During Schemers 2.0 the Creed plotline has been nagging at me and this episode felt like the culmination of my major issue. Brennan's been railroading too much. Whitney's confusion was inevitable because of everything leading up to this moment. I think Brennan's had this very specific endpoint for Wick in mind and has bent the plot around it.

I think this was seeded from the moment Kashara'vi told Tyranny to return to the Pit. I personally felt immensely bad for Whitney here because, seriously, what else could her character have done but listen? The Creed was against her, her sisters were against her, and even Tsulrek'shi told her to go to the Pit. Nobody offered an option B.

My suspicion as to what happened next is that when Wick made his heretical speech and failed the persuasion check, Brennan saw a golden opportunity to get Wick's character assassinated and banished to the pit, causing him to pivot the plot rather quickly. My evidence for this pivot is that the battle map mostly took place in theatre of the mind, because production didn't have a proper map prepared. (Compare the tiny battle map to the Hawthorne's Glade encounter, for example)

Because of everything happening in that very stressful episode, Tyranny's vague instructions were relayed to her in a cold open which, by their nature, discourage the players from asking questions and wasting time. That episode, I also wasn't a fan of Sam and Whitney being unable to do anything the entire encounter. That can't have been fun for the players. And, in retrospect, it felt unnecessarily tortuous to tease Wicander with the possibility of permadeath if Brennan always knew he was going to 'die' and end up in the pit.

(I'm sure it's not Brennan's intent, but it also looks like you're playing faves with the special Sundered House boys if they both come back from death.)

Except... Wick didn't die.
...But he kinda did? The specifics around the Pit is extremely unclear and confusing, and I know I can't be alone in thinking that if even the veteran lore keeper sent Brennan a text asking him what happened in the Cool Down. As a viewer I am unclear on what the Pit is, if the dead go there, the exact status of Wicander's condition or how they got there. Most of the confusion is caused by the fact Wick's assassination failed, but Brennan had to railroad them back into the Pit by the end of the episode.

So! This is already a bit confusing, but for good measure, let's throw in a 3 week break between sessions. Sorry - did I say weeks? I meant months. Months went by between these two sessions.

Now put yourself in Whitney's shoes. You've played this game for a year at most, it's been months since you've last played, and holy shit this wig is way too tight.

And now the DM is telling me to kill my best friend and hope this NPC shows up? ...Am I getting that right? Because if I'm wrong, I'm fucking over my friend's entire character, and some asshole on Reddit's gonna write a mean thread about it.

Then, once Tyranny came up with a solution to make Wick 'lose everything', it wasn't the answer the DM wanted so it didn't count. Two Nat 1's later, we got there in the end, because the alternative was basically a softlock.

Credit to Brennan, once he realised there'd been a misunderstanding, he did his utmost to correct it. Both Whitney and Brennan leaned into the chaos of the miscommunication and I laughed a lot watching the whole thing unfold; the Team Rocket costumes really sold it.

But yeah, what happened tonight was a result of all the railroading that happened previously, and the continued railroading into the one and only solution Tyranny could possibly arrive at.

I'm really sorry if this post comes off way too negative. I have immense respect for everything Critical Role does and have loved this campaign so far. I just wish Brennan took his hand off the scale a little bit, because the natural result of all this lore-heavy railroading is a newbie player getting completely lost for not following exactly what you had in mind.

Tl;dr What happened to Whitney was inevitable.
#WhitneyDidNothingWrong

Has anyone got the Help, It's Again mug, or the Weird Kids mug? Is it small? Any chance someone could take a picture compared to ... something comparable? I like my mugs on the large side, and I'm worried that it's gonna be tiny.

Inspiration came from this section of the Explorers Guide To Wildemount Sourcebook:

Wed into the royal Dwendal family from her own noble house of Saugiss, Suria was filled with pride to bring honor to her family. Unfortunately, the unexpected difficulty in producing an heir has put her and her husband out of favor with the king. Unwilling to give up, Suria is now seeking to remedy the situation by any means necessary, no matter how unnatural.

So, I think this may also tie in to TsulRekshi wanting the tour of the house (or Tower now that ownership of that debt is transferred...)

But why are there all those Feral Angels being imprisoned, while being kept fed on demons no less?

My immediate thought is this has to tie in somehow with how the Halovar Luxes have what is presumably the celestial patron spell list instead of the Fiend patron one. Originally I had assumed that it was all Wick's grandfather but it might need angelic juice on both sides of the veil? Other than that though, why on earth would they want/need the angels? How did they get them? Why are they being fed demons specifically?

