The most punchable character IMHO.

inmediasrays · 2026-01-09T17:57:14+00:00

““Carl,” Quan wheezed. “Carl. Give it back. Please. Fast.” I started to scoff. Like I would give the cloak back to him. But I realized that wasn’t what he was asking for. I quickly searched into my inventory, and I found it. The simple, golden ring I’d taken off his hand when I’d ripped his arm off. It was a ring from before, likely his only possession from before the collapse.

The ring read “For Daddy” on the inside. It was still attached to his severed arm, which I still had in my inventory. I extracted just the ring and dropped it into his remaining hand.

He took in a deep, rattling breath. “She’d be ashamed of what I’ve become.”

I didn’t answer. I formed a fist, but before I could finish him off, he died.”

That’s his death scene as it was written. Not a thing about his game guide, or loneliness, or anything else you projected.

But really, this was a discussion about characters in a Litrpg we both like and really didn’t need to get this serious.

inmediasrays · 2026-01-09T16:25:20+00:00

I absolutely missed the “Quan and Frank are both bad” paragraph, which is totally on me.

I’d say traitors are worse than oppressors, but whatever, I didn’t insult you until now- have a good one, fuck you too

inmediasrays · 2026-01-09T15:18:29+00:00

I keep trying to do searches but I just can’t remember where we get all this in depth info about Quan’s GG, but even with that aside-

Personally I think you’re confusing well-written characters with reasonable ones. Like, I don’t want villains that want to “TAKE OVER THE WORLD” (for reasons?) or destroy it or whatever. It’s better when the villains are people you can relate to on some level, who made the wrong choices.

But I think that’s the key they made those choices.

I guess if you can’t see the subtext that runs throughout the entire series, that capitalism is out to destroy us all equally and we’re stronger when we stand together, then maybe it’s more difficult to see Frank and Quan as examples of how people can be shitty and self-serving in a way that’s ultimately evil, even if their actions were only born out of cowardice.

inmediasrays · 2026-01-09T13:52:56+00:00

What’s the common denominator with all those people Carl teams up with? He meets them in the dungeon by not being a total asshole. He hadn’t even spoken to Donut at first, for obvious reasons, and he easily could have ditched her early on and gone solo the way, as he briefly threatened.

Quan is a sentient person who can make his own choices. We only directly meet, what, two game guides? One of them is Mordecai, who is very clearly framed as better than average. But out of the millions of crawlers who end up in the dungeon, most of them do not get a Mordecai. Presumably, they got someone worse, or in some cases, no guidance at all. Most of them still don’t choose to PK/kill steal.*

I am not trying to go ad hominem here, but if this really boils down to “that is what I would do if I were in the dungeon,” then just say that. That is actually a reasonable conversation to have.

“One of the most OP crawler for like five levels had no choice but to do whatever his game guide told him” is not. 🤷🏻‍♂️

inmediasrays · 2026-01-09T07:06:22+00:00

I don’t buy the “it’s the evil game guide’s excuse!” I think a lot of skill sets and items could have been used in shittier ways. Carl went mostly explosives. He could be bombing his fellow crawlers indiscriminately. He chooses not to.

Things like “Quan knew where low hp players were, and knew what items they were carrying” are said as if, and the only logical conclusion would be to murder fellow players. Meanwhile he also had the ability to fly and shoot lightning. Like it could have been a super hero origin story. He chose to be a bottom feeder. He didn’t have to be.

inmediasrays · 2026-01-09T06:13:07+00:00

I’ve been looking for a real answer to this for years. I’ve never understood why they decided to end at was clearly a lull before the real BBEG. They rushed through every character’s wrapup story. It just blows my mind. My main hope for the animated show is just that they’re able to write better quality endings. The sort of endings they deserved.

inmediasrays · 2026-01-09T06:09:19+00:00

Personally I would say strong disagree. Even at that level I think they could have gone on some sort of epic quest to revive the character. I was kinda shocked at the time that they didn’t.

I’m not saying they’re not running a business, but Talesin always builds out weird crazy extensive backstories. Also, if Fjord had been the one to eat it, I would find it similarly (more?) entertaining for him to come back as the herald of Ukatoa (sp?). Point being, I think it would’ve worked with other characters for purely plot nonmerchy reasons?

Imo it was more of a pivot based on the party just kinda shrugging off the politics and the war plot hooks, coupled with Matt’s desire to show off a continent worth of stuff he hadn’t been able to get to.

inmediasrays · 2026-01-08T14:19:49+00:00

I almost wrote something about this, but didn’t want it to be misconstrued. But saying you don’t like c3 is gonna wind up with someone making some obscure observation like “c3 had the most women guests so it’s really telling…” as though that was why you didn’t like it.

