Hello! Since a ton of new folks are seeing the video (welcome btw :)) I wanted to give a short disclaimer about the context of this video. This is from my "Critical Eyes" series, where I watch and analyze Critical Role as someone who has never seen it or any media related to it (or any actual plays in general!). Even though I've never watched CR, I have been DMing D&D since I was 13, and try to bring a fresh perspective to the good and bad of CR! This video was made almost directly after Orion's last episode, so basically the start of the Briarwood Arc. At the time of writing this comment, we are in the Feywild mini-arc looking for Fenthras! I don't think you need to have seen any previous episodes of my series to hop in to live (assuming you've seen CR or don't care about spoiling it for yourself), so I'd love to see you there! If you have any questions about additional context for this video or the series, feel free to ask below! Also, because a large part of this series is me not having seen Critical Role, I do have to delete any spoilers or spoiler-adjacent comments, more for myself than anything else. If I don't I'll keep seeing them in my comment review box, and it'll get harder and harder to forget the information.
Hey! It'd be nice if you would give credit in the description and/or comments to the original creator of the videos you're reacting to. Not doing so is kind of stealing content 😅
@@nietzopaniquen are you referring to Mike or Critical Role? In the case of Mike, him and I talked extensively before and after this, and I got direct permission to watch and talk about those videos. In terms of CR, I follow their fan content policies to the letter. I am very concious of not rebroadcasting others' works without being transformative and having permission.
I think a good term to describe the toxic investment you're talking about is character bleed. Where you have a hard time separating yourself from the character and what they're feeling/experiencing. It's not an uncommon topic of discussion in communities around roleplaying
ooooo I love character bleed as a term. I've never heard it put in that terminology (something I was clearly struggling with here), but that's very much what I was trying to access. I think that some amount of character bleed can be okay, potentially even desirable, as it COULD indicate investment. However, when such a large percentage of your character is just, you, then character bleed can become a massive problem.
Disclaimer: I will most likely go back and edit this as I get farther through the video. 1) For me, the biggest obstacles to having trouble differentiating between Marisha and Keyleth was that their voices and way of speaking were pretty much the same. Travis/Grog, Liam/Vax, Laura/Vex, and Taliesin/Percy all had distinction between player and character voices. Sam/Scanlan were a bit more similar (there wasn't much of an accent), but, Scanlan's vocal cadence was different enough. 2) I enjoyed Talks Machina, but, I really like the flow and vibe of 4-sided dive. Edit 1: 3) monks do require certain circumstances to shine; they cannot be disarmed (unless literally losing their arms), and they are predisposed to being stealthy. Even though they're MAD, I think *most* folks tend to want a decent DEX and WIS (class dependent, of course). If the DM isn't providing circumstances for the monk to shine, yeah, can definitely be a feelsbadman.jpg. Edit 2: 4) Matt, while an experienced and amazing DM, was still finding his feet with 5E and learning how to do so as an actual play DM. He, more so than the players, is in a learning curve that is in the public eye. Edit 3: 5) Travis is one of the most chill people at the table, so, as you pointed out, when *he's* clearly irritated, you done fucked up. Edit 4: 6) The biggest draw for me, with regards to Critical Role, is that it's *very* apparent these are a group of friends sitting down to play DnD. They aren't an assembled cast; their chemistry with each other fairly drips off the screen,
@@MegaphoneMan0 I heard about you because of your collab with Mike, and that's the next video of yours I am going to listen to/watch; final edit in my original comment is in.
I remember reading a theory somewhere that Orion wasn't showing up too often when it was just a home game, and started showing up only when the game going live was on the table. Orion never played a character to begin with.. only used Tiberius as a veneer for Orion himself Speaking of Travis, towards Orion's end in some eps you can see Travis miffed and looks half about to climb over the table asking Matt if he's allowed to rage
man, I'm always sort of impressed by the grace people are willing to extend. I will fully admit - I'm a bad person in that regard. I would have had sympathy with Orion's struggles until I saw the tangible proof (not allegations) of him scamming his own community and kickstarter backers, until I listened to the voice message he sent a gf who later showed it amongst the allegations thrown his way. To me, the condemnation of his behaviour can't just stop at what he did at the table - because let's be real, I don't think he would have been kept on the show once abuse allegations hit the table. And good riddance. Someone like that certainly needs help, but does *not* need a platform. If he feels sorry, I hope he privately made amends with the women he's harmed, and paid back every single person he scammed. Beyond that, I hope he really *has* gotten help and grown as a person. But I also find his pivot from raging on stream about how CR sold out, as well as the nasty accusations he made against some of his cast members, from scamming his fans and being under fire for abusing ex-gf's, to then retweeting CR announcements and being oh so vocally and publically supportive, as well as commenting on videos about this topic to paint himself a certain way as well as going on a podcast and talking about it, knowing full well that the CR people will never speak a word about it..... distateful, to say the least.
I tend to try to give grace by default, but in this case I just haven't seen anything besides what happened at the CR table and what Mike talked about in his video, so it's hard for me to go that hard on Orion when I'm getting all of my information about his off-table behavior second hand. I think I have enough context to do a dive on Tiberius as a character, and the effect of Orion's behavior specifically at the table, but I would feel irresponsible giving a holistic opinion of Orion as an individual. I needed to know some of it to inform what happened at the table, but there are a lot of people out there (it sounds like you included) who have done significantly more research in to the topic and who's voices should be listened to rather than my own. All of that is something that I wish I had made a bit more clear during the video, and I also wish that I had focused my commentary a bit more than I did,
On Tiberius not having access to the silence spell. I am pretty sure in Pathfinder 1e Sorcerer shared a spell list with Wizards (that was how it was in 3.5, I believe). Because there are so many direct spells equivalences from Pathfinder to D&D (something they changed with the new 2e, because of the SRD debacle) I wouldn't be surprised if Orion, probably with Matt permission, just went and picked the equivalent spells from his known list without checking if it was technically a sorcerer spell. A few times he got confused by the way the spells functioned differently, so I don't think it is a crazy assumption. In other words, if it is a spell Tiberius knew from the Pathfinder days, I don't think it really mattered it wasn't on the sorcerer list.
Iiiiinteresting. Yeah, there are definitely some times where I didn't want to go too hard in case it was just transition weirdness. I remember a use of Telekinesis during the airship battle that was like that
@@MegaphoneMan0 In this case it was chat who brought up, not you. I made this comment because I know you care about being fair to Orion and I don't think most people do. People really nitpick everything he did and assume he was cheating even in situations like this, where there is much simpler explanation. One doesn't need to nitpick his spell selection and assume cheating or whatever, he fucked up plenty without it.
Another thing for the army part; Earlier, Orion asked Matt to swap out his nobility background ability to throw his name around for the research skill, then he threw his name around to ask for the army.
I remember Tibs being my favorite early in my initial watch through. I suspect that kind of early positive feedback may have played into his main character/star of Critical Role energy.
I found out the hard way that you can hold things too close to the chest. In my current campaign my morally gray wizard got extremely cagey whenever the party talked about their goals. By session 5-6 the barbarian cornered my wizard and forced them to spill the beans.
Lol, it can definitely happen. That does sound like a nice bit of character work on the Barbarian's part though! I find that, generally, sharing goals with the players but not with the characters can help alleviate out-of-game tension and allow those character moments to breath a bit more. I can't speak to your game exactly, but it could be something to consider going forward. Your characters certainly don't have to be on the same page, but it generally helps if the players are.
@MegaphoneMan0 the barbarians player is a semi-professional actor. They are great. Yeah, that's a great point. My idea was to play the wizard kind of maniacal, but secretly, their desire was just to rescue their little sis. It was supposed to be a surprising subversion of expectations that this apparently evil wizard was really just a really overprotective brother. But maybe I was too focused on the surprise factor and didn't pick up on how concerning it seemed hanging with this apparently evil wizard.
hahaha yeahhhhh I can see how that would be potentially disconcerting to them :P I think that's definitely something I've seen the more I've played. Surprising players and DMs is inarguably interesting, and it would be disingenuous of me to say that it isn't, but I find that surprising the characters even when the other players themselves know can be incredibly interesting as well, just in a different way. It's something it took me and my table a LONG time to learn, and it's something I'm still learning as a DM! Something I am really trying to take away from my BitD experience is "foreshadow danger". It's a big rule in BitD, because of how deadly the system is, that you never just spring traps or danger on your players. You always foreshadow it in some way, like "you open the door and feel the slightest tug of resistance on your initial push, definitely not natural for a door like this". They don't need to know what it is, they don't need to know how to deal with it, but you need to give them a chance. It's not fun for your players when they get jumpscared by a combat out of nowhere, or a betrayal that they failed all of the checks to even notice. The surprise SEEMS like it'll be cool, but more often than not it's much more cool when they had time to prepare for it, or at least react before they are swept up. It's hard though, and it's awesome that you are thinking critically about your characters and play!
What shows early on in the show and later and in all future campaignes, is that the group tried to compliment each other in their task or story. Tibs tried it too, but he tried to make those moments about himself. The Arrow Moment or the moment Vax and Vex see each other again. And he had to steal the moment, cause in his mind set he had to contribut to the scene. The moments when he heard what others have or do and he had to try and mimic it in one way or another. Was a way for him to try and build connections but it never came over that way. Cause through his need to overshine everyones moment it never felt that way. I never was a Keyleth hater. I loved her Charaker besides Grog and Scanlan the most. One Problem was her Spells, but most of the time it was cause Matt had something other in mind what the spell means. The other Problem was that Keyleth was always a moralty compass gor the group and shoved it in the groups face. Even when nobody liked to see/hear it. But her best moments where those moments.
they all had problems just plain out not reading the spells. ashley is still horrible about it. everyone else has gotten better, to the point that i assume they ask when they pick them. I am at the end of a c1 rewatch and the number of times matt has said something akin to "well what does the spell say" would have infuriated me as a DM. The first use of wind walk jumps to mind. When they first come up against vecna and hold person works on vax, making him autofail dex saves, with disintegrate following up. Expected it to just do SOMETHING extra/outside the bounds of what the spell does because it was 9th level and acting upset about it.
@@mcdotterson4103 my least favorite thing is when Taliesin says he's going to use a feature but never explains what it does, like bro we don't need you to be mysterious about what your character can do just tell us what it does
@@mcdotterson4103 Taliesin does make up for it by playing either homebrewed or more obscure races and (sub)classes a lot, which means he already has to communicate a lot outside of the game to make sure it fits within Matt's world, and frankly he also gets away with a lot by being extremely quick-witted. Not just because it makes his dubious behaviour more tolerable by virtue of being fun at the table, it also makes that his dubious behaviour is not nearly as grating. Though, if I am fair here, I think in a different universe Orion could very well have remained part of the group, problem player or no. There are moments where he genuinely seems to at least try to learn from his behaviour, though I sadly can't really remember any specifics. Sadly episode 27 of the VM campaign is a thing, but as you lot pointed out a lof of his actions were not born out of malice, he just overstepped boundaries in an effort to be useful. It's just that when that behaviour is combined with real world issues it's just better to not have such a player at the table. And frankly I don't have nearly as much problems with the female players (aside from Ashley sometimes stumbling but she's been absent a lot so it's understandable why she'd not nearly be as refined) as I would have with how Taliesin and Orion played at times. Keyleth's initial mistrust of Lady Kima kinda rubbed me the wrong way when I heard it for the first time because I am still rather religious, but honestly when I relistened to it she did raise some valuable points, just not as valuable in the DnD world where divine intervention is a bit more tangible than it is irl.
@the_tactician9858 Ashley is probably my favorite person on the show. She is 100% engaged with what's going, to her detriment when it comes to her turn lol I think the tablet with dndbeyond is screwing her. Get it out of there, give her paper character sheet and her daily prepped spells in card form, she'd be better about mechanics of her class. All of the things orion did could be seen as a positive, if they weren't turned to 11 and focused on himself. Finding some mirrors to help Percy BEFORE the failure instead of just trying to do it himself after. Lockheed could have been a cute pet but again, cranked up to 11 by him, I'm teaching 33 tricks over 2 days to act like trinket, yadda yadda. Taliesin is dialing up his things, in my eyes. Campaign 1, he'd tinker for himself and to supply others for their own moments. Campaign 3, he's trying to turn them into moments for himself with the others involved maybe knowing/remembering what's going on lol when he got the spell splitting hammer idea, then X number of episodes later is telling Laura to shoot his hammer instead of what she was trying to do, while refusing to explain himself lol just a total look of resignation from her. Unsurprised it never happened again.
