It's just not fun to watch someone change something mid combat to railroad an outcome. Could have easily just made the enemy burst as it was destroyed doing AOE. You can have a different DM style but changing rules because you didn't have a back up plan is disrespectful to the players.
When a player reads a rule and the DM makes up a new one in the moment to punish a player and the players asks “what’s the rule?” Only to be met with “it is what I say it is and F you if you don’t like it!” That’s when I get up and leave the table never to return.
Yes, Aabria's DMing is a horror story to me. This is not about "rolling with the punches". The players are just WAY too nice. If you NEED to kill off Cyrus, there are COUNTLESS proper ways to do it. Literally countless. This wasn't one of them.
Robbie: "I'm unclear, what are the rules?" Aabria: "the rules are whatever the fuck I say it is" Do not tell me that's not a sign of a toxic DM! I would have lost my shit if I was Robbie. It's so condescending to talk to a player like that especially if they are asking for clarification
This moment is ripped right out of DND horror story threads from reddit, if it wasn't Abria, I think a lot less people would be trying to defend this...
I believe in equality. Just swap the gender or race of the people involved in a situtations. If it feels wrong when those things are reversed, then it likely is and everybody needs to stop excusing toxic people's behaviors
@@xEvilRaptorx exactly. I’m all for having tables to all nationalities, sexualities, genders, any walk of life long as you’re respectful and there for fun. This was just toxic behavior regardless of the fact it was the Spider Queen’s MO. You’re the DM, you remain neutral and follow the dice rolls to make the story’s path. Felt like no matter what happened the story kept getting pushed back into a set narrative.
Let me start by saying, I am not raging, I'm not angry, but do not like all that happened in the last two episodes. This just happens, things don't always develop the way you as a watcher and fan hope and sometimes things will be frustrating, but I honestly hate the type of Uber-Fans that overreact so hysterically to anything they don't like, all the time. I've had my problems with Aabria's DMing before. She's prone to just disregard rules and what things to, if she wants something to happen, but I also like a lot of what she does. The problem is, that in this case (unlike other times she acted similarly, but for the players) she had an outcome she wanted, and she went against the rules, against what players wanted, and I'd say even against the whole spirit of TTRPGs to get there. A DM has so much power and so many options, a good and experienced DM like Aabria should not need to act like she did, to achieve what she wants, she really should have known better and found a better way. It does feel as if she or maybe even CR and her together wanted to get rid of the Crownskeepers for good and open up the way for Dorian to rejoin Bells Hells. Maybe she doesn't have any good ideas for them any more or doesn't particularly like the characters. I don't mind integrating the Crownskeepers into the campaign that way, because for one they did need a way to bring Dorian back and tbh. While Matt might not have been sure that one of the player characters would die, he probably knew it was a likely occurrence and that might be why he set this up beforehand, to give a bit more time for a grieving player before they had to present their new character.
I mean...that chromatic orb thing was horrible fiat. Don't agree? Put yourself in the player's shoes for a second. On a whim a spell you've cast before during play which you know both in and out of character is single target spell, suddenly becomes an AOE spell. The DM has now arbitrarily made you hurt your friends' PCs. That sucks. Then add in that due to this change it also kills your PC's brother. Frustrating. Now, normally there could have been some other effect that only the DM was aware of that over charged or otherwise changed up the spell. OK, fair. However, in this case it was due to arbitrary DM fiat, with them stating that "You know...'thunder' sounds like it would effect more than one person" (paraphrased). If this had happened to me as a player (after a bunch of other weird things that outright ignored RAW), I'd seriously reconsider playing at that table going forward. Player agency is important! Otherwise, it's just DM story time and nothing you do as a player matters. Darn right some critters took issue with this. I'd think any TTRPG player easily could, tbh.
She even umm'd and ahh'd fir a while before making the decision, even saying out loud "Do I want to be mean...." which just shows that she pulled it out of her ass on the fly. I think Robbie even said "be mean, but fair". She then proceeded to be completely unfair. Horrible to watch, and it makes me cringe to think that someone might see that and think it's okay for a DM to do that just because they saw it on Critical Role...
But what if we're the reverse, and that DM fiat was beneficial to the Players/PC? Would you have a problem then? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say no you wouldn't. Matt has gone outside of the rules on the fly as well and let's not act like Aabria hasn't used fiat in favor of players as well.
@@nojusticenetwork9309 I just think there is a huuuuge difference between acting outside the rules to help players and to go out of your way and disregard the rules to basically lead to the end you want, no matter how much it goes against the rules and the whole basic concept of player agency. So personally, I am fine with a DM breaking a few rules if it is to help the players, but not break the rules AND take away a player's agency to do them in. Since both things are not at all the same, being fine with one of them has no real influence in regard to your stance on the other.
@nojusticenetwork9309 you're exactly right, it wouldn't be as much of an issue if the rules were bent in favour of the players. This is the difference between "rule of cool" where you bend the rules for the sake of rewarding player creativity and creating a fun moment for them, vs being an adversarial DM who doesn't play fair and changes the rules on the spot to hurt the players. This isn't just about adherenece to the rules, it's about the general attitude you take with your players, and running a game that is fair and fun.
For me my major issue with Aabria DMing was that she was actively antagonistic. She repeated over and over about how she intended to kill PCs. She made rulings that put characters in danger or got them hurt, or in the case of Cyrus, killed, because she had a plan to kill PCs. She railroaded so hard to get Opal to kill them even though her player was tryimg every way to not do that until she was basically given no choice. You could see the defeat on Amy's face when she counterspelled Firarai's fireball. She didn't want to do something like that and Aabria just smiled about it. I've seen Aabria as a player and as a DM and it always seems like she wants fun. She wants cool moments to happen, but these two episodes just seemed like she didn't care about that, she wanted blood. As a DM, I would never kill PCs just because I want to see them dead. If it makes sense in the narrative and/or in the combat, absolutely a PC can die, but I never set out with the explicit intention of killing a PC. It just left a bad taste in my mouth and I feel bad for both Dorian and Robbie, because he just had to sit there and think, "Wow, this is all because I wanted to come back and play more?" I would definitely be upset, especially about the Chromatic Orb. I understand they're on a show, but it's 1. A single target spell, and 2. Dorian would make sure not to hurt his brother, regardless of hubris, that's his brother that he sacrificed everything to save. He would not risk a wayward spell like that. Such a frustrating scenario that just seemed like Aabria being an a-hole for no reason. Honestly them having to kill Opal would have been interesting and tragic, but instead, they all just walked away with Cyrus dead. Unsatisfying ending to a less than stellar battle and an amazing group of players wasted.
I stopped mid 92 and went back to watch EXU because I hadn't watch it. Most of the times it feels like Aabria has something against Opal/Aimee... She boons all the other characters while relentlessly going after Opal and making her life hard. I'm totally not feeling watching EXU because of this. I liked watching Aabria as a player but as a DM it's just been a drag. At this point I really just want to catch up with the story so I understand where the filler in the main arc stands. Bleh
I agree. Aabria is' trying to force her narrative by giving the players a false sense of control over their decision. Where Matt would adapt without bending the rules. Example: 1) My character take the left path DM) As you take the left path, you found you went the right path instead. 1) I roll a 25 for attack and hit the 16 AC DM) You miss (because I dont want you to) 1) I roll a 25 for my saving throw on your 18 DC DM) It still hits you . She feels like a bully. Honestly, Episode 92 and 93 were hard for me to watch.
It seems like an interesting detour from the main plot. The unfortunate downside, as you mentioned, is that it started the episode after FCG died and a lot of people were wanting to see the aftermath of that and the effects on the main cast. So to suddenly switch to a bunch of characters they hadn't seen in a couple of years or was a right kick in the pants...
My biggest issue is the spell change, everything else is hyper subjective and a “like it or not it’s going to happen” if you set a precedent with a spell change then it stays going forward unless you immediately be toxic and go “well it was a one time thing that you didn’t want” which is a big horror story. Now that chromatic orb is one of the best aoe spells now which is just m e h
If productuon and Aabria put 10 minutes more thought into it you could have structured it really well. 1) You prerecord the one shot 2) Robbie is reintroduced at the ene of episode 92 wherein he says Cyrus died Opals went on a Ramapage. Im out for vengeance. WOW A HOOK?! 3) Release the one shot OPTIONALLY to the community that care about what. The people who really care about the crownkeepers will watch it. The people who don't won't and can continue to appreciate Dorian.
Why is any of that Aabria's fault? Do you think she ia running production or creative direction at Critical Role. This is on Matt and HIS team. He wrote this plot point, hired the freelancer and she did her job. Marisha ia the creative director. You expect the outside person to come tell them how to run their production company?
@@SamuBrownYT they have said time and again Aabria was heavily involved with the process The fuck you mean Matt wrote this, Aabria wrote this and it was horrible, defend your weird cult leader somewhere else
I skip anything Aabria DM'd. She's a DM vs. Player type, thinks its her job to screw over the party not play along with them. And she's really not that good. Tried a little ExU, but hated it all. She is extremely arbitrary and just changes the rules on a whim to fit her current mood. She's trying sooo hard to be iconic and with Matt sitting at the table, only manages to be ironic.
Not when you're DMing with solid flow control. I think my turns avg 5 minutes or so, with especially tense ones coming up to 10 or the rare 20 mins when people are making big risky choices. Hour long turns are usually a result of a few different failures, and can come from the DM or players. Esp common in new players who are still grasping the choices available.
@DarkhalfBreed Depends. Turns at tables in the groups I play in are about a minute max. I'd quit a game that wasted that much time. It's disrespectful to the other players not knowing the rules and wasting time. Especially when most people only have time to game once a week. If you are in a system that is overly complex or people don't know the rules than yeah. I haven't seen the specific episode with the hour long turn but it sounds dreadful so I won't anyway. I could see a whole round with 8 characters and 10 enemies going an hour. But a single players turn? God no
@@MyrddintheBard I think they ment rounds not turns,not a single turn was an hour but some were prolonged by alot of in-game and out of character player interactions.
@@DarkhalfBreed Yeah I used to have games like that in 5e. It was fun for final boss fights but most combats can lose their steam. Most combats I run are usually about 10 minutes. 30 for big ones. Less complex systems with less HP get the job done for my group
Personally, I think the criticism is valid in every case, but especially with Aabria's DMing. She is at the very edge of being on that RPG horror story DM list especially with her behavior during the 2 sessions in this "filler arc" Railroad narrative was fine (sometimes have to especially for 1 shot or time constrained adventures. Having different rules to another DM, also fine. But the problem was that she outright gets the written rules wrong and then attempts to lecture the audience not the players on how they work. She did it with the Darkness spell in the first filler episode, and then again when Robbie was asking for a rules clarification so he could resolve what he can actually do in his head. This is a sign of a very very antagonistic DM. It didn't look like a fun episode, it didn't look fun for the players, she actively went after the audience, it was entirely a mess as a production and I really really hope the cast talks to her and sets her straight on how she should treat people going forward because if I was a player at that table, I would not be coming back.
I personally enjoyed her in this episode, she's very much in her element in horror. I don't know the rules (just something basic), so I'm not bothered by her decisions. I was entertained.
Yeah, her literally saying "f- you" to the audience was super wild to witness. Extra wild considering they launched Beacon shortly after that. I wonder if she was trying to pull one of Brennan's "get in the comments" type wall breaks, but she's way more controlling/aggressive so instead of being a wink-wink thing (like it is when Brennan does it), it just felt like bullying. I really enjoyed ACOFAF but I don't think I can ever watch something Aabria DMs again, those eps were too hard to watch. I felt bad for the fans, bad for the players, and bad for Matt any time he wilted under her mean-ness. Just bad vibes all around. I agree that I really hope someone talks to her so she doesn't put other players through this, especially since she flat-out said she thinks the criticism is ridiculous. Just very troubling to see.
To me, when abria came on it felt like the last season of game of thrones. The story in my opinion should be driven from everyone at the table, and not the DM forcing a square peg into a round hole. Oh boy the combat was really really slow. It's like an hour and a half for one round, that's just too long.
Straight up, the filler wasn't the problem, AABRIA was the problem. Her personality makes her BARELY tolerable as a player, and she SUCKS as a DM, and it's not her STYLE, it's her PERSONALITY. Most of the fans dislike her, judging by the comments, but they keep foisting her on the audience. It's very annoying.
You completely summed up my feelings. I cannot understand how anyone likes her. She makes me as uncomfortable as Brian Foster did, and I never understood why people liked him either...
I feel the same way. I know as a DM that they're suppose to enforce rules and have the final say, but she seems way too controlling and unnecessarily barks at others, at least that's how I saw it in C3E93.
@@VaxtrisI’m glad someone else thinks this cause I’ve never seen her DM till now and the unnecessary amount of venom behind how she said it. “Look at me, it’s whatever the fuck I say it is” is remarkably disrespectful and outright rude. And he was just asking a question out of sheer concern cause she was just straight up changing the rule and you could tell it didn’t sit right with him or really anyone.
To the haters replying to this comment and any people who also agree with them, Brennan did the same thing in EXU, Matt is sometimes a little softer as he's killing his players but Brennan doesn't get flak for putting on the Bad Guy Hat and I think y'all should really look inward to find out why you think it's okay to bash on Aabria for doing the same shit Brennan did. The DM is the person running the game and they're also the friend of the people playing the game, please do not shed tears and speak for Robbie. Just don't do that. It's really common sense.
@@CassieCarryd Brennan put the bad guy hat is way different than Aabrya change the working of a spell after the player had use it, without any warning or clue.
I am honestly just not a big fan of Aabria, especially as a DM. I do understand why they did the small branch off, but kinda hope that the thread with Aabria DM-ing on C3 is finished. Really feel like the filler was dropped on us due to FCG dropping what he did on the crew. Now as far as story, I feel like the only reason this filler needed to be aired is maybe because of Opal's part later in the story. Otherwise, it could have been easy for Robby to just have a bit of backstory on the time between. Could have been simple for Matt to have everyone leave the table and bring Robby in solo, like he has done in the past. @johnpo2 brings up a solid point, one of the reasons I do not care for Aabria's DM style. At the end of the day, I think it bothered me the most because I wanted to see the main cast after such a major loss. I also want to put this out there. I am not hating on Aabria or what CR did. It just wasn't for me, and I can understand why it bothered many.
