The Legend of Vox Machina

j00t · Jan 30, 2022

i THINK part of pike's narrative early on was because their home game was pathfinder. same story, just pathfinder rules. when they swtched to streaming they had JUST switched to 5e dnd rules because pathfinder rules are really chunky with modifiers. a typical pathfinder attack role is basically d20 +3 -2 -1 +2 +3 -2 and those modifiers might change every attack depending on who you are attacking, where they are standing, where you are standing, how many times you're attacking in a single round, etc.

so pike's diety is Sarenrae, which is a pathfinder diety, but doesn't exist in dnd. i THINK matt was trying to demonstrate a weakening link, sort of as a story beat but ashley never picked up on that because she never picks up on ANY of the story beats that matt gives her. but like, her symbol broke so it messed up her connection to Sarenrae, whereas matt was pulling a thor ragnarok when thor's hammer breaks and has to figure out that the hammer was just a focus for his power, not the source of it. but again, ashley never really picked up on that at all.

Nothar · Jan 30, 2022

Yeah I love Ashley, but she is not the brightest of the bunch. That being said her character in Campaign 3, Fearne, is much better than her previous characters.
As for the show, they have 12 episodes for this 1st season it appears, so if they have the Briarwoods be the main villain for the rest of the season that seems fine to me.

Wrenn · Jan 31, 2022

Regarding Pike, in some of the first live episodes they were exploring a dungeon and Pike showed a strange interested in some torture implements. Later they had an unconscious guard and she slit it's throat to stop it following them. She and the party all seemed shocked by this action. When they left the dungeon Matt described her finding a crack in her holy symbol. Later she described spending time in the temple praying and doing good deeds to try and repair her link to her god.

Angerz · Jan 31, 2022

Grabbit Allworth said:
That said, I wasn't the least bit surprised that 6 minutes in to the first episode they introduced the pink-haired, non-binary, bearded tranny barkeep. /eyeroll.

That character was made up from surveying the Kickstarter backers, the CR team had nothing to do with it, other than making a crowdsourced character a stretch goal. Also (this isn't mentioned in the show), not sure it's technically a tranny, their race is Changeling, who I imagine have no gender, since they can swap at will.

BoozeCube · Jan 31, 2022

Netflix and Amazon shows that don't release all content for me to binge watch in a day are aids.

Animosity · Jan 31, 2022

BoozeCube said:
Netflix and Amazon shows that don't release all content for me to binge watch in a day are aids.

Netflix is the only one that drops full seasons. Everyone else is weekly like assholes to keep us subbed.

Qhue · Jan 31, 2022

I do see value in having staggered release as they allow people a chance to chat about the content part way through a story. Nothing was quite so maddening as watching a cool episode of a series and not having anyone to talk to about it because everyone else had either watched none or all of it.

Lenardo · Jan 31, 2022

WHILE i agree dropping all at once is great,

one thing to remember is..Word of Mouth.

drop at once hype before release then....a bit a week or 2 after the WoM gets passed along as people go, did you see X on netflix, it is great you should watch it. then nada as the masses move on to the next big thing

limited release = people talk about the episode from this past week, then NEXT week they talk about that episode, then etc
allowing for a more organic gain of followers as more people hear about the show as time goes on. so that above WoM example is, did you watch X that just came out on amazon video? ...next week, then next week, etc. and people like to TALK about episodes during the week to anticipate the next episode, that builds a fanbase.

Srathor · Feb 3, 2022

Next 3 are up on Prime.

Djay · Feb 3, 2022

I was expecting one episode per week...that's a nice surprise.

Kaines · Feb 3, 2022

Djay said:
I was expecting one episode per week...that's a nice surprise.

Nope, 3 each week. It's a 4 week run.

These episodes flow together much better. The only criticism I have is that you can almost physically feel them rushing the story. Still really good overall, the story beats just have zero time to breath.

Mist · Feb 3, 2022

I randomly put this on when I was building my new PC last night and it was pretty fucking hilarious. I had no idea what it was, I was working front of my TV and clicked on Prime, clicked on whatever the first thing that came up, and then got weirded out by how instantly recognizable all the voices were.