My personal issue with Keyleth wasn't the fact that she was a woman, it was because she positioned herself as the moral center of the group. I'm just not a fan of characters who jump quickly to take moral high grounds, which Keyleth did more than any other character in VM, likely due to her nature as a Druid. I think it's mainly due to me not liking morality being boiled down to a strict right or wrong; I enjoy when morally-ambiguous situations are explored to their fullest depth. The Clasp Deal was the point I most disliked Keyleth, because there was so much that could have been discussed about the pros and cons, but Keyleth's hard-line stance of "No, this is absolutely wrong and there's no way we could even consider this" just really put me off. As for Marisha's later characters. Beauregard and Laudna are up there with my favorites (Beau is my second-favorite from Campaign 2, losing out by a hair only to Caduceus, and Laudna is my absolute favorite of Campaign 3, and it's not even close). I am in awe of Marisha's skill as a roleplayer, and have a lot of respect for her ability and her dedication, but it was just the choice of character during Vox Machina with which I personally have a problem. I acknowledge Keyleth is a good character, and she was played very well by Marisha, it's just a personal hang-up on my end.
I think most people who support Keyleth cause to that time it was realy realy hard Push against her. And you are rights she was a Moral hard-liner. And If you don't like that, thats your right. And i totaly see your point😊 But i have to say if Keyleth wouldn't had been such a hard-liner in morality, the group would have ended up morality wise like Tiberius. They wouldn't have cared. Cause everyone else except Scanland where totaly on the verge of first kill and then ask questions. The Situation with the clasp, that you mentioned. Was hard, but i thought Percy shined more through this. And i could understand both Sides. Percy made bad decisions through deals. Keyleth sees it black and white through Keyleths naive way of thinking.
The misogyny was always going to be there and it was always gonna be at least a subconscious reason for a lot of people. It was the early days of gamer gate and Marisha is a beautiful woman playing a game that beautiful women aren’t “supposed” to be into. It wasn’t just Marisha although she bore the brunt of it, Laura and Ashley also got harassment and those three combined still get way more hate and criticism than their male counterparts
I clicked on this video thinking…man…how will this guy keep me entertained for 6 hours? Turns out you’re hilarious. May have even tempted me to watch you watch a show I’ve already seen…Jesus Christ
Hahaha I really appreciate it!!! I have a ton of fun making these streams, and I am planning on focusing more on highlight videos so that new folks can catch up without toooooo much rewatching of an already gargantuan show ;P
UA-cam randomly recommended this and I'll add on Sam-- Sam usually kept Scanlan the butt of the joke. Scanlan being a weird little sex gnome was part of the joke. So when he hit on a character you knew it was a joke. Not that Scanlan was entirely a joke character, you can see in the Scanbo episode that there was always real intention for the character to sometimes succeed and be awesome, but Scanlan being a person that hits on other people and being rejected, is part of his core character. I have no doubt that Ashley was always fine with Scanlan's jokes and found it funny. Tiberius randomly hitting on Vex will not play as well, we don't know if he hit on her if he's always liked her, or if this is a joke Orion just finds funny, it's going to be out of nowhere or feel blurred. It's not going to play as well, and you can see Sam try and play off it but he also looks uncomfortable. And it's Sam!
Yeah i think the main difference was that it was Scanlan, they knew what to expect so they didn't expect anything less. Therefore, it was fine for the group, also when it comes to player characters I noticed that Scanlan was more cautious about the jokes, Even with Pike, they were relatively tame compared to when he was hitting on npcs (like the paladin). On the other hand that was never apart of Tiberius's character, he had never made a joke like that in the show and at that time i think the show had been running for quite a bit, so it was extrememly bizzare and out of pocket for him to do so. It was also the *type* of 'hiting' on that was quite well uncomfortable.
Great video! Actually appreciate the length. Was informative and interesting. I love that I could listen to it during my work hours and not have to search for a new video every few minutes.
Adding to what was talked about at the start regarding Keyleth: I think your assessment is 100% spot on and the pushback you got like comes from the fact that some of her haters nowadays cannot grasp their own internalized misogyny and don't accept that critique over that hate-train. They try to be rational about it, but there's some digging needed to be done. As an example: some of them preferred Grog's less optimal actions saying how genius it was due to RP, versus her playing a fairly decent person with internal struggles that sometimes wasn't as optimal all the time as others. Some were fine with the guys messing up actions, potions, spells and feats, but lord forbit Marisha not knowing by hearth more than 100 spells and all their wording. Even Matt messes up and she was still getting some scary harassment live and on twitter. Ashley was barely there and when she was, there was the whole angelic fanon stuff covering part of her, and Vex was "the hot sexy one" to many in the fandom. The 3 of them took a fair share of hate, but Marisha was just normal and the internet is not great to women being comfortable in their own skin.
I don't want to make assumptions about anyone's specific or particular history, but I do think it's probable that there are some people that have potentially progressed in adulthood that don't want to acknowledge or examine their own problematic history. I do also think it's very possible that there are some folks who just don't like the character or the player, not everyone likes everyone, but there is certainly a disproportionate amount of those people for it to just be that.
@@MegaphoneMan0the way you go about it is not only very mature but healthy and it makes me happy to see it. As long as someone goes "hmm wait a minute... he might be right" that's a win.
@@thisrogue I don't know how many drugs you do, but anyone claiming Laura is anything but comfortable in her own skin has to be on some serious dosage. Marisha had an unfortunate confluence of playing one of the most disliked roleplaying tropes(the moral grandstander), being amongst absurdly likable players while being more normal herself, and not yet coming into her own style in that setting. Yes people transferred hate for character onto the player, but honestly I get it. Most dnd characters are an extension of their player, so people get used to seeing them as that. No amount of claiming internalized misogyny is going to change that Keyleth was a pretty damn bad character, nor is it going to change that Marisha grew as a player and her other characters have been delightful since. She's never going to rate as highly as Jester, Grog, or Mollymauk in my books, but Laudna is up there for my favorite CR characters.
Hey Mega! I am one of those who watched CR (friend recommendation) and started to play DnD after because it looked so fun and a good time with friends and good stories that could be emotive and not only combat and maths and rules. So, yeah, we exist :)
I think it’s completely fine to eat on stream. Only thing I would be bothered by personally is if you would chew directly into the mic because I have misophonia 😅 People need to eat. It’s inhumane to forbid people from eating, unless it would be dangerous or unhygienic to eat at the work place (like in a lab), which it isn’t for a streamer.
@@fletcherw32 at least 19 people agree with me. The only place you can’t eat on stream is tiktok they ban for eating, because on there it was done for p*rnographic purposes. So now it’s just blanket banned.
Really love how extremely fair you were in your entire discussion of this. Like holy shit nobody else would couch their disagreement with this level of respect: 3:30:55
Even before I knew any of the controversy around him, Orion just has a vibe to him, like if they were all characters in a movie you could just take one look at Orion and know he's the one who's going to turn out to be evil.
Very Early into the Video but was not expecting the Atrioc mention, his situation was a complete shell shock situation for me cause of how long i had been watching him and it came out of no where. And i feel the same way, I know still some people that haven't followed up with most off it still harbor some disgust towards him which is fair enough, but like you mentioned the amount of effort he put in, the fact that he held strong with his friends even though the topic that caused the Drama was loosely relevant to them shows his character. And Vice Versa, the follow up scenario with Orion also shows his character Stuff Regarding Orion: 1. His thoughts about being under-powered are completely bs, at one point he says that he's the main glass cannon of the group when they find the +2 AC ring, but at that time he literally had the 2nd most effective HP due to Dragon born, Con and the fact that he rolled only 4-6's on his Hit die lvl ups.
Side note, i know this is well past the stream but, the constant complaining about the Timer is kinda weird, if they don't want to hear your feedback that can watch the original video (i know that some of them were memes but)
"People loved Dragon Magazine! Why aren't they doing something like that anymore?" Because Paizo wrote Dragon Magazine and they are currently busy managing better tabletop games.
I've been seeing this a lot in the comments and I know you're probably sick of it, but I want to thank you for keeping firm with Keyleth hate & the misogyny involved. Many people don't want to acknowledge that when we say misogyny we are talking about less so "I hate women, so I'm going to harrass Marisha online." and more so a subconscious bias that leads someone to think "oh well a woman wouldn't know how to play this game well" or a "woman are like this, so clearly she isn't acting"... this usually isn't even what people are saying out loud. So when people hear misogyny and aren't fully aware of it as a concept, they're like "well I didn't understand her" why not? I can see how some would misread it, but misogyny can very well play into misinterpreting female characters. Also, it was horrific to be a woman in nerd spaces in 2015. Just downright awful. I think many have tried to move past that/blocked it out from their memory but as someone who saw that, there is no way that the general anti-SJW/largely misogynistic and very prominent political movement didn't play into Keyleth hate. So again- thank you for holding your ground. It means a lot
I've been waiting for this episode for ages, finally caught up 😁 I'm actually one of the ppl who came over bc of SGM's original shout-out, and boy did that pay off ;) anyway, I always really enjoy getting your view abt what's going on - super raw, but also very reflected once the discussion gets going. I really like how respectful you seem to be in general. keep it up!
Okay I gotta say, I scrolled and seen the title and thought hmm that might be interesting, then I seen the time and was like holy shit 6 hours now I gotta kinda watch at least a bit of it but after all is said and done I had a good time watching it it was a great stream
just found this video, and i wonder if Tiberius being Tiberius is partly why no one has played a Dragonborn in the later campaigns. Definitely agree that the Orion/Tiberius divide was practically non-existent and even when he was speaking in his Tiberius voice it was basically just Orion. I had a way easier time understanding the Marisha/Keyleth divide and Keyleth basically just spoke in Marisha's voice. As for Keyleth, I really enjoyed her character and the way she was kind of at odds with the group (she was way more of a good-aligned person with strict morals than the rest of the party and it brought them into conflict). I caught up sometime around the Umbrasyl fight.
You speaked to my soul with this first line about Dragonborns being absent! When I got the Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn book I was actually shocked to see that Dragonborns still existed in Exandria, I think we never saw a PC or NPC Dragonborn ever again (there was two guests in C1 that used the race, and that was it) and I kinda wished they were used more because the lore for Draconia after the attack of the Conclave is cool and fleshed out in the book.
hey there, nice Video and nice explanations, to your "to much investment" part, we call this "Characterbleed" here, or if it was his first Character it could be "FIrst Character Syndrom" in the community, at least here in Germany (yes we use still the englisch words for it ^^) both are common terms and thereare many sources for a longer ecplanation what it means, if your interested. But it seems way too much Info for the comment section xD Greetz L.
The term you coined me and my group refer to as 'Avataring'- you're no longer writing or investing in the character- you are quite literally your character in a way that eliminates the line between OOC and IC; this is something I used to do and realized it was really really bad when I had an actual legitimate adrenaline rush when my character ended up in danger. My body went through a physical flight or fight response when I was attacked in the roleplay setting- that's dangerous.
Maaaaaaan, people are so much more clever than me at naming shit XD Avataring is a GREAT term for it, and another comment coined in "Character Bleed". And you're 100% right. It's amazing to get invested in your character, and we should feel things for and with them, but there is a very distinct line where too much can become incredibly detrimental to the stories we are playing through and the tables we are playing at. I'm really glad my point came across even if I didn't term it the best. I really think, in terms of actual observable in-table behavior (obviously there's a LOT of context off-table), this is probably the foundational pillar of Orion's "problem player behavior". A lot of his other stuff either stems from it, or wasn't able to be addressed BECAUSE of it.
@@MegaphoneMan0 I haven't watched c1 yet- just recently found out about c2 and finished it recently while designing a campaign in which we utilize Project Zomboid as the 'table'- it's been quite a blast homebrewing the dice system from scratch to translate into PZ more properly but I think I got something far more complex than anything I meant to go into for my first time GMing; luckily I do have CR to thank for inspiring me to take on this task and 15+ years of roleplaying experience that will hopefully allow me to recognize a problem player before they do to much damage. It is astonishing how quickly just one person can sour the mood on an entire campaign and effectively kill it.
Loving all your content! Though I'd quickly just mention that orion's city is noted on the map on the wildmount continent... However don't go looking for it till early to mid ep 60's.
Only an hour in, but it's nice that you recognize that Keyleth and Tiberius were both divisive characters for some very similar reasons even if you didn't make the connection explicit. The biggest difference between the two's players is that one learned from their mistakes (and went from "GM's girlfriend who won't read her spells" to a beloved mainstay of future projects) and the other refused to acknowledge them.