I wouldn't call myself a devout Critical Role or Aabria fan; but I wouldn't call myself a detractor of them either. I view them as people who share a love with me for the greatest hobby on earth. Only occasionally will I tune in and perhaps listen in the background while I prep my own campaigns; after all, the BEST dnd is the one you get to play in! That said, THIS episode was ABSOLUTE TRASH! DM's come with numerous variations in style and that's absolutely fine; it's part and parcel of what makes the hobby awesome! And I think we can (mostly) all understand and agree that "railroading" is defined in many different ways; some good, some bad (personally, I believe it's required to a certain degree else the story never progresses; after all, I choose how the villains/world reacts to player agency). I can even understand the difficult position Aabria was in, having to rather shoehorn an event that leads a player to rejoin another party while trying to maintain a vibe all while under a time crunch... I get it. But playing so loosey goosey with Player Agency and at times even straight up ignoring it? I was FORCED to watch after my ears recognized the symptoms while trying to prepare my own next session! And much like a train wreck I couldn't rip my eyes from, I could only sit there feeling disgusted deep in my gut. She's supposed to be representative of the shared community, she's supposed to be receptive to her players actions while laying down clear and concise information for them to interact with/react to in GOOD FAITH. Instead, she decides to subvert what is mechanically spelled out in front of him, and when he questions it she responds with "the rules are what I say they are, cause FUCK YOU" (all while looking directly into the camera). That wasn't a response meant for him, but for the fans; either way, entirely unprofessional. She could've changed the environment noticeably enough to impress upon the players that spells get kind of funky here (in which case, any one of his spells could've done the deed with him understanding at least some of the potential), or had any number of other vectors kill his brother (literally rocks falling would've been better, or the crown takes a lair action to seep his brother's vitality away); but no, she utterly STOLE his agency away then made light of it in a socially deaf manner. She bore zero responsibility to address the fandom or even a subsection of it in the middle of play; let alone in such a negative fashion. She does bear the responsibility to provide a safe environment for her players and the audience (to some extent as a guest) and present herself as a responsible DM worthy of her players trust. She bears this responsibility because the CR community (and I'm certain her own as well) look up to her as some form of "pinnacle DM". Someone who should be setting a proper example of how the DM/Player relationship SHOULD be. She simply failed to uphold her responsibilities here. She tried coming off as some "bad bitch", but she ended up only coming off as a bitch instead. Which is a shame. What she did fell short of only Adam Koebel's incident; thank GOD, cause that would've been so much worse. It's bad enough that this incident will prove to be a precedent for many future DMs that it's quite ok to write a complete story during your prep (player agency be damned), and the only actions that matter at the table are the DMs. As for myself, well... I held her in high regard despite the fact that I don't jive with her DM style; I still respected her way of storytelling. But, this is DnD; and that means COOPERATIVE storytelling. Perhaps she can take some time to reflect on that.
@@spawnofmolagbal317 I couldn’t care less what she does to be honest. I’ve moved beyond this conversation, beyond her, and beyond anything she’s apart of. Far too much negativity out there to get hung up on one source for too long. Wish her the best but she’s no longer in my existence.
As someone watched EXU I feel like for me the issue is this being in the main campaign. They could have easily made this another one shot thing to wrap up crown keepers story. Even at the end of the story Dorian comes back to the main story so he could have just said sth like my brother has died and if wwe wanted to learn how and why would could have just watched the one shot if we wanted to. But with this way they put pressure on lots of people that didn't watch the whole exu story since this came out of nowhere and naturally people had no idea what was happening and quickly lost interest with these 2 episodes. This was kinda giving me more of a `spinoff of a show got cancelled so the main character of that show returned to the main show but we actually had to watch 2 episodes of that spinoff in the main show' than a crossover they intended for.
The thing that made me feel weird is that Cyrus' death felt very obviously scripted. If my DM did what Abria did for that chromatic orb I would be very annoyed, I respect my DM but that is just plain bs, my single target spell somehow becomes an aoe? I fire a Disintegrate and for some reason it explodes so my 2 friends standing near the villain also both die? It was just a really strange thing to do. Even more strange is that no one seemed to care too much, which made me feel like this was probably discussed beforehand that Syrus will probably die in the fight. Dariax also healed Syrus which I don't know if I just missed it, but I think Abria didn't even bother to give him that 20+ HP, which would have probably kept him alive for 1 or more attacks from the spider. Other than these moments yes the combat was a bit slow because of the really long descriptions but the rp was great, I found myself tearing up at a few sections.
Scripted as in: A single sentence is written in DM's notes and it says "Cyrus has to die" xD? Because the way Aabria has tumbled her way to this point felt as if she had a goal in mind, but had no clue whasovether as to how to achive it :/
Knowing what we now know, why sam had to suddenly leave, i think i understand a little more why they had to kind of scramble to figure something out to buy time and work stuff out behind the scenes. I know it probably wasnt done in the best fashion, but again knowing what we know, now, i get it.
All the people blasting critical role and the players personally should feel terrible and apologize as profusely as they complained. I doubt many people actually reflected on their actions but hopefully they will.
Ima say this without spoilers but Matt the dm is writing this as you go so with the loss of a PC and the death of a big bad Matt needs time so yes a filler episode was needed cause the episode after the PC death was just the team coming to grips with the loss!
This "filler" was very very likely scheduled way before the pc death incident, or the death of the bad guy even happened. It was merely poor timing of a pc death. This was always going to be done.
My thought process about it is, with the episodes not being live, it's pretty reasonable to assume they actually play at about a weeks offset to account for editing. Not only that, but they most likely aren't usually playing even on a Thursday night, but at different nights thru the week when schedules allow. This includes guests coming in, so factoring in having aabria and the rest on set ahead of the start of the session, it doesn't necessarily mean anything that they were scheduled to be there. They have at minimum the whole week to set it up, and it's perfectly doable to have been on the fly to account for the unexpected death. That all being said, I'm sure it was also just fun for Matt to have a little break and play a couple sessions within the main campaign. It doesn't need to all be a conspiracy theory
6:58 I beg to differ. I as well as a lot of Dorian fans would say this is the most impactful piece of side story we got out of Campaign 3. More impactful that some of the detour BH has actually take. We got direct confirmation on the stances of the Deities both Prime and Betrayer gods. Not only that, without this little side story it would be weird for Dorian to just pop up back without knowing what happen to the Crown Keepers. You said it yourself, this campaign is the best long form story telling you have seen. And knowing that EXU kicked off campaign 3 and Kimal followed Dorian meeting back up with them after leaving BH. Robbie's return would be unjustified without taking a full episode break. Given that he popped up right asked Orym asked for him.
Yeah especially sitting here after it has concluded. It was short, sweet and to the point. It filled in the blanks it needed to, punctuated the Crown Keeper arc and explained Dorian’s reappearance. Was I shocked and confused, yeah for a minute, but I ended up really enjoying it
This, literally this. I do not understand the way people feel like this was a total mistake, an unneeded interruption, whatever! Big bad things happened and the group needed this segway to happen at some point - it just happened to follow a big PC loss. This "filler" tied together a lot in a narrative-led bow. I loved it, I'm so happy Dorian is back, what the heck is Sam going to pull...
18:00 I don't know, being a diehard fan I get a lot of YT recommendations and if the titles are all "CRITICAL ROLE SUCKS" - "CRITICAL ROLE ARE MAKING LIFE ENDING MISTAKES" while I felt nothing wrong has happened I still face so much ire just by the algorithm shoving things in my face. so I'm going to be real sick of all these people making mountains out of mole hills and having the content that relates to my fandom be overwhelmingly negative is affecting my enjoyment of it. I can't imagine what it's like for people with live feed social media like twitter who are faced with it all the time.... I think it's only natural to just want to leave the cast alone for choices they made and not be confronted with opinions of such dire magnitudes all the time....
I think that's the difference between you and all the negative Nancies, you don't feel the need to be overly negative/critical when you don't agree with small decisions. I'm the same way, the chat really perplexed me last Thursday. I couldn't believe how many people were just tearing the whole thing down. Like.... don't watch it then?! And the rebuttal I saw to people saying that was usually, "I pay for this, I can be here if I want to." Which is a weak defense for poisoning the chat. I even saw people say things like, "they know they have to PLEASE the fan base." Like no dude, it's their show and they are telling the story they want. I think life's too short to be angry and rant and rave in a public forum. I'd much rather just trust the process of the show and know that it will definitely have a deeper meaning.
@@levypoulter I hold the opinion she's a trash DM as well. Nothing to do with comparing her to Matt though. She flaunts breaking trust with her players which is the foundation for Cooperative Storytelling.
@@levypoulter It's because she's a bad DM. She's way too heavy handed and comes into the game with an antagonistic attitude. It's a typical "DM vs. Players" situation. A good and level-headed DM understands that you have to work with your players just as much as you need to work against them. She twists outcomes to fit her own purposes instead of deftly manipulating events and situations in order to make things happen organically. She even went so far as to change the actual written rules of a spell in order to make something happen that she wasn't competent enough to make happen on her own. That right there puts her incompetence on full display for everyone to see. The way she runs a game is a red flag to any player who might come across her in the future who doesn't want to feel pure frustration through a whole campaign. She's a killer DM in the making and I'd be surprised if she's ever managed to keep a game intact for a whole campaign outside of RUclips. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a revolving door of players in her private games.
The problem I have with Aabria here is two fold. One, she exibited every behavioral red flag you see in bad GM vids on RUclips. Railroaded, told players how THEIR character felt, was actively antagonistic towards player and PC, "the rules are whatever the fuck I say they are", etc. It's every red flag. Two, and probably the one that annoyed me most, is changing the rules of chromatic orb. Why does it bother me? Because it isnt her world! She arbitrarily changed the rules for a spell we've seen used in this universe, and the universe isnt even hers. It's Matt's. Is he now hamstrung by this going forward? Everytime Dorian uses CO, does it have to be AOE for it to make narrative sense? Was that really HER decision to make in the 4 hours she was the GM? To completely change a spell on a whim so she could get her moment is... a choice. And generally I love her as a player and I can see the appeal when she GM's, but this was a train wreck for me.
Because the toxic fans should stop being toxic. This is their campaign AND THEIR WORLD NOT THE AUDIENCES. Matt etc chose Aabria and they put it here for narrative reasons. Simple as that. Sit back and enjoy the ride basically.
@amethystimagination3332 I try to stay out of the community cause it can be so toxic :/ I enjoy the content for the contents brilliance. I really enjoyed the break, Aimee is frickin gold and Aabria has such a cinematic style though it does drag a bit. Part of the issue is the rail road feeling I think, but that's the cut scene idea? The memory interplay during combat was a nice break at times from combat that some people will zone out during, after an hour or so.
I suspect we're going to see Opal, Fy'ra and Morrighan along the way to the end. Since all are Champions now. If all the gods from both sides are gathering Champions etc and agreeing to work together for the face off with Predathos. We'll see them again.
Such a great video! 👏🏻👏🏻 PS. As a small note, the Circlet of Barbed Vision isn't one of the Arms of the Betrayers. Although created by the same gods, the latter were specifically made by re-purposing the life force of a fiend to create a sentient weapon. Which... Would be even funnier, because it would mean that Opal would have herself, Ted, Lolth AND a demon in her head 😂😂😂
I wonder at which point people lost all ability to straight up say "this was bad" and instead started using phrases like "this is just her style and it's OK". No it's not OK and yes all Aabria's episodes on CR were pretty bad. She is very antagonistic, she does not know the rules and is proud of it, all her NPC's are the same abrupt and cocky person etc etc
Yeah, I like her on D20 when she's not using dnd. Kids with bikes is a lot more cinematic and free form, it works a lot better with her style. I literally can't watch her dm dnd, but I'm perfectly happy watching her dm other stuff.
Hindsight being 20/20, this kind of hints at the fact that the regular cast didn't know about Sam's condition until after FCG's death and it's entirely possible they did this to give themselves some time to emotionally recoup.
I love Aabria and find most of the hate towards her to be highly unjustified. I actually didnt mind her banter, I saw it as teasing i n a group, where that exact antagonisti energy has been matched by her players in past seasions. If the players at the table are comfortable with it, then it doesnt matter how fans feel. But, with that said, her call on the chromatic orb was shit.
Yeah as somebody who follows her online and has seen her in person, she genuinely seems like a lovely person and anybody who’s seen her in different campaigns knows that the ‘DM vs Player’ stuff is often just a joke. I think people saying she’s a horrible person are just wrong, you can’t say that from watching her DM
I know there are a bunch of people who hate Aabria for non-DnD reasons and I'm not in those camps (ACOFAF is actually my fave d20 series, though it also suffers from a lack of pacing control), but after the way Aabria treated the players in these episodes, I will not be watching anything she DMs ever again. I haven't been watching campaign 3 at all (I like CR but idk that I'd call myself a full-on fan? idk) but I tuned back in when I heard they switched back to Crown Keepers because I liked their EXU eps. 92 and 93 were really hard to watch. I get that every table is different, and both players and DMs have different styles and preferences, but it really felt like this went beyond that. Aabria wanted to kill players off but wasn't succeeding, so she really obviously ignored rules of the game and imo broke player trust multiple times. For example, Erica is extremely new to DnD, and said she wanted to move away from an enemy. Aabria told Erica she couldn't move without provoking an attack of opportunity. This is not true; Erica could have used her Hop ability. Not only did Aabria violate Erica's trust by telling her something untrue, Aabria then also took advantage of Morrigan not moving and attacked Morrigan multiple times for huge damage. It's hard to not read that as petty, or at least unenjoyably rail-roading. Even if you argue Aabria maybe didn't remember the Hop ability (tho why would an incredibly experienced DM not read up on a very new player's character sheet? I do that even as a fellow player), but Aabria did definitely know about Hop when Aabria chose to attack Morrigan a bunch regardless. With Robbie Aabria full-on rewrote the affects of a Chromatic Orb after Dorian had cast it, so when Robbie wanted to *save* Cyrus, Aabria had him instead do damage. Robbie was visibly upset when this happened, and even more visibly upset when Cyrus died. As Aabria herself said: Dorian left to save his brother, and his brother is the only one he didn't save. Erica was so upset about this that she started sobbing in the middle of talking (not the cathartic, good-narrative cry we see so often in CR and EXU, but a panicked-player sob). After bending these and other rules/trust to deal damage, Aabria then gloated and pretended to not know the rules for death saves, and passive aggressively pretended to ask Matt about the rules. It was seriously disturbing to watch Matt initially answer her questions in good faith, then realize what Aabria was doing and go quiet. Aabria essentially 'cheated' multiple times to kill Cyrus and try to kill the other players, then threw it in their faces when she. succeeded. Even if one argues that some players/tables enjoy that combative DMing style (some absolutely do!) it was very clear that this particular table did not. If not for Erica making jokes and saving the mood, I think things would have gone really sour for the whole episode after that. The purpose of this little interlude was supposed to be getting Dorian back to the main cast in a limited number of episodes, and doing it in an entertaining way (because unlike the main cast, these are not just buddies playing a home game; Crown Keepers are paid participants who are hired to come do a job). If Aabria is incapable of accomplishing that job in a professional way, then imo she should not be brought back. Maybe she meant this all in good fun, but it came off toxic, punitive, and even borderline abusive depending on the person. There are some players for whom being forced to roleplay helping kill your own brother would be incredibly triggering, let alone being mocked about it after the fact. I've played in enough toxic campaigns to never want to play with a DM that acts like Aabria did during these eps. It sets a bad example for the DnD community as a whole, and most importantly it was clear her players were negatively affected by that behavior. That's not only not entertaining, it's flat-out not ok. The fact that Aabria seems to be aware and doesn't care (she literally looked at the camera and said 'f- you Reddit' at one point) just feels very troubling to me. I've seen Matt, Brennan, and countless other DMs kill off NPCs and PCs, but only Aabria makes it feel like she's trying to punish her players to keep them in line, or that she's holding players down just so she can punch them more easily. It's icky, and I don't blame anyone for not being onboard.
As someone that has never had the chat on while watching a stream, it's fantastic. As a life long DM myself, I akin it to one of the many problem players. IE - rules lawyers, know it alls, etc. I just sit back and enjoy the story as it happens. Hell, I've even had a player sacrifice themselves for the group. Yeah I fudged dice and things, because I believe in the "Rule of cool."
Honestly it's the best way to watch any Twitch channel, apart from maybe ones where there's an active Q&A with the streamer. Twitch chat seems to always devolve into the worst behavior from people.
