The Legend of Vox Machina

Djay · Jan 14, 2022

Caliane said:
its enjoyable for a few reasons. one, they stay in character. so it really plays out like a radio play. As opposed to most regular dnd groups that drop character and spend 20 minutes discussing how to do a fight, or whatever, in the 2 seconds before a fight, or what every player should do, during their turn...
Matt himself of course bringing insane range and world building to all his npcs.

for the players. yeah, Sam is fucking amazing. hell, hes better here, then he is at voice acting. crazy long term planning, and trolling his friends.
Travis is great, but low key. as grog, he was overplaying grogs "low int", so intentionally took a back seat, save for the occasional, intentionally doing some thing "dumb" to get a reaction.. like pulling a card from the deck of many things.
A good time to point out, Matt is an incredibly generous Dm. theres more then a few times, they should have TPK, but Matt gave them multiple outs.
A cowardly, but more intelligent Fjord. And, now Chetney is pretty lulz.

Liam was insufferably Emo with Vax. sufferably emo with Caleb. and sufferably emo with orm, while trying to not be.. he does well.. but god, everything he does is morose.

Talieson is actually pretty similar. if liam is sad emo. Talieson is "im too cool for school emo". everything he does and says is trying so hard to be counterculture.
A big part of why Cadeusus, was his best character. it was counter to his normal characters. But, hilariously, While Talieson loves to pretend to say insightful things... what comes out of his mouth is often dumb. so, him playing a wise character was pretty funny.

Marisha. fucking awful as keyleth. I blame matt partially for this. Keyleth had a heroes journey. but marisha/keyleth was an idiot, and didn't learn anything. yet, the narrative via matt kept moving forward as if she had. Ashley/Yasha had this same problem. their preset story arc didn't reflect their actual actions, as the players didn't understand their own characters.
insufferable. marisha made me stop watching season 1. Beau was slightly better in s2. still frustrating. Marisha really turned it around in the oneshot, with her grammaphone character. and its doing great with laudna now.

Ashley. wasn't around enough in s1. she never really understood the rules of the game. can't blame her too much there. s2. a bit of the same, but yasha overall had real problems, where ashley didn't seem to understand barbarian rage, or kord/stormlord.. shes playing a pacifist barbarian, who worships kord. so, Matt keeps trying over and over, to get her into character, and get to to respond.. but she just keeps failing over and over. "please sir, Kord, what would you like me to do?" so, sure, her failing and understanding Kord is not for her would have made sense.. but thats not what they do.. she ends up a champion of kord, yet at no point ever understanding what it means to be the storm. the storm does not ask permission.
again, she's killing it with Fearne in s3 however. she seems to be channeling a fae compulsive liar/klepto like no other..

Orion back in s1. Idk. there must have been more behind the scenes. or something. Orion on screen was not guilty of anything, the rest of them aren't. maybe he was the odd man out. so when Sam made sexual jokes, among his close friends, no one batted an eye. But, when Orion, made similar jokes, suddenly its outrage. he thought they were closer then they were?
or the power gaming. again, its not like talison with percy, or later beau with the cobalt soul didnt pull the same shit.
some of the accusations was Orion was copyrighting his own creations for the world, knowing it would get big. its possibly this. and thats the reason all of his "dragonia" stuff was stricken.
alot of the fan base loves to delude themselves with, "oh its just a group of friends doing this for fun!" yeah, no. thats bullshit.

I'm actually commissioning a piece of art right now with my favorite character from each person and you have fairly similar opinions to me. I actually liked Keyleth, although I see your point and she may be doing a better job with Laudna. I also like Liam a bit more than you and really like Caleb, as a character, but I see the similarities you hit on.

It's going to be Grog, Keyleth, Scanlan, Caduceus, Caleb, Imogen and Fearne....with Pumat Sol for Matt. I could have picked different characters for Travis, Marisha, Sam, and Laura, but I also was trying to keep a relatively even split between Campaigns.

Orion felt off to me when I went back to watch Campaign 1, so that might have been because I was so used to the dynamic between the rest, but he just felt off, so I think it was for more of the reasons j00t mentions.

Caliane · Jan 14, 2022

its not that I don't like Liam really. vax was too much... he was a drag. Caled was fine 90% of the time. I knew I was forgetting someone. laura. ha. shes one of my favorites. I think she has good range with her characters.

j00t · Jan 14, 2022

i'm with you on liam. i've never disliked him at all. but i definitely get the feeling that he personally suffers from depression on some level and that it comes out in his characters. like i don't think he's actively trying to make his characters debbie downer's, but it's a lense in which he sees the world so it just comes out when he doesn't have a script to read. it's the polar opposite with taliesin. i feel like he's one of those people that thinks poor mental health is cool.

