It's about DnD

Critical Role, home games, dice, characters, backstories, etc. Literally just dnd.

[burr-ell]

I caught up with the Schemers' Tale Gate a little bit ago, and Taliesin said something there that stood out to me, in response to Liam discussing Hal's use of the theatre to portray the history of the Rungjani. His commentary is...not great, and I think it also lies at the heart of the issue with the way Taliesin is handling Bolaire's view of Thjazi:

"I can retort with history is a snapshot of the present, and history is made by storytellers. Facts come and go; stories are what lasts. [...] It only takes one good diary to change our perspective on a whole situation that happened a hundred years ago. [...] I was literally thinking of a diary that was found during the San Francisco earthquake that actually, like—we find these things and suddenly we realize that a whole bunch of people were full of shit."

Yeah, I don't need a doctorate in history to know this sucks. One single primary source may be all it takes to convince a subset of people that actually a historical figure was incompetent or terrible, but that does not mean that perception is accurate. One lone diary isn't a study of history in any meaningful sense; it's a record of one person's experience, and that alone is not historiography. Caring more about story than about facts is not a good thing—one of those things is pretend and the other has an actual impact on real people's lives. This is incredibly self-congratulatory; it has nothing substantive to do with this entirely separate discipline; it's frankly pretty bad storytelling anyway; and it would furthermore make most actual academics grind their teeth at the kindest.

But it also sheds some light on why Taliesin, out of game, insists that Thjazi can't possibly be working for a happy ending that is inclusive of the PCs and that he actually planned for half the PCs to die and that everyone who likes him is a "schmuck". He truly believes that if only everyone could just read Bolaire's diary, they'd all agree Thjazi was full of shit. He truly believes that he alone has the game-changing knowledge, and everyone else is too willfully blind to try to look for it.

I don't think that's particularly nuanced. I think it's just inverted Great Man Theory. Considering I learned better in my APUSH classes, I think calling that sophomoric is an insult to high school sophomores.

[shovelwareyaoi]

[seelieyoulater]

I'll never get over how wonderful Thaisha is as a druid. She embodies it so perfectly, every part of her. She is kind and loving and offers help and a home to those who need it, and she also does not hesitate to act, to fight, to shout. When Wick snaps (deservedly), she snaps back but she also tells him that it was good for him to do that and that he shouldn't apologise. She just makes me think of all the destructive, unpredictable powers of nature so perfectly coupled with all of its comforts and beauty.

[davinosradcnihtroyce]

I actually don't want Azune to be secretly related to a Sundered House or be lost royalty or whatever.

Royalty isn't special and the divine blood of kings is a lie, they are just descendants of the people who were nasty enough to hold onto power. The Sundered Houses aren't special and worthy of power above all others, either. It's all a lie enforced with violence, Primus being exhibit A.

Azune is something else, I think, outside that power structure. Something perhaps supressed by the Shapers in the same way that whatever gave Teor and Cyd their Paladin gifts seems to be unknown and parts of the Old Path lore have been lost.

Yes, Azune is very much using the Einfasen's belief in their inherited superiority against them, which is extremely valid of him.

No, this doesn't make him Anastasia.

[utilitycaster]

I remember that earlier in Daggerheart's development I think Spenser Starke said something about rewarding RP integration with mechanics (ie, providing a benefit if you help patch up your teammate during a short rest) and while I think that precise idea was streamlined a bit, I do think the need to pick downtime moves during a long rest puts players into a mindset where they slow down and have to think which in turn fosters more downtime conversation. The campfire during slow travel is where a great deal of character conversations and bonding take place, and options like preparing with a colleague very naturally lead to having those conversations and encouraging interaction with characters you might not automatically gravitate to. Or in other words I think Daggerheart was made with a really keen eye towards using mechanics to gently guide people towards open RP, whereas I still love D&D but often the RP element of it requires much more conscious choice.

[mookybear12404]

I feel like the first class you played in DND tells a lot about you

Reblog and put in the tags what your first class was

[dogpuppy]

[chillinglikeashilling]

I was joking about Thaisha's metal spine being a sort of fantasy scoliosis representation (for those unaware the corrective surgery for scoliosis involves the insertion of rods and screws into your back to hold the manually straightened spine in place) but...

I am now remembering that her PC Decima from when she guest starred on Bards of New York also had various magical metal prosthetics (that heated up!), and that Aabria mentioned in the Study Hall interview that she irl had multiple sports related injuries including a disc to the back that was the final end of her sports career.

So, I do wonder if the plates do speak to some chronic disability management or the magical intervention into some sort of serious injury that we might learn more about now that Thaisha is traveling alone.

[natrual11]

Headcannoning that orcs have very intense parental instincts

bc why was it that anytime they saw an unattended human child they would just be like “dibs” and bring it home???