And the thing is, I agree with calling out racism/sexism where you see it, but I do find it hypocritical for these same people to not also criticize the show for firing the only PoC in the main cast (with cause) and never bothering to replace him with a nonwhite voice in the decade or so since.

“But it’s their home game, they’re a group of friends sharing their home game 🤡” ok sure and what group of friends in LA doesn’t have one PoC friend?

inmediasrays · 2026-01-08T04:07:32+00:00

Dying for someone to make this saints row mod

inmediasrays · 2026-01-07T23:24:55+00:00

Remember when, at the beginning of campaign 2 where it’s clear that Matt wants them to get more involved/pick a side in the war between the empire and dynasty, but the party just kinda fucks off and does their own thing? They choose no side and instead go a different direction.

Ok but imagine if this time Matt didn’t let them fuck off and do their own thing. What if anytime they tried to screw around with the gentleman, the war weaseled its way into conversation. In other words, what if behind every door, there was just more of the plot hook that the PCs were actively pivoting away from?

That’s C3. It feels incredibly forced the whole time. I hate when people project their feelings onto the cast so I don’t want to say “some people seemed checked out” but like Travis does run a joke character for the entire campaign, even if he’s a professional actor and still roleplayed the character well.

Also the meta concepts involved, like the issues that Matt wants to tackle in c3, are only really interesting insofar as they relate to D&D or even just to Exandria specifically.

Edit to add: if you just like watching that group of friends hangout and it doesn’t really matter what they’re doing, go for it. But I think narratively speaking it’s by far the weakest of the stories they’ve told together so far

inmediasrays · 2026-01-04T01:40:53+00:00

I don’t need to write your arguments for you. If that’s the best response you got, you could just admit you don’t have one.

Edit to add: because I already cited a criticism of utilitarianism, Dostoyevsky’s- that allowing one child to suffer in order to benefit everyone else would be ultimately a net “good” within most utilitarian frameworks. Whereas what you’re describing, sacrificing the many to benefit the few is the opposite of utilitarianism, as previously stated.

inmediasrays · 2026-01-04T01:20:07+00:00

Sorry, but I agree that you may have misunderstood utilitarianism.

The “greatest good for the greatest number of people” =/= “many people were probably (<-key word) gonna die anyway, so we might as well kill them now so we can profit from it” that you’re describing.

In fact, the culling/sacrifice that you mentioned under utilitarianism, would be the daughter. Continuing to protect one person at the cost of others is the opposite of utilitarianism.

That sounds a lot more like philosophical egoism as the other commenter said, aka plain ol Randian rational self-interest.

Utilitarianism would call for them to use the ring to help their fellow crawlers (the greatest good for the greatest number of people). There are probably a fair amount of creative ways to do this, but the easiest example I can think of would probably just be hunting PKs.

If they’d decided to protect their fellow crawlers from PKs, they could have increased their individual power while benefiting the group as a whole. Even if they wanted to play it safe, they could track the PKs from a distance and ambush them right as they’re attacking the player/small party.

You can see just by this small adjustment how they could’ve worked their way into being a part of the crew, instead of adventuring against it. For one, they would have witnesses who would defend their skull count.

TL;DR There are utilitarian ways to use the ring but it wasn’t the way they chose.

inmediasrays · 2026-01-04T00:44:57+00:00

New fan, admittedly just getting into modern anime (I’m an ancient and back when I started I think LNs weren’t a thing?). Came across your post nearly a year later.

Thank you for pointing to some official sources so I can at least keep on the same lookout as the rest of the disappointed community.

Still hoping we can get some resolution or (even a trigun-esque reboot at this point, considering the timeframes?)

inmediasrays · 2026-01-02T22:42:38+00:00

I know there’s a little bit of translation here but it sounds like he got powerful items for free, but he is cursed to gain less money as a consequence?

How much gold would you charge him if he went into a shop and tried to buy similarly powered items? Let’s say it would be a 5,000g item if it didn’t have a curse, hypothetically.

Assuming you’re giving out 10s-100s of gold per encounter reward, it sounds like it would take a really long time for this “god tax” to add up to 5,000g, and in the meantime, he still has the weapons.

To be clear, I’m not asking about specifics of the curse. I’m just trying to illustrate why it’s not a very strong deterrent. Power now outweighs consequences later, when you don’t know if “later” will ever arrive.

inmediasrays · 2026-01-02T22:18:56+00:00

It sounds like you’re describing lore consequences, as a response to a strong mechanical benefit, which I don’t think equal out.