marisha has grown on me over the years. not even in the sense that her characters have gotten better, which they have, but i don't even really mind keyleth. i think a few of them early on really relied on the trope of "well my character has low (x stat) so it's okay that i behave like a (fill in the blank)" and she did it with charisma and int, even though they weren't really that low. she definitely had some awful moments but the golden gods moment was the exact slap in the face she needed and deserved. i think that did a lot for her as a player. you could tell it was something she thought matt was being too harsh on, and was actually upset with... i don't REALLY characterize her as "just the dm's girlfriend/wife" but you could tell at that moment that matt never considered her that and that she realized that she maybe, kinda, sorta did. it was this moment where you KNOW they drove home and she was just FUMING at matt for embarrassing her, but probably the next day took a step back and realized how ridiculous the whole thing was.

ashley is in this REALLY weird spot for me because by all rights she is the EXACT kind of player that irritate me to NO END. you've been playing this game for 15 years HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING YET? but for some reason she is just endearing. i think a HUGE piece of why she has no idea what's going on is just that riffing and freestyling are not her strongpoint. she has a much different background than the others on top of just being a very meek person. so the theatre and ad libbers like matt, sam, liam can go and do an entire play off the cuff by themselves, ashley panics and blanks.

i watched everything they put out RIGHT up until the mini campaign they did before campaign 3. i had THE HARDEST time getting into it, and still haven't finished it. then in campaign 3 when travis took a couple episodes off i realized just how important he is to the setup. i keep meaning to get back on track with campaign 3, but even knowing he's gone for a couple episodes i just can't lol. everyone is SOOOOOO dramatic about everything. travis is the one who keeps things on track.

slippery · Jan 14, 2022

j00t said:
i'm with you on liam. i've never disliked him at all. but i definitely get the feeling that he personally suffers from depression on some level and that it comes out in his characters. like i don't think he's actively trying to make his characters debbie downer's, but it's a lense in which he sees the world so it just comes out when he doesn't have a script to read. it's the polar opposite with taliesin. i feel like he's one of those people that thinks poor mental health is cool.

marisha has grown on me over the years. not even in the sense that her characters have gotten better, which they have, but i don't even really mind keyleth. i think a few of them early on really relied on the trope of "well my character has low (x stat) so it's okay that i behave like a (fill in the blank)" and she did it with charisma and int, even though they weren't really that low. she definitely had some awful moments but the golden gods moment was the exact slap in the face she needed and deserved. i think that did a lot for her as a player. you could tell it was something she thought matt was being too harsh on, and was actually upset with... i don't REALLY characterize her as "just the dm's girlfriend/wife" but you could tell at that moment that matt never considered her that and that she realized that she maybe, kinda, sorta did. it was this moment where you KNOW they drove home and she was just FUMING at matt for embarrassing her, but probably the next day took a step back and realized how ridiculous the whole thing was.

ashley is in this REALLY weird spot for me because by all rights she is the EXACT kind of player that irritate me to NO END. you've been playing this game for 15 years HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING YET? but for some reason she is just endearing. i think a HUGE piece of why she has no idea what's going on is just that riffing and freestyling are not her strongpoint. she has a much different background than the others on top of just being a very meek person. so the theatre and ad libbers like matt, sam, liam can go and do an entire play off the cuff by themselves, ashley panics and blanks.

i watched everything they put out RIGHT up until the mini campaign they did before campaign 3. i had THE HARDEST time getting into it, and still haven't finished it. then in campaign 3 when travis took a couple episodes off i realized just how important he is to the setup. i keep meaning to get back on track with campaign 3, but even knowing he's gone for a couple episodes i just can't lol. everyone is SOOOOOO dramatic about everything. travis is the one who keeps things on track.

I'm only like 20 episodes into campaign 2, and I've felt like that about Travis a lot. He kind of takes the party by the reins sometimes and gets things going. I definitely didn't enjoy the episodes in campaign 3 where he was missing nearly as much. And Chetney is a fucking hilarious character

Djay · Jan 14, 2022

For those that don't know, Chetney is his character from Liam's The Night Before Critmas, Chutney. That's why everyone started freaking out when he introduced himself and why he loves making things out of wood. Bertrand was his character in The Search For Grog and The Search For Bob.

I also didn't like the Battle For Exandria or whatever the thing was before Campaign 3. I stopped watching after 3 episodes or so, then they introduced some guest actors that I already didn't like from previous appearances and I saw from the episode art she continued being in future episodes, so I was just done. Not sure if I should just put it on in the background and plow through or if I should just read spoilers and figure out how it ended.

Caliane · Jan 14, 2022

yeah, I bailed on exandria unlimited after a few.

I thought the guest actors were all fine. but Aabria was a terrible GM. she was 100% rule of cool, no rules, "sounds fun, I'll allow it". was just pure chaos. didn't do a good job setting up any plot hooks up early. the players were kindof forcing it. lets do something stupid and completely out of character, because it seems like that's the direction the dm is trying to point in? which also, completely contradicts these other potential plot hooks..

Sevens · Jan 20, 2022

Damn they got some big names in this

j00t · Jan 27, 2022

first 3 episodes are out today. was pretty good. they changed some things from the table, but mostly just to streamline the story i think.

i'm glad they kept some running gags from the stream. like trinket not actually contributing in ANY possible way and percy's gun jamming every fight.

