Brennan gets to have fun with Ally’s occasional terrible rolls. 😂
Ally's luck with Emily's Emily's shenanigans would probably have completely derailed the entire campaign within 2 sessions flat. Hands down, no question about it.
@@solidmoon8266 I would add Murph's strategies. People forget because he has TERRIBLE luck with dice, but Murph can achieve the same level of champain breaking when his plans works... it just, almost never happens
I loooove the ribbon scene in Fantasy High hahahahaha. They fucking suffered for that valiant attempt at a shenanigan hahahhaa
"Endlessly creative, so fun to play with, she was also sent from Hell, to kill me"
If only Brennan had realized that Emily wasn't the only one that he had to worry about lol
when the dm starts saying "um" and "cool" a lot, you know something big is happening
"Okay, yeah, cool" _crapcrapcrapcrapcrap..._
They're the filler words the brain spits out as exhaust while the engines are running maximum speed to adjust what is happening next
most DMs would frantically try to rationalize why the nat 20 wouldn't work out like this.
but Brennan respects the dice no matter how much it ruins his planning.
@@skelitonking117 dude chill, its homebrew and fun
@@skelitonking117 You must be fun to play with
dude’s everywhere mansplaining dnd… my guy there is a reason why you’re not a professional DM and brennan is. he bends the rules enough to keep it fun while still playing the game. if you only ever strictly follow the rules no one wants to play with you. yeesh.
@@alexia7063 What he say man deleted his comment
@@El_Ingobernable1 just that he’s played for 20 years and you only crit (nat 20 or nat 1) on attack rolls. just generally shitting on brennan.
it’s technically sorta correct, but considering that everyone DMs different, you can’t shit on something that also technically follows rules. if brennan (the DM) says the dc is 21, he is allowing the characters a tiny chance. that’s his prerogative to decide. getting everyone hyped about a crit roll, even if it’s not super by-the-book is a great way to up the enjoyment of the game, which is why that guy deleted his comment. it’s meant to be fun, more than anything else, which he appeared to have forgotten.
Pete Conlan, the Greatest Vox Fantasma to ever live. This is like Superboy Prime punching reality so hard it broke.
Lmfao for real though.
Long live Pete!
'if you rolled a 19 you'd be dead'
Brennan really knows how to make a roll feel important
I've watched hundreds of hours of CR, and they are incredible people, and legends, but Ally is my favorite player. Only they could be an Atheism Cleric, and punch a cthulu in the nose.
And eat a magical seed
"favorite story teller." I believe you mean. In this video no one is actually playing a game. Nothing about what is going on makes any sense. How does Ally's character know where an invisible person is to run towards them? Why are they making a saving throw to use a spell that requires an enemy to make a saving throw? How can they garget something invisible with a spell that requires you to be able to see your target? Why is something that is on its home plane banished and doesn't return after a minute despite that being what the spell does? I like Dimension 20s story telling but the idea that they're actually playing a game is at the very least misleading.
@@Wolfie-gj9ch because you are missing the context. Brennan described the "invisible person" as a silhouette where the color was missing on the background... basically you can't see the creature, but if you see through it what's on the other side, it seems to be in shades of gray (and if I remmember correctly, Ally's character was able to see that shadow after a perception check). The saving throw wasn't for casting banishment, was because an ability of the creature that activated when Ally's character got close to it. The spell was focused on the silhouette and that's how it was able to work. The creature didn't came back because is NOT on its home plane... they are in Dream, the creature is from Deep Dream; Dream use to be conected with Deep Dream but it was separated for safety reasons.
Dimension 20 is an actual play show, the players have said that their decisions some times are taken by taking in consideration what would be more coherent with the story, but that doesn't mean those decisions are not linked to what the die says. Just because you don't like how the play, it doesn't make it less correct
@@Wolfie-gj9ch DM's often use House Rules to keep things fun and interesting, and making the DC nigh-impossible is how.
@@Wolfie-gj9ch you’re just being deliberately obtuse.
ally just killed god
Banished
@@jayclement3581 thanks for telling me, there was no way i could know that and i don't know what i would do if i didn't know that
@@joaoaguiar4306 no problem. Lemme help you prevent misinformation. 😊
More like kicked but it would have felt the same.
@@Firegen1 that's what banished means...kicked from a dimension.
So is this what “pulling an Ally” is?
This, but also when you try to roll your die and it just goes flying
'pulling an Ally' is when you rip you dice like they're a beyblade
Pulling an Ally is when your dice dont land on the table
To quote Brennan: “Pulling an ‘Ally’ is specifically when your D4 doesn’t make it to the table”
Only half. For balance you hace to throw the dices like a Beyblade
This is amazing, I love that Ally just was like "fuck it, let's do something crazy" and Brennan just does the thing that makes them such a great DM, he rolls with it and the players having fun is the thing that is most important.