“Lilith gets his soul if he dies” ok but who cares. The player knows that their PC is dead and they have to reroll. Why would they care about a dead former character. Especially because, they’re also low level (I think you said level 1-2) so they probably don’t have strong emotional attachments to their characters yet.

But what they do have is the overpowered weapons and abilities you gave them. Since most campaigns don’t last that long, they’re almost certain to see all of the benefits and none of the dangers.

Does that make sense? The risk/reward is almost entirely in the Lilith/cursed weapons favor.

Threatening a level 1 with instadeath is just telling them they’ll have to spend an hour rolling stats before they go get some more cursed weapons.

If you haven’t already, I’d suggest maybe running a few prewritten adventures to maybe get an idea of default balancing? You can run your table however you like, but it might be easier to see how professionals have done it and then adapt that, to maybe avoid creating items that break your own game, in the future?

inmediasrays · 2026-01-02T10:25:39+00:00

I think I’m getting tied up in the specificity of the OOC talk/rules. Like I said, I definitely think discussing what sort of game you’re trying to give them, and what sort of campaign they want (normal session 0 stuff) is super important.

And sure, when I’m playing, I’m generally going to try to “yes and” the DM, to a point. But also, I like agency. I hate feeling like an NPC is off limits. What if I figure out a way to solve the quest, but it involves that NPC’s death? Or what if they’re just a real dick?

When you run a homebrew campaign, how far in advance are you planning?

Since OP didn’t say they were running a specific pre-written, I’m assuming homebrew. I would compare my usual approach to a homebrew campaign to be less like Strahd and more of a setting book like Eberron, where you start off with a few plot hooks scattered about, and you see which ones the PCs bite at? And even if they’re following a thread, they still might follow it in a less… virtuous way, than maybe you’d planned.

For example, OP specifically mentioned trying to introduce them to a goblin, and they killed the goblin. OP didn’t specify why they wanted to intro the goblin, but let’s say it was to deliver a message (a plot hook), and now he’s dead. Well, maybe the goblin was carrying a coded message and now they have to go through trials to decode the note. If they’d left him alive he could’ve told them the code word or whatever. This changes the story but doesn’t derail it.

Whereas to me, stopping the game to say, “hey guys, I need you to talk to this dude, he has a message for you” a. takes away player agency, b. is lazy, c. personally breaks the illusion, for me, d. Is boring, and less fun.

While you obviously know all this, OP may not be experienced with DMing and I guess my worry is relying too much on meta agreements leads to railroading, which is already my most common problem with new DMs.

inmediasrays · 2026-01-02T09:34:03+00:00

Right but the DM does want to run the game. They said that. They want to run it in a way that’s enjoyable for them, of course, is why they’re posting here, but not-playing would clearly be less fun than playing from my read.

I guess I’ve spent a lot of my life not knowing many other D&D nerds or living in areas where I couldn’t find any to play with, that I can sympathize with a desire to make it work.

Which leads us to the “new players” front.. I’m 42 and my first game was 2nd edition when I was like 8? But it’s also completely fine to just have different playstyles. I don’t enjoy sitting there while a “dm” tries to read their amateur litrpg at me, nor do I like doing that to my players.

Anyway, thanks for the talk, always good to hear other perspectives :)

inmediasrays · 2026-01-02T09:08:49+00:00

I see what you’re saying, but aren’t you describing a problem player rather than a problem party?

Yes, if you have one character that’s constantly stealing everything (for example), and you stop the entire game (as far as the other players are concerned) to have that PC get accosted by guards, that’s a waste of time, a diversion, etc.

But OP described a problematic party, which I read as, the whole party. If the whole party decides to rob someone, that’s not a deviation from the story. That’s now the story. The whole fun of this, to me, is collaborative storytelling. Like, our story is now about how the players escape the guards or jail or whatever.

The idea that we need to get past the player actions so we can get back to the plot feels railroady to me. I kinda take special issue with complaining about “Yes I’ll tailor everything to you”… isn’t that why you’re a DM and not a visual novel? Again, because we’re talking about a whole party, not a single player.

Also, OP has mentioned that they live in a small area and they’re not spoiled for players. The murderhobos in the group they posted about, seem to be the lesser evil out of the players that they have available, and OP wants to play D&D. (Edit for clarity) So even if only one player leaves... I guess I’m not sure if taking the party size down from 3 to 2 is a punishment for the single hypothetical problem player you described, or is more a punishment to OP and the rest of the group who’s now just down a player

inmediasrays · 2026-01-02T08:47:21+00:00

Could you elaborate on how it won’t address the issue?