On the topic of critical role as a brand i will be genuinely shocked if the default setting of the next D&D edition isn't Exandria. The two are truly intrinsically intertwined now
I think that assumes that WotC WANTS to highlight that entwinement. With Candela published and Daggerheart on the horizon, it's pretty clear that Critical Role is moving on from D&D, and I don't think that WotC will want to draw too much attention to CR in the future. There is also that factor that even though Forgotten Realms is the de-facto default setting, WotC's official stance is that "the multiverse" is the actual default setting for 5e. That's more than a bit eye-rolly to me, I think default settings are incredibly useful and it would be better for everyone if they officially embraced FR as the default for 5e, but I don't foresee them changing their stance on that.
Hey, new viewer here, also a new viewer of Critical Role, starting from episode one. I had known a bit about the Orion drama, and learned from YT comments that episode 27 was his exit point. I have never played DnD myself before so some of the earlier moments where he was a bad teammate in the game kind of flew over my head but from the arrow incident in Vasselheim onward it started being noticeable even to me. Anyway none of that really matters, guess just giving context to what kind of viewer I am, I just finished episode 27 the other day, and because I am also a drama goblin like how you described yourself I immediately tried finding videos on other people's thoughts on this, and any background that I might not know of. That's how I found this video and I quite enjoyed it! Anyway, I won't repeat anything about Orion/Tiberius that everyone has been repeating ad nauseum for like 8 years, but one thing I haven't seen people mention that stood out to me, especially in the last few episodes, is that even though Orion seemed to not be able to separate himself from Tiberius, which you think would make it easier for him to be consistent with Tibs' character, he really wasn't consistent at all. Obviously the half chub thing when Tibs has never been a sleazy character is the biggest example, but another example I noticed is how inconsistent he was with the whole "I am a Stormwind, you will show me respect" attitude he sometimes expressed. I'll just go through the two recent examples for the sake of brevity, but when Uriel was talking with Vox Machina after the Briarwood incident, and basically telling them they need proof the Briarwoods are evil or they will be outlaws, Tibs tries to play the "how dare you threaten a Stormwind" thing which Matt shuts down really quickly. And, despite the later context that Uriel was charmed, I still think that even if he wasn't that is a very reasonable attitude for him to have, and this is the ruler of the city Vox Machina lives in, if you should not ruffle feathers with someone, it should be him. I can kind of excuse it from Tibs because of the low wisdom but still maybe he should know better than to try to pull that in this situation. However, the next episode when they have the flying cows adventure, when some random-ass gnome druid tries threatening them, Tibs doesn't do any of that, he is, oddly very understanding for the druid's argument, and argument which, in my opinion, is way less reasonable than what Uriel said. This gnome is allowing his roc to steal a ridiculous amount of livestock from people. Half of their cows in 2 weeks is absurd, and stuff like that could easily lead to famines that could kill many, MANY people, if they really want to stretch the consequences to a realistic degree. So Tibs showing that random gnome with barely any logical legs to stand on waaaaay more patience and grace than Uriel really stood out as weird to me. There are other examples but like I said wanted to just use two to keep this comment (relatively) brief, and I haven't noticed anyone bring stuff like that up yet. Maybe I just wanted to vent because honestly that section with the gnome druid really annoyed me lol. Anyway I'll leave it at that. Enjoyed this video, definitely gonna check out more of your stuff!
Probably not going to matter. But i will address something about the difference between 5e Sorcerer and PF 1e Sorcerer. So the thing about a PF Sorcerer is that they trade of Spells known. For Access to more spell slots than most other casters ever get. In fact there is only one other class that does get the same amount of slots as the sorcerer does. In 5e Sorcerers get the same spell slots as everyone else but a lot lesser spells known, similar to bard. But Bard gets an additional resource separate to their spells, inspiration and can actually use armor and weapons. Now Sorcerers get metamagic, but metamagic is a resource than only works in combination with spells. so you are expending both at the same time. You can use the points to get more spell slots, but thats point you aren't using to enhance your spells. So regardless its tied to the same resource. More recent additions have sorta addressed this with newer subclasses giving additional spells and allowing spells to be swapped more frequently and actually giving Sorcery points an additional function, it can now allow you to reroll skill checks. But back in the day at the start of dnd there where only 2 sorcerer subclasses and both didn't feel powerful enough compared to subclasses that where added later. It is also the fact that there is a crafting system with high magic in pf is kind of part of the system. players get a lot more magical items with small bonuses that add up over time. This is not something 5e does. 5e has more incrementally powerful magic items than pf does and no way to get access to them other than what the dm says. Where as in pf there are rules set to how you could craft almost every single item in the game, with the exception of artefacts. And of course, while extremely expensive. PF has items that make the sorcerer bloodline abilities more powerful and can even add additional spells known.
It's definitely hard for me to fully understand, as I haven't played PF 1e and only a bit of PF 2e, but that is certainly good context around why the switch might have felt more jarring. I talked about this to some degree with another commenter regarding percy's class choice, but it feels like Vox Machina really focused on the class and class choice when they switched rather than the... vibes of the characters, if that makes any sense. Like, to me, even at this point, Percy really does not feel like a fighter. I've said several times that I see him as an artificer (even though that wasn't an option at the time). Commenters have rightly pointed out that Gunslinger in PF is a ranged fighter, the tinkering was totally separate from his PF class, so fighter makes the most sense if you are trying to get the closest 1:1 with Percy's PF build. Percy wasn't a magic wielder in PF, wouldn't it be weird for him to be an artificer in D&D? Personally, I think that most of the weirdness could have been abstracted and flavored to not be weird, and that the literal mechanics of what the class achieves feel much more Percy. While I agree that fighter is the closest D&D port of gunslinger, I think that (at least to me as of Ep 27), Artificer feels the closest to Percy as a persona, as a character, than Fighter does. I bring all of that up to say, I think that they made a bit of a whoopsie with Tiberious. As you point out, while they both share the name "Sorcerer", PF and D&D sorcerer really aren't much alike in general. Tiberious' whole vibe, to me, feels MUCH more like a Wizard, and I think allowing him to focus his attention on things like crafting spell scrolls could have been a great outlet for his lost magic item crafting, and allowed him to be much more creative and flexible with his crafting. An evocation wizard even could have avoided the fireball incident ;) this ALSO would have been a fantastic outlet for the treasure loot goblins. Putting more magic scrolls in would be a great way to "give out more magic items and loot" without giving so many permanent things. I think that this is a good lesson in porting characters in general! Something I'm really taking away is to focus really holistically on it. Try to ask the players about what they really like doing and want to do in the game, then look for a class that most matches that in the new system (although, if none of you have played, that can be difficult).
@@MegaphoneMan0 I agree that he probably would have been better off to convert to a Wizard rather than a sorcerer, cause it would have left him with a lot more options in the spellcasting department. especially like an evocation wizard would have been great for him and his play style. As for the Percy artificer thing, while i agree with you. I again would like to point out that Artificer in its current state didnt exist when they started playing. It wasnt until later when Sam played one and even then it was still in UA and not fully resembling its current form. So a switch to Artificer couldnt have been made cause the class didnt yet fully exist. Could they have homebrewed it more for both Percy and Tiberius. Yes, yes they could have.
Honestly not to argue too much with the comment comparing Marisha with Laura and Ashley, but going into the show I KNEW who Laura Bailey and Ashley Johnson were from their voice roles and thus “knew and trusted them” where as Marisha kind of got shafted with the “oh it’s just Matt fucking Mercer’s girlfriend, okay nepotism much?” And it wasn’t until C2 when everyone started fresh that we could see the beginning of the story and like it’s been said, “we have to peace meal 2 years of lore with no help”
I have to say, Marisha is a good player. I just don't like Kelith as a character. Didn't have a problem with the moral hemming and hawing. Just had an issue with when she chose to do something about it and how she went about it. It tended to be detrimental to the group and didn't allow for as much redemption and forgiveness than I personally would have liked. I think some people didn't like the character and assumed it was because they didn't like the player. I also think you had a wide range of experience in rpgs on the streams. This could allow for the misunderstanding of Marisha maybe even moreso than the once a week timeframe.
I'm personally sick of people using the fact that just because not 100% percent of the hate a woman online gets is because of her gender that just all accusations of misogyny should be thrown out the window. Like they don't know what's going on, come on, stop running interference for assholes. People are so focused on trying to deflect a perceived accusation away from themselves that they'll whitewash the whole issue to absolve themselves of guilt by association. Personally I think if you're sending the person nasty messages instead of just leaving your issues with them in the comment section, you're an asshole no matter what your motivation is anyway.
I do kind of love that Mike is almost doing a David Attenborough animal documentary. 😂 I dont think it's accurate for Orion to claim that it was just his drug and alcohol abuse and not his behavior. I dont think you can uncouple those things. People who engage in drug abuse do not act in appropriate ways. Their behavior isnt reliable. And the fact that Orion said they were tired of the same old lines he used prior to stream suggests he had a long history of problematic behavior.
It's hard, I have seen addicts completely tank their life, and I would say that their life was ruined by their addiction. However, I agree that you can't really uncouple those things, and regardless of anything he is ultimately responsible for everything he did or didn't do during his time there. But, at the end of the day, I'm not a psychologist or sociologist or anything like that, so discussions of addiction are a bit out of my depth beyond my own anecdotal experience with folks. I think there's a lot to be learned from looking at how his behavior affected those around him, but how culpable he is or what his behavior stemmed from probably isn't for me to say.
Late to the party but I don't think I've seen anyone else say this but I honestly think Orion wanted to be kicked off the show. Not at the beginning of course and perhaps not even consciously, but with everything he was dealing with in his personal life...I think he needed to get out but couldn't leave on his own, walking away from all that attention and community. There is no other explanation for how badly he acted for the entire 27th episode. He wanted to get kicked.
@@Daltygaming2 I mean, he knew what the other cast wanted for their community relations, he also knew what they considered out of order in terms of table conduct yet we get episode 27 where he jumped on top of every problem player issue we know about.
Not sure if you listen to any NADDPOD but they have segments called dnd court that examine fan-submitted dnd horror stories and dish out funny "rulings"...could be a fun if you did something similar bc your analysis of Tiberius is spot on and funny
From what I’ve seen and heard about Travis he seems like a chill and down to earth guy. Sure he’ll jokingly get upset like the time he broke a mechanical pencil for a played up bit like anger towards Liam’s shaving prank. He doesn’t strike me as someone who gets actually angry with people easily. So when *that* kind of person is making snide remarks about your attitude and is staring daggers at you like he’s holding every urge to go full wookie and tear your limbs off… you know you’re an asshole. I actively refrain from watching early stream Vox Machina if I ever decide to watch it at all. I’m more of a mighty nein guy since that was where I found CR but either way I stay away from anything with Orion. Even in the first episode his constant interruptions and comments always rubbed me up the wrong way. But I liked Tiberius that weird murmuring mannerism was funny and his “I encourage violence” was legit hilarious. But yeah… everything else was just iffy and miserable. As someone who played with people like that as dms and players alike I can tell you by experience that they sap all the fun out of the game.
There's actually an interesting moment (at least to me) from Liam's one-shot that he ran between episodes 58 and 59 of Campaign 1. We just watched those episodes last week at the time of writing. Sam's character (Sam) makes, what I would argue, is a more explicit advance on Laura's character (Laura), in a context where they are all playing *themselves* (that one shot was... weird), and Travis' reaction is super chilled. He plays up his character a bit, but is still laughing and ostensibly having fun (as is Laura). It drew a veeeeeeery stark comparison between the two moments for me. We can never know what was going on or how people felt, they are all actors after all, but the differences in Travis' reactions certainly says something about the vibes off-table.
@@MegaphoneMan0 exactly like Travis knows these people and what their like so he probably knows Sam better to know that he’s doing what he’s doing and saying what he’s saying for a bit and is just playing along. The group have a nice way of not taking ships personal in game. Mainly due to them playing characters before because voice actors stuff like that happens with characters in a story. But yeah the difference in reaction between Sam and Orion strikes me as definitely suspicious on Orion’s part. He must have done or said something to really make Travis not just mad at him but livid from his response and way of looking.