They were planning a small dip into EXU already as a way to bring Dorian back into the main party and wrap up the crown keepers. Everyone was hyped up emotions wise and I think it hurt fans who were still grieving. I don’t think these were filler episodes though. This was the equivalent to Paul McGann’s Night of the doctor as a way to introduce John Hurt as the War Doctor for the 50th Doctor Who special.
I just absolutely can not stand Aabria at all. There are lessons that can be learned from her but she has more negatives than positives in my opinion. Whenever she’s on scream, it becomes a chore to finish the episode.
I've been a fan of CR since C1E25. If something on the show doesn't go exactly the way I want it to, well, then it's just like literally everything else in my life since I was born, and I'm just not going to spend the energy to be angry about it. It's not about me.
Not really sure how you can say nothing happened SPOILER AHEAD Cyrus was killed by a god, which then led to Dorian saying that he wants revenge on the gods. The whole intent of this campaign is that they are trying to stop the gods from being killed by predothos, now Dorian has a way to get revenge on the gods by releasing predothos/siding with the Vanguard. I think Dorian adds a new dynamic to the party, especially because Bells Hells still really aren't sure how they feel about the gods. Dorian might try and instigate the party into believing the gods are bad or something who knows. I hope Robbie/Dorian at least explores that idea as I think this little mini arc with the Crown Keepers could have repercussions through the rest of the campaign if Dorian wants there to be.
There were a lot of things that I felt weren't right and over the top. The way Aabria actively redirected the story and outcome of everyone's actions to perfectly fit how she or who ever wrote this portion of the the campaign to go. Just a bit to heavy handed IMO. If I were playing, I would think twice of playing again if she were leading the game. And this is just a side note. Personally, I can't imagine Lolth taking a personal interest in any mortal the way she did in this game play. She would have acted through one of her Yochlol hand maidens. Mortals are completely beneath her. Even a presumed champion. Just my opinion. Cheers
Honestly I feel like everything leading up to FCG's death was also kind of unfair, from the bombs to Otohan literally sneaking up on BH despite them constantly checking for her. Just kind of didn't sit well with me. Also, nah fuck the spider queen. 🤷♂️
i saw one episode of aabria her DMing and it was not my thing to watch the moment the group switched i just turned the episode off and from what im hearing and reading is that the filler wasnt that good the chromatic orb if you change the ruling of any spell u have to make it clear with your player before hand and not after they casted the spell and say "the rules are whatever i say they are" that is the wrong mentality as any DM for it will make everything just confusing. u can change certain effects of a spell on nat 1 or 20 for extra dramatic effect for sure but killing off someweone becuse u changed a spell is bad DMing IMO but its all hearsay since i didnt watch it becuse it was not in my interest im more peeved becuse of the change but u adressed that aswell so ye good vid and explanation
And it's not as if it's open to interpretation either. It's not one of those "DM ruling because of weird wording" situations. Chromatic Orb is a single-target spell. That's it, plain and simple. She just arbitrarily changed the written rules for no reason other than her being a bad DM who couldn't achieve the results she wanted on her own.
If they really needed to get Dorian's character and the player up to speed, then Matt could have done a one-shot with the player as he has done with Steven Colbert. Or they could have just brought in Dorian again and he could have regaled the story of how his brother fell from him own misdoings. Do you need to abruptly have a mini-episode in an episode? No. Do you need new players that only get a brief amount of air time/ game time? No, because this could just be thrown a money bone at these people and really trying to control more of the D&D community. They already get the biggest piece of the pie and now we just have a DM openly ignore rules to satisfy their narrations, they can write a novel instead of holding out for more money because they are having a writers strike. Just play the game and respect the rules.
CR is all over the place. Nothing really make sense anymore, they are doing games, spirits, series, books, now a subscription thing, it's just too much and their stories are clearly suffering from it
Was not a fan of the EXU Crown Keepers. I didn't watch them, so I missed on most of the lore and the characters. I knew Orym, Fearne and Dorian were from that series. But throwing it back into our faces without any backstory, I felt lost on the story. I didn't like the player (with the bunny ears) her turns during the combat was AWFUL. She took forever and didn't understand how to play. Just made it painful to watch. I turned it off. So last weeks episode I ended up watching it this week so I could fast forward to the end of their episode (before the break) got all the info I needed and was happy to see the CR cast return. I like Robbie and his character Dorian. He is a good match up for the CR cast and plays very well. So in a nutshell I think the CR cast were planning a break for the Indio music festival. I miss when they were airing live episodes, I get why they aren't but I do miss it...
most "fans" in the sense of the word fanatics, will be too railroaded into the common modern zeitgeist of California, that they will never see that this is exactly it.
It was there to purposely take time away from the main campaign, they just lost a player character and a main villain, Matt needed time to restructure his plans as this is all on the spot
@@ryno1509 I would imagine they already had it scheduled that Dorian was going to return after the moon thing. I think Matt already had plans in place given he knows how strong Otahan is and she is entirely capable of killing one of two PCs before going down.
I’m not familiar with Aabria in the CR space but I am familiar with her in the Dimension 20 space. She’s exceptional there, her campaigns are truly some of the best so seeing peoples opinions about her in CR is actually really surprising
Honestly, it was a choice. It was an interesting look at one of the questions that I've had with the story so far, which is How Do the Betrayer Gods Feel About All This, but at the same time, I also remember back when EXU and EXU Kymal were done that the Audience were told that we didn't have to watch them to get the full campaign story. That these were separate things. Even with 2 (3 if you count Dorian) core members of the Bells Hells as previous members of the Crown Keepers, we could watch it or not at our leisure. With thousands of hours of content to watch/catch up on, it had been nice to not need to have these shows as frames of reference. Now it feels like we almost HAVE to watch these mini-series that we were told we didn't have to, in order to get the full extent of what was going on with the show.
Yeah, I tried watching ExU but Aabria's style didn't vibe well with me. With the mid-stream switch, I felt I had to go back and watch ExU and ExU: Kymal. I'm not really looking forward to watching more of her in Episodes 92 & 93.
Hey, remember when CR had new guests and fresh faces almost weekly? Matt got to play with narrative structure and try different things? Those are the days that made CR what it is. They haven't done anything novel in dozens of episodes, and it's stagnating Matt knows this, and when he saw an opportunity, tried something. The reason he was so grateful to the Crown Keeper players at the end was because they swooped in to play on short notice and transition the story.
When I see people like Aabria DMing on screen, I feel pretty good about myself. It is the opposite of the Matt-Mercer-effect. I compare myself to an experienced DM with thousands of views and I am a way better DM. That makes me happy. Still wouldn't watch anything with her to the end.
You keep saying that critical role members aren't giving these alterative characters and stories a chance, well what if they did give them a chance and decided that they do not enjoy it? that's the boat i'm in, I have watched everything Abria has been in regarding CR and the only thing I liked her in was the calamity. I want to like her characters and DM'ing style but just never do and every time I give her a decent chance I get put off and have to switch off. This is not a personal attack on her by the way, I don't know her personally to judge. I wonder how many others are like me. Just for a little more context, I watch various other roleplaying series and enjoy alot of other DM's besides Matt. Matt is awesome but there are other amazing DM's I just can't count Arbria on the list unfortunately.
The DM is supposed to be there for the questers. People with naturally dominant personalities like Iyengar - and myself, if I'm being honest - tend not to make good DM's. She makes me cringe because I find her overpowering in her role as DM, running roughshod over Mercer's finely tuned story. Yes, I know how that sounded, but surely we can all agree that the amount of work and effort Mercer has put into his, let's face it, masterful DnD storytelling has been titanic. I am unashamedly - as well as obviously ;o) - a fan of Mercer's achievements because I see how much blood, sweat and tears he has invested in this "Critical Role" endeavour of his. To my mind, it demanded more respect than it was awarded. Ugh, anyway, enough from me. I'm gonna watch another episode. And who drank all my wine!!? oh .......
I mean, now that we know what happened to Sam, the switch makes sense. Its hard knowing the extra story behind the change. So glad Sam is doing better now.
(Spoilers) "Nothing super important happened" Sorry dude, but Lolth deciding to claim her champion for the fight against Predathos, which will probably result in Pearl and Feor teaming up with the Hells later down the line needed to be set up so it didn't cause a disruption when they suddenly appear later and the dissolution of the Crown Keepers is kinda important. Probably should have been its own episode, I agree. But the chance is, is because they're time poor for something coming soon that required its necessity.
I genuinely love abria as a player and a DM but i don't think shes built for a show like critical role. Shes admitted that she doesn't like high fantasy very much so its to be expected and shes done some amazing work elsewhere. So yeah i think that combined with the sudden change after such an emotional beat really made me disconnect from this bit of the story. Thank god for Flando! He really helped me get through it
@@DOKTORPUSZ she can be a bit aggressive and tends to do things for the plot but really she is fantastic dm. You're never gonna like everything an artist does. I agree that I think she may have gone a bit far for my taste but everyone at the table and off screen seem fine and ok with what happened. So I think it's just chalking it up to this not being not a great showing for her. She also said on the newest four sided dive that they wanted Dorian to come in with the same energy as bells hells.
@herebyaccident5174 of course the rest of the cast seem fine with her. Do you really think they would openly criticise her, or the episode, on the channel?
@@herebyaccident5174I can understand what she wanted to do and have Dorian bring to the table for BHs, but I don’t really agree with how “railroaded” the entire thing was. Whatever a DM wants shouldn’t come at the cost of players agency, and the entire “fight” felt like it was all determined by her despite whatever the players might do. To had context about myself I didn’t react like all these fanatic babies that popped during the episodes, but I did have a bad taste in my mouth after watching them. Maybe the “railroading” was due to a “time crunch” to wrap up what the Crown Keepers were doing, and to get Dorian on the other side of the planet. So maybe what was needed was 2 or more full episodes dedicated to the CK rather than two half episodes Idk? But how it stands now with the arguably bad timing of it all and railroaded mess of it all, just spdidnt sit right with me personally.
I suspect his brother dying was something everyone agreed needed to happen from a narrative stand point, before any of them sat at the table. Otherwise, Dorian would have no reason to seek out and rejoin Bell’s Hells. Turning that single target spell into an aoe spell for that purpose was a means to an end everyone already knew had to happen one way or another. Between having a random spider kill him or having the unintended splash of Dorian’s own spell kill him, having Dorian’s own actions be the final blow is more dramatic and impactful for the narrative they needed to tell.
Problem is, it werent his actions. If Aabrya had said before he casted the spell, O would agree with you. But she decided after, that Chromatic Orb could have done anything and thats why ppl are livid.
I'm sure that was aabria's intent but they could've found a more graceful way to do it. You can't force emotional impact you need to let the mechanics tell the story otherwise it's not a game.
@@xxliew an easy and not rulesbreaking but onetime bending could have been "as you cast your spell something feels of and you feel a surge in the spells manifestation that you can not controll all of a sudden it does more than you expect than you know should have happened." there an easy fix simple, not unelegant and not blatantly disregarding the rules but respecting them, just bending the event to have a certain outcome to achieve a goal, wich in this case was probably discussed beforehand (Cyrrus must die). i watched the first EXU but never got to like it, abreia didn´t vibed with me and the charakters were not that interesting to mee either, the only thing i remember from the EXU is abreia asking for saving throws where nothing was to save from a lot of times, or where other roles would have been much more apropriate or even needed per RAW. her long narrative style was also not my cup of tea, my adhd brain can´t take that much info in let alone if 80% is not relevant or should not be known to players or charakters, or breaking pace of combat wich allready is a drag for me to watch as fast page action is slowed down even more slowed down through long narrative inserts have me losing oversight of what is going on. Almost as bad as dragonball Z where a fight took a felt 20 weekly episodes where each episodes were thrown 3 punches and the rest was the bystanders commenting about it. allthough i don´t hate her i would rather see brendan lee mulligan join CR as Guest DM, his style is also different from matts but it is much more enjoyable to me than abreias, i enjoyed his dimension twenty shows they were really fun to watch. i feel what a lot of people missed about campaign 3 is that it is actually a the culmination of the multiverse of season 1, 2 and EXU, kinda like the marvel cinematic universe, wich has the weakness that one has to watch all the stuff to understand whats going on, allthough not liking some of that stuff. i hope for season 4 CR stops doing that stuff, i don´t think it works to well if one has to watch multiple campaigns wich each take over a year to follow. it doesn´t really helped that C§ was a bit all over the place the dynamic of the party was disrupted before it took form multiple times by comming and going guests, forced in EXU charakters and a time rushed main event not leaving enough time for the party to get information and rally allies and resources setting up for failure dividing the party and joining the different partyparts with guests again from EXU dividing the campaign in multiple storyarcs to follow till the reunion was achieved. the dividing was where i ended my watching of C3 since i felt it was a mess from the start and wasn´t anjoying it anymore, might return to give C4 a chance but i am not confident it will catch me like S1 and 2 did.
I can actually see why this isn't just EXU filler. They didn't JUST need Dorian back, they need a slightly different Dorian back. When Dorian parted ways with Bell's Hells, all of them were a bunch of chuckle-fucks with no sense of direction or duty (except Orym, who has always been the odd one out). Having just lost FCG, Dorian couldn't come back as the same old chuckle-fuck, he needed life experiences, perspective on the looming threats, etc. By making this a canon event (not that EXU isn't canon, but rather by making this part of the main campaign) more people were encouraged to watch it and understand why Dorian suddenly has different views on things like the gods. Dorian is not potentially the biggest potential side-swipe that Critical Role has seen since Arkhan took the hand of Vecna in C1. Think about it, who among the original cast is inclined to let Predathos out and see the ending of the gods? Neither the players nor their characters are really willing to see what that sort of world looks like. Meanwhile, Dorian just lost his brother, as well as several close friends, to the whims of a couple of deities. He's vowed revenge, he's angry. He's in an amazing spot right now to wait until Bell's Hells think they're about to end the Ruidus arc, only to betray the group and release Predathos in order to get revenge on the Spider Queen. Robbie is an agent of chaos, and Dorian doesn't 'have to be around in the next campaign, so neighther he nor Robbie necessarily have to stick around and deal with the consequences. If this wasn't a main campaign episode and people came back to c3e93 without context for Dorians' personal changes (or even who he is at that point,) then such a betrayal would land differently and really tripped people up.
Maybe youtube will finally stop using aabrias name in the same breath as other, actually great dms now. She's not in that class just because her games are streamed.
Campaign 3 is broken beyond the repair. This isn't long form story telling, its a dumpster fire. The pacing is a nightmare, the characters are not suited to the story being told, the story itself is nonsensical and all built to vilify the gods Matt spent years getting the community to like and care about just so he can kill them off and install his Daggerheart bs.
Like the gods? I agree that campaign 3 is not the best but Matt NEVER wanted us to like the gods, what a terrible take. The damn Matron of Ravens actively used a deal in saving Vax's sister to basically make him a foot soldier in a war he wanted no part in. Even the "good" gods actively use other as proxies to further a war against the betrayer gods, who also use people as proxies. The gods have actively been shown to be forces of power that use people as pawns. The gods were always vilified and this has always been the case. HELL, the extended conclusion to campaign 2 was everybody meeting up to battle Uka'toa, a person who also made a power deal with Fjord and many others to live a life of trying to free him, and we saw to what extent that corrupted people like Avantika. What a terrible argument, deities and highpowers have always been problematic in Exandria.