Kaines · Jan 27, 2022

I'll be honest, the first two episodes are a little hard to get through. By themselves, they feel like an entire campaign reduced to 40 minutes. The third episode is incredibly good, however, and really sets up the rest of the season well. It seems like it took them the first two episodes to really find their footing in how they are going to tell the story.

Qhue · Jan 27, 2022

The first two are the original Kickstarter pilot they wanted to make that covers a story from before the stream started.

The third episode is very fun however!

Lenardo · Jan 28, 2022

caught the first 2 episodes last night. damn that was good. i just KNEW the sinister dude wasn't the bad guy, it was too obvious.

love the gnome bard...

Chanur · Jan 28, 2022

I never saw the original season of the show and I loved these episodes with 3 definitely being the best.

Djay · Jan 28, 2022

I watched the first two this morning. I think the gf liked them since she kept making comments I had to correct. "No, he's Vax...she's Vex." "No, they don't have Hobbits...he's a Gnome." "She's a Druid...I mean, I guess she can heal, but she mostly does nature things. The girl gnome is the healer."

I laughed out loud a few times...I knew I'd enjoy it, though. More interested in how others that didn't watch Critical Role like it, and when the second episode started, she didn't ask me to watch something else, so I figure that's a good sign.

wormie · Jan 28, 2022

I liked it despite the woke faggotry of every side character being a tranny.

j00t · Jan 28, 2022

In campaign one, there were a COUPLE bi-curious characters. Vax had a flirtatious thing going on with Gilmore, but it felt pretty harmless since that came out AFTER he was clearly committed to keyleth. There was a one or two blink and you'll miss it moments where matt had some female characters mention their wife, but that was really it. It was all generally just a matter of fact "there are gays and lesbians in this world" with hardly any actual focus on it. But campaign 2 really amped up the "WE ARE LGBTQ ALLIES AND SO IS TALDOREI!" even going so far as to retconning that lady kima and alurra are married. These are characters that the mighty Nein have JUST met and have no particular interest in, but because they were big characters for vox machina, it just felt like a way to retroactively make the world more gay.

Its one of the reasons I've gotten less and less interested with critical role. I still like it and all, but they always say how it hasn't changed anything from their home game and that's just clearly false. The dnd community is AWFUL. It's like they got so angry at gatekeeping that they decided to gatekeep the gatekeepers. It's very much the "if you're not with us, you're against us," and you can tell these guys just don't want to offend anyone that if ANYONE says they feel offended they immediately bend the knee. See the Wendy's one shot episode that has been scrubbed from the internet

Sevens · Jan 28, 2022

j00t said:
In campaign one, there were a COUPLE bi-curious characters. Vax had a flirtatious thing going on with Gilmore, but it felt pretty harmless since that came out AFTER he was clearly committed to keyleth. There was a one or two blink and you'll miss it moments where matt had some female characters mention their wife, but that was really it. It was all generally just a matter of fact "there are gays and lesbians in this world" with hardly any actual focus on it. But campaign 2 really amped up the "WE ARE LGBTQ ALLIES AND SO IS TALDOREI!" even going so far as to retconning that lady kima and alurra are married. These are characters that the mighty Nein have JUST met and have no particular interest in, but because they were big characters for vox machina, it just felt like a way to retroactively make the world more gay.

Its one of the reasons I've gotten less and less interested with critical role. I still like it and all, but they always say how it hasn't changed anything from hmtheir home game and that's just clearly false. The dnd community is AWFUL. It's like they got so angry at gatekeeping that they decided to gatekeep the gatekeepers. It's very much the "if you're not with us, you're against us," and you can tell these guys just don't want to offend anyone that can if ANYONE says they feel offended they immediately bend the knee. See the Wendy's one shot episode that has been scrubbed from the internet

Yeah, im in the same boat...my interest in campaign 3 dropped to almost 0 when Taliesin Jaffe listed Ashtons pronouns as He / They.

Kaines · Jan 28, 2022

Sevens said:
Yeah, im in the same boat...my interest in campaign 3 dropped to almost 0 when Taliesin Jaffe listed Ashtons pronouns as He / They.

Taliesin is the biggest SJW douche in the group and I have never liked any of his characters, including Percy. However, the Briarwoods are far and away the best villains Mercer has come up with to date for any of the campaigns. It's just too bad he had to waste them on that piece of shit by making Percy the focal point of the story arc.

Nola · Jan 28, 2022

Anyone else started watching Legends of Vox Machina series today? I’m on the 2nd episode and so far it’s pretty damn good.

Edit: Ok I screwed up the title big time.
Mod delete this post.

Drinsic · Jan 28, 2022

The Legend of Vox Machina

Title: The Legend of Vox Machina Genre: Animation, Sci-Fi & Fantasy First aired: 2022-01-28 Cast: Matthew Mercer, Ashley Johnson, Laura Bailey, Liam O'Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, Taliesin Jaffe, Travis Willingham Overview: The Legend of Vox Machina is an upcoming animated series...

www.firesofheaven.org

Three posts down dude

Big Phoenix · Jan 28, 2022

You fucked it up.

The Legend of Vox Machina

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