This may be a controversial thought, but I always thought that Orion just isn't a charismatic person and that's why he couldn't get away with some of the same stuff the others could. I'm not saying it's not his fault, or that he didn't have other flaws. Just that if he was naturally cool, most of his blunders would be accepted. Just think of all well liked bad guy characters, they are dicks but people still love them because of rizz
I think that, in general, there's definitely some validity to the thought that more charismatic people are given more of the benefit of the doubt. I actually talked a bit about that in the Liam's Quest video that I posted recently, where Sam did something that would have absolutely not gone well if Orion had done it. I think that combines with the problem of his playstyle, seemingly, not really fitting the rest of the table after they started streaming. We have no idea how well it did or didn't fit pre-stream, but it certainly didn't after Kraghammer. The Vex arrow punch incident is something that is definitely very table-dependent as to how bad it is. I think the true, ultimate, "problem behavior" that we were able to witness was the hostility in the face feedback. This *could* be seen as the character's hostility to feedback, but when the character bleed was so strong it was very hard to ever tell. Even if things had been hunky-dory behind the scenes, this hostility that was not very clearly in-character made it hard to engage with the character. Honestly, even if it was just meant to be a character flaw, I think that character flaw is one that someone should think long and hard about before bringing to the table, as it runs a bit of a risk of seeming out of character unless you make the separation incredibly and consistently clear.
(1h12) I understand convo searching for something beyond misogyny, but your initial take was the right take: it was internet misogyny. All the regular stuff, and then consider that this was happening in 2015--still in the most toxic throes of gamergate (most intense years being 2014 - 2018). You can bet there was crossover in the audience for gamergate and CR. The thing is: misogyny as cyberbullying is an expression of hatred and resentment, but it can be triggered by so many things. You can list all the possible reasons about her character, her relationship to the GM, her acting skills---but those aren't the hatred. Those are the triggers or excuses. Once a wave like that finds a target, and one woman in an online project is deemed "the bitch" or "the difficult one" or "the bad one" or "the stupid one"... that's when the it becomes the play we've all sat through time and time again. It's very common that they don't hate all the women--they just find the one that best fits the narrative and the resentment they're used to. (They being the toxic viewers.) Sometimes it's a woman who's too pretty, or not pretty enough, or too loud, or too fortunate, or who isn't naturally demure... once that woman is identified, it's free reign to complain about her and then hide behind 'liking' the other women as a shield. The misogyny isn't actually wrapped up in their problems with Marisha; it's a toxic movement constantly scanning for a target. If things had been slightly different, it could have been Ashley. And over time, the pendulum swings and Laura gets it too, when she's pregnant-- maybe because she looked slightly different, maybe because being pregnant meant certain male viewers couldn't justify fantasizing about her anymore, or maybe it was just too feminine a thing to proudly be...but she got a lot of harassment over it. Moving through the internet game spaces and avoiding becoming the target of misogyny is like moving through an enemy place in BG3, while stealthed, trying to avoid the red gaze of doom. It scans the room and you gotta hide. If you walk right in, they clock you, and it might get toxic. If you roll bad on your stealth, they clock you, and aggro is triggered. That's what it feels like, except IRL we don't see the red vision lines. We know they're there and we could aggro them at any time, but we have to guess and hope because we don't have a button to make it safe. I know this is long, but listening to this really brought to mind so much of the stuff I've seen on the internet in the last 10 years. The misogyny against Marisha didn't happen in a vacuum--it was happening at the same time as an enormous cultural movement towards cyberbullying women. Trying to identify the exact "thing" she did that made her a target instead of the other women is pointless: they're always going to pick someone. In 2015 the red gaze fell on Marisha. Once that ball gets rolling, it doesn't unroll. So CR has to turn off chat display, change social media engagement, and establish stronger walls between them and the fandom. Ride it out until the fandom actively changes their own culture and takes responsibility.
Imo I think Tiberius was an ideal of what Orion wants to be. Orion strikes me as someone who is insecure but wants to be the cool guy and thus tries to live that through his character. When he doesn’t get his way he feels his insecurity and lashes out.
Regarding monk being good, I think monk it fine until you try to optimize characters, at which point you run into the fact that unarmed strikes don’t interact favorably with any feats, so your damage in anemic compared to other martials, you’re squishier than them on both AC and HP, and you’re left with stunning strike and mobility as your defining traits. Mobility is useful when it’s good and meaningless when it’s not, anz stunning strike makes you good at locking down solo bosses, something casters already cover. Monks suffer from being specialists is a niche that other classes are better at incidentally.
Mariaha was a bit of a lightning rod for hate. I think that if her character had been perceived as less grandstanding than she was a lot of the toxicity would probably have been focused more evenly on all the women at the table.
I honestly can't remember which album that is. It is either "Welcome to Tal'Dorei", which was made by the Critical Role folks especially for content creators to use, OR it's the Baldur's Gate 3 OST which I got as part of pre-ordering the game (not sure if it's available for purchase seperately). I use both pretty frequently :)
I'm just happy to get an answer. Enjoy or have enjoyed joth medias before, so it's worth the search! Thanks for the answer, and soon im actually through this colossus!
Yeah, I had a bit of that realization later on... not necessarily RE: the cancer (although I think that's a totally valid feeling), but when we were talking about "how terrible it would be to be Orion nowadays with the success of Critical Role". It think it is VERY reasonable and good to talk about his actions, those are the things he has control over and I don't think that the externalities excuse those actions. However, the "regret" section felt more like bad mouthing, and I don't think that's constructive or good to do in general.
if it makes you feel better, he also scammed a lot of people out of money via a "charity donation drive" for someone who never received that money, as well as through a kickstarter that never delivered its rewards, and he was also abusive to *several* ex-girlfriends whom he still harrassed after the relationships ended. I do not feel bad for bad mouthing an abuser, negl.
I don't wish cancer on anyone, but I also don't like giving bad people a pass because a bad thing happens to them. A lot of people get cancer and don't become giant assholes who run fraudulent charity streams and make creepy sexual passes at their friends in front of a large audience.
Marisha caught a ton of flak for many reasons. Most of all, because she was inexperienced both as a player and an actor. As an inexperienced player, she chose a difficult class, that led to some pretty big mistakes in some pretty big moments. As an actor, she chose to RP a character with more depth and nuance then she was able to portray honestly. Nothing makes that more clear than the way Keyleth is characterized in the animated show, compared to the live shows. Live show Keykey was oftentimes abrasive, argumentative, stubborn, and combative in the face of religion. Keykey in the animated show is a young, sweet, inexperienced druid who is lacking confidence but is a very capable badass who is simply ignorant about religion. The stark differences between Keyleth in C1, Beau in C2 and Laudna in C3 are pretty glaring, but a tribute to her powerful personality. She didnt back down from the hate/criticism. She grew SO MUCH from previous campaigns. Laudna, for my money, is 1 of the best characters in C3 (my favorite). Clever tragic backstory, interesting character build, crazy intense with a sweet, childlike side. Beautifully portrayed. While the amount of hate she got was definitely shitty, chalking up all criticism of her to "Misogyny" is just lazy. Not saying that's your take, but it happens to be the opinion of many critters. Yes, the anonymity of the internet will always lead to children saying awful things about someone out of ignorance. But not all criticisms were unwarranted or should be off limits. Nerds love to discuss and criticize the things we enjoy. Its a very fun and natural thing to do and shouldn't be frowned upon.
Certainly! And I'm glad someone brought up something similar in chat during this. I don't find Keyleth all that annoying (probably because I personally agreed with her opinions several times during the underdark arc), BUT I definitely understand how one could and there's a solid chance I might later on. I really appreciate having folks from a lot of different areas and lenses around to talk about these more contentious things with, especially when everyone has been so chill and nice. These are complicated issues and deserve thought out conversations ^_^
likewise, I think chalking up so much of the scathing misogyny directed at Marisha to "children saying awful things out of ignorance" is lazy, as well as the insinuation that most of the criticism was just "nerds discussing and criticizing things they enjoy".
I think Marisha being an inexperienced player is a bit of misconception? Travis,Laura, Sam, and Ashley never played before. Liam played one in his youth. Taliesin was brought in to be the clincher as the most experienced player at the table and help Matt teach the newbies. Marisha played in Matt's campaign before. I would agreed that she is least experienced actor in the group.
@@InkcharmAbsolutely, and you pushing back on this is very much appreciated. Attempting to retcon the fact that there was a ton of very clear misogyny directed at Marisha, or that the female cast members have received a staggeringly disproportionate amount of hate relative to the male cast members, is a lot lazier than acknowledging a reality you may not feel entirely comfortable with.
It was very difficult to follow this video when every event in the timeline is reference but never explained. Like I don’t know what the arrow event was… or the temple event… So I’m six hours you can’t even give me that??? Jfc nothing better than having to click back and forth from this video, and another explaining your topic
This is part of a much longer series of mine (Critical Eyes), which itself is based on an even longer series called Critical Role. I do assume a level of knowledge about the events leading up to this, whether my videos or the critical role videos. This will absolutely be difficult to follow if you don't have that
nah the marisha hate isn't really a women thing. i'm currently rewatching campaign 2 and good god! the way she interacts with liams character in the first third of the story is so grating. it legitimately elicits anger in me at times. she also likes to insert herself in other people's moments. she's not the only one doing that but she does it differently, kind of barging in. and mainly to tal's characters. hard to describe, english isn't my primary language.
The whole marisha is only disliked because of misogyny is such a dumb thing I don't get why people say it. Laura is probably the most beloved of the cast and Zara and Pike were the most hyped guest characters. Same goes for people just not understanding keyleth isn't marisha or they didn't see what she's going for. Sometimes it's not that people don't understand what you are doing or only don't like you because you are a girl. Sometimes they just don't like you or think you are annoying. Like for instance I think Percy is annoying and that tal tries too hard to come off more smart, punk and weird than he actually is. It's not because he's a guy or because I don't get what Percy is going for, I just think it's annoying. Harassing is dumb and wrong but so is insisting that you have to like something
I made this video a few months ago, so I don't remember what was said in exact terms. But, I will say now, that misogyny, at least in the communication of the internet, rarely directly manifests as a "reason" to dislike someone. It enhances existing dislike, and makes one seek out excuses for dislike when they otherwise wouldn't. It is feelings that already exist that are simply activated by other things. The primary thing that I have observed, watching and experiencing everything CR for the first time, is that Marisha is held to a higher standard than the guys (possibly with the exception of Matt) when it comes to the actual game portion. It's totally fair to dislike certain characters. However, there are many who's dislike is more consistent, takes on a higher magnitude, and is backed up with far less thought, when it is directed towards women. Not every person that dislikes Marisha falls in this category, but many do. You say that Laura is the most beloved of the cast, but frankly, I haven't seen that love yet. The only milestone moment regarding Laura and the audience that I'm aware of is "Broomgate". Even to use Percy/Tal as an example, in a Q&A in 2016 that I'm currently making a piece on, the cast members and audience all acknowledge that Marisha gets far more hate than any other member. Tal isn't even brought up, by the cast or audience member asking the question, in reference to it. They may both play characters that some could validly dislike for one reason or another, but for many that doesn't matter. Potentially valid aspects to some are just excuses to express already held beliefs to others. Of course every single person that dislikes her doesn't do so with backing misogyny. If I remember correctly, I, Mike, and no one in chat ever claimed that. Nor did any of us say that you need to like her. I don't like several parts of Keyleth, but dismissing the real misogynist segments in our communities only gives them room to thrive.
Hello! Since a ton of new folks are seeing the video (welcome btw :)) I wanted to give a short disclaimer about the context of this video.
This is from my "Critical Eyes" series, where I watch and analyze Critical Role as someone who has never seen it or any media related to it (or any actual plays in general!). Even though I've never watched CR, I have been DMing D&D since I was 13, and try to bring a fresh perspective to the good and bad of CR!
This video was made almost directly after Orion's last episode, so basically the start of the Briarwood Arc. At the time of writing this comment, we are in the Feywild mini-arc looking for Fenthras! I don't think you need to have seen any previous episodes of my series to hop in to live (assuming you've seen CR or don't care about spoiling it for yourself), so I'd love to see you there!
If you have any questions about additional context for this video or the series, feel free to ask below!
Also, because a large part of this series is me not having seen Critical Role, I do have to delete any spoilers or spoiler-adjacent comments, more for myself than anything else. If I don't I'll keep seeing them in my comment review box, and it'll get harder and harder to forget the information.
Hey! It'd be nice if you would give credit in the description and/or comments to the original creator of the videos you're reacting to. Not doing so is kind of stealing content 😅
@@nietzopaniquen are you referring to Mike or Critical Role? In the case of Mike, him and I talked extensively before and after this, and I got direct permission to watch and talk about those videos. In terms of CR, I follow their fan content policies to the letter.
I am very concious of not rebroadcasting others' works without being transformative and having permission.
Fun Fact: Normal human autopsies take around 3 hours on average, so a mortician could realistically do two while watching this video.
