Critical Role Critical Role Campaign 3 Discussion (SPOILERS)

[RoughCoronet0]

I greatly enjoyed the first episode personally and find myself liking nearly every character right out the gate.

I’ll agree that Liam’s does seem the weakest to me as well but I feel for me personally it’s due to the fact that Liam is one of those people that gets into character so much that it can sometimes be difficult to separate character from player. It’s was so surreal seeing him play his new characters because I kept seeing him as Caleb. So it will take a bit of time for me to adjust. Having said that, I’m still excited to see how his character’s story unfold.

 

[Mind of tempest]

My unsolicited Critical Role Campaign 3 episode 1 thoughts, having watched the first half while not paying very close attention to it.

I was fine with it by the end of the first half. However, if I was a brand new viewer I 100% would not have made it through the opening 10 minute intro/shilling section.

The first 30-40 minutes of play was really front-loaded with the standard Mercer factions, orders, and institutions that it'll take me a while to wrap my head around and which I may never care about.

Laura is doing the young southern gothic voice she used for her Pillars of Eternity 2 character. It's great.

Laura is playing a human aberrant mind (I think) sorcerer. Marisha is a warlock/sorcerer. Warlock patron is The Undead from Van Richten's guide and I think she's a dhampir as well. Not sure what her sorcerous origin is but likely shadow.

After one half of one episode, I like Marisha's character better than Keyleth or Beau.

Taleisin's character is a non-binary earth genasi barbarian. Very cool looking visually.

FCG = Ted Lasso. At first I thought he was the little robot voiced by Slim Pickens in The Black Hole, but it's clearly Ted Lasso.

I like FCG and Laura's character, Imogen, a lot.

Ashley, Liam, and Robbie are playing their Exandria Unlimited characters. Travis joins late in part one as Bertram Bell, his campaign 1 back-up character. This does not feel like a long-term character for him (unlike everyone else, he does not get a character sheet). It appears there may be something to the rumors that this is a West Marches campaign or that sometimes people other than Matt will be playing NPCs.

Sam inadvertently revealed he did not watch a single minute of Exandria Unlimited.

Taleisin and Sam are playing unpublished subclasses for barbarian and cleric, respectively. Maybe they'll be available with the March CR adventure book.

Bold choice for Ashley to play a druid, the most technically complex class in the game. Despite playing the character in all 8 episodes of Exandria Unlimited, she did not know how her cantrips worked here.

Not crazy about the new set so far. It has a weird fishbowl effect, and whenever Mercer leans in to move minis there are suddenly three of him as he appears in every camera shot at weird angles.

The latest odd Mercer pronunciation issue is that instead of gondola he said gon-DOE-la conservatively a million times in the first hour.

Their ability scores are higher than what you'd get with point buy or standard array, but so far they each have one really low score. Marisha has a 5 strength and Taleisin has a 6 charisma.

I always learn a lot watching this show. My biggest take-away is that the first session of a campaign is hard to DM. But I think it’s better to do two things they didn’t do here:

• Start with an action sequence. Not hungover people in a bar. You’re inviting 30-40 minutes of low-energy meandering.
• Start simple. You don’t need to introduce every faction and location right away. No player or viewer is holding all of these guilds, libraries, theaters, and towers in their heads. Just intro stuff as you need it. And in session one, just intro the stuff you need for session 1.

can you elaborate on the characters from EU as I am a new watcher?

 

[overgeeked]

Really? I already love most of them! Liam’s character doesn’t really stand out to me, and I’m not especially drawn to the new guy’s character - though that may in part be because he’s new. I like Laura’s character’s design but I haven’t seen enough from her yet to have a strong opinion on. I love the rest, especially Taleisin’s and Sam’s characters, who have a delightful dynamic going on.

Yeah. Really. It's fine to have one joke character. But now it's what...half the group are basically one-trick pony joke characters. As you mention, Sam's a literal healbot. Taliesin's a literal punk rock. Laura and Marisha are both playing Southern Gothic belles. Liam's playing the boring halfling fighter. Fearne's voice...ugh...a kleptomaniac druid. Okay. I mean, I know it's CR so they're going to do something dramatic and amazing with all of them...and this is only episode one...but I'd be happy if they wiped hard and reset.

I