I was like "That's weird, that sounds like Laura Bailey... that's weird, those are all video game voice actors..."

I actually think the pacing is great, because I can't stand those TTRPG streams which is why I had never even watched Critical Role and had no idea what this was.

j00t · Feb 3, 2022

last week on their watch party (it's on youtube now, don't bother it's mostly boring) i think matt or travis said the entire briarwood arc was 40+ hours streaming, and they needed to bring that down to like 5 hours. it is, and always will be the problem with this show specifically. they have SOOOOO much content that no matter what they do, it will always feel rushed. if you give moments time to breath, it's at the expense of someone's favorite moment.

Kaines · Feb 3, 2022

j00t said:
last week on their watch party (it's on youtube now, don't bother it's mostly boring) i think matt or travis said the entire briarwood arc was 40+ hours streaming, and they needed to bring that down to like 5 hours. it is, and always will be the problem with this show specifically. they have SOOOOO much content that no matter what they do, it will always feel rushed. if you give moments time to breath, it's at the expense of someone's favorite moment.

Yeah, I watched that live as well. And I get the problem. It's still a problem though when you can sense just how badly they had to rush every story beat just to get them all in. Taking it from 40+ hours to 5 was always going to be rough and could have been FAR better for everyone if they spread the Briarwoods out to be both initial seasons. But I understand them not having any guarantees beyond the first season when they were first writting the stories. Even though now Amazon has guaranteed a 2nd season, it's too late to extend the story arc out that far.

Still a great show. I'm still enjoying it. But the pacing is borderline Saturday Morning Kids Show levels of speed.

Animosity · Feb 4, 2022

Im not a big cartoon person or ever got into Critical Role but I decided to check this out and have been thoroughly enjoying it.

j00t · Feb 4, 2022

Kaines said:
Yeah, I watched that live as well. And I get the problem. It's still a problem though when you can sense just how badly they had to rush every story beat just to get them all in. Taking it from 40+ hours to 5 was always going to be rough and could have been FAR better for everyone if they spread the Briarwoods out to be both initial seasons. But I understand them not having any guarantees beyond the first season when they were first writting the stories. Even though now Amazon has guaranteed a 2nd season, it's too late to extend the story arc out that far.

Still a great show. I'm still enjoying it. But the pacing is borderline Saturday Morning Kids Show levels of speed.

well, the hope is that the show does well despite this and allows for more/longer seasons so that they can take their time a little more, as well as open the door for more shows like this

BoozeCube · Feb 4, 2022

So I wanted to wait and see more before rushing to an opinion. The first 3 episodes kind of felt disjointed but I gave the first couple with backstory a pass to try and catch everything up and then introduce the Brairwoods but yeah with these next 3 if you weren't already someone who watched the D&D shit it just feels janky, rushed, and not explained. Instead of any characters having any charm of reason to exist they are just hamfisted in. Like Percy's childhood freedom fighter fag is a whole lot of who gives any fucks because there is no time for any character development everything is just breakneck rush to the end with some a magical clusterfuck of death and violence cut scenes inbetween. The series has the potential to be amazing and hopefully with Amazon footing the bill for a 2nd season it can come into it's own, but it really has to get some more depth if it wan'ts to be an ongoing thing.

zzeris · Feb 5, 2022

I know nothing about Vox Machina but have enjoyed all the episodes so far. It's well made and few things on Amazon have been. I agree that Season 2 should increase either the episode count or just expand each episode by 2-3 minutes. If you're cramming 40 hrs into 5, just cram 40 into 6 next time and give us a little more to make the story smoother. I like all the characters in this version which probably wouldn't be the case with the original version. I want to listen to this now though.

Grez · Feb 8, 2022

I havn't seen this yet, but I think I'm going to have to after watching this:

Shh, shh, quiet, quiet, go to sleep... /PTSDeyes

Angerz · Feb 9, 2022

Grez said:
I havn't seen this yet, but I think I'm going to have to after watching this:

Shh, shh, quiet, quiet, go to sleep... /PTSDeyes

This was a great scene to do callbacks to things that happened at the table, but before the events of the show.

The Legend of Vox Machina

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REEEEeyore

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