This is the best way anyone has ever said "man, this is long" about one of my videos (and I get that a lot ;P). I want this on my tombstone
I think a good term to describe the toxic investment you're talking about is character bleed. Where you have a hard time separating yourself from the character and what they're feeling/experiencing. It's not an uncommon topic of discussion in communities around roleplaying
ooooo I love character bleed as a term. I've never heard it put in that terminology (something I was clearly struggling with here), but that's very much what I was trying to access. I think that some amount of character bleed can be okay, potentially even desirable, as it COULD indicate investment. However, when such a large percentage of your character is just, you, then character bleed can become a massive problem.
Disclaimer: I will most likely go back and edit this as I get farther through the video.
1) For me, the biggest obstacles to having trouble differentiating between Marisha and Keyleth was that their voices and way of speaking were pretty much the same. Travis/Grog, Liam/Vax, Laura/Vex, and Taliesin/Percy all had distinction between player and character voices. Sam/Scanlan were a bit more similar (there wasn't much of an accent), but, Scanlan's vocal cadence was different enough.
2) I enjoyed Talks Machina, but, I really like the flow and vibe of 4-sided dive.
Edit 1:
3) monks do require certain circumstances to shine; they cannot be disarmed (unless literally losing their arms), and they are predisposed to being stealthy. Even though they're MAD, I think *most* folks tend to want a decent DEX and WIS (class dependent, of course). If the DM isn't providing circumstances for the monk to shine, yeah, can definitely be a feelsbadman.jpg.
Edit 2:
4) Matt, while an experienced and amazing DM, was still finding his feet with 5E and learning how to do so as an actual play DM. He, more so than the players, is in a learning curve that is in the public eye.
Edit 3:
5) Travis is one of the most chill people at the table, so, as you pointed out, when *he's* clearly irritated, you done fucked up.
Edit 4:
6) The biggest draw for me, with regards to Critical Role, is that it's *very* apparent these are a group of friends sitting down to play DnD. They aren't an assembled cast; their chemistry with each other fairly drips off the screen,
That's a fair distinction to draw between her and the others, especially in a show quasi-built around the voices.
@@MegaphoneMan0 I heard about you because of your collab with Mike, and that's the next video of yours I am going to listen to/watch; final edit in my original comment is in.
Travis always seemed to like Orion the least to. Even in the very first episode he is glaring at that dude.
I remember reading a theory somewhere that Orion wasn't showing up too often when it was just a home game, and started showing up only when the game going live was on the table.
Orion never played a character to begin with.. only used Tiberius as a veneer for Orion himself
Speaking of Travis, towards Orion's end in some eps you can see Travis miffed and looks half about to climb over the table asking Matt if he's allowed to rage
man, I'm always sort of impressed by the grace people are willing to extend. I will fully admit - I'm a bad person in that regard. I would have had sympathy with Orion's struggles until I saw the tangible proof (not allegations) of him scamming his own community and kickstarter backers, until I listened to the voice message he sent a gf who later showed it amongst the allegations thrown his way.
To me, the condemnation of his behaviour can't just stop at what he did at the table - because let's be real, I don't think he would have been kept on the show once abuse allegations hit the table. And good riddance. Someone like that certainly needs help, but does *not* need a platform.
If he feels sorry, I hope he privately made amends with the women he's harmed, and paid back every single person he scammed. Beyond that, I hope he really *has* gotten help and grown as a person.
But I also find his pivot from raging on stream about how CR sold out, as well as the nasty accusations he made against some of his cast members, from scamming his fans and being under fire for abusing ex-gf's, to then retweeting CR announcements and being oh so vocally and publically supportive, as well as commenting on videos about this topic to paint himself a certain way as well as going on a podcast and talking about it, knowing full well that the CR people will never speak a word about it..... distateful, to say the least.
I tend to try to give grace by default, but in this case I just haven't seen anything besides what happened at the CR table and what Mike talked about in his video, so it's hard for me to go that hard on Orion when I'm getting all of my information about his off-table behavior second hand. I think I have enough context to do a dive on Tiberius as a character, and the effect of Orion's behavior specifically at the table, but I would feel irresponsible giving a holistic opinion of Orion as an individual. I needed to know some of it to inform what happened at the table, but there are a lot of people out there (it sounds like you included) who have done significantly more research in to the topic and who's voices should be listened to rather than my own.
All of that is something that I wish I had made a bit more clear during the video, and I also wish that I had focused my commentary a bit more than I did,
Note: He hasn't made amends or paid much of anyone back.
You got me to watch a six hour video about a topic i mostly knew about already fair play, subscription earned my friend great video!
Haha thank you so much!!! I'm very glad you enjoyed and loved having you in chat yesterday!
On Tiberius not having access to the silence spell. I am pretty sure in Pathfinder 1e Sorcerer shared a spell list with Wizards (that was how it was in 3.5, I believe). Because there are so many direct spells equivalences from Pathfinder to D&D (something they changed with the new 2e, because of the SRD debacle) I wouldn't be surprised if Orion, probably with Matt permission, just went and picked the equivalent spells from his known list without checking if it was technically a sorcerer spell. A few times he got confused by the way the spells functioned differently, so I don't think it is a crazy assumption. In other words, if it is a spell Tiberius knew from the Pathfinder days, I don't think it really mattered it wasn't on the sorcerer list.
Iiiiinteresting. Yeah, there are definitely some times where I didn't want to go too hard in case it was just transition weirdness. I remember a use of Telekinesis during the airship battle that was like that
@@MegaphoneMan0 In this case it was chat who brought up, not you. I made this comment because I know you care about being fair to Orion and I don't think most people do. People really nitpick everything he did and assume he was cheating even in situations like this, where there is much simpler explanation. One doesn't need to nitpick his spell selection and assume cheating or whatever, he fucked up plenty without it.
Another thing for the army part; Earlier, Orion asked Matt to swap out his nobility background ability to throw his name around for the research skill, then he threw his name around to ask for the army.
I remember Tibs being my favorite early in my initial watch through. I suspect that kind of early positive feedback may have played into his main character/star of Critical Role energy.
I found out the hard way that you can hold things too close to the chest. In my current campaign my morally gray wizard got extremely cagey whenever the party talked about their goals. By session 5-6 the barbarian cornered my wizard and forced them to spill the beans.
Lol, it can definitely happen. That does sound like a nice bit of character work on the Barbarian's part though! I find that, generally, sharing goals with the players but not with the characters can help alleviate out-of-game tension and allow those character moments to breath a bit more.
I can't speak to your game exactly, but it could be something to consider going forward. Your characters certainly don't have to be on the same page, but it generally helps if the players are.
@MegaphoneMan0 the barbarians player is a semi-professional actor. They are great.
Yeah, that's a great point. My idea was to play the wizard kind of maniacal, but secretly, their desire was just to rescue their little sis. It was supposed to be a surprising subversion of expectations that this apparently evil wizard was really just a really overprotective brother. But maybe I was too focused on the surprise factor and didn't pick up on how concerning it seemed hanging with this apparently evil wizard.
hahaha yeahhhhh I can see how that would be potentially disconcerting to them :P
I think that's definitely something I've seen the more I've played. Surprising players and DMs is inarguably interesting, and it would be disingenuous of me to say that it isn't, but I find that surprising the characters even when the other players themselves know can be incredibly interesting as well, just in a different way. It's something it took me and my table a LONG time to learn, and it's something I'm still learning as a DM!
Something I am really trying to take away from my BitD experience is "foreshadow danger". It's a big rule in BitD, because of how deadly the system is, that you never just spring traps or danger on your players. You always foreshadow it in some way, like "you open the door and feel the slightest tug of resistance on your initial push, definitely not natural for a door like this". They don't need to know what it is, they don't need to know how to deal with it, but you need to give them a chance. It's not fun for your players when they get jumpscared by a combat out of nowhere, or a betrayal that they failed all of the checks to even notice. The surprise SEEMS like it'll be cool, but more often than not it's much more cool when they had time to prepare for it, or at least react before they are swept up.
It's hard though, and it's awesome that you are thinking critically about your characters and play!
What shows early on in the show and later and in all future campaignes, is that the group tried to compliment each other in their task or story. Tibs tried it too, but he tried to make those moments about himself. The Arrow Moment or the moment Vax and Vex see each other again. And he had to steal the moment, cause in his mind set he had to contribut to the scene.
The moments when he heard what others have or do and he had to try and mimic it in one way or another.
Was a way for him to try and build connections but it never came over that way. Cause through his need to overshine everyones moment it never felt that way.
I never was a Keyleth hater. I loved her Charaker besides Grog and Scanlan the most.
One Problem was her Spells, but most of the time it was cause Matt had something other in mind what the spell means.
The other Problem was that Keyleth was always a moralty compass gor the group and shoved it in the groups face. Even when nobody liked to see/hear it. But her best moments where those moments.
they all had problems just plain out not reading the spells. ashley is still horrible about it. everyone else has gotten better, to the point that i assume they ask when they pick them. I am at the end of a c1 rewatch and the number of times matt has said something akin to "well what does the spell say" would have infuriated me as a DM. The first use of wind walk jumps to mind. When they first come up against vecna and hold person works on vax, making him autofail dex saves, with disintegrate following up. Expected it to just do SOMETHING extra/outside the bounds of what the spell does because it was 9th level and acting upset about it.
@@mcdotterson4103 my least favorite thing is when Taliesin says he's going to use a feature but never explains what it does, like bro we don't need you to be mysterious about what your character can do just tell us what it does
@@GusJenkinsElite I can rant about taliesin all day lol he bugs me, I'm happy I'm not in a game with him. He has orion tendencies just not as bad.
@@mcdotterson4103 Taliesin does make up for it by playing either homebrewed or more obscure races and (sub)classes a lot, which means he already has to communicate a lot outside of the game to make sure it fits within Matt's world, and frankly he also gets away with a lot by being extremely quick-witted. Not just because it makes his dubious behaviour more tolerable by virtue of being fun at the table, it also makes that his dubious behaviour is not nearly as grating.
Though, if I am fair here, I think in a different universe Orion could very well have remained part of the group, problem player or no. There are moments where he genuinely seems to at least try to learn from his behaviour, though I sadly can't really remember any specifics. Sadly episode 27 of the VM campaign is a thing, but as you lot pointed out a lof of his actions were not born out of malice, he just overstepped boundaries in an effort to be useful. It's just that when that behaviour is combined with real world issues it's just better to not have such a player at the table.
And frankly I don't have nearly as much problems with the female players (aside from Ashley sometimes stumbling but she's been absent a lot so it's understandable why she'd not nearly be as refined) as I would have with how Taliesin and Orion played at times. Keyleth's initial mistrust of Lady Kima kinda rubbed me the wrong way when I heard it for the first time because I am still rather religious, but honestly when I relistened to it she did raise some valuable points, just not as valuable in the DnD world where divine intervention is a bit more tangible than it is irl.
@the_tactician9858 Ashley is probably my favorite person on the show. She is 100% engaged with what's going, to her detriment when it comes to her turn lol I think the tablet with dndbeyond is screwing her. Get it out of there, give her paper character sheet and her daily prepped spells in card form, she'd be better about mechanics of her class.
All of the things orion did could be seen as a positive, if they weren't turned to 11 and focused on himself. Finding some mirrors to help Percy BEFORE the failure instead of just trying to do it himself after. Lockheed could have been a cute pet but again, cranked up to 11 by him, I'm teaching 33 tricks over 2 days to act like trinket, yadda yadda.
Taliesin is dialing up his things, in my eyes. Campaign 1, he'd tinker for himself and to supply others for their own moments. Campaign 3, he's trying to turn them into moments for himself with the others involved maybe knowing/remembering what's going on lol when he got the spell splitting hammer idea, then X number of episodes later is telling Laura to shoot his hammer instead of what she was trying to do, while refusing to explain himself lol just a total look of resignation from her. Unsurprised it never happened again.
My personal issue with Keyleth wasn't the fact that she was a woman, it was because she positioned herself as the moral center of the group. I'm just not a fan of characters who jump quickly to take moral high grounds, which Keyleth did more than any other character in VM, likely due to her nature as a Druid. I think it's mainly due to me not liking morality being boiled down to a strict right or wrong; I enjoy when morally-ambiguous situations are explored to their fullest depth. The Clasp Deal was the point I most disliked Keyleth, because there was so much that could have been discussed about the pros and cons, but Keyleth's hard-line stance of "No, this is absolutely wrong and there's no way we could even consider this" just really put me off.