Enjoyed your video. You made some valid points that I can understand. I'm also a pretty serious Critical Role fan. I've been watching consistently since early(ish) campaign 1. I watch nearly every episode live on Twitch and have a great time doing so. This most recent season is the weakest in my opinion. I've not liked the more "accessible" or accommodating episodes. Yes, I understand that new players/viewers need that type of support in order to grasp a show like Critical Role, however I'm simply not a fan of it. It's annoying for me to watch explanations for action economy or hearing discussion on how certain things can be done. These aren't fresh players! They may not have as much experience as you or I, but they have enough to figure out most anything that it placed before them. Requiring Matt to explain rules or to hand hold these players is frustrating for me. I'll continue to watch Critical Role, Campaign 3 but I'm simply not as big of a fan as I once was. Campaign 1 will remain my top favorite campaign. Ain't nothing topping that! I mean, the fact that the animated show is based off of and follows the characters from campaign 1 should show how beloved that campaign was and is. I mean, I've got a terrible memory. Straight goldflsh levels, bad. I can still remember and name each of the characters from campaign 1 and who played them, whereas for 2 I'm drawing a blank and 3 - I can remember a few. This is a Monday and I watched the most recent episode on Thursday live. I do not enjoy Critical Role nearly as much as I once did. I have debated with myself whether or not I'll continue my subscription to Critical Role on Twitch. Love the cast, loved the show.. but it's going downhill and I'm not wanting to be on a sinking ship. That's my take on it.
Dude, it's not that I won't give the side projects a chance, it's that I'm a busy working adult with a family and barely have enough time to consume four to five hour episodes a week of the main campaign. That episode so drawing because I didn't know any of those characters and I didn't care about them at all. And I'm not fan of Abrea's style. They should have just made this a separate side episode that was meant to be woven into the main campaign.
Does anyone have the link or know where that clip of Brennan talking about poison of the mind? Curious what context he was talking about, so I'd like to see it.
Just a comment on the point that the audience should give new players the chance to shine; for those of us who listen to the podcast rather than watching the show, tossing an entirely new cast at us is suuuuuper confusing. When I started with CR, I watched the show, and I was able to put the voices to a face. Simple and easy. Then I started a new job and didn’t have the time needed to watch the show, so I just started listening instead. I knew the voices and I knew which characters were talking. But you throw an entirely new cast at me, and suddenly I couldn’t tell you who is who. It’s incredibly confusing at times. Small problem in the greater scheme of things, but I wanted to at least mention it.
The fan reaction to ep. 92 & 93 are one of the reasons I don’t introduce D&D to my friends or family. Some of the negativity towards Aabria was uncalled for. Outside of Critcal Role her DMing style works so well, but it just seems to be hit and miss whenever she has to DM for a Critical Role production. But for the life of me, I can’t or just don’t get the hate. Being a weeks removed from ep. 92 & 93 it’s feels that Aabria along w/ the Crownkeepers were brought in as a reaction to Sam’s choice to have FCG sacrifice themselves to give the story & the gang some time to breath. While I was hoping it would be a 3 mini episode to explain Dorian’s return, it’s definitely clear that there was a time crunch Matt was on & Aabria had to move the timetable earlier than expected. Who knows what the actually plan was for Dorian to return but I honestly don’t see those episodes to be that divisive
Her gming isn’t that great outside of cr. A court of fey and flowers is great but that’s only because the pcs are doing the heavy lifting. Misfits and magic is terrible anytime there’s plot instead of just players making jokes. Burrows ends is her best work and it was just ok. She is a great dnd player but she is not a good dm
Aabria's DM style isn't for me she takes far to long to get things done. And that's the main reason why I never got invested in the crown keepers group while the players themselves I really liked when they showed up in the main series. My biggest complaint about this was the filler feeling of it when talking to the people FCG knew like dancer and seeing there reaction would have been big. And they very easily have turned this to a EXU: division special a extra contract for people who want it but this took away the choice. Now they are moving into the next stage of the campaign and most of the hells are wearing pieces of FCG and they haven't told dancer or Frida that he died.
I personally found the switch so jarring. She has such a different DM style to Matt and the contrast is really clear. I don’t think she’s naturally built for this game / campaign. Ep91 wasn’t too bad but Ep92 just felt so aggressive and antagonistic. It felt like players were getting confused and didn’t seem to feel like they could ask for clarification on certain decisions. It just felt uncomfortable at times to watch how she was so forcefully pushing the narrative that she could do whatever they wanted and if they cast a spell etc that would hurt her narrative, they’d be punished for it!
Jfc. Man I don't hate her or anything. But crap. I will not watch anything with her in it. She is the type of person I avoid at all costs. And it seems a big part of the fans feel the same.
I originally planned to watch EXU after I caught up with C3, like a little "bonus" show, so the characters showing up in episode 92 really blindsided me. I've been looking for a recap of the show so I can understand wtf is going on, but following this I think I'm going to just happily skip to Dorian meeting Hell's Bells and stick with my original planning of going back later. ^^"
The main reason this episode was a disaster and a series killer for me had nothing to do with anything mentioned in this video. It was the unjustified assumption that viewers had any idea who these people and their characters were. The problem was the assumption that everyone had watched ExU: Kymal and knew this stuff already. I, for one, had not. A person who had watched all of C3 would obviously know Mercer and Daymond, because of their previous appearances in the campaign. The others would be a complete mystery. And we have no idea of any of their characters’ names, levels, races, and classes (though eventually that information appeared on screen). We have no idea of the story up to this point. We don’t even know where on the continent of Exandria this is taking place. How hard would it have been to start with introductions and some basic scene-setting: “Hi, I’m Aabria Iyengar, and I’ll be your DM for the next little while. Let’s go around the table and have everyone introduce themselves and their characters.” And then, after they did so, Aabria could say, “We’re picking the story up here shortly after the events in Exandria Unlimited: Kymal. If you want to know more, check out that series on RUclips and Twitch. Meanwhile, here’s a brief summary of what our heroes have been up to.” Anything would have been better than simply dropping us into the middle of a story that many of us knew nothing about, without any signpost whatsoever to guide us.
I’m not blaming Aabria for this, by the way. This is a production issue by the whole CR team. When planning this switch, someone should have said, “What about those who haven’t watched ExU: Kymal?” It took me a month just to figure out that these were characters from that series.
It’s not that aabria has a different dming style than Matt. Brennan is completely different but he is loved by the cr community. The problem is that it destroyed the narrative momentum of a campaign that was finally getting really good. Also aabria is just not a great dm. Even in d20, she’s never the best part of the games she runs
@@SamuBrownYT then why do the views drop on her episodes, comments talk about “her not being for them” or outright saying they think she’s bad. Why does almost every cr related community say they don’t like her as much as Matt or Brennan? Why does almost everyone agree that her interrupting campaign 3 was a bad decision that killed the momentum c3 had finally achieved? I really don’t hate her as a person. She seem nice. I like her as a pc in the seven, calamity, and worlds beyond number. As a dm both me and many others just don’t like what she does. Especially in cr
@@Pearlem because most of the Fandom simply likes Matt and Co. They straight up do not watch shit without them in it. Look at Calamity views. They aren't actually very high. People "love it" sure but they views don't compare to the rest of the campaign or EXU views. I'm simply saying MOST people don't care. People who come online and rant and a MINORITY. Most people when they dislike something they are pretty quiet about it. And her stepping in to C3 to DM was on the CR team. Not her. They planned her appearance there. You can't blame the freelancer for showing up to work when hired when that was booked in advance. It is not her fault FCG died in the previous episode. Her presence did not slow down in the show in anyway that could be planned for in advance. Fans complain that critical role is scripted and pre-planned and then when shit happens that makes it clear PCs have agency they get upset they are not watching a scripted show. Would the momentum be broken is it was still BH flapping around and FCG had not died? Or did FCG die, Aabria had a scheduled DM gig and the crew both honored PC agency as well as the schedule they had prior. Yall are loud and mad for no reason. Btw, Brennan your lord and savior has awful views on Downfall as well. People have also been mad that it's placed in the main campaign and interrupted the regular cast and Matt. They don't like it as much as Calamity. Because Calamity was not made great by Brennan. It was made great by his stepping up to be compelling characters.
You made a lot of valid points. I'm glad Robbie is back. I was also happy to see Matt getting to play in his own world, the sheer joy on his face.... I have a friend that adores Abbria and we discussed what happened, production wise. I don't care to watch her games, however, I would absolutely love to play in one. If I'm honest, it helped to let FCG go. Sam did that sacrifice justice. I needed something detached and less emotional to not be mad at them moving forward.
I just thought this arc was pretty boring. Worst thing is that it felt required to watch the whole arc. C3 is the first CR campaign I watched and have enjoyed it, but I didn’t feel that the side arc were supposed to be in the main story. Just extra for the world of Exandria, which is why I skipped most of the side arcs, but to reach episode 91-92 and then for the cast to get up and start something else that I have no recollection of was annoying. I felt as though I needed to stop watching to go watch this other stuff. The other stuff was all unimportant in my eyes. I think that was the biggest problem for me. I felt like I had to watch this mediocre subplot that some happened before C3 and most during the campaign to understand whatever was gonna happen next and it did nothing. Shouldn’t have been a part of the main campaign.
I just don’t watch if Matt isn’t dm. Period. In fact, any time any cast member is absent I’m less interested. (Except for tally, he genuinely irritates me just naturally as a person so)
Personally aabria isn't my cup of tea, DM or Player, except for her role in Calamity, she did a fantastic job. Apart from that exception, her DMing is hard on my head, I'm a fan of gritty dark storytelling and you always need glimmers of comedy to contrast. BUT! she has like three styles of NPCs personas and they are all kind of annoying, she almost always sounds condescending, she tries to be dark gritty but it always devolves into either childish antics, or obnoxious amounts of adult humor at all of the wrong times. If that fight wasnt emphasized by "dick gems" every 5 minutes I might've enjoyed it. And like Laura has her notorious dirty mind but she giggles or makes a quick comment and we move on with the scene. But aabria's fight was just a cluster fuck.
I'm just posting this to maybe balance out opinions. I like Aabria, and I've enjoyed at least three of the series she's DMed. (I can't claim to watched have ALL the online games available.). I didn't enjoyed these episodes, and I think it's mainly because I was wanting to see the fallout from FCG's sacrifice, and this was a long detour from that story. That's not her fault, and I'm inclined to think, now that we know more about what was happening with Sam at the time, that it's not Critical Role's fault, either. They were dealing with a big scheduling situation, and it may well be that the Crown Keepers were stepping in without a lot of notice. Nevertheless, it did halt the main narrative, and I was impatient to get past this Spider Queen stuff and get back to the main crew. I do wonder if the Spider Queen champion will show up again, and help out in what looks to be an epic battle.
Aabria is the worst DM ever, you couldnt pay me enough to play even in a oneshot of hers. Orion's player vs DM attitude woulda been much more valid if he had her as a DM
I'm in the 80 percentile, and I LOVED 😍 the switch. I really wanted to know how the Crown Keepers were doing. Watching Matt play is always fun, good for him.
Of course S P O I L E R S Meanwhile me for the last 2 years: what are the Crown Keepers doing? What does "Opal is getting darker" mean?Where's Dorian, and when will we see him and Orym finally reunite? What about Dariax and Deni$e (still unanswered)? To me it's not a filler, it's PLOT. And people had the same complaints about ExU: Calamity, which is, imho, the best example of role-playing I've ever seen, and integral to the plot too.
How much better would that session have gone if Aabria had TALKED to Aimee, and gotten on the same page "Opal is going to kill someone due to the influence of the crown. How do you want to play this?" Aimee kept trying to look for ways out, and that could have been clarified with "you are the champion of an evil god, and wearing her vestige. There is no way out. This god is frustrated, has no interest in negotiating, and no motive to delay (in fact, an incentive to hurry) - this ends with you leaving this group to go do her bidding because nothing else with satisfy her. This much you have figured out from many nights of dark nightmares." Gove Aimee some heads up to ponder those constraints without the pressure of time and cameras.
Exactly, once you know the why behind the actions I had no issues with it. I might not like everything that happens in campaign but I understand that it's not my decision to make. The 20% needs to sit down, shut up, and watch the game. If you like it keep watching, if you don't like it, I'm sure there is some fake RUclipsr out there that speaks your level of entitlement for you to watch. "Oh, Wendy's is bad. You can't support them!" You made me turn Wendy's into a weekly trip.
I'm very sorry if you feel that way. I personally love them. They were getting stale and they stood up? What's not to like about that? That they weren't pro-WoTC anymore? I don't understand the debate. They're all good in my mind. Coming from an RPGist with 40 years of XP, I'd find anything but praise less than worthy.
Critical Role And The Beauty of Long Term Storytelling
ruclips.net/video/QXd2wYDdmZg/видео.html
Basically, anyone that tells someone that simply disagrees with them "Fuck You", then there's no "middle ground"- so done with her as well.
It's just not fun to watch someone change something mid combat to railroad an outcome. Could have easily just made the enemy burst as it was destroyed doing AOE. You can have a different DM style but changing rules because you didn't have a back up plan is disrespectful to the players.
If I was Robbie, my main spell would become level 1 fireball.. i mean chromatic orb.
When a player reads a rule and the DM makes up a new one in the moment to punish a player and the players asks “what’s the rule?” Only to be met with “it is what I say it is and F you if you don’t like it!” That’s when I get up and leave the table never to return.
Yes, Aabria's DMing is a horror story to me. This is not about "rolling with the punches". The players are just WAY too nice. If you NEED to kill off Cyrus, there are COUNTLESS proper ways to do it. Literally countless. This wasn't one of them.
Robbie: "I'm unclear, what are the rules?"
Aabria: "the rules are whatever the fuck I say it is"
Do not tell me that's not a sign of a toxic DM! I would have lost my shit if I was Robbie. It's so condescending to talk to a player like that especially if they are asking for clarification
That was my biggest problem with the whole thing, it was just an unnecessarily mean thing to say
This moment is ripped right out of DND horror story threads from reddit, if it wasn't Abria, I think a lot less people would be trying to defend this...
I believe in equality. Just swap the gender or race of the people involved in a situtations. If it feels wrong when those things are reversed, then it likely is and everybody needs to stop excusing toxic people's behaviors
Nailed it@@xEvilRaptorx
@@xEvilRaptorx exactly. I’m all for having tables to all nationalities, sexualities, genders, any walk of life long as you’re respectful and there for fun. This was just toxic behavior regardless of the fact it was the Spider Queen’s MO. You’re the DM, you remain neutral and follow the dice rolls to make the story’s path. Felt like no matter what happened the story kept getting pushed back into a set narrative.
Let me start by saying, I am not raging, I'm not angry, but do not like all that happened in the last two episodes.
This just happens, things don't always develop the way you as a watcher and fan hope and sometimes things will be frustrating, but I honestly hate the type of Uber-Fans that overreact so hysterically to anything they don't like, all the time.
I've had my problems with Aabria's DMing before. She's prone to just disregard rules and what things to, if she wants something to happen, but I also like a lot of what she does.
The problem is, that in this case (unlike other times she acted similarly, but for the players) she had an outcome she wanted, and she went against the rules, against what players wanted, and I'd say even against the whole spirit of TTRPGs to get there.
A DM has so much power and so many options, a good and experienced DM like Aabria should not need to act like she did, to achieve what she wants, she really should have known better and found a better way.