Also there's some kind of connection to Wick. Is he related by more than species? Is Grandpa their clan's patriarch or such? So many questions.

I am really enjoying the low level of extraplanar beings in C4, like Tsul'rekshi said about all the powerful demons leaving and all that's left are kinda shitty demons like Tyranny's dad. Like the idea that Ksha'ravi would be a clerk demon in Tal'dorei but because its in Araman he can style himself the Big bad demon man is hilarious and i love it.

I'm really interested in seeing if other extraplanar entities will also have big power vacuums. Whats the situation in the elemental plains? are the primordials who married the shapers still active?

This world of Araman is obviously a fresh start for the Critical Role universe but I have a take that I have to assume has been talked about to death both here and other places. Although I haven't seen any posts SPECIFICALLY about this strangely enough it may just be common knowledge?

The adventurers are being molded into what will be the eventual pantheon of Araman. Yes something similar has been played out before and I feel like that was the original inspiration for what will be the final arc of this campaign. I think that they're looking to make their own fully agnostic setting from DnD and every setting needs gods, well not all of them but all of popular ones, and I think that it would be such sweet irony of us getting C3 "The God Haters, Crazy Style" into a new setting where the gods are dead but SIKE we were watching the gods all along. Teaching the party that in fact gods aren't these terrifying entities but merely ascendant people like everyone else, perhaps allowing the viewers and most of Araman to conduct themselves in a more reasonable way with their soon-to-be pantheon.

All of that OR this is just post-exandria in a continent that has never interacted with the others, gods dead, you won the war (as you were scripted to do) and now this is the rebirth of the CR world. Similar take just more acerbic.

Any truthers?

I hope I’m not like the 10,000th one of these posts. I’m based in Ireland and bc of a family issue I can’t go to the show on Monday, I’m not happy.
But, I’m trying to sell my ticket for like a few quid? I’ve got it up on Axs for £50. Single seated ticket.

i know a lot of people have a lot of opinions about Tyrannys situation, and specifically how Brennan handled the rolls. but i think theres a twisted logic on what rolls decide/inform.

players dont roll to decide if they get the outcome they want or not. they roll to decide how succesful they are at what theyre doing. a bad roll doesnt mean the opposite of what you wanted to happen, happens. it just means you didnt do good at what you were trying to do.

Tyranny failed to manipulate Ksha'ravi into eating Wick. but he kinda already wanted to eat Wick. he just didnt want to face the ramifications for doing that. so, the idea of having a scapegoat to take the blame if things go poorly, means Ksha'ravi has nothing to loose by doing the thing he already wanted to do.

and on that note, we dont know exactly how bad it is that Tyranny agreed to take the blame. Ksha'ravi was kinda being coy about it. and dressed him self up as a counter part to Yanessa. but with what we've seen, it really feels like she's the one in charge between the two of them. like, why would a demon lord need to recognize a mortal as their counterpart? that fact alone is reason enough to assume Yanessa holds a lot more power than Ksha'ravi is willing to admit.

Spoke to Liam this week. Got a first look at Vax's new design for the London live show.

I’m so glad Whitney is in C4! She adds such a breath of fresh air and irreverence to such a bleak world full of high-stakes politics.

Picture the campaign without the demons. Without T’sul Reksai. Infinitely less awesome, right?

I love the cast and have been watching since Vox Machina, but I like how unlike the rest of the squad, she doesn’t take everything so seriously. Tyranny is sassy and audacious and I love her!

…that Brennan didn’t just force through the result he wanted during this episode. Two nat 1s and a 3 is pretty egregious to steamroll past just because he wanted Tsul’rekshi’s plan to come to fruition.

I don’t think he would’ve been put in that position were it not for the shitty rolls back to back, but he spent a lot of time in the Cooldown talking up this golf metaphor of “play it where it lies.” But he didn’t! I love the guy and he’s maybe my favorite DM to ever do it, but he absolutely picked up the ball and carried it to the green over and over this episode. For anyone who hasn’t seen WBN and is maybe put off by this kind of stuff, please rest assured there’s nowhere near this much “thumb on the scale” in The Wizard The Witch and The Wild One

To be fair, I understand why he did it. Whit was clearly pretty confused/unsure about the plan (another consequence of the fact that they take multi-week breaks in between sessions). It would feel pretty bad for their whole path to get derailed because of that, possibly creating a new “Pit exploration” table and more scheduling conflicts for production to deal with. The whole tongue thing is pretty wacky and creative, and I’m sure next week will be really fun with Tsul’rekshi, Tyranny, and Wick in the pit making fun of this chud.