As for Marisha's later characters. Beauregard and Laudna are up there with my favorites (Beau is my second-favorite from Campaign 2, losing out by a hair only to Caduceus, and Laudna is my absolute favorite of Campaign 3, and it's not even close). I am in awe of Marisha's skill as a roleplayer, and have a lot of respect for her ability and her dedication, but it was just the choice of character during Vox Machina with which I personally have a problem. I acknowledge Keyleth is a good character, and she was played very well by Marisha, it's just a personal hang-up on my end.
I think most people who support Keyleth cause to that time it was realy realy hard Push against her.
And you are rights she was a Moral hard-liner. And If you don't like that, thats your right. And i totaly see your point😊
But i have to say if Keyleth wouldn't had been such a hard-liner in morality, the group would have ended up morality wise like Tiberius. They wouldn't have cared. Cause everyone else except Scanland where totaly on the verge of first kill and then ask questions.
The Situation with the clasp, that you mentioned. Was hard, but i thought Percy shined more through this. And i could understand both Sides. Percy made bad decisions through deals. Keyleth sees it black and white through Keyleths naive way of thinking.
I think the misogyny primarily "gave permission" to harass the female players, rather than being the major reason for people disliking Keyleth.
Agreed, and imo it often made haters able to go way to far and actually harass Marisha instead of just criticizing a character normally
The misogyny was always going to be there and it was always gonna be at least a subconscious reason for a lot of people. It was the early days of gamer gate and Marisha is a beautiful woman playing a game that beautiful women aren’t “supposed” to be into. It wasn’t just Marisha although she bore the brunt of it, Laura and Ashley also got harassment and those three combined still get way more hate and criticism than their male counterparts
I clicked on this video thinking…man…how will this guy keep me entertained for 6 hours? Turns out you’re hilarious. May have even tempted me to watch you watch a show I’ve already seen…Jesus Christ
Hahaha I really appreciate it!!! I have a ton of fun making these streams, and I am planning on focusing more on highlight videos so that new folks can catch up without toooooo much rewatching of an already gargantuan show ;P
UA-cam randomly recommended this and I'll add on Sam-- Sam usually kept Scanlan the butt of the joke. Scanlan being a weird little sex gnome was part of the joke. So when he hit on a character you knew it was a joke. Not that Scanlan was entirely a joke character, you can see in the Scanbo episode that there was always real intention for the character to sometimes succeed and be awesome, but Scanlan being a person that hits on other people and being rejected, is part of his core character. I have no doubt that Ashley was always fine with Scanlan's jokes and found it funny. Tiberius randomly hitting on Vex will not play as well, we don't know if he hit on her if he's always liked her, or if this is a joke Orion just finds funny, it's going to be out of nowhere or feel blurred. It's not going to play as well, and you can see Sam try and play off it but he also looks uncomfortable. And it's Sam!
Yeah i think the main difference was that it was Scanlan, they knew what to expect so they didn't expect anything less. Therefore, it was fine for the group, also when it comes to player characters I noticed that Scanlan was more cautious about the jokes, Even with Pike, they were relatively tame compared to when he was hitting on npcs (like the paladin). On the other hand that was never apart of Tiberius's character, he had never made a joke like that in the show and at that time i think the show had been running for quite a bit, so it was extrememly bizzare and out of pocket for him to do so. It was also the *type* of 'hiting' on that was quite well uncomfortable.
Great video! Actually appreciate the length. Was informative and interesting. I love that I could listen to it during my work hours and not have to search for a new video every few minutes.
Adding to what was talked about at the start regarding Keyleth: I think your assessment is 100% spot on and the pushback you got like comes from the fact that some of her haters nowadays cannot grasp their own internalized misogyny and don't accept that critique over that hate-train. They try to be rational about it, but there's some digging needed to be done. As an example: some of them preferred Grog's less optimal actions saying how genius it was due to RP, versus her playing a fairly decent person with internal struggles that sometimes wasn't as optimal all the time as others. Some were fine with the guys messing up actions, potions, spells and feats, but lord forbit Marisha not knowing by hearth more than 100 spells and all their wording. Even Matt messes up and she was still getting some scary harassment live and on twitter.
Ashley was barely there and when she was, there was the whole angelic fanon stuff covering part of her, and Vex was "the hot sexy one" to many in the fandom. The 3 of them took a fair share of hate, but Marisha was just normal and the internet is not great to women being comfortable in their own skin.
I don't want to make assumptions about anyone's specific or particular history, but I do think it's probable that there are some people that have potentially progressed in adulthood that don't want to acknowledge or examine their own problematic history. I do also think it's very possible that there are some folks who just don't like the character or the player, not everyone likes everyone, but there is certainly a disproportionate amount of those people for it to just be that.
@@MegaphoneMan0the way you go about it is not only very mature but healthy and it makes me happy to see it. As long as someone goes "hmm wait a minute... he might be right" that's a win.
@@thisrogue I don't know how many drugs you do, but anyone claiming Laura is anything but comfortable in her own skin has to be on some serious dosage. Marisha had an unfortunate confluence of playing one of the most disliked roleplaying tropes(the moral grandstander), being amongst absurdly likable players while being more normal herself, and not yet coming into her own style in that setting. Yes people transferred hate for character onto the player, but honestly I get it. Most dnd characters are an extension of their player, so people get used to seeing them as that. No amount of claiming internalized misogyny is going to change that Keyleth was a pretty damn bad character, nor is it going to change that Marisha grew as a player and her other characters have been delightful since. She's never going to rate as highly as Jester, Grog, or Mollymauk in my books, but Laudna is up there for my favorite CR characters.
Hey Mega! I am one of those who watched CR (friend recommendation) and started to play DnD after because it looked so fun and a good time with friends and good stories that could be emotive and not only combat and maths and rules. So, yeah, we exist :)
Same here! Started when Campaign 2 began, went back and watched all of Campaign 1 before we even hit episode 20.
Now I'm a forever DM XD
I think it’s completely fine to eat on stream. Only thing I would be bothered by personally is if you would chew directly into the mic because I have misophonia 😅
People need to eat. It’s inhumane to forbid people from eating, unless it would be dangerous or unhygienic to eat at the work place (like in a lab), which it isn’t for a streamer.
Don’t listen to this person, take a 15-30 minute break. Don’t eat on stream. For the love of all that is holy.
@@fletcherw32 at least 19 people agree with me. The only place you can’t eat on stream is tiktok they ban for eating, because on there it was done for p*rnographic purposes. So now it’s just blanket banned.
Regarding the old lady incident, the other players were down with it. And even a few characters in the moment
Really love how extremely fair you were in your entire discussion of this. Like holy shit nobody else would couch their disagreement with this level of respect: 3:30:55
haha thank you! I'm not always that measured by default, but I try to be when I can :)
Even before I knew any of the controversy around him, Orion just has a vibe to him, like if they were all characters in a movie you could just take one look at Orion and know he's the one who's going to turn out to be evil.
Very Early into the Video but was not expecting the Atrioc mention, his situation was a complete shell shock situation for me cause of how long i had been watching him and it came out of no where. And i feel the same way, I know still some people that haven't followed up with most off it still harbor some disgust towards him which is fair enough, but like you mentioned the amount of effort he put in, the fact that he held strong with his friends even though the topic that caused the Drama was loosely relevant to them shows his character. And Vice Versa, the follow up scenario with Orion also shows his character
Stuff Regarding Orion:
1. His thoughts about being under-powered are completely bs, at one point he says that he's the main glass cannon of the group when they find the +2 AC ring, but at that time he literally had the 2nd most effective HP due to Dragon born, Con and the fact that he rolled only 4-6's on his Hit die lvl ups.
Side note, i know this is well past the stream but, the constant complaining about the Timer is kinda weird, if they don't want to hear your feedback that can watch the original video (i know that some of them were memes but)
TBh the Gus Johnson thing is more complicated than the original allegations, I recommend looking into it
"People loved Dragon Magazine! Why aren't they doing something like that anymore?" Because Paizo wrote Dragon Magazine and they are currently busy managing better tabletop games.
This was such a comprehensive breakdown!!!
Thank you so much! It was super fun to make, I could talk about this sort of thing for 6 more hours, and I'm so glad that folks are enjoying it!
I've been seeing this a lot in the comments and I know you're probably sick of it, but I want to thank you for keeping firm with Keyleth hate & the misogyny involved. Many people don't want to acknowledge that when we say misogyny we are talking about less so "I hate women, so I'm going to harrass Marisha online." and more so a subconscious bias that leads someone to think "oh well a woman wouldn't know how to play this game well" or a "woman are like this, so clearly she isn't acting"... this usually isn't even what people are saying out loud. So when people hear misogyny and aren't fully aware of it as a concept, they're like "well I didn't understand her" why not? I can see how some would misread it, but misogyny can very well play into misinterpreting female characters. Also, it was horrific to be a woman in nerd spaces in 2015. Just downright awful. I think many have tried to move past that/blocked it out from their memory but as someone who saw that, there is no way that the general anti-SJW/largely misogynistic and very prominent political movement didn't play into Keyleth hate. So again- thank you for holding your ground. It means a lot
Besides this ^ your VOD just popped up on my front page and I love how you rationalize/work through things like Orion's actions.
I've been waiting for this episode for ages, finally caught up 😁 I'm actually one of the ppl who came over bc of SGM's original shout-out, and boy did that pay off ;) anyway, I always really enjoy getting your view abt what's going on - super raw, but also very reflected once the discussion gets going. I really like how respectful you seem to be in general. keep it up!
Okay I gotta say, I scrolled and seen the title and thought hmm that might be interesting, then I seen the time and was like holy shit 6 hours now I gotta kinda watch at least a bit of it but after all is said and done I had a good time watching it it was a great stream
In my games it is a lot more common for characters to refer to subclass names then class names as they are more descriptive and less generic
just found this video, and i wonder if Tiberius being Tiberius is partly why no one has played a Dragonborn in the later campaigns. Definitely agree that the Orion/Tiberius divide was practically non-existent and even when he was speaking in his Tiberius voice it was basically just Orion. I had a way easier time understanding the Marisha/Keyleth divide and Keyleth basically just spoke in Marisha's voice. As for Keyleth, I really enjoyed her character and the way she was kind of at odds with the group (she was way more of a good-aligned person with strict morals than the rest of the party and it brought them into conflict). I caught up sometime around the Umbrasyl fight.
You speaked to my soul with this first line about Dragonborns being absent!
When I got the Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn book I was actually shocked to see that Dragonborns still existed in Exandria, I think we never saw a PC or NPC Dragonborn ever again (there was two guests in C1 that used the race, and that was it) and I kinda wished they were used more because the lore for Draconia after the attack of the Conclave is cool and fleshed out in the book.
hey there, nice Video and nice explanations, to your "to much investment" part, we call this "Characterbleed" here, or if it was his first Character it could be "FIrst Character Syndrom" in the community, at least here in Germany (yes we use still the englisch words for it ^^) both are common terms and thereare many sources for a longer ecplanation what it means, if your interested. But it seems way too much Info for the comment section xD
Greetz L.
The term you coined me and my group refer to as 'Avataring'- you're no longer writing or investing in the character- you are quite literally your character in a way that eliminates the line between OOC and IC; this is something I used to do and realized it was really really bad when I had an actual legitimate adrenaline rush when my character ended up in danger. My body went through a physical flight or fight response when I was attacked in the roleplay setting- that's dangerous.
Maaaaaaan, people are so much more clever than me at naming shit XD Avataring is a GREAT term for it, and another comment coined in "Character Bleed".
And you're 100% right. It's amazing to get invested in your character, and we should feel things for and with them, but there is a very distinct line where too much can become incredibly detrimental to the stories we are playing through and the tables we are playing at.
I'm really glad my point came across even if I didn't term it the best. I really think, in terms of actual observable in-table behavior (obviously there's a LOT of context off-table), this is probably the foundational pillar of Orion's "problem player behavior". A lot of his other stuff either stems from it, or wasn't able to be addressed BECAUSE of it.
@@MegaphoneMan0 I haven't watched c1 yet- just recently found out about c2 and finished it recently while designing a campaign in which we utilize Project Zomboid as the 'table'- it's been quite a blast homebrewing the dice system from scratch to translate into PZ more properly but I think I got something far more complex than anything I meant to go into for my first time GMing; luckily I do have CR to thank for inspiring me to take on this task and 15+ years of roleplaying experience that will hopefully allow me to recognize a problem player before they do to much damage. It is astonishing how quickly just one person can sour the mood on an entire campaign and effectively kill it.
Loving all your content! Though I'd quickly just mention that orion's city is noted on the map on the wildmount continent... However don't go looking for it till early to mid ep 60's.