This is like that cheat code developers sometimes put into video games that skips the whole game and takes you straight to the end credits. Initially it's "hah, I can't believe that worked!" followed immediately by "wait... Does that mean I can't play?"
Gotta revisit this now bc of junior year
the way brennan responds to this unexpected success is incredible. he's rewriting his whole thing, but even still, he's able to communicate how vastly incredible the thing they're fighting is. originally he wanted to demonstrate its power via action. instead he demonstrates it with incredible description
These are the kinds of moments that are so memorable and epic. I remember my old gaming group played a Deadlands game (old west magic/horror setting) where the big bad guy was this demon possessed scarecrow that just wiped the floor with us in battle. We managed to drive it off but didn't come close to killing it. Later we're investigating things and after some lucky rolls find a scarecrow in a field - no indication that this is our big bad guy, it's just a scarecrow in a place you'd expect to find a scarecrow. We say "Fuck it, better safe than sorry" and burn the thing down. Campaign over, we win, the big bad guy turns into an actual normal scarecrow during the day. DM's like "welp, didn't expect you to find that guy, or just set him on fire like that." Short campaign but very fun and memorable.
I’m fairly certain ally is the living avatar of a chaos diety
Brennan is such a champ for constantly rolling with everybody's antics and improvising around them.
The silence that fell after everyone realized the stakes after the fact is truly hilarious
The sound at 2:30 is glorious
I kept seeing this video title, and refused to watch it because I hadn't seen S2 quite yet. Just got to this moment in the show and Immediately knew that this was the moment the video was going to be referring to lol
honored
You know it's good when Siobhan looks that shocked and when Emily laughs like that
words said right before thinking youre gonna kill one of the characters: "okay. cool. :)"
Wasn't Ally's character arguably the most important one for the plot to continue? Behind that smile Brennan was probably thinking, "S***. Ally had better make an Ally Roll™ right now."
When you nat 20 to 1v1 an eldritch god.
I remember watching this cheering for Pete as Ally realizes what they just did, lol.
Can we all take a moment of silence for the campaign that could have been.... ? f.
Ally is a deity, there's no other explanation for their rolls. I shall worship at the alter of Ally Beardsley from now on lol
after Prompocalypse, I'm sure Helio is real and Ally is his prophet.
i wonder why brennan keeps letting ally do these crazy game breaking rolls lmao, like they always get the nat20. brennan should do backup "ally branch" story parts for big moments in future campaigns for the likely scenario they get the nat20.
Ally: So I punch God in the face.
I love the way he just said "fuck you" two times xD
As always, Ally comes in with the clutch rolls. I love them ❤️❤️❤️
brennan is amazing, everybody looks so shook - I am so shook - at the cost and everything of what just happened (in a game) because he is just so good at getting everybody into it - and he creates this amount of tension after the thing happened. the legend.
"I cast banish on them."
Congratulations, you just did the equivalent of walking up the stairway to heaven, drop kicking open the pearly gates, and telling God "Get up, get out, that's my chair you're sitting in."
Anything but a Nat-20 would have you thrown down the floor of the abyss.
But you rolled a 20, so now you get to banish God, note the capital G. _Damn. _*_Literally._*
This moment is why I always have backup bbegs for just in case the players somehow get lucky, *banishes main bad guy* “huh, ok, time for plan B I guess? Turns out that guy was just a minion for the bbeg” like holy shot ally is a god at that shit.
Thank you so much for uploading this I love this moment
Truly it was an Insane move for ally to just immediately rush at a suspicious powerful figure that has overtaken Nod so thank God they rolled that 20 and didn't beef it
I imagine this god just reacted as if a spider just crawled up its arm and it ran from the room, it’ll be back but it got spooked
I love that he only allows it because he has five day to fix his shit
This one always amazes and confuses me. So was Ally meant to like full on die and roll a new character in this campaign?
Well yeah, he explained that they did something incredibly "brave" (read: stupid), and was only saved from the consequences of their rash decision because of a nat 20
Ally was meant not to attack the being at all.
Ally was meant to stay away from the invisible elder deity.
But they punched it in the face instead.
In DnD, “you can try” and variants of don’t mean “you have to”. It means “you will die if you try this”. So no not at all. Ally just did it and was gonna be faced with the consequences.
It was as Brennan said, they made a choice to do something very dumb and got super lucky. Like leaping off a boat to punch a shark in the nose. They weren't meant to die they were meant to not sprint at the super big bad alone and attack. In D&d, much like in life, your choices can have deadly consequences, but you can luck your way through surviving terrible choices as well.