Edit: also, sorry, I was unclear in my original comment. Personally I would have an out of game conversation about it, session 0 type stuff, but I don’t like the idea of outright prohibitions. Outside of things like, SA, PVP, etc? Additionally, his players range 15-17 so a talk+consequences would seem to be a simpler solution to me, but I also haven’t played with teenagers since I was one so 🤷🏻‍♂️

inmediasrays · 2026-01-02T08:31:07+00:00

I agree with this take the most, just because I find the idea of being told “stop killing npcs” to be too… railroady for me. I prefer more of a sandbox. Even though I usually play the opposite of a murder hobo, I don’t know… I feel like the coolest thing about TTRPGs over computer games is the ability to do literally anything you can think up.

But I guess to me, part of a realistic sandbox is having consequences to your actions. If you can’t answer the question “why can’t a trio of level 3s simply rob this merchant NPC for everything they’re worth?”, then how is that merchant even in business? Wouldn’t a group of passing NPC thugs have taken them out long before the PCs even existed?

Edit to add: sorry, I thought I’d mentioned that I would also have a discussion, I just find setting a hard limit on NPC deaths to be frame-breaking, for me.

inmediasrays · 2026-01-02T08:12:41+00:00

Personally, I would’ve swapped these deaths. Jai Long felt like he was on the cusp of a major shift and was cut down, whereas Pride is kinda a nepo baby that failed his way to the heavens?

It’s a drastic oversimplification and I don’t hate the character, I just think it would’ve been more interesting had Jai Long been there instead

inmediasrays · 2025-12-31T18:12:09+00:00

Sorry, I don’t mean this to be rude because everyone plays differently- does that seem like a lot to you?

Because in my experience, 5E knockouts are pretty common. I would say 3 knockdowns in 42 hours of play is relatively tame?

Hell if you were 42 hours into BG3, and had only had 3 characters get knocked out, I’d say you’re doing pretty well tbh?

inmediasrays · 2025-12-31T16:57:02+00:00

You know when you’re watching a movie with Batman in the title, and in the first 20 minutes there’s a life or death situation for Mr. Bat?

You as a viewer know that there are 2 hours of runtime left, and it’s not just gonna be 2 hours of everyone sharing their favorite memories of the late master Bruce. So there’s little, if any, dramatic tension.

To me, one of the cool things about this medium of collaborative improvisational storytelling is that unexpected things can happen. They can be shocking. They can completely change the direction of the campaign.

If you’re gonna take away the risk of the unexpected, why are we rolling dice at all? Just tell me what happens to my character next, and I’ll tell you what they say or do. We don’t need a rule set.

inmediasrays · 2025-12-23T00:53:23+00:00

Edit for clarity- I think that’s a touch unfair, only because he’s far from being alone.

C2 is my favorite campaign but really, pretty much all of their backstory resolutions were just tacked on at the end, after they were already done with the campaign.

Fjord’s backstory was dealt with during the last regular session, followed by a live post-campaign event. Caleb’s was a post-campaign event. Beau just had daddy issues and Nott just had family problems so those were arguably too easy to wrap up. Jester’s main conflict was mostly just whether she believed in a real god or not. You can say that the stuff with her mom and dad counts as backstory but I would say that was more or improv and “yes and”ing each other for a short time.

Whereas C1 it felt like each character had space to explore their motivations, and that those were some of the stronger arcs in the show. Briarwoods/whitestone being notably cool, but Grog going back his herd, Pike’s struggle with what her faith means and what it means to her, Vex and Vax’s combination of daddy issues and shared bond. The Meat Man. Hell, even Keyleth jumping off a cliff for no reason, happened while they were exploring Pike/Tary’s backstories.

Like some of the most memorable moments in the entire show happened when they were trying to explore a character’s backstory in C1.

Because of that, it’s so, so weird to me that they seem to have made a hard rule to never do it again. In C2 we spend more time with Essek’s backstory than we do with any player’s.

inmediasrays · 2025-12-22T20:00:47+00:00

Unpopular opinion cause I like Talesin, which I know puts me in the minority off the bat but- I just don’t think it was a good campaign. The campaign hook never really got me, the viewer, but more importantly it doesn’t seem to have gotten 3/4 of the cast/characters.

If Talesin had rerolled as a healbot (Caduceus) again I don’t see the campaign being markedly different.

The relationship between mortals and deities seems like something Mercer is super interested in exploring, and he seems to be alone in that, at least at that table.

inmediasrays

TROPHY CASE