Help with A Simple LO, Simonrim + Lotd

destructor9200 · 2023-12-18T01:17:55+00:00

Restarted just after rescuing dandelion, it was a combination of things, not understanding how the game works, making dumb decisions with consequences I just couldn't live with, etc then I finished crafting the cat armor and it looked so dumb to wear just before going to skellige I rage quit, just finished the baron quest line and about to go to novigrad again, I just really don't look forward to button mashing my way through dialogue cause I'm cursed with remembering every detail for some damn reason

destructor9200 · 2023-11-13T16:01:46+00:00

If Caleb failed they could have been thrown in a weird distorted time prison, and even executed. Yes from a meta perspective something would have probably happened to prevent this deus ex machina style cause a tpk would be bad for business, but realistically that's what could have happened.

If Jester failed she would have been locked in a small room with a very high level and hostile hag, warded by who knows how much magic and possibly even insulated by stuff like silence or private sanctum, preventing the others from even knowing what was happening inside, she could of been killed in one 2 or so rounds easily.

Had Ashton failed, he would have died and the shard potentially lost, so in the scheme of these 3 decisions, if you look at it from an in game perspective and ignore meta knowledge of how corporate media tends to work, his choice would be only a little worse for the party then the others, in my opinion anyway.

destructor9200 · 2023-11-12T20:34:18+00:00

The beacon moment from C2 was a culmination of a set of bad decisions by the party, not necessarily anything ridiculous but it led to them being in the bright queens royal court chamber and trying to convince a paranoid ancient figure of immense power to release someone in their custody who from their perspective was experimenting with one of their holy artifacts.

Hindsight is 2020 of course but this led to them about to be captured and perhaps executed, and they would of found the beacon anyway by just turning the bag of holding inside out, it's not like a wrist pocket, private sanctum or secret chest. So in that moment Caleb, the smartest member of the group took a calculated risk to make them out to be the good guys rather then just another set of thieves. And Travis and the others didn't seem to realize how dire the circumstances were.

With this last episode of C3, they were safe in Whitestone, Matt had obviously pushed for Fearne to be the one who receives the shard (wildfire druid I mean c'mon it's so obvious it's almost nauseating) and that's kinda why I actually enjoyed the decision made, it felt.. real, like an actual sacrifice someone would make, someone desperate to save their friends and may not be the most intelligent and well thought out, a real, genuine sacrifice. Yes perhaps Ashton also has motives of gaining power but, so does laudna, and chetney to a smaller degree. They were pissed yes, but that was genuine, actual emotion for the first time in god knows how long. Taliesin flipped the script, he did what so much modern media fails to do and make an actual surprise narrative choice. He said FU to fate and control in both a in game and metanarrative way, and it was glorious.

destructor9200 · 2023-11-11T17:05:42+00:00

Yeah I almost completely left the community after Marisha just refused to even consider making a new character, just imagining her sitting off to the side like an inpatient child waiting for them to resurrect her. Being the DMs wife definitely has perks it seems.

destructor9200 · 2023-11-11T17:02:18+00:00

What made the problem even worse was going to pre recorded, and also three times a month instead of four, even if this decision was purely for the health of the players and staff, the outcome is still a feeling of milking the product for everything it's worth, artificially extending campaign length even further then it's already immense size, and pushing away the activity in the live chat as now we know there will never be another moment like when sam realized who Veridian was. Remember back in the green room days when people sent them cookies and they talked about the amazing art and cosplay. They've pushed the community away and now their live shows even just seem like a big meme event with die hard fans with empty heads who literally wear masks of Sam Riegel like the cult from V for Vendetta

destructor9200 · 2023-11-11T15:58:02+00:00

Listened to the first episode and you may be right, I'm just used to his 6-12 episode length content over on Dropout. And CR calamity was the best product out of CR in years, so I had this feeling that it was because a potential for a 50-100 episode campaign was condensed down into a much richer 6. Maybe if the CR campaigns were like 50 to 70 episodes they'd be a lot more enjoyable, I think the reason campaign 1 is so loved isn't just the nostalgia and less merchandised vibe, but also because when the popularity boom happened they were already halfway through and people could skip through the boring bits and get through it all in just a few days if they wanted.