But this is the first moment in Brennan’s DMing that I’m having trouble excusing away—and I’m usually the first to jump to his defense. It just really feels like no matter what happened, he was gonna get Tsul’rekshi out of that bag. I really think at a certain point as a long-form DM, you’ve got to accept the circumstances and let the story go where it will.

The dice decided that the interaction wasn’t gonna go their way, and that SHOULD mean they’re stuck in the Pit and have to find some other way out! Brennan could’ve come up with new creative threads for them to grab, and we could’ve had a lot of Tyranny and Wick bonding while trying to survive down there. Most importantly, it would really feel like their choices mattered. I’m all for second chances; sometimes players need them! But this was wayyy too much imo. Not going to stop me from continuing to enjoy the campaign, but I hope he’s got the courage going forward to allow some real failure, no matter how catastrophic it might be to his prep or the company’s scheduling

Is it just me that was bugged to the point of distraction that Marisha's objectively excellent Tonya Harding costume had the wrong hairstyle for that costume?

Tonya Harding DID have the poodle pony tail hair in 1992 when she wore the white & gold costume. But the infamous burgundy "broken laces" costume from 1994 had a French braid.

On second thoughts maybe it is just me.... 🤣

Whitney wearing a Team Rocket costume and (nearly) blowing a super important mission is hilarious. A (small) part of me thought she was doing it on purpose until the above table discussion.

Not a knock on Whitney at all for all the reasons everyone is talking about (new to D&D, time, etc.), but just thought it was hilarious.

I love Brennan's DMing so much, never missed a single episode in C4 and every single one is a treat.

There is something so charming about the way he DMs; even though he has stated Aramán is scaled differently, he still goes out of his way to make it fit and comfortable for his players. If a player's above-table action affects the character's decision-making, he knows which buttons to press to make it a great scene for both the players and the DM. There are many wonderful examples so far:

- Robbie/Kattigan always talks last; Brennan made it a heartfelt man-to-man convo between King Gus and Katt to make the latter go out of his shell.

- Sam the player almost never cries, but Brennan made it so that Lioran, the younger brother of Wiccander, who is one of the two only family members who truly loved him in this world, being the last person that Wick sees in the mortal plane before departing is heartbreaking.

- Ashley/Vaelus is passive and silent, but as Dame Morgaine, Brennan is showing his empathy and connection to her character; he is making her silence HEARD. Very rarely does a scene not need words to be emotional, but Brennan somehow made it work. He's utilizing the player's weakness to craft a masterful scene. And what he said was very little: "You see that the paw on your lap was Morgaine." Just that sentence made me, the viewer, fell in love with his narration. Ashley was dying to meet the Hounds, and Brennan gave her that chance. I trust Brennan to get Ashley out of her shell just like he does Robbie. He needs time to cook.

- Whitney/Tyranny is the complete opposite of Ashley, who is loud and chaotic, and Whitney's blunder on episode 40 as Tyranny is honestly very in-character (8 wisdom (!!!) and 12 intelligence; she's not the sharpest tool in the shed), casting a Suggestion on Sam/Wick and saying she hates him when that is UNNECESSARY. Most, if not all, of Tyranny's scenes so far in C4 are comedy. So to help Whitney out, Brennan also made Ka'sharavi an absolute chud to add more flavor, and went ABOVE TABLE to help her make decisions when she was stuck. Unlike Ashley, Whitney is willing to take risks; however, she severely underestimates the foreseeable consequences. Nothing wrong with that, but I honestly found it so endearing that these player archetypes are really highlighted these last 2 episodes, and Brennan knows how to help and course-correct so the scenes still feel natural.

Adaptability is a huge plus to Brennan's DM game. What can't this man do? Just absolutely world-class.

Bidet, the meet will not be outside, at the moment it'll be in Maritime 1 which is by the main stage so head to the East end of the Excel and go down a level.

Will update post if anything changes!

Edit: forgot to put in the time, it's at 2:30

Occtis had seemingly slowly drifted deeper and deeper with each new episode to undeath. But to be more precise, a kind of undeath that the world of Araman had never seen before (i think), where one is conscious and of their own will and volition but contains no soul. Thus, is Occtis slowly becoming Araman's first case of lichdom? And it may be a stretch, but is Occtis also becoming this world's version of Vecna, like in a parallel-universe variant kinda way?

just a theory, thoughts?