[trailertrashgrog]

brennan has put a lot of care into building a setting where there is no immutable source of evil within the world. it makes the villains rich and diverse. placing the onus of the sundered houses' villainy upon sorcery as a concept is simply flattening the setting at every level. sorcerers aren't evil. at no point is the concept of innate magic considered bad.

sorcerers are just a fact of the setting. they're not evil because they're sorcerers and they're not sorcerers because they're evil. sorcerers exist because of ancient pacts or boons or a chance of biology or simply being born in proximity to magical places, and that's clear in all of the sundered house mythos. i think speculating that the ancient versions of the sundered houses got their magic nefariously is falling into the "some things are Just Evil." we can't assume that because the human sorcerers of modern aramán are engaging in class warfare, their ancestors were wicked.

there are sundered houses who took the heroic position of defying the shapers during the shapers war. the priestly houses are rotten not because sorcerers are rotten but because wealth and resource hoarding and the dismissive carelessness they treat mortal life with is evil. otto einfasen isn't evil because he's an einfasen, he's evil because he took a commoner girl's head off with a hammer. and there's endless nuance to be found here: the einfasens are nominally allied with the protagonists, but it doesn't render them heroic, they're still canonically authoritarians. the royces are complicit in every evil done by the sundered houses for the last 70 years, but they are inexorably tied to the heroes in a positive way and are making active efforts to break away from the evil system.

additionally: assuming that the primordials were bad because they wed the shapers is a big leap. the shapers murdered them. thaisha saw the desecration of tehana's shrine in favor of trozhna as wrong and insulting. if it were one evil covering another, it would not have been impactful to notice the desecration. the primordials might have been a neutral or evil force on the world, we don't actually know, but they are a part of the foundation of the world, so it's more likely that forces of nature are simply a neutral concept.

aramán is a setting where evil consistently is shown to be an active choice. even the shapers. there is no indication that they were just born bad. they chose to come to aramán, kill the primordials and repress the population, turning them into playthings in their sibling squabbles as they bent the world to their will. those are the reasons they are evil, not because they come from Evil Land.

brennan is using a lot of heightened fantasy genre conventions. it speaks to lord of the rings and a song of ice and fire and old fairytales and legends, but this campaign takes ideas about good and evil from classic D&D settings, and fixes them. good and evil are a choice, always. a demon can do good. an angel can do bad. the villainy is complex. there is no evil race or class (in the D&D sense of the word). complaining about the villains shows a lack of understanding of the setting.

[heytherecentaurs]

Luis is my favourite. I'm on episode 19 of CR4 and holy fuck.

Azune believes it's his fault that Thjazi was executed. Azune was ready to give up his life to repay the family that took him in. He'd made his peace, knowing that helping Thjazi escape likely meant death, but for a man who needed to have his life mean something after the sacrifices made for him, a man who was loyal to the Fang family and to the cause, Azune in his eyes let them down. Thjazi wasn't going to sacrifice Azune, and Azune feels like he's the reason Thjazi didn't even try. Now, he has to go on living and he's not mentally or emotionally in a place where that makes sense to him. Thjazi is gone, and he's still there and he doesn't know what to do with himself because he hadn't planned for there to be a future.

A man that was like a father figure or older brother was executed and he couldn't stop it, and despite his perceived failure, Azune is still brought into Hal's home and loved. From Hal's point of view, Azune is family and he's doing what he does for his family. He's still looking after Azune like he did when he first got to the city, like Hal did with Thjazi. And I think that's what overwhelmed Azune. It was Hal's tenderness and compassion that made the dam burst, because Azune doesn't just weep for his dead loved one or because he failed or for the detriment this has caused their movement. I feel like he'd do that in private. But rather he apologizes to Hal. "I'm so sorry!" This is a man apologizing not only for Thjazi's death but for being alive.

[revvethasmythh]

episode 76 really is an episode of all time. britney spears opening ad, and sam stays dressed as britney for half the episode including wearing a skirt we can't even see. beer pong contest that caleb (privately) wins. jester, caleb, and reani are bats."i like bread!" fjord bitch-slaps jester out of polymorph because she's too stupid as a bat to do it herself. caleb and beau take a meeting with demid sunlash to discuss the mysteries of ruidus in a fantasy denny's parking lot. HEIST! nott accidentally one-shots a guard by dealing 69 points of damage (nice). caleb and nott make a plan to message each other and then can't because nott's too far (nott is not concerned about this; caleb DEFINITELY IS). *fjord voice* one dead, no communication. caleb and fjord go invisible. "you go first. on three" "WHAT are we DOING on THREE?!" fjord and caleb realize they can't see each other if they're both invisible and aggressively hold hands to keep track of each other. fjord gets captain america'd by the wildmother in the form of a seaweed wrap. meanwhile the party trades quiet and tender moments and meaningful check-ins with each other. THE STAR RAZOR IS REFJORGED. the entire party screams their heads off when fjord uses mask of many faces to look like nott. *southern drawl* "eldritch blast" "OOH YEEHAW." beau and reani have sex and it makes everyone level up. who is doing it like episode 76