It does feel as if she or maybe even CR and her together wanted to get rid of the Crownskeepers for good and open up the way for Dorian to rejoin Bells Hells. Maybe she doesn't have any good ideas for them any more or doesn't particularly like the characters.
I don't mind integrating the Crownskeepers into the campaign that way, because for one they did need a way to bring Dorian back and tbh. While Matt might not have been sure that one of the player characters would die, he probably knew it was a likely occurrence and that might be why he set this up beforehand, to give a bit more time for a grieving player before they had to present their new character.
I mean...that chromatic orb thing was horrible fiat. Don't agree? Put yourself in the player's shoes for a second. On a whim a spell you've cast before during play which you know both in and out of character is single target spell, suddenly becomes an AOE spell. The DM has now arbitrarily made you hurt your friends' PCs. That sucks. Then add in that due to this change it also kills your PC's brother. Frustrating.
Now, normally there could have been some other effect that only the DM was aware of that over charged or otherwise changed up the spell. OK, fair. However, in this case it was due to arbitrary DM fiat, with them stating that "You know...'thunder' sounds like it would effect more than one person" (paraphrased). If this had happened to me as a player (after a bunch of other weird things that outright ignored RAW), I'd seriously reconsider playing at that table going forward.
Player agency is important! Otherwise, it's just DM story time and nothing you do as a player matters.
Darn right some critters took issue with this. I'd think any TTRPG player easily could, tbh.
She even umm'd and ahh'd fir a while before making the decision, even saying out loud "Do I want to be mean...." which just shows that she pulled it out of her ass on the fly. I think Robbie even said "be mean, but fair". She then proceeded to be completely unfair. Horrible to watch, and it makes me cringe to think that someone might see that and think it's okay for a DM to do that just because they saw it on Critical Role...
But what if we're the reverse, and that DM fiat was beneficial to the Players/PC? Would you have a problem then? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say no you wouldn't. Matt has gone outside of the rules on the fly as well and let's not act like Aabria hasn't used fiat in favor of players as well.
@@nojusticenetwork9309 it may shock you, but yes. It would bother me. It does bother me, and has bothered me.
@@nojusticenetwork9309 I just think there is a huuuuge difference between acting outside the rules to help players and to go out of your way and disregard the rules to basically lead to the end you want, no matter how much it goes against the rules and the whole basic concept of player agency.
So personally, I am fine with a DM breaking a few rules if it is to help the players, but not break the rules AND take away a player's agency to do them in.
Since both things are not at all the same, being fine with one of them has no real influence in regard to your stance on the other.
@nojusticenetwork9309 you're exactly right, it wouldn't be as much of an issue if the rules were bent in favour of the players. This is the difference between "rule of cool" where you bend the rules for the sake of rewarding player creativity and creating a fun moment for them, vs being an adversarial DM who doesn't play fair and changes the rules on the spot to hurt the players.
This isn't just about adherenece to the rules, it's about the general attitude you take with your players, and running a game that is fair and fun.
For me my major issue with Aabria DMing was that she was actively antagonistic. She repeated over and over about how she intended to kill PCs. She made rulings that put characters in danger or got them hurt, or in the case of Cyrus, killed, because she had a plan to kill PCs. She railroaded so hard to get Opal to kill them even though her player was tryimg every way to not do that until she was basically given no choice. You could see the defeat on Amy's face when she counterspelled Firarai's fireball. She didn't want to do something like that and Aabria just smiled about it. I've seen Aabria as a player and as a DM and it always seems like she wants fun. She wants cool moments to happen, but these two episodes just seemed like she didn't care about that, she wanted blood. As a DM, I would never kill PCs just because I want to see them dead. If it makes sense in the narrative and/or in the combat, absolutely a PC can die, but I never set out with the explicit intention of killing a PC. It just left a bad taste in my mouth and I feel bad for both Dorian and Robbie, because he just had to sit there and think, "Wow, this is all because I wanted to come back and play more?" I would definitely be upset, especially about the Chromatic Orb. I understand they're on a show, but it's 1. A single target spell, and 2. Dorian would make sure not to hurt his brother, regardless of hubris, that's his brother that he sacrificed everything to save. He would not risk a wayward spell like that. Such a frustrating scenario that just seemed like Aabria being an a-hole for no reason. Honestly them having to kill Opal would have been interesting and tragic, but instead, they all just walked away with Cyrus dead. Unsatisfying ending to a less than stellar battle and an amazing group of players wasted.
yes ^
she comes across as a DM that has the "DMvsPlayer" mentalilty.
I stopped mid 92 and went back to watch EXU because I hadn't watch it. Most of the times it feels like Aabria has something against Opal/Aimee... She boons all the other characters while relentlessly going after Opal and making her life hard. I'm totally not feeling watching EXU because of this. I liked watching Aabria as a player but as a DM it's just been a drag. At this point I really just want to catch up with the story so I understand where the filler in the main arc stands. Bleh
I agree. Aabria is' trying to force her narrative by giving the players a false sense of control over their decision. Where Matt would adapt without bending the rules. Example: 1) My character take the left path DM) As you take the left path, you found you went the right path instead. 1) I roll a 25 for attack and hit the 16 AC DM) You miss (because I dont want you to) 1) I roll a 25 for my saving throw on your 18 DC DM) It still hits you . She feels like a bully. Honestly, Episode 92 and 93 were hard for me to watch.
She went full killer DM mode.
It seems like an interesting detour from the main plot. The unfortunate downside, as you mentioned, is that it started the episode after FCG died and a lot of people were wanting to see the aftermath of that and the effects on the main cast. So to suddenly switch to a bunch of characters they hadn't seen in a couple of years or was a right kick in the pants...
If you watched 4 sided Dive... the switch was planned, what wasn't was FCG's death. So that gear shift rest squarely on the shoulders of Sam
My biggest issue is the spell change, everything else is hyper subjective and a “like it or not it’s going to happen” if you set a precedent with a spell change then it stays going forward unless you immediately be toxic and go “well it was a one time thing that you didn’t want” which is a big horror story. Now that chromatic orb is one of the best aoe spells now which is just m e h
If productuon and Aabria put 10 minutes more thought into it you could have structured it really well.
1) You prerecord the one shot
2) Robbie is reintroduced at the ene of episode 92 wherein he says Cyrus died Opals went on a Ramapage. Im out for vengeance. WOW A HOOK?!
3) Release the one shot OPTIONALLY to the community that care about what. The people who really care about the crownkeepers will watch it. The people who don't won't and can continue to appreciate Dorian.
I thought the same thing
I probably would have been more hooked and wanted to watch the episode that way.
They wouldn't have had the viewing they needed
Why is any of that Aabria's fault? Do you think she ia running production or creative direction at Critical Role. This is on Matt and HIS team. He wrote this plot point, hired the freelancer and she did her job. Marisha ia the creative director. You expect the outside person to come tell them how to run their production company?
@@SamuBrownYT they have said time and again Aabria was heavily involved with the process
The fuck you mean Matt wrote this, Aabria wrote this and it was horrible, defend your weird cult leader somewhere else
I skip anything Aabria DM'd. She's a DM vs. Player type, thinks its her job to screw over the party not play along with them. And she's really not that good. Tried a little ExU, but hated it all. She is extremely arbitrary and just changes the rules on a whim to fit her current mood. She's trying sooo hard to be iconic and with Matt sitting at the table, only manages to be ironic.
So true. Aabria and the player with the crown, I think her name is Amy, annoy me.
i don't think you know what ironic means
@@skinxbones4845 oh the irony!
It’s not just the chromatic orb, it’s the confrontational attitude, the hours long SINGLE TURNS and railroading bs
Are hour long single turns not... normal?
Not when you're DMing with solid flow control. I think my turns avg 5 minutes or so, with especially tense ones coming up to 10 or the rare 20 mins when people are making big risky choices.
Hour long turns are usually a result of a few different failures, and can come from the DM or players. Esp common in new players who are still grasping the choices available.
@DarkhalfBreed Depends. Turns at tables in the groups I play in are about a minute max. I'd quit a game that wasted that much time. It's disrespectful to the other players not knowing the rules and wasting time. Especially when most people only have time to game once a week. If you are in a system that is overly complex or people don't know the rules than yeah. I haven't seen the specific episode with the hour long turn but it sounds dreadful so I won't anyway. I could see a whole round with 8 characters and 10 enemies going an hour. But a single players turn? God no
@@MyrddintheBard I think they ment rounds not turns,not a single turn was an hour but some were prolonged by alot of in-game and out of character player interactions.
@@DarkhalfBreed Yeah I used to have games like that in 5e. It was fun for final boss fights but most combats can lose their steam. Most combats I run are usually about 10 minutes. 30 for big ones. Less complex systems with less HP get the job done for my group
Personally, I think the criticism is valid in every case, but especially with Aabria's DMing. She is at the very edge of being on that RPG horror story DM list especially with her behavior during the 2 sessions in this "filler arc" Railroad narrative was fine (sometimes have to especially for 1 shot or time constrained adventures. Having different rules to another DM, also fine. But the problem was that she outright gets the written rules wrong and then attempts to lecture the audience not the players on how they work. She did it with the Darkness spell in the first filler episode, and then again when Robbie was asking for a rules clarification so he could resolve what he can actually do in his head. This is a sign of a very very antagonistic DM. It didn't look like a fun episode, it didn't look fun for the players, she actively went after the audience, it was entirely a mess as a production and I really really hope the cast talks to her and sets her straight on how she should treat people going forward because if I was a player at that table, I would not be coming back.
I personally enjoyed her in this episode, she's very much in her element in horror. I don't know the rules (just something basic), so I'm not bothered by her decisions. I was entertained.
Yeah, her literally saying "f- you" to the audience was super wild to witness. Extra wild considering they launched Beacon shortly after that. I wonder if she was trying to pull one of Brennan's "get in the comments" type wall breaks, but she's way more controlling/aggressive so instead of being a wink-wink thing (like it is when Brennan does it), it just felt like bullying. I really enjoyed ACOFAF but I don't think I can ever watch something Aabria DMs again, those eps were too hard to watch. I felt bad for the fans, bad for the players, and bad for Matt any time he wilted under her mean-ness. Just bad vibes all around. I agree that I really hope someone talks to her so she doesn't put other players through this, especially since she flat-out said she thinks the criticism is ridiculous. Just very troubling to see.
we now know that alot of the filler episodes as of late was becuase of sam's medical appointments conflicting with critical role and needing recovery
never got what's Aabria's vibe was. as a DM she railroads and acts antagonistic. as a player she acts like "that guy" with a rogue character.
To me, when abria came on it felt like the last season of game of thrones. The story in my opinion should be driven from everyone at the table, and not the DM forcing a square peg into a round hole. Oh boy the combat was really really slow. It's like an hour and a half for one round, that's just too long.
Straight up, the filler wasn't the problem, AABRIA was the problem. Her personality makes her BARELY tolerable as a player, and she SUCKS as a DM, and it's not her STYLE, it's her PERSONALITY. Most of the fans dislike her, judging by the comments, but they keep foisting her on the audience. It's very annoying.
You completely summed up my feelings. I cannot understand how anyone likes her. She makes me as uncomfortable as Brian Foster did, and I never understood why people liked him either...
Needed to be said.
She's obviously there for one reason lmao
Good...good. Harness that anger. Use it.
I don't enjoy Abbrias DMing style but I enjoy watching when she's a player.
I feel the same way. I know as a DM that they're suppose to enforce rules and have the final say, but she seems way too controlling and unnecessarily barks at others, at least that's how I saw it in C3E93.
@@VaxtrisI’m glad someone else thinks this cause I’ve never seen her DM till now and the unnecessary amount of venom behind how she said it. “Look at me, it’s whatever the fuck I say it is” is remarkably disrespectful and outright rude. And he was just asking a question out of sheer concern cause she was just straight up changing the rule and you could tell it didn’t sit right with him or really anyone.
To the haters replying to this comment and any people who also agree with them, Brennan did the same thing in EXU, Matt is sometimes a little softer as he's killing his players but Brennan doesn't get flak for putting on the Bad Guy Hat and I think y'all should really look inward to find out why you think it's okay to bash on Aabria for doing the same shit Brennan did.
The DM is the person running the game and they're also the friend of the people playing the game, please do not shed tears and speak for Robbie. Just don't do that. It's really common sense.
@@CassieCarryd idk, if my friend CHANGED the way a spell works and is as written I'd be pissed off.
@@CassieCarryd Brennan put the bad guy hat is way different than Aabrya change the working of a spell after the player had use it, without any warning or clue.
I am honestly just not a big fan of Aabria, especially as a DM. I do understand why they did the small branch off, but kinda hope that the thread with Aabria DM-ing on C3 is finished. Really feel like the filler was dropped on us due to FCG dropping what he did on the crew. Now as far as story, I feel like the only reason this filler needed to be aired is maybe because of Opal's part later in the story. Otherwise, it could have been easy for Robby to just have a bit of backstory on the time between. Could have been simple for Matt to have everyone leave the table and bring Robby in solo, like he has done in the past. @johnpo2 brings up a solid point, one of the reasons I do not care for Aabria's DM style.
At the end of the day, I think it bothered me the most because I wanted to see the main cast after such a major loss.
I also want to put this out there. I am not hating on Aabria or what CR did. It just wasn't for me, and I can understand why it bothered many.
I wouldn't call myself a devout Critical Role or Aabria fan; but I wouldn't call myself a detractor of them either. I view them as people who share a love with me for the greatest hobby on earth. Only occasionally will I tune in and perhaps listen in the background while I prep my own campaigns; after all, the BEST dnd is the one you get to play in!
That said, THIS episode was ABSOLUTE TRASH! DM's come with numerous variations in style and that's absolutely fine; it's part and parcel of what makes the hobby awesome! And I think we can (mostly) all understand and agree that "railroading" is defined in many different ways; some good, some bad (personally, I believe it's required to a certain degree else the story never progresses; after all, I choose how the villains/world reacts to player agency). I can even understand the difficult position Aabria was in, having to rather shoehorn an event that leads a player to rejoin another party while trying to maintain a vibe all while under a time crunch... I get it.
But playing so loosey goosey with Player Agency and at times even straight up ignoring it? I was FORCED to watch after my ears recognized the symptoms while trying to prepare my own next session! And much like a train wreck I couldn't rip my eyes from, I could only sit there feeling disgusted deep in my gut. She's supposed to be representative of the shared community, she's supposed to be receptive to her players actions while laying down clear and concise information for them to interact with/react to in GOOD FAITH. Instead, she decides to subvert what is mechanically spelled out in front of him, and when he questions it she responds with "the rules are what I say they are, cause FUCK YOU" (all while looking directly into the camera). That wasn't a response meant for him, but for the fans; either way, entirely unprofessional.
She could've changed the environment noticeably enough to impress upon the players that spells get kind of funky here (in which case, any one of his spells could've done the deed with him understanding at least some of the potential), or had any number of other vectors kill his brother (literally rocks falling would've been better, or the crown takes a lair action to seep his brother's vitality away); but no, she utterly STOLE his agency away then made light of it in a socially deaf manner. She bore zero responsibility to address the fandom or even a subsection of it in the middle of play; let alone in such a negative fashion. She does bear the responsibility to provide a safe environment for her players and the audience (to some extent as a guest) and present herself as a responsible DM worthy of her players trust. She bears this responsibility because the CR community (and I'm certain her own as well) look up to her as some form of "pinnacle DM". Someone who should be setting a proper example of how the DM/Player relationship SHOULD be.