Only an hour in, but it's nice that you recognize that Keyleth and Tiberius were both divisive characters for some very similar reasons even if you didn't make the connection explicit.
The biggest difference between the two's players is that one learned from their mistakes (and went from "GM's girlfriend who won't read her spells" to a beloved mainstay of future projects) and the other refused to acknowledge them.
On the topic of critical role as a brand i will be genuinely shocked if the default setting of the next D&D edition isn't Exandria. The two are truly intrinsically intertwined now
I think that assumes that WotC WANTS to highlight that entwinement. With Candela published and Daggerheart on the horizon, it's pretty clear that Critical Role is moving on from D&D, and I don't think that WotC will want to draw too much attention to CR in the future.
There is also that factor that even though Forgotten Realms is the de-facto default setting, WotC's official stance is that "the multiverse" is the actual default setting for 5e. That's more than a bit eye-rolly to me, I think default settings are incredibly useful and it would be better for everyone if they officially embraced FR as the default for 5e, but I don't foresee them changing their stance on that.
Hey, new viewer here, also a new viewer of Critical Role, starting from episode one. I had known a bit about the Orion drama, and learned from YT comments that episode 27 was his exit point. I have never played DnD myself before so some of the earlier moments where he was a bad teammate in the game kind of flew over my head but from the arrow incident in Vasselheim onward it started being noticeable even to me.
Anyway none of that really matters, guess just giving context to what kind of viewer I am, I just finished episode 27 the other day, and because I am also a drama goblin like how you described yourself I immediately tried finding videos on other people's thoughts on this, and any background that I might not know of. That's how I found this video and I quite enjoyed it!
Anyway, I won't repeat anything about Orion/Tiberius that everyone has been repeating ad nauseum for like 8 years, but one thing I haven't seen people mention that stood out to me, especially in the last few episodes, is that even though Orion seemed to not be able to separate himself from Tiberius, which you think would make it easier for him to be consistent with Tibs' character, he really wasn't consistent at all. Obviously the half chub thing when Tibs has never been a sleazy character is the biggest example, but another example I noticed is how inconsistent he was with the whole "I am a Stormwind, you will show me respect" attitude he sometimes expressed.
I'll just go through the two recent examples for the sake of brevity, but when Uriel was talking with Vox Machina after the Briarwood incident, and basically telling them they need proof the Briarwoods are evil or they will be outlaws, Tibs tries to play the "how dare you threaten a Stormwind" thing which Matt shuts down really quickly. And, despite the later context that Uriel was charmed, I still think that even if he wasn't that is a very reasonable attitude for him to have, and this is the ruler of the city Vox Machina lives in, if you should not ruffle feathers with someone, it should be him. I can kind of excuse it from Tibs because of the low wisdom but still maybe he should know better than to try to pull that in this situation.
However, the next episode when they have the flying cows adventure, when some random-ass gnome druid tries threatening them, Tibs doesn't do any of that, he is, oddly very understanding for the druid's argument, and argument which, in my opinion, is way less reasonable than what Uriel said. This gnome is allowing his roc to steal a ridiculous amount of livestock from people. Half of their cows in 2 weeks is absurd, and stuff like that could easily lead to famines that could kill many, MANY people, if they really want to stretch the consequences to a realistic degree. So Tibs showing that random gnome with barely any logical legs to stand on waaaaay more patience and grace than Uriel really stood out as weird to me.
There are other examples but like I said wanted to just use two to keep this comment (relatively) brief, and I haven't noticed anyone bring stuff like that up yet. Maybe I just wanted to vent because honestly that section with the gnome druid really annoyed me lol. Anyway I'll leave it at that. Enjoyed this video, definitely gonna check out more of your stuff!
Loved this! Looking forward to more
Probably not going to matter. But i will address something about the difference between 5e Sorcerer and PF 1e Sorcerer.
So the thing about a PF Sorcerer is that they trade of Spells known. For Access to more spell slots than most other casters ever get. In fact there is only one other class that does get the same amount of slots as the sorcerer does.
In 5e Sorcerers get the same spell slots as everyone else but a lot lesser spells known, similar to bard. But Bard gets an additional resource separate to their spells, inspiration and can actually use armor and weapons.
Now Sorcerers get metamagic, but metamagic is a resource than only works in combination with spells. so you are expending both at the same time. You can use the points to get more spell slots, but thats point you aren't using to enhance your spells. So regardless its tied to the same resource.
More recent additions have sorta addressed this with newer subclasses giving additional spells and allowing spells to be swapped more frequently and actually giving Sorcery points an additional function, it can now allow you to reroll skill checks. But back in the day at the start of dnd there where only 2 sorcerer subclasses and both didn't feel powerful enough compared to subclasses that where added later.
It is also the fact that there is a crafting system with high magic in pf is kind of part of the system. players get a lot more magical items with small bonuses that add up over time.
This is not something 5e does. 5e has more incrementally powerful magic items than pf does and no way to get access to them other than what the dm says.
Where as in pf there are rules set to how you could craft almost every single item in the game, with the exception of artefacts.
And of course, while extremely expensive. PF has items that make the sorcerer bloodline abilities more powerful and can even add additional spells known.
It's definitely hard for me to fully understand, as I haven't played PF 1e and only a bit of PF 2e, but that is certainly good context around why the switch might have felt more jarring. I talked about this to some degree with another commenter regarding percy's class choice, but it feels like Vox Machina really focused on the class and class choice when they switched rather than the... vibes of the characters, if that makes any sense.
Like, to me, even at this point, Percy really does not feel like a fighter. I've said several times that I see him as an artificer (even though that wasn't an option at the time). Commenters have rightly pointed out that Gunslinger in PF is a ranged fighter, the tinkering was totally separate from his PF class, so fighter makes the most sense if you are trying to get the closest 1:1 with Percy's PF build. Percy wasn't a magic wielder in PF, wouldn't it be weird for him to be an artificer in D&D? Personally, I think that most of the weirdness could have been abstracted and flavored to not be weird, and that the literal mechanics of what the class achieves feel much more Percy. While I agree that fighter is the closest D&D port of gunslinger, I think that (at least to me as of Ep 27), Artificer feels the closest to Percy as a persona, as a character, than Fighter does.
I bring all of that up to say, I think that they made a bit of a whoopsie with Tiberious. As you point out, while they both share the name "Sorcerer", PF and D&D sorcerer really aren't much alike in general. Tiberious' whole vibe, to me, feels MUCH more like a Wizard, and I think allowing him to focus his attention on things like crafting spell scrolls could have been a great outlet for his lost magic item crafting, and allowed him to be much more creative and flexible with his crafting. An evocation wizard even could have avoided the fireball incident ;) this ALSO would have been a fantastic outlet for the treasure loot goblins. Putting more magic scrolls in would be a great way to "give out more magic items and loot" without giving so many permanent things.
I think that this is a good lesson in porting characters in general! Something I'm really taking away is to focus really holistically on it. Try to ask the players about what they really like doing and want to do in the game, then look for a class that most matches that in the new system (although, if none of you have played, that can be difficult).
@@MegaphoneMan0 I agree that he probably would have been better off to convert to a Wizard rather than a sorcerer, cause it would have left him with a lot more options in the spellcasting department. especially like an evocation wizard would have been great for him and his play style.
As for the Percy artificer thing, while i agree with you. I again would like to point out that Artificer in its current state didnt exist when they started playing. It wasnt until later when Sam played one and even then it was still in UA and not fully resembling its current form. So a switch to Artificer couldnt have been made cause the class didnt yet fully exist. Could they have homebrewed it more for both Percy and Tiberius. Yes, yes they could have.
Honestly not to argue too much with the comment comparing Marisha with Laura and Ashley, but going into the show I KNEW who Laura Bailey and Ashley Johnson were from their voice roles and thus “knew and trusted them” where as Marisha kind of got shafted with the “oh it’s just Matt fucking Mercer’s girlfriend, okay nepotism much?” And it wasn’t until C2 when everyone started fresh that we could see the beginning of the story and like it’s been said, “we have to peace meal 2 years of lore with no help”
I have to say, Marisha is a good player. I just don't like Kelith as a character. Didn't have a problem with the moral hemming and hawing. Just had an issue with when she chose to do something about it and how she went about it. It tended to be detrimental to the group and didn't allow for as much redemption and forgiveness than I personally would have liked. I think some people didn't like the character and assumed it was because they didn't like the player. I also think you had a wide range of experience in rpgs on the streams. This could allow for the misunderstanding of Marisha maybe even moreso than the once a week timeframe.
I'm personally sick of people using the fact that just because not 100% percent of the hate a woman online gets is because of her gender that just all accusations of misogyny should be thrown out the window. Like they don't know what's going on, come on, stop running interference for assholes. People are so focused on trying to deflect a perceived accusation away from themselves that they'll whitewash the whole issue to absolve themselves of guilt by association. Personally I think if you're sending the person nasty messages instead of just leaving your issues with them in the comment section, you're an asshole no matter what your motivation is anyway.
I do kind of love that Mike is almost doing a David Attenborough animal documentary. 😂
I dont think it's accurate for Orion to claim that it was just his drug and alcohol abuse and not his behavior. I dont think you can uncouple those things. People who engage in drug abuse do not act in appropriate ways. Their behavior isnt reliable. And the fact that Orion said they were tired of the same old lines he used prior to stream suggests he had a long history of problematic behavior.
It's hard, I have seen addicts completely tank their life, and I would say that their life was ruined by their addiction. However, I agree that you can't really uncouple those things, and regardless of anything he is ultimately responsible for everything he did or didn't do during his time there.
But, at the end of the day, I'm not a psychologist or sociologist or anything like that, so discussions of addiction are a bit out of my depth beyond my own anecdotal experience with folks. I think there's a lot to be learned from looking at how his behavior affected those around him, but how culpable he is or what his behavior stemmed from probably isn't for me to say.
Late to the party but I don't think I've seen anyone else say this but I honestly think Orion wanted to be kicked off the show. Not at the beginning of course and perhaps not even consciously, but with everything he was dealing with in his personal life...I think he needed to get out but couldn't leave on his own, walking away from all that attention and community. There is no other explanation for how badly he acted for the entire 27th episode. He wanted to get kicked.
interesting theory.
@@Daltygaming2 I mean, he knew what the other cast wanted for their community relations, he also knew what they considered out of order in terms of table conduct yet we get episode 27 where he jumped on top of every problem player issue we know about.
@@conflictdiamonds to be kicked out or not to be.
Not sure if you listen to any NADDPOD but they have segments called dnd court that examine fan-submitted dnd horror stories and dish out funny "rulings"...could be a fun if you did something similar bc your analysis of Tiberius is spot on and funny
From what I’ve seen and heard about Travis he seems like a chill and down to earth guy.
Sure he’ll jokingly get upset like the time he broke a mechanical pencil for a played up bit like anger towards Liam’s shaving prank.
He doesn’t strike me as someone who gets actually angry with people easily.
So when *that* kind of person is making snide remarks about your attitude and is staring daggers at you like he’s holding every urge to go full wookie and tear your limbs off… you know you’re an asshole.
I actively refrain from watching early stream Vox Machina if I ever decide to watch it at all. I’m more of a mighty nein guy since that was where I found CR but either way I stay away from anything with Orion.
Even in the first episode his constant interruptions and comments always rubbed me up the wrong way. But I liked Tiberius that weird murmuring mannerism was funny and his “I encourage violence” was legit hilarious.
But yeah… everything else was just iffy and miserable. As someone who played with people like that as dms and players alike I can tell you by experience that they sap all the fun out of the game.
There's actually an interesting moment (at least to me) from Liam's one-shot that he ran between episodes 58 and 59 of Campaign 1. We just watched those episodes last week at the time of writing.
Sam's character (Sam) makes, what I would argue, is a more explicit advance on Laura's character (Laura), in a context where they are all playing *themselves* (that one shot was... weird), and Travis' reaction is super chilled. He plays up his character a bit, but is still laughing and ostensibly having fun (as is Laura). It drew a veeeeeeery stark comparison between the two moments for me. We can never know what was going on or how people felt, they are all actors after all, but the differences in Travis' reactions certainly says something about the vibes off-table.
@@MegaphoneMan0 exactly like Travis knows these people and what their like so he probably knows Sam better to know that he’s doing what he’s doing and saying what he’s saying for a bit and is just playing along.
The group have a nice way of not taking ships personal in game. Mainly due to them playing characters before because voice actors stuff like that happens with characters in a story.
But yeah the difference in reaction between Sam and Orion strikes me as definitely suspicious on Orion’s part. He must have done or said something to really make Travis not just mad at him but livid from his response and way of looking.