[your-turn-to-role]

honestly though getting back to that murray azune conversation during his panic attack about evidence for the einfasen, it really does strike me just how unfairly the fandom treated murray after that one

like there was a lot of "oh she sees demodus as a kid but not azune even though azune's only 27, she's undervaluing his life just like everyone does", and even the posts that were murray favourable commented that this was another instance of her being short sighted. but while i agree that that is sometimes a flaw of murray's, i really don't think this is an example of it?

regardless of where you stand on the "how much of a difference is there between 22 and 27" debate, there is a reason in murray's mind (that she states) as to the difference - they just rescued demodus from the crow keepers. seeing one of her students (one of the people she has dedicated her life to protecting) on the verge of death is fresh in her mind, and she's trying to keep that from happening for the second time this week, because they might not be able to save him a second time

(and while she did see azune get hurt in the archenade fight, she also saw him tank the fuck out of the crow keeper combat - he is good at what he does, murray's seen him be good at what he does, and him having a panic attack doesn't change the fact that he has a way higher rate of survival here)

but regardless - she's not blind to what azune's going through. he's her friend, and she's so clearly doing everything she can to help him right now! she hates that she has to put him in this position, the primary emotion she is feeling in this scene is guilt. guilt that she straight up doesn't have a better option for him, that someone needs to do this and there's no one else who can

and she doesn't leave him alone in it. she protests at the idea of volunteering demodus for something deadly without asking him (in the same way she feels terrible volunteering azune for the same task - this is her asking him), but ultimately it doesn't stop her from trying to get demodus on board to help azune. because she knows he's right. they both have to be there.

her one condition is that she gets to come too. and i don't think that was just about protecting demodus, because she volunteered to come with before they brought demodus into it, that was about protecting azune as well! her hesitation was a brief moment of "okay, i can't speak for other people's lives here" combined with "i cannot lose demodus so soon after just barely managing to save him", and it was a hesitation that she got over within that very conversation

it's not about her seeing azune's life as lesser. that's her friend

[littlebosslady7]

Araman Days of the week via the Lorekeeper's Ledger. (src)

[pawthorn]

As always, I'm so here for Aabria and her attention to the world, both the small details and the larger implications, how grounded her character is in its histories and realities, using that character knowledge to put things together and move things forward so swiftly elegantly, cutting through confusion and argument.

"Wasn't Thjazi called Shadow?"

Tossing the Iron nail to Julien.

Quickly cutting through all the noise to reveal the truth.

While playing Thaisha, Aabria is so conscious of the world and Thaisha's worldview. As a woman whose religious culture has been persecuted nearly to extinction. As a person from a race that every other race of Aramán was happy to leave in subjugation; the suffering of the Runjani was a fair price for their comfort.

You can viscerally feel this in her gentle but clear acknowledgement of Bolaire, her tone when she asked him why he was so angry.

"What exactly do you find to be foolishness, Bolaire?"

The calm, despite the fact that, when it comes down to it, he is angry that the actions Thjazi set in motion blew up his comfortable life. The same actions that liberated the Runjani afterlife. He doesn't think "a couple hundred" Runjani souls are worth it.

"So you're not angry, you're afraid."

It reminded me of when Aranessa was breaking down and overwhelmed because her life was blown up and she has to make hard decisions to move forward. Thaisha used the same gentle, but firm tone then.

"You always had to make a choice and the world was always chaos. It's just touching you now."

There's such weight and truth behind the way Aabria carries Thaisha. I look forward to her Soldier table, but I feel for what the rest of the tables will be losing without her presence.

[corrya]

It's not lost on me that Dol-makjar is a historically orcish city and yet has a governing body consisting entirely of humans. How the hallowed round, the very site of so much orcish suffering, is mearly on a lease to Hal from the sundered houses, trying to corrupt and shape the stories they share there.

[honourablejester]

Oh my fucking god, Thaisha fucking Lloy. Wreathed in storm, surrounded by her people, priestess of her city, telling this foreign false faith to fuck right off before they get hurt. Oh my god.

Like, the difference between the Thaisha of the ritual, the gentle shepherdess guiding lost souls through grief and joy to freedom, and then this Thaisha Lloy, stone cold, stone faced, just flatly daring anyone to touch what is hers. No explanations, no nothing. Just flat, this is the way it is because I say so. Do we have a problem?

I am getting Delenn of the Minbari flashbacks, because Thaisha Lloy just made a whole combat just go away. Tail between their legs.

There's all these Magpies in the background with their crossbows, Vaelus, Azune, Hal, Murray, half of damned Dol Makjar ready to have a fucking go, and none of it is needed.

Just Thaisha. Just a Lloy. Casually ready to stand her ground.

Hot damn.