She simply failed to uphold her responsibilities here. She tried coming off as some "bad bitch", but she ended up only coming off as a bitch instead. Which is a shame. What she did fell short of only Adam Koebel's incident; thank GOD, cause that would've been so much worse. It's bad enough that this incident will prove to be a precedent for many future DMs that it's quite ok to write a complete story during your prep (player agency be damned), and the only actions that matter at the table are the DMs. As for myself, well... I held her in high regard despite the fact that I don't jive with her DM style; I still respected her way of storytelling. But, this is DnD; and that means COOPERATIVE storytelling. Perhaps she can take some time to reflect on that.
Well put.
And if she does not reflect on it? What then? Suppose she comes back and doubles down on her antagonistic DM style.
@@spawnofmolagbal317 I couldn’t care less what she does to be honest. I’ve moved beyond this conversation, beyond her, and beyond anything she’s apart of. Far too much negativity out there to get hung up on one source for too long. Wish her the best but she’s no longer in my existence.
As someone watched EXU I feel like for me the issue is this being in the main campaign. They could have easily made this another one shot thing to wrap up crown keepers story. Even at the end of the story Dorian comes back to the main story so he could have just said sth like my brother has died and if wwe wanted to learn how and why would could have just watched the one shot if we wanted to. But with this way they put pressure on lots of people that didn't watch the whole exu story since this came out of nowhere and naturally people had no idea what was happening and quickly lost interest with these 2 episodes. This was kinda giving me more of a `spinoff of a show got cancelled so the main character of that show returned to the main show but we actually had to watch 2 episodes of that spinoff in the main show' than a crossover they intended for.
The thing that made me feel weird is that Cyrus' death felt very obviously scripted. If my DM did what Abria did for that chromatic orb I would be very annoyed, I respect my DM but that is just plain bs, my single target spell somehow becomes an aoe? I fire a Disintegrate and for some reason it explodes so my 2 friends standing near the villain also both die? It was just a really strange thing to do. Even more strange is that no one seemed to care too much, which made me feel like this was probably discussed beforehand that Syrus will probably die in the fight. Dariax also healed Syrus which I don't know if I just missed it, but I think Abria didn't even bother to give him that 20+ HP, which would have probably kept him alive for 1 or more attacks from the spider.
Other than these moments yes the combat was a bit slow because of the really long descriptions but the rp was great, I found myself tearing up at a few sections.
Scripted as in:
A single sentence is written in DM's notes and it says "Cyrus has to die" xD?
Because the way Aabria has tumbled her way to this point felt as if she had a goal in mind, but had no clue whasovether as to how to achive it :/
Knowing what we now know, why sam had to suddenly leave, i think i understand a little more why they had to kind of scramble to figure something out to buy time and work stuff out behind the scenes. I know it probably wasnt done in the best fashion, but again knowing what we know, now, i get it.
All the people blasting critical role and the players personally should feel terrible and apologize as profusely as they complained. I doubt many people actually reflected on their actions but hopefully they will.
Ima say this without spoilers but Matt the dm is writing this as you go so with the loss of a PC and the death of a big bad Matt needs time so yes a filler episode was needed cause the episode after the PC death was just the team coming to grips with the loss!
I was thinking that to. They probably wanted to give Sam some additional time.
This "filler" was very very likely scheduled way before the pc death incident, or the death of the bad guy even happened. It was merely poor timing of a pc death. This was always going to be done.
@@mtheoryx83honestly, Sam may have even know this and decided to go all in as a result. Who knows!
I might agree if they hadn’t had a table of guests scheduled to come in.
My thought process about it is, with the episodes not being live, it's pretty reasonable to assume they actually play at about a weeks offset to account for editing. Not only that, but they most likely aren't usually playing even on a Thursday night, but at different nights thru the week when schedules allow. This includes guests coming in, so factoring in having aabria and the rest on set ahead of the start of the session, it doesn't necessarily mean anything that they were scheduled to be there. They have at minimum the whole week to set it up, and it's perfectly doable to have been on the fly to account for the unexpected death. That all being said, I'm sure it was also just fun for Matt to have a little break and play a couple sessions within the main campaign. It doesn't need to all be a conspiracy theory
6:58
I beg to differ. I as well as a lot of Dorian fans would say this is the most impactful piece of side story we got out of Campaign 3. More impactful that some of the detour BH has actually take. We got direct confirmation on the stances of the Deities both Prime and Betrayer gods. Not only that, without this little side story it would be weird for Dorian to just pop up back without knowing what happen to the Crown Keepers.
You said it yourself, this campaign is the best long form story telling you have seen. And knowing that EXU kicked off campaign 3 and Kimal followed Dorian meeting back up with them after leaving BH. Robbie's return would be unjustified without taking a full episode break. Given that he popped up right asked Orym asked for him.
Yeah especially sitting here after it has concluded. It was short, sweet and to the point. It filled in the blanks it needed to, punctuated the Crown Keeper arc and explained Dorian’s reappearance.
Was I shocked and confused, yeah for a minute, but I ended up really enjoying it
Hard agree!
we got to see a foud family actually behave like that. i've been missing that from BH, they're great characters but oh boy
This, literally this. I do not understand the way people feel like this was a total mistake, an unneeded interruption, whatever! Big bad things happened and the group needed this segway to happen at some point - it just happened to follow a big PC loss. This "filler" tied together a lot in a narrative-led bow. I loved it, I'm so happy Dorian is back, what the heck is Sam going to pull...
Abbria's personality is one I actively avoid engaging with. Would not play at the same table with that type of toxic player
18:00 I don't know, being a diehard fan I get a lot of YT recommendations and if the titles are all "CRITICAL ROLE SUCKS" - "CRITICAL ROLE ARE MAKING LIFE ENDING MISTAKES" while I felt nothing wrong has happened I still face so much ire just by the algorithm shoving things in my face. so I'm going to be real sick of all these people making mountains out of mole hills and having the content that relates to my fandom be overwhelmingly negative is affecting my enjoyment of it.
I can't imagine what it's like for people with live feed social media like twitter who are faced with it all the time....
I think it's only natural to just want to leave the cast alone for choices they made and not be confronted with opinions of such dire magnitudes all the time....
I think that's the difference between you and all the negative Nancies, you don't feel the need to be overly negative/critical when you don't agree with small decisions. I'm the same way, the chat really perplexed me last Thursday. I couldn't believe how many people were just tearing the whole thing down. Like.... don't watch it then?! And the rebuttal I saw to people saying that was usually, "I pay for this, I can be here if I want to." Which is a weak defense for poisoning the chat. I even saw people say things like, "they know they have to PLEASE the fan base." Like no dude, it's their show and they are telling the story they want.
I think life's too short to be angry and rant and rave in a public forum. I'd much rather just trust the process of the show and know that it will definitely have a deeper meaning.
Abrias a horrible dm. Do not enjoy watching her
thats a bit driven by the fact that you place the bar to Matt Mercer level maybe ?
@@levypoulter I hold the opinion she's a trash DM as well. Nothing to do with comparing her to Matt though. She flaunts breaking trust with her players which is the foundation for Cooperative Storytelling.
@@levypoulter It's because she's a bad DM. She's way too heavy handed and comes into the game with an antagonistic attitude. It's a typical "DM vs. Players" situation. A good and level-headed DM understands that you have to work with your players just as much as you need to work against them.
She twists outcomes to fit her own purposes instead of deftly manipulating events and situations in order to make things happen organically. She even went so far as to change the actual written rules of a spell in order to make something happen that she wasn't competent enough to make happen on her own. That right there puts her incompetence on full display for everyone to see.
The way she runs a game is a red flag to any player who might come across her in the future who doesn't want to feel pure frustration through a whole campaign. She's a killer DM in the making and I'd be surprised if she's ever managed to keep a game intact for a whole campaign outside of RUclips. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a revolving door of players in her private games.
The problem I have with Aabria here is two fold.
One, she exibited every behavioral red flag you see in bad GM vids on RUclips. Railroaded, told players how THEIR character felt, was actively antagonistic towards player and PC, "the rules are whatever the fuck I say they are", etc. It's every red flag.
Two, and probably the one that annoyed me most, is changing the rules of chromatic orb. Why does it bother me? Because it isnt her world! She arbitrarily changed the rules for a spell we've seen used in this universe, and the universe isnt even hers. It's Matt's. Is he now hamstrung by this going forward? Everytime Dorian uses CO, does it have to be AOE for it to make narrative sense? Was that really HER decision to make in the 4 hours she was the GM? To completely change a spell on a whim so she could get her moment is... a choice.
And generally I love her as a player and I can see the appeal when she GM's, but this was a train wreck for me.
She literally says "fuck you" to the fans. How can people defend this?
Because it was a joke and you’re not a Fan if that offends you!! Ashley, Marisha, Travis and Laura have all said fuck you to the fans joking before!!
Because the toxic fans should stop being toxic. This is their campaign AND THEIR WORLD NOT THE AUDIENCES. Matt etc chose Aabria and they put it here for narrative reasons. Simple as that. Sit back and enjoy the ride basically.
A number of fans have been pretty racist towards her in the past, I don’t blame her for being defensive.
@amethystimagination3332 I try to stay out of the community cause it can be so toxic :/ I enjoy the content for the contents brilliance. I really enjoyed the break, Aimee is frickin gold and Aabria has such a cinematic style though it does drag a bit. Part of the issue is the rail road feeling I think, but that's the cut scene idea?
The memory interplay during combat was a nice break at times from combat that some people will zone out during, after an hour or so.
@@ryno1509That was not a joke, it was bitter and aggressive.
I suspect we're going to see Opal, Fy'ra and Morrighan along the way to the end. Since all are Champions now. If all the gods from both sides are gathering Champions etc and agreeing to work together for the face off with Predathos. We'll see them again.
Such a great video! 👏🏻👏🏻
PS. As a small note, the Circlet of Barbed Vision isn't one of the Arms of the Betrayers. Although created by the same gods, the latter were specifically made by re-purposing the life force of a fiend to create a sentient weapon. Which... Would be even funnier, because it would mean that Opal would have herself, Ted, Lolth AND a demon in her head 😂😂😂
I wonder at which point people lost all ability to straight up say "this was bad" and instead started using phrases like "this is just her style and it's OK". No it's not OK and yes all Aabria's episodes on CR were pretty bad. She is very antagonistic, she does not know the rules and is proud of it, all her NPC's are the same abrupt and cocky person etc etc
American culture of not hurting feelings.
What a good way to put it!
I really wish people like would leave the dnd space asap
womp womp womp
Yeah, I like her on D20 when she's not using dnd. Kids with bikes is a lot more cinematic and free form, it works a lot better with her style. I literally can't watch her dm dnd, but I'm perfectly happy watching her dm other stuff.
Literal Bait & Switch. more Modern Hollywood:
101. If they had shown Abria NOBODY would watch and they know it.
I would not mind a filler, but Aabria's GM style sux IMO ...
Yeah I feel like this video focuses on people being upset about the filler, when really Aabria is the main problem.
Hindsight being 20/20, this kind of hints at the fact that the regular cast didn't know about Sam's condition until after FCG's death and it's entirely possible they did this to give themselves some time to emotionally recoup.
I love Aabria and find most of the hate towards her to be highly unjustified. I actually didnt mind her banter, I saw it as teasing i n a group, where that exact antagonisti energy has been matched by her players in past seasions. If the players at the table are comfortable with it, then it doesnt matter how fans feel.
But, with that said, her call on the chromatic orb was shit.
Yeah as somebody who follows her online and has seen her in person, she genuinely seems like a lovely person and anybody who’s seen her in different campaigns knows that the ‘DM vs Player’ stuff is often just a joke. I think people saying she’s a horrible person are just wrong, you can’t say that from watching her DM
I know there are a bunch of people who hate Aabria for non-DnD reasons and I'm not in those camps (ACOFAF is actually my fave d20 series, though it also suffers from a lack of pacing control), but after the way Aabria treated the players in these episodes, I will not be watching anything she DMs ever again.
I haven't been watching campaign 3 at all (I like CR but idk that I'd call myself a full-on fan? idk) but I tuned back in when I heard they switched back to Crown Keepers because I liked their EXU eps.
92 and 93 were really hard to watch. I get that every table is different, and both players and DMs have different styles and preferences, but it really felt like this went beyond that. Aabria wanted to kill players off but wasn't succeeding, so she really obviously ignored rules of the game and imo broke player trust multiple times. For example, Erica is extremely new to DnD, and said she wanted to move away from an enemy. Aabria told Erica she couldn't move without provoking an attack of opportunity. This is not true; Erica could have used her Hop ability. Not only did Aabria violate Erica's trust by telling her something untrue, Aabria then also took advantage of Morrigan not moving and attacked Morrigan multiple times for huge damage. It's hard to not read that as petty, or at least unenjoyably rail-roading. Even if you argue Aabria maybe didn't remember the Hop ability (tho why would an incredibly experienced DM not read up on a very new player's character sheet? I do that even as a fellow player), but Aabria did definitely know about Hop when Aabria chose to attack Morrigan a bunch regardless.
With Robbie Aabria full-on rewrote the affects of a Chromatic Orb after Dorian had cast it, so when Robbie wanted to *save* Cyrus, Aabria had him instead do damage. Robbie was visibly upset when this happened, and even more visibly upset when Cyrus died. As Aabria herself said: Dorian left to save his brother, and his brother is the only one he didn't save. Erica was so upset about this that she started sobbing in the middle of talking (not the cathartic, good-narrative cry we see so often in CR and EXU, but a panicked-player sob).
After bending these and other rules/trust to deal damage, Aabria then gloated and pretended to not know the rules for death saves, and passive aggressively pretended to ask Matt about the rules. It was seriously disturbing to watch Matt initially answer her questions in good faith, then realize what Aabria was doing and go quiet. Aabria essentially 'cheated' multiple times to kill Cyrus and try to kill the other players, then threw it in their faces when she. succeeded. Even if one argues that some players/tables enjoy that combative DMing style (some absolutely do!) it was very clear that this particular table did not. If not for Erica making jokes and saving the mood, I think things would have gone really sour for the whole episode after that.
The purpose of this little interlude was supposed to be getting Dorian back to the main cast in a limited number of episodes, and doing it in an entertaining way (because unlike the main cast, these are not just buddies playing a home game; Crown Keepers are paid participants who are hired to come do a job). If Aabria is incapable of accomplishing that job in a professional way, then imo she should not be brought back. Maybe she meant this all in good fun, but it came off toxic, punitive, and even borderline abusive depending on the person. There are some players for whom being forced to roleplay helping kill your own brother would be incredibly triggering, let alone being mocked about it after the fact. I've played in enough toxic campaigns to never want to play with a DM that acts like Aabria did during these eps. It sets a bad example for the DnD community as a whole, and most importantly it was clear her players were negatively affected by that behavior. That's not only not entertaining, it's flat-out not ok. The fact that Aabria seems to be aware and doesn't care (she literally looked at the camera and said 'f- you Reddit' at one point) just feels very troubling to me. I've seen Matt, Brennan, and countless other DMs kill off NPCs and PCs, but only Aabria makes it feel like she's trying to punish her players to keep them in line, or that she's holding players down just so she can punch them more easily. It's icky, and I don't blame anyone for not being onboard.