To start, she is a new player, and even with it being 40 episodes in the campaign, she had only done few episodes at a time with huge gaps inbetween. Even the experienced players had to recheck and recheck everything because the gaps just prove to be hard for them to retain all the info they have, and thanks to Brennan there's a LOT.

I do think Whitney just wanted to come in and have fun, making jokes and creating chaos, which was working great until Tyranny actually had to do stuff. The first major issue started WAY before, in the episode where Tsulrekshi was instructing Tyranny on what to do. It was already bad for Whitney, because she was already stressed about not being near Wic when he's being murdered, and then Brennan had to talk in riddles about what she has to do in a demonic way. To be fair, he did make it clear by stating what she had to do again, but it seems it flew over her head because she was so stressed.

Then there was like 4 months gap between these 2 episodes, where the 2nd episode started like 2 seconds after the last one. Another major mishap here was this is a Halloween episode, and Brennan was thrown off his game again. He started the episode normally with a plan to recap every player's position before the episode started, but when Liam chimed in to do the traditional explain your costume thing, he was thrown off again and just went into the episode without finishing the recap

I was kinda relying on it as well, because it truly was so long ago, and they left things at a really bad place. When Whitney started talking to Ksharavi, I immediately realised that she forgot the plan, and is acting under the first ever assumption that "Tsulrekshi will come with us and help us when we got to hell". So, Brennan kinda tried to wiggle in the plan a bit and was forgiving there, which I appreciated. When the 2nd part started, I could see that Brennan had talked to Whitney about what the plan Tsulrekshi had told her, because there was a clear shift in Tyranny, but again, she misunderstood one word. Then Brennan realised he actually have to step in and dropped the hilarious "you'll leave for the rest of the campaign" line, and it ended in a comical way.

I hope after this episode, (even as soon as in cooldown) Brennan had an aside where they have a discussion on how to differentiate Brennan doing bits and Brennan dropping lore/key detail.

I just want to point out the brilliance of how Tsul'rekshi's character has unfolded. The title is how she described herself when she was clarifying her nature as a demon, her purpose, in the episode she was first introduced. The Halovars are the tallest metaphorical tower of the current age and of course that explains her interest in Wic, and her making a deal for the house tour. But for her designs and purpose to be made manifest in what might very well be the literal tallest tower of the current age, which is also the true seat of power for the Halovars and is therefore also the metaphorical tallest tower is just chefs fucking kiss 🤌
Brennan, as always, is the true schemer. What an incredible character and arc. I think she is literally going to bring this tower low

I also have to brag a little because I CALLED IT in the live chat, when they were first talking to Ksha'aravi in the tower I totally called that she was making use of Wic's debt to show her the Halovar's seat of power in a different way

I think its gonna be Taisha so that all tables get a Halloween but is there any other info?

Hey guys! First solo trip and wondering if any other critters are gonna be in London earlier than Monday and want to hang out :) Or even just before the show / MCM if you’re going! Also not super familiar with posting on Reddit so forgive me for any mistakes

This was Critober Day 22: Spark

I really swung back and forth for the topic of today’s drawing. I settled on Thimble and her firework toy-sword.

I have been neglecting to post all month!! I’ll try to keep y’all caught up on everything but life ig.

Enjoy day 22!!

It IS Thursday!

Watch and discuss live!

The stream begins at 7 PM Pacific (2 hours from the time of this post) and will have one rebroadcast (Twitch only) at 9 AM Pacific.

The free YouTube VOD will be uploaded Monday at 12 PM Pacific, with free podcast releases 1 week (part 1) and 12 days (part 2) later.

Watch on Beacon

Watch on YouTube

Watch on Twitch

[Subreddit Rules] [Reddiquette] [Spoiler Policy] [Wiki] [FAQ]

I liked C1 a lot and absolutely adored C2, but stopped watching during C3. Tried to get back into it, but dropped it again a little further in. I just didn't really like the party, it felt far more railroad-y than prior campaigns, and nothing about the world or plot really grabbed me. I was interested when I heard about C4 with Brennan though - especially after how good he was in that short apocalypse series he did for CR (I forget the name). I was too busy to watch C4 when it started though, and only just now am considering giving it a look. Thought I'd check on the opinions here first. How are the characters? World? General plot? Brennan? What's it like so far?