"My video isnt going to go viral but there is a none 0 chance he sees my video" 20k views later lol. 5:14
This may be a controversial thought, but I always thought that Orion just isn't a charismatic person and that's why he couldn't get away with some of the same stuff the others could. I'm not saying it's not his fault, or that he didn't have other flaws. Just that if he was naturally cool, most of his blunders would be accepted. Just think of all well liked bad guy characters, they are dicks but people still love them because of rizz
I think that, in general, there's definitely some validity to the thought that more charismatic people are given more of the benefit of the doubt. I actually talked a bit about that in the Liam's Quest video that I posted recently, where Sam did something that would have absolutely not gone well if Orion had done it.
I think that combines with the problem of his playstyle, seemingly, not really fitting the rest of the table after they started streaming. We have no idea how well it did or didn't fit pre-stream, but it certainly didn't after Kraghammer. The Vex arrow punch incident is something that is definitely very table-dependent as to how bad it is.
I think the true, ultimate, "problem behavior" that we were able to witness was the hostility in the face feedback. This *could* be seen as the character's hostility to feedback, but when the character bleed was so strong it was very hard to ever tell. Even if things had been hunky-dory behind the scenes, this hostility that was not very clearly in-character made it hard to engage with the character. Honestly, even if it was just meant to be a character flaw, I think that character flaw is one that someone should think long and hard about before bringing to the table, as it runs a bit of a risk of seeming out of character unless you make the separation incredibly and consistently clear.
The "I'm Tiberius Stormwind From Draconia" bit really got overplayed when it was around. I think orion wanted it to be a marketable catchphrase
(1h12) I understand convo searching for something beyond misogyny, but your initial take was the right take: it was internet misogyny. All the regular stuff, and then consider that this was happening in 2015--still in the most toxic throes of gamergate (most intense years being 2014 - 2018). You can bet there was crossover in the audience for gamergate and CR.
The thing is: misogyny as cyberbullying is an expression of hatred and resentment, but it can be triggered by so many things. You can list all the possible reasons about her character, her relationship to the GM, her acting skills---but those aren't the hatred. Those are the triggers or excuses. Once a wave like that finds a target, and one woman in an online project is deemed "the bitch" or "the difficult one" or "the bad one" or "the stupid one"... that's when the it becomes the play we've all sat through time and time again. It's very common that they don't hate all the women--they just find the one that best fits the narrative and the resentment they're used to. (They being the toxic viewers.) Sometimes it's a woman who's too pretty, or not pretty enough, or too loud, or too fortunate, or who isn't naturally demure... once that woman is identified, it's free reign to complain about her and then hide behind 'liking' the other women as a shield.
The misogyny isn't actually wrapped up in their problems with Marisha; it's a toxic movement constantly scanning for a target. If things had been slightly different, it could have been Ashley. And over time, the pendulum swings and Laura gets it too, when she's pregnant-- maybe because she looked slightly different, maybe because being pregnant meant certain male viewers couldn't justify fantasizing about her anymore, or maybe it was just too feminine a thing to proudly be...but she got a lot of harassment over it.
Moving through the internet game spaces and avoiding becoming the target of misogyny is like moving through an enemy place in BG3, while stealthed, trying to avoid the red gaze of doom. It scans the room and you gotta hide. If you walk right in, they clock you, and it might get toxic. If you roll bad on your stealth, they clock you, and aggro is triggered. That's what it feels like, except IRL we don't see the red vision lines. We know they're there and we could aggro them at any time, but we have to guess and hope because we don't have a button to make it safe.
I know this is long, but listening to this really brought to mind so much of the stuff I've seen on the internet in the last 10 years. The misogyny against Marisha didn't happen in a vacuum--it was happening at the same time as an enormous cultural movement towards cyberbullying women. Trying to identify the exact "thing" she did that made her a target instead of the other women is pointless: they're always going to pick someone. In 2015 the red gaze fell on Marisha. Once that ball gets rolling, it doesn't unroll. So CR has to turn off chat display, change social media engagement, and establish stronger walls between them and the fandom. Ride it out until the fandom actively changes their own culture and takes responsibility.
Imo I think Tiberius was an ideal of what Orion wants to be. Orion strikes me as someone who is insecure but wants to be the cool guy and thus tries to live that through his character. When he doesn’t get his way he feels his insecurity and lashes out.
Yeah, Tiberius to me felt like a new player and just mildly annoying. Until the half chub comment. Then all of his shit finally hit home for me.
Sam's characters are not evil. Yes chaotic but never evil
Regarding monk being good, I think monk it fine until you try to optimize characters, at which point you run into the fact that unarmed strikes don’t interact favorably with any feats, so your damage in anemic compared to other martials, you’re squishier than them on both AC and HP, and you’re left with stunning strike and mobility as your defining traits. Mobility is useful when it’s good and meaningless when it’s not, anz stunning strike makes you good at locking down solo bosses, something casters already cover. Monks suffer from being specialists is a niche that other classes are better at incidentally.
Mariaha was a bit of a lightning rod for hate. I think that if her character had been perceived as less grandstanding than she was a lot of the toxicity would probably have been focused more evenly on all the women at the table.
The music during break is fire. Is there a playlist, an artist, an album, a site to buy it?
I honestly can't remember which album that is. It is either "Welcome to Tal'Dorei", which was made by the Critical Role folks especially for content creators to use, OR it's the Baldur's Gate 3 OST which I got as part of pre-ordering the game (not sure if it's available for purchase seperately). I use both pretty frequently :)
I'm just happy to get an answer. Enjoy or have enjoyed joth medias before, so it's worth the search! Thanks for the answer, and soon im actually through this colossus!
3:48:30 I swear I have had the same rant before
I do believe its main character syndrome but he has cancer and I feel bad to bad mouth him.
Yeah, I had a bit of that realization later on... not necessarily RE: the cancer (although I think that's a totally valid feeling), but when we were talking about "how terrible it would be to be Orion nowadays with the success of Critical Role". It think it is VERY reasonable and good to talk about his actions, those are the things he has control over and I don't think that the externalities excuse those actions. However, the "regret" section felt more like bad mouthing, and I don't think that's constructive or good to do in general.
if it makes you feel better, he also scammed a lot of people out of money via a "charity donation drive" for someone who never received that money, as well as through a kickstarter that never delivered its rewards, and he was also abusive to *several* ex-girlfriends whom he still harrassed after the relationships ended. I do not feel bad for bad mouthing an abuser, negl.
I don't wish cancer on anyone, but I also don't like giving bad people a pass because a bad thing happens to them. A lot of people get cancer and don't become giant assholes who run fraudulent charity streams and make creepy sexual passes at their friends in front of a large audience.
Omg and I just found out this isn’t your only six hour video on this guy? You’re sick in the head ☠️
Lol, the other ones aren't all about him, they're about the show that he was on and his name is good for titles :P
Marisha caught a ton of flak for many reasons. Most of all, because she was inexperienced both as a player and an actor. As an inexperienced player, she chose a difficult class, that led to some pretty big mistakes in some pretty big moments. As an actor, she chose to RP a character with more depth and nuance then she was able to portray honestly. Nothing makes that more clear than the way Keyleth is characterized in the animated show, compared to the live shows. Live show Keykey was oftentimes abrasive, argumentative, stubborn, and combative in the face of religion. Keykey in the animated show is a young, sweet, inexperienced druid who is lacking confidence but is a very capable badass who is simply ignorant about religion. The stark differences between Keyleth in C1, Beau in C2 and Laudna in C3 are pretty glaring, but a tribute to her powerful personality. She didnt back down from the hate/criticism. She grew SO MUCH from previous campaigns. Laudna, for my money, is 1 of the best characters in C3 (my favorite). Clever tragic backstory, interesting character build, crazy intense with a sweet, childlike side. Beautifully portrayed. While the amount of hate she got was definitely shitty, chalking up all criticism of her to "Misogyny" is just lazy. Not saying that's your take, but it happens to be the opinion of many critters. Yes, the anonymity of the internet will always lead to children saying awful things about someone out of ignorance. But not all criticisms were unwarranted or should be off limits. Nerds love to discuss and criticize the things we enjoy. Its a very fun and natural thing to do and shouldn't be frowned upon.
Certainly! And I'm glad someone brought up something similar in chat during this. I don't find Keyleth all that annoying (probably because I personally agreed with her opinions several times during the underdark arc), BUT I definitely understand how one could and there's a solid chance I might later on.
I really appreciate having folks from a lot of different areas and lenses around to talk about these more contentious things with, especially when everyone has been so chill and nice. These are complicated issues and deserve thought out conversations ^_^
likewise, I think chalking up so much of the scathing misogyny directed at Marisha to "children saying awful things out of ignorance" is lazy, as well as the insinuation that most of the criticism was just "nerds discussing and criticizing things they enjoy".
I think Marisha being an inexperienced player is a bit of misconception? Travis,Laura, Sam, and Ashley never played before. Liam played one in his youth. Taliesin was brought in to be the clincher as the most experienced player at the table and help Matt teach the newbies. Marisha played in Matt's campaign before. I would agreed that she is least experienced actor in the group.
@@InkcharmAbsolutely, and you pushing back on this is very much appreciated. Attempting to retcon the fact that there was a ton of very clear misogyny directed at Marisha, or that the female cast members have received a staggeringly disproportionate amount of hate relative to the male cast members, is a lot lazier than acknowledging a reality you may not feel entirely comfortable with.
It was very difficult to follow this video when every event in the timeline is reference but never explained.
Like I don’t know what the arrow event was… or the temple event…
So I’m six hours you can’t even give me that??? Jfc nothing better than having to click back and forth from this video, and another explaining your topic
This is part of a much longer series of mine (Critical Eyes), which itself is based on an even longer series called Critical Role. I do assume a level of knowledge about the events leading up to this, whether my videos or the critical role videos. This will absolutely be difficult to follow if you don't have that
nah the marisha hate isn't really a women thing. i'm currently rewatching campaign 2 and good god! the way she interacts with liams character in the first third of the story is so grating. it legitimately elicits anger in me at times.
she also likes to insert herself in other people's moments. she's not the only one doing that but she does it differently, kind of barging in. and mainly to tal's characters. hard to describe, english isn't my primary language.
I recommend this video on the topic, it goes deeper into it, and I filmed a bit for it!
ua-cam.com/video/3jf1h_CD-og/v-deo.htmlsi=-KRxm1O9YYNADu-Z
The whole marisha is only disliked because of misogyny is such a dumb thing I don't get why people say it. Laura is probably the most beloved of the cast and Zara and Pike were the most hyped guest characters.
Same goes for people just not understanding keyleth isn't marisha or they didn't see what she's going for. Sometimes it's not that people don't understand what you are doing or only don't like you because you are a girl. Sometimes they just don't like you or think you are annoying.
Like for instance I think Percy is annoying and that tal tries too hard to come off more smart, punk and weird than he actually is. It's not because he's a guy or because I don't get what Percy is going for, I just think it's annoying.
Harassing is dumb and wrong but so is insisting that you have to like something
I made this video a few months ago, so I don't remember what was said in exact terms. But, I will say now, that misogyny, at least in the communication of the internet, rarely directly manifests as a "reason" to dislike someone. It enhances existing dislike, and makes one seek out excuses for dislike when they otherwise wouldn't. It is feelings that already exist that are simply activated by other things.
The primary thing that I have observed, watching and experiencing everything CR for the first time, is that Marisha is held to a higher standard than the guys (possibly with the exception of Matt) when it comes to the actual game portion. It's totally fair to dislike certain characters. However, there are many who's dislike is more consistent, takes on a higher magnitude, and is backed up with far less thought, when it is directed towards women. Not every person that dislikes Marisha falls in this category, but many do. You say that Laura is the most beloved of the cast, but frankly, I haven't seen that love yet. The only milestone moment regarding Laura and the audience that I'm aware of is "Broomgate".
Even to use Percy/Tal as an example, in a Q&A in 2016 that I'm currently making a piece on, the cast members and audience all acknowledge that Marisha gets far more hate than any other member. Tal isn't even brought up, by the cast or audience member asking the question, in reference to it. They may both play characters that some could validly dislike for one reason or another, but for many that doesn't matter. Potentially valid aspects to some are just excuses to express already held beliefs to others.
Of course every single person that dislikes her doesn't do so with backing misogyny. If I remember correctly, I, Mike, and no one in chat ever claimed that. Nor did any of us say that you need to like her. I don't like several parts of Keyleth, but dismissing the real misogynist segments in our communities only gives them room to thrive.