I really... REALLY have to stop watching CR with the chat on
As someone that has never had the chat on while watching a stream, it's fantastic. As a life long DM myself, I akin it to one of the many problem players. IE - rules lawyers, know it alls, etc.
I just sit back and enjoy the story as it happens. Hell, I've even had a player sacrifice themselves for the group. Yeah I fudged dice and things, because I believe in the "Rule of cool."
Honestly it's the best way to watch any Twitch channel, apart from maybe ones where there's an active Q&A with the streamer. Twitch chat seems to always devolve into the worst behavior from people.
I wasn’t super happy with the swap, but Dorian’s return made it all worth it!
They were planning a small dip into EXU already as a way to bring Dorian back into the main party and wrap up the crown keepers. Everyone was hyped up emotions wise and I think it hurt fans who were still grieving. I don’t think these were filler episodes though. This was the equivalent to Paul McGann’s Night of the doctor as a way to introduce John Hurt as the War Doctor for the 50th Doctor Who special.
I just absolutely can not stand Aabria at all. There are lessons that can be learned from her but she has more negatives than positives in my opinion. Whenever she’s on scream, it becomes a chore to finish the episode.
I've been a fan of CR since C1E25. If something on the show doesn't go exactly the way I want it to, well, then it's just like literally everything else in my life since I was born, and I'm just not going to spend the energy to be angry about it. It's not about me.
This is my favorite take I've seen so far. Simple. True. Not selfish.
Same dude if I happen to not like an episode for whatever just turn it off or go with the flow why trip on it
Well of course. Episode 25 c1 is right about when Orion left. Much better going forward
@@pauljinkerson6359 Agreed, but for me that was coincidental.
@@graywulf19 Sometimes coincidence works in your favor 👍
Not really sure how you can say nothing happened
SPOILER AHEAD
Cyrus was killed by a god, which then led to Dorian saying that he wants revenge on the gods. The whole intent of this campaign is that they are trying to stop the gods from being killed by predothos, now Dorian has a way to get revenge on the gods by releasing predothos/siding with the Vanguard. I think Dorian adds a new dynamic to the party, especially because Bells Hells still really aren't sure how they feel about the gods. Dorian might try and instigate the party into believing the gods are bad or something who knows. I hope Robbie/Dorian at least explores that idea as I think this little mini arc with the Crown Keepers could have repercussions through the rest of the campaign if Dorian wants there to be.
There were a lot of things that I felt weren't right and over the top. The way Aabria actively redirected the story and outcome of everyone's actions to perfectly fit how she or who ever wrote this portion of the the campaign to go. Just a bit to heavy handed IMO. If I were playing, I would think twice of playing again if she were leading the game.
And this is just a side note.
Personally, I can't imagine Lolth taking a personal interest in any mortal the way she did in this game play. She would have acted through one of her Yochlol hand maidens. Mortals are completely beneath her. Even a presumed champion.
Just my opinion.
Cheers
Honestly I feel like everything leading up to FCG's death was also kind of unfair, from the bombs to Otohan literally sneaking up on BH despite them constantly checking for her. Just kind of didn't sit well with me. Also, nah fuck the spider queen. 🤷♂️
Well this aged badly.
Her "style" is "different", "vibes"......in other words , terrible.
i saw one episode of aabria her DMing and it was not my thing to watch
the moment the group switched i just turned the episode off and from what im hearing and reading is that the filler wasnt that good
the chromatic orb if you change the ruling of any spell u have to make it clear with your player before hand and not after they casted the spell and say "the rules are whatever i say they are" that is the wrong mentality as any DM for it will make everything just confusing.
u can change certain effects of a spell on nat 1 or 20 for extra dramatic effect for sure but killing off someweone becuse u changed a spell is bad DMing IMO
but its all hearsay since i didnt watch it becuse it was not in my interest im more peeved becuse of the change but u adressed that aswell so ye
good vid and explanation
And it's not as if it's open to interpretation either. It's not one of those "DM ruling because of weird wording" situations. Chromatic Orb is a single-target spell. That's it, plain and simple. She just arbitrarily changed the written rules for no reason other than her being a bad DM who couldn't achieve the results she wanted on her own.
If they really needed to get Dorian's character and the player up to speed, then Matt could have done a one-shot with the player as he has done with Steven Colbert. Or they could have just brought in Dorian again and he could have regaled the story of how his brother fell from him own misdoings. Do you need to abruptly have a mini-episode in an episode? No. Do you need new players that only get a brief amount of air time/ game time? No, because this could just be thrown a money bone at these people and really trying to control more of the D&D community. They already get the biggest piece of the pie and now we just have a DM openly ignore rules to satisfy their narrations, they can write a novel instead of holding out for more money because they are having a writers strike. Just play the game and respect the rules.
Aabria's style is anti-player agency.
CR is all over the place. Nothing really make sense anymore, they are doing games, spirits, series, books, now a subscription thing, it's just too much and their stories are clearly suffering from it
Was not a fan of the EXU Crown Keepers. I didn't watch them, so I missed on most of the lore and the characters. I knew Orym, Fearne and Dorian were from that series. But throwing it back into our faces without any backstory, I felt lost on the story. I didn't like the player (with the bunny ears) her turns during the combat was AWFUL. She took forever and didn't understand how to play. Just made it painful to watch. I turned it off. So last weeks episode I ended up watching it this week so I could fast forward to the end of their episode (before the break) got all the info I needed and was happy to see the CR cast return. I like Robbie and his character Dorian. He is a good match up for the CR cast and plays very well. So in a nutshell I think the CR cast were planning a break for the Indio music festival. I miss when they were airing live episodes, I get why they aren't but I do miss it...
D.E.I at it's finest. She's not good enought to DM.
most "fans" in the sense of the word fanatics, will be too railroaded into the common modern zeitgeist of California, that they will never see that this is exactly it.
One word. CANCER. filler was needed by the cast to figure some things out.
I feel like they could have done this in place of candela instead of taking time away from the main campaign.
It should have been a stand alone thing to give Aabria more time, which probably would have made a lot of the issues better.
It was there to purposely take time away from the main campaign, they just lost a player character and a main villain, Matt needed time to restructure his plans as this is all on the spot
@@ryno1509 I would imagine they already had it scheduled that Dorian was going to return after the moon thing. I think Matt already had plans in place given he knows how strong Otahan is and she is entirely capable of killing one of two PCs before going down.
I’m not familiar with Aabria in the CR space but I am familiar with her in the Dimension 20 space. She’s exceptional there, her campaigns are truly some of the best so seeing peoples opinions about her in CR is actually really surprising
Honestly, it was a choice. It was an interesting look at one of the questions that I've had with the story so far, which is How Do the Betrayer Gods Feel About All This, but at the same time, I also remember back when EXU and EXU Kymal were done that the Audience were told that we didn't have to watch them to get the full campaign story. That these were separate things. Even with 2 (3 if you count Dorian) core members of the Bells Hells as previous members of the Crown Keepers, we could watch it or not at our leisure. With thousands of hours of content to watch/catch up on, it had been nice to not need to have these shows as frames of reference. Now it feels like we almost HAVE to watch these mini-series that we were told we didn't have to, in order to get the full extent of what was going on with the show.
Yeah, I tried watching ExU but Aabria's style didn't vibe well with me. With the mid-stream switch, I felt I had to go back and watch ExU and ExU: Kymal. I'm not really looking forward to watching more of her in Episodes 92 & 93.
Hey, remember when CR had new guests and fresh faces almost weekly? Matt got to play with narrative structure and try different things?
Those are the days that made CR what it is. They haven't done anything novel in dozens of episodes, and it's stagnating
Matt knows this, and when he saw an opportunity, tried something. The reason he was so grateful to the Crown Keeper players at the end was because they swooped in to play on short notice and transition the story.
When I see people like Aabria DMing on screen, I feel pretty good about myself. It is the opposite of the Matt-Mercer-effect. I compare myself to an experienced DM with thousands of views and I am a way better DM. That makes me happy.
Still wouldn't watch anything with her to the end.
You keep saying that critical role members aren't giving these alterative characters and stories a chance, well what if they did give them a chance and decided that they do not enjoy it? that's the boat i'm in, I have watched everything Abria has been in regarding CR and the only thing I liked her in was the calamity. I want to like her characters and DM'ing style but just never do and every time I give her a decent chance I get put off and have to switch off. This is not a personal attack on her by the way, I don't know her personally to judge. I wonder how many others are like me. Just for a little more context, I watch various other roleplaying series and enjoy alot of other DM's besides Matt. Matt is awesome but there are other amazing DM's I just can't count Arbria on the list unfortunately.
The DM is supposed to be there for the questers. People with naturally dominant personalities like Iyengar - and myself, if I'm being honest - tend not to make good DM's. She makes me cringe because I find her overpowering in her role as DM, running roughshod over Mercer's finely tuned story. Yes, I know how that sounded, but surely we can all agree that the amount of work and effort Mercer has put into his, let's face it, masterful DnD storytelling has been titanic.
I am unashamedly - as well as obviously ;o) - a fan of Mercer's achievements because I see how much blood, sweat and tears he has invested in this "Critical Role" endeavour of his. To my mind, it demanded more respect than it was awarded.
Ugh, anyway, enough from me. I'm gonna watch another episode. And who drank all my wine!!?
oh .......
I mean, now that we know what happened to Sam, the switch makes sense. Its hard knowing the extra story behind the change. So glad Sam is doing better now.
And then came Sam's personal message and a lot of choices of the team made a lot more sense.
(Spoilers) "Nothing super important happened" Sorry dude, but Lolth deciding to claim her champion for the fight against Predathos, which will probably result in Pearl and Feor teaming up with the Hells later down the line needed to be set up so it didn't cause a disruption when they suddenly appear later and the dissolution of the Crown Keepers is kinda important.
Probably should have been its own episode, I agree. But the chance is, is because they're time poor for something coming soon that required its necessity.
I could never play under Aabria, and I can't watch her DM, nothing against her, just not my cup of tea.
I genuinely love abria as a player and a DM but i don't think shes built for a show like critical role. Shes admitted that she doesn't like high fantasy very much so its to be expected and shes done some amazing work elsewhere. So yeah i think that combined with the sudden change after such an emotional beat really made me disconnect from this bit of the story. Thank god for Flando! He really helped me get through it
Based on what I saw in this episode I dint think she should even be DMing for a small home game. She belongs in r/rpghorrorstories
@@DOKTORPUSZ she can be a bit aggressive and tends to do things for the plot but really she is fantastic dm. You're never gonna like everything an artist does. I agree that I think she may have gone a bit far for my taste but everyone at the table and off screen seem fine and ok with what happened. So I think it's just chalking it up to this not being not a great showing for her.
She also said on the newest four sided dive that they wanted Dorian to come in with the same energy as bells hells.
@herebyaccident5174 of course the rest of the cast seem fine with her. Do you really think they would openly criticise her, or the episode, on the channel?
@@DOKTORPUSZ Alright. Think what you want.
@@herebyaccident5174I can understand what she wanted to do and have Dorian bring to the table for BHs, but I don’t really agree with how “railroaded” the entire thing was. Whatever a DM wants shouldn’t come at the cost of players agency, and the entire “fight” felt like it was all determined by her despite whatever the players might do. To had context about myself I didn’t react like all these fanatic babies that popped during the episodes, but I did have a bad taste in my mouth after watching them. Maybe the “railroading” was due to a “time crunch” to wrap up what the Crown Keepers were doing, and to get Dorian on the other side of the planet. So maybe what was needed was 2 or more full episodes dedicated to the CK rather than two half episodes Idk? But how it stands now with the arguably bad timing of it all and railroaded mess of it all, just spdidnt sit right with me personally.
I suspect his brother dying was something everyone agreed needed to happen from a narrative stand point, before any of them sat at the table. Otherwise, Dorian would have no reason to seek out and rejoin Bell’s Hells. Turning that single target spell into an aoe spell for that purpose was a means to an end everyone already knew had to happen one way or another.
Between having a random spider kill him or having the unintended splash of Dorian’s own spell kill him, having Dorian’s own actions be the final blow is more dramatic and impactful for the narrative they needed to tell.
Problem is, it werent his actions. If Aabrya had said before he casted the spell, O would agree with you. But she decided after, that Chromatic Orb could have done anything and thats why ppl are livid.
I'm sure that was aabria's intent but they could've found a more graceful way to do it. You can't force emotional impact you need to let the mechanics tell the story otherwise it's not a game.
@@xxliew an easy and not rulesbreaking but onetime bending could have been
"as you cast your spell something feels of and you feel a surge in the spells manifestation that you can not controll all of a sudden it does more than you expect than you know should have happened."
there an easy fix simple, not unelegant and not blatantly disregarding the rules but respecting them, just bending the event to have a certain outcome to achieve a goal, wich in this case was probably discussed beforehand (Cyrrus must die).
i watched the first EXU but never got to like it, abreia didn´t vibed with me and the charakters were not that interesting to mee either, the only thing i remember from the EXU is abreia asking for saving throws where nothing was to save from a lot of times, or where other roles would have been much more apropriate or even needed per RAW. her long narrative style was also not my cup of tea, my adhd brain can´t take that much info in let alone if 80% is not relevant or should not be known to players or charakters, or breaking pace of combat wich allready is a drag for me to watch as fast page action is slowed down even more slowed down through long narrative inserts have me losing oversight of what is going on.
Almost as bad as dragonball Z where a fight took a felt 20 weekly episodes where each episodes were thrown 3 punches and the rest was the bystanders commenting about it.
allthough i don´t hate her i would rather see brendan lee mulligan join CR as Guest DM, his style is also different from matts but it is much more enjoyable to me than abreias, i enjoyed his dimension twenty shows they were really fun to watch.
i feel what a lot of people missed about campaign 3 is that it is actually a the culmination of the multiverse of season 1, 2 and EXU, kinda like the marvel cinematic universe, wich has the weakness that one has to watch all the stuff to understand whats going on, allthough not liking some of that stuff.
i hope for season 4 CR stops doing that stuff, i don´t think it works to well if one has to watch multiple campaigns wich each take over a year to follow.
it doesn´t really helped that C§ was a bit all over the place the dynamic of the party was disrupted before it took form multiple times by comming and going guests, forced in EXU charakters and a time rushed main event not leaving enough time for the party to get information and rally allies and resources setting up for failure dividing the party and joining the different partyparts with guests again from EXU dividing the campaign in multiple storyarcs to follow till the reunion was achieved. the dividing was where i ended my watching of C3 since i felt it was a mess from the start and wasn´t anjoying it anymore, might return to give C4 a chance but i am not confident it will catch me like S1 and 2 did.
I can actually see why this isn't just EXU filler. They didn't JUST need Dorian back, they need a slightly different Dorian back. When Dorian parted ways with Bell's Hells, all of them were a bunch of chuckle-fucks with no sense of direction or duty (except Orym, who has always been the odd one out). Having just lost FCG, Dorian couldn't come back as the same old chuckle-fuck, he needed life experiences, perspective on the looming threats, etc. By making this a canon event (not that EXU isn't canon, but rather by making this part of the main campaign) more people were encouraged to watch it and understand why Dorian suddenly has different views on things like the gods. Dorian is not potentially the biggest potential side-swipe that Critical Role has seen since Arkhan took the hand of Vecna in C1. Think about it, who among the original cast is inclined to let Predathos out and see the ending of the gods? Neither the players nor their characters are really willing to see what that sort of world looks like. Meanwhile, Dorian just lost his brother, as well as several close friends, to the whims of a couple of deities. He's vowed revenge, he's angry. He's in an amazing spot right now to wait until Bell's Hells think they're about to end the Ruidus arc, only to betray the group and release Predathos in order to get revenge on the Spider Queen. Robbie is an agent of chaos, and Dorian doesn't 'have to be around in the next campaign, so neighther he nor Robbie necessarily have to stick around and deal with the consequences. If this wasn't a main campaign episode and people came back to c3e93 without context for Dorians' personal changes (or even who he is at that point,) then such a betrayal would land differently and really tripped people up.