THEY CANT KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS!!!
and of course Emily is just thriving on the chaos
I will only beyblade my dice from now on. Goddamnit Ally, so damn poetic
Something similar happened to me where my party found this mysterious dust found at a cultists campsite, no one knew what to do with it, so I had the bright idea to lick it, because what could go wrong right? Well after that I had to roll a death saving roll and i had to roll all 3 times and if I failed even once I’d die, but the first roll was a nat 20 and it teleported me to a dream world like thing where I talked to the BBEG, I also got addicted to the dust because I wanted to talk to them often
the speed he recovers is amazing!
You know, now I'm thinking Brennan planned the rest of the campaign to finish without the Vox Phantasma. I wonder how much harder it would've been to find out what Null is and all the deeper dreaming aspects wouldve been without Pete...
Brennan should have learned after FH S1 to never ask Ally to roll unless he's fully prepared for the consequences of them rolling a Nat20 lmao
This was the most important Natural 20 of Ally's life
k i have another comment floating around here but this thought is getting its own:
assuming i've got my info right... brennan *could've* used that nat 20 (which i think also might've been necessary for pete to even hit that dc??), since it was a wisdom saving throw, to give the wisdom of "don't fucking do that," or just have there be no (or less) serious consequences, but he chose to *let* ally do this crazy awesome shit instead and fuck up his whole plan - and this is even more speculative, but i think something like that might've been the actual alternative (bc having a break being "the only reason i'm ruining my whole game right now" implies that had there not been a break, he would've done something else) and i just...
ugh i love them all so much, y'know?
Everything about this is gold, but can we appreciate the sheer poetry of “into the deep dark depths of the dreaming forever”
The Beardsley Blessing strikes again
He had a lot of luck not dying to whatever that thing was.
Definitely the coolest character of the group.
My favorite part was seeing the entire casts reaction, so good
Leave it up to Ally Beardsley to just casually *exorcise an eldrich abomination from the spirit realm.*
Love the look on Ally's face when they realize how insane (yet courageous) running into that thing was
This roll reminded me of the Nat 20 roll for ghosts in Mice and Murder as they both made Brennan rewrite his entire campaign
Ah brennan lee mulligan i love thee
i *need* a compilation of all pete's wild magic/chaotic energy, it's always so impressive
I’ve watched several various clips from these dnd guys… I hav to say something about these fantasy green screen backgrounds make this feel SO immersive. It’s hard to describe but it like separates them from the “real world” in my mind, and it’s really cool.
All the people trying to rules lawyer this interaction have clearly never watched Dimension 20 campaigns lmao
Fun/Cool Story > Rules
fr
Truly
I mean, rules as written for D&D 5E, critical successes and failures only count for death saving throws and attack rolls. However, it's way more fun to play this way, even if a saving throw or skill check you were counting on failing ends up coming out critically successful. Makes it more fun for the players in the long run.
It was a DC 21 save and Pete had a +1 mod to it
@@emilysmith2965 yes, but d20 honors any nat20 as critical success and any nat1 as critical fail, which is what the op was referring to.
I can not believe in one roll they ruined his whole campaign. Thank God for those five days because they killed the baddie of the season. Ally's rolls are wild. They are always story changing rolls. They are either super great or super super bad.
This is also in the same vain as asking, "Can I roll a nat 20 and be alive?"
Some magic was lost in the Zoom era, for sure. But in this format, you can still get great edits, like when it expands from the Brennan/Ally shot to show Emily and Siobhan both covering their mouths in the exact same way. Quietly one of my favorite moments.
Allys dies are a paid actor. They're nat 20s are always perfect and I love them for it
I love when ally ruins Brennan’s whole life
i love this so fucking much. probably my favorite ally nat 20 moment
I love when Brennan can't do anything about what they choose to do. Even when they are about to kill their character.
*_Casually banishes an eldritch fucking horror_*
Emily's laugh at the end is just the perfect punctuation to this moment
This is how you fucking dm people take notes
A good GM copes with the breaking of his game. A great GM has FUN with the breaking of his game. This man is a legend.
Wil Wheaton exists in this universe to counterbalance rolls like these...
This is my favorite moment in all of dimension 20 history
God damn I know that feeling. It's a mix of "what the fuck I'm suppoed to do know?" but you also feel happy for your players... They are going to talk about this moment for a long time xD
and this was like the second episode or something too LMAO I LOVE Ally
Ally: The Anti-Wheaton.
I have been watching dimension 20 for a while now. And Ally has always had the absolute craziest rolls of any campaign that they’re in
Of all nat 20s, i think this must be the 2nd coming of rng-esus
So Ally punched a fucking god/dimension.
fave clip of all time