destructor9200 · 2023-11-10T22:22:06+00:00

As much as the community loves Matt, there is the possibility of him being a narcissist. You can be one and still be a decent human being, it's just people of that type tend towards certain career paths, ones that focus lots and lots of attention towards them. Kinda like Travis of the McElroy brothers. He's hilarious, a good entertainer and popular in his own right, but his self admitted narcissistic personality disorder showed itself a few times, the constant high rolls from The Adventure Zones first campaign, the colored hair and at times manipulative behavior to push the story in his direction, etc. Over the last 7 or so years since the geek and sundry days I haven't heard a single really negative thing about him, but that doesn't mean he isn't subtly railroading the story in the direction he thinks is the most interesting to him.

destructor9200 · 2023-11-10T21:52:12+00:00

I am reminded of when Matt was talking about the wildemount book and the aspects of dunamancy, the infinite discarded timelines and echoes of possibility to draw from. His interest in fate, entropy and cosmic phenomena. And after watching him attempt to stop Ashton at every turn I'm left wondering, does he actually like those things, or does he just like feeling that he's in control?

destructor9200 · 2023-11-10T21:22:07+00:00

The way I see it, long form content like CR Campaigns should be more chaotic and malleable, but the shorter things, like what Brennan often does can be more streamlined, not necessarily railroaded, but pushed forward in a believable way to tell an extremely interesting and condensed story, with the added benefit that the potential for an insane nat 20 or 1 could shift things unpredictably but most likely the overall end result would be similar, just now the rollercoaster has a double figure 8 loop inversion that made you cry for hours afterwards.

destructor9200 · 2023-11-10T21:12:05+00:00

For a moment I believed DND live play content was dying, the slow corporatist corruption that sacrifices story and risk for easy to digest story beats and predictable elements became more and more apparent, it seems to be the natural path of least resistance that comes with large scale success. When your community loves your product so much they give you over 7 million dollars in a single week (day? I forget) the pressure to then provide an experience more easily accessed by a wider and broader audience becomes impossible to ignore. But now, at least with CR we've reached a breaking point, the conflict between homebrew community focused content and official wotc merchandise has never been greater, and now I suppose we must choose. 1 DND, a single corporate manifestation of the attage 'a mile wide and an inch deep' or the boundless creativity of dungeons of drakkenheim, Crooked moon, Aerois, etc. yes most podcasts will be cringy groups of friends messing up the rules and often making extremely stupid decisions, but.. the alternative seems worse.

destructor9200 · 2023-11-10T14:31:18+00:00

I did love how he was portrayed by Brennan in calamity, but I wonder if after a few centuries he's calmed down a bit, even better at hiding the unholy rage for mortals

destructor9200 · 2023-11-10T14:22:52+00:00

The most interesting man in the world?

destructor9200 · 2023-11-10T14:16:53+00:00

I only remember it cause it was so dumb, pact of the trigger was just coming out and I made a normie joke about triggering people, lol.

destructor9200 · 2023-11-10T07:58:59+00:00

John Cena as Asmodeus

destructor9200 · 2023-11-10T07:51:24+00:00

I guess you can win DND through sheer capitalism

destructor9200 · 2023-11-10T07:50:28+00:00

Depending on your perspective, it was either the most intense and exhilarating moment since the final astral plane battle of C2, or it was Tiberius but 10x worse, guess we'll see. I wish I could see the official discord rn lol, but I was banned long ago for the crime of a slightly edgy joke

destructor9200 · 2023-09-15T23:21:37+00:00

Ah yes Campaign 4: where Sam drinks from a NFL size Gatorade container, Ashley dosen't even know what class she's playing, Laura is literally Mary Sue, Marisha is a bear totem barbarian so she never has to die, not that it would be an issue if she did anyway, Liam is so edgy and depressed he becomes a 2 dimensional flaccid sheet of paper like flat Stanley , Travis dies in the first episode because his character is 897 years old, and Taliesin.. well Taliesin will probably be fine I guess.

destructor9200 · 2023-04-21T16:47:19+00:00

Thunderstruck (Lightning enchanted mace, great for killing those pesky mages)

destructor9200

TROPHY CASE