Maybe youtube will finally stop using aabrias name in the same breath as other, actually great dms now. She's not in that class just because her games are streamed.
Campaign 3 is broken beyond the repair. This isn't long form story telling, its a dumpster fire. The pacing is a nightmare, the characters are not suited to the story being told, the story itself is nonsensical and all built to vilify the gods Matt spent years getting the community to like and care about just so he can kill them off and install his Daggerheart bs.
Like the gods? I agree that campaign 3 is not the best but Matt NEVER wanted us to like the gods, what a terrible take. The damn Matron of Ravens actively used a deal in saving Vax's sister to basically make him a foot soldier in a war he wanted no part in. Even the "good" gods actively use other as proxies to further a war against the betrayer gods, who also use people as proxies. The gods have actively been shown to be forces of power that use people as pawns. The gods were always vilified and this has always been the case. HELL, the extended conclusion to campaign 2 was everybody meeting up to battle Uka'toa, a person who also made a power deal with Fjord and many others to live a life of trying to free him, and we saw to what extent that corrupted people like Avantika. What a terrible argument, deities and highpowers have always been problematic in Exandria.
Well said.
I stopped at watching after the teleportation bs.
C3 has a lot of logic problems….and I don’t like most of the characters
Enjoyed your video. You made some valid points that I can understand. I'm also a pretty serious Critical Role fan. I've been watching consistently since early(ish) campaign 1. I watch nearly every episode live on Twitch and have a great time doing so. This most recent season is the weakest in my opinion. I've not liked the more "accessible" or accommodating episodes. Yes, I understand that new players/viewers need that type of support in order to grasp a show like Critical Role, however I'm simply not a fan of it. It's annoying for me to watch explanations for action economy or hearing discussion on how certain things can be done. These aren't fresh players! They may not have as much experience as you or I, but they have enough to figure out most anything that it placed before them. Requiring Matt to explain rules or to hand hold these players is frustrating for me.
I'll continue to watch Critical Role, Campaign 3 but I'm simply not as big of a fan as I once was. Campaign 1 will remain my top favorite campaign. Ain't nothing topping that! I mean, the fact that the animated show is based off of and follows the characters from campaign 1 should show how beloved that campaign was and is. I mean, I've got a terrible memory. Straight goldflsh levels, bad. I can still remember and name each of the characters from campaign 1 and who played them, whereas for 2 I'm drawing a blank and 3 - I can remember a few. This is a Monday and I watched the most recent episode on Thursday live. I do not enjoy Critical Role nearly as much as I once did. I have debated with myself whether or not I'll continue my subscription to Critical Role on Twitch.
Love the cast, loved the show.. but it's going downhill and I'm not wanting to be on a sinking ship. That's my take on it.
Dude, it's not that I won't give the side projects a chance, it's that I'm a busy working adult with a family and barely have enough time to consume four to five hour episodes a week of the main campaign. That episode so drawing because I didn't know any of those characters and I didn't care about them at all. And I'm not fan of Abrea's style. They should have just made this a separate side episode that was meant to be woven into the main campaign.
Does anyone have the link or know where that clip of Brennan talking about poison of the mind? Curious what context he was talking about, so I'd like to see it.
I made the mistake of watching it with some of the chat. I kept switching to full screen to get away from how awfully toxic it was.
You must've also turned your eyes and ears away from Aabria if you managed to avoid toxicity 😂
Knowing now what Sam was going through, these two filler episodes makes so much more sense.
Just a comment on the point that the audience should give new players the chance to shine; for those of us who listen to the podcast rather than watching the show, tossing an entirely new cast at us is suuuuuper confusing.
When I started with CR, I watched the show, and I was able to put the voices to a face. Simple and easy. Then I started a new job and didn’t have the time needed to watch the show, so I just started listening instead. I knew the voices and I knew which characters were talking.
But you throw an entirely new cast at me, and suddenly I couldn’t tell you who is who. It’s incredibly confusing at times.
Small problem in the greater scheme of things, but I wanted to at least mention it.
Aabria is always cringe. Not watching if she is on.
The fan reaction to ep. 92 & 93 are one of the reasons I don’t introduce D&D to my friends or family. Some of the negativity towards Aabria was uncalled for. Outside of Critcal Role her DMing style works so well, but it just seems to be hit and miss whenever she has to DM for a Critical Role production. But for the life of me, I can’t or just don’t get the hate.
Being a weeks removed from ep. 92 & 93 it’s feels that Aabria along w/ the Crownkeepers were brought in as a reaction to Sam’s choice to have FCG sacrifice themselves to give the story & the gang some time to breath. While I was hoping it would be a 3 mini episode to explain Dorian’s return, it’s definitely clear that there was a time crunch Matt was on & Aabria had to move the timetable earlier than expected.
Who knows what the actually plan was for Dorian to return but I honestly don’t see those episodes to be that divisive
Her gming isn’t that great outside of cr. A court of fey and flowers is great but that’s only because the pcs are doing the heavy lifting. Misfits and magic is terrible anytime there’s plot instead of just players making jokes. Burrows ends is her best work and it was just ok. She is a great dnd player but she is not a good dm
Aabria's DM style isn't for me she takes far to long to get things done. And that's the main reason why I never got invested in the crown keepers group while the players themselves I really liked when they showed up in the main series.
My biggest complaint about this was the filler feeling of it when talking to the people FCG knew like dancer and seeing there reaction would have been big. And they very easily have turned this to a EXU: division special a extra contract for people who want it but this took away the choice. Now they are moving into the next stage of the campaign and most of the hells are wearing pieces of FCG and they haven't told dancer or Frida that he died.
I personally found the switch so jarring. She has such a different DM style to Matt and the contrast is really clear.
I don’t think she’s naturally built for this game / campaign. Ep91 wasn’t too bad but Ep92 just felt so aggressive and antagonistic. It felt like players were getting confused and didn’t seem to feel like they could ask for clarification on certain decisions.
It just felt uncomfortable at times to watch how she was so forcefully pushing the narrative that she could do whatever they wanted and if they cast a spell etc that would hurt her narrative, they’d be punished for it!
Jfc. Man I don't hate her or anything. But crap. I will not watch anything with her in it. She is the type of person I avoid at all costs. And it seems a big part of the fans feel the same.
I originally planned to watch EXU after I caught up with C3, like a little "bonus" show, so the characters showing up in episode 92 really blindsided me. I've been looking for a recap of the show so I can understand wtf is going on, but following this I think I'm going to just happily skip to Dorian meeting Hell's Bells and stick with my original planning of going back later. ^^"
The main reason this episode was a disaster and a series killer for me had nothing to do with anything mentioned in this video. It was the unjustified assumption that viewers had any idea who these people and their characters were. The problem was the assumption that everyone had watched ExU: Kymal and knew this stuff already. I, for one, had not.
A person who had watched all of C3 would obviously know Mercer and Daymond, because of their previous appearances in the campaign. The others would be a complete mystery. And we have no idea of any of their characters’ names, levels, races, and classes (though eventually that information appeared on screen). We have no idea of the story up to this point. We don’t even know where on the continent of Exandria this is taking place.
How hard would it have been to start with introductions and some basic scene-setting: “Hi, I’m Aabria Iyengar, and I’ll be your DM for the next little while. Let’s go around the table and have everyone introduce themselves and their characters.” And then, after they did so, Aabria could say, “We’re picking the story up here shortly after the events in Exandria Unlimited: Kymal. If you want to know more, check out that series on RUclips and Twitch. Meanwhile, here’s a brief summary of what our heroes have been up to.”
Anything would have been better than simply dropping us into the middle of a story that many of us knew nothing about, without any signpost whatsoever to guide us.
I’m not blaming Aabria for this, by the way. This is a production issue by the whole CR team. When planning this switch, someone should have said, “What about those who haven’t watched ExU: Kymal?” It took me a month just to figure out that these were characters from that series.
It’s not that aabria has a different dming style than Matt. Brennan is completely different but he is loved by the cr community. The problem is that it destroyed the narrative momentum of a campaign that was finally getting really good. Also aabria is just not a great dm. Even in d20, she’s never the best part of the games she runs
Do you think aabria broke into the CR set and forced them to film for her. Or was she invited, booked and paid by Matt, Marisha and Travis?
@@SamuBrownYT I think it’s great that they enjoy playing with her. I just don’t think she’s good. Most of the cr fandom agrees with me
@@Pearlem most of the cr Fandom simply do not care. A small very loud and vocal minority do however.
@@SamuBrownYT then why do the views drop on her episodes, comments talk about “her not being for them” or outright saying they think she’s bad. Why does almost every cr related community say they don’t like her as much as Matt or Brennan? Why does almost everyone agree that her interrupting campaign 3 was a bad decision that killed the momentum c3 had finally achieved? I really don’t hate her as a person. She seem nice. I like her as a pc in the seven, calamity, and worlds beyond number. As a dm both me and many others just don’t like what she does. Especially in cr
@@Pearlem because most of the Fandom simply likes Matt and Co. They straight up do not watch shit without them in it. Look at Calamity views. They aren't actually very high. People "love it" sure but they views don't compare to the rest of the campaign or EXU views. I'm simply saying MOST people don't care. People who come online and rant and a MINORITY. Most people when they dislike something they are pretty quiet about it. And her stepping in to C3 to DM was on the CR team. Not her. They planned her appearance there. You can't blame the freelancer for showing up to work when hired when that was booked in advance. It is not her fault FCG died in the previous episode. Her presence did not slow down in the show in anyway that could be planned for in advance. Fans complain that critical role is scripted and pre-planned and then when shit happens that makes it clear PCs have agency they get upset they are not watching a scripted show. Would the momentum be broken is it was still BH flapping around and FCG had not died? Or did FCG die, Aabria had a scheduled DM gig and the crew both honored PC agency as well as the schedule they had prior.
Yall are loud and mad for no reason. Btw, Brennan your lord and savior has awful views on Downfall as well. People have also been mad that it's placed in the main campaign and interrupted the regular cast and Matt. They don't like it as much as Calamity. Because Calamity was not made great by Brennan. It was made great by his stepping up to be compelling characters.
You made a lot of valid points. I'm glad Robbie is back. I was also happy to see Matt getting to play in his own world, the sheer joy on his face.... I have a friend that adores Abbria and we discussed what happened, production wise. I don't care to watch her games, however, I would absolutely love to play in one. If I'm honest, it helped to let FCG go. Sam did that sacrifice justice. I needed something detached and less emotional to not be mad at them moving forward.
I just thought this arc was pretty boring. Worst thing is that it felt required to watch the whole arc. C3 is the first CR campaign I watched and have enjoyed it, but I didn’t feel that the side arc were supposed to be in the main story. Just extra for the world of Exandria, which is why I skipped most of the side arcs, but to reach episode 91-92 and then for the cast to get up and start something else that I have no recollection of was annoying. I felt as though I needed to stop watching to go watch this other stuff. The other stuff was all unimportant in my eyes. I think that was the biggest problem for me. I felt like I had to watch this mediocre subplot that some happened before C3 and most during the campaign to understand whatever was gonna happen next and it did nothing. Shouldn’t have been a part of the main campaign.
Credit to you, sir, for doing a Chef’s Kiss without then verbally saying “Chef’s Kiss.”
I just don’t watch if Matt isn’t dm. Period. In fact, any time any cast member is absent I’m less interested. (Except for tally, he genuinely irritates me just naturally as a person so)
Personally aabria isn't my cup of tea, DM or Player, except for her role in Calamity, she did a fantastic job.
Apart from that exception, her DMing is hard on my head, I'm a fan of gritty dark storytelling and you always need glimmers of comedy to contrast. BUT! she has like three styles of NPCs personas and they are all kind of annoying, she almost always sounds condescending, she tries to be dark gritty but it always devolves into either childish antics, or obnoxious amounts of adult humor at all of the wrong times.
If that fight wasnt emphasized by "dick gems" every 5 minutes I might've enjoyed it.
And like Laura has her notorious dirty mind but she giggles or makes a quick comment and we move on with the scene. But aabria's fight was just a cluster fuck.
I'm just posting this to maybe balance out opinions. I like Aabria, and I've enjoyed at least three of the series she's DMed. (I can't claim to watched have ALL the online games available.). I didn't enjoyed these episodes, and I think it's mainly because I was wanting to see the fallout from FCG's sacrifice, and this was a long detour from that story. That's not her fault, and I'm inclined to think, now that we know more about what was happening with Sam at the time, that it's not Critical Role's fault, either. They were dealing with a big scheduling situation, and it may well be that the Crown Keepers were stepping in without a lot of notice.
Nevertheless, it did halt the main narrative, and I was impatient to get past this Spider Queen stuff and get back to the main crew. I do wonder if the Spider Queen champion will show up again, and help out in what looks to be an epic battle.
Aabria is the worst DM ever, you couldnt pay me enough to play even in a oneshot of hers. Orion's player vs DM attitude woulda been much more valid if he had her as a DM
I'm in the 80 percentile, and I LOVED 😍 the switch. I really wanted to know how the Crown Keepers were doing. Watching Matt play is always fun, good for him.
Of course
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Meanwhile me for the last 2 years: what are the Crown Keepers doing? What does "Opal is getting darker" mean?Where's Dorian, and when will we see him and Orym finally reunite? What about Dariax and Deni$e (still unanswered)? To me it's not a filler, it's PLOT. And people had the same complaints about ExU: Calamity, which is, imho, the best example of role-playing I've ever seen, and integral to the plot too.
I couldn't have said it better!
Random but you look like the spawn of Marisha and Matt o.O
How much better would that session have gone if Aabria had TALKED to Aimee, and gotten on the same page "Opal is going to kill someone due to the influence of the crown. How do you want to play this?"
Aimee kept trying to look for ways out, and that could have been clarified with "you are the champion of an evil god, and wearing her vestige. There is no way out. This god is frustrated, has no interest in negotiating, and no motive to delay (in fact, an incentive to hurry) - this ends with you leaving this group to go do her bidding because nothing else with satisfy her. This much you have figured out from many nights of dark nightmares."
Gove Aimee some heads up to ponder those constraints without the pressure of time and cameras.
Carful when complaining, now that we know SAM HAD CANCER, complaining about these little hiccups seems pretty shallow.
Exactly, once you know the why behind the actions I had no issues with it. I might not like everything that happens in campaign but I understand that it's not my decision to make.
The 20% needs to sit down, shut up, and watch the game. If you like it keep watching, if you don't like it, I'm sure there is some fake RUclipsr out there that speaks your level of entitlement for you to watch.
"Oh, Wendy's is bad. You can't support them!" You made me turn Wendy's into a weekly trip.
I'm very sorry if you feel that way. I personally love them. They were getting stale and they stood up? What's not to like about that? That they weren't pro-WoTC anymore?
I don't understand the debate. They're all good in my mind. Coming from an RPGist with 40 years of XP, I'd find anything but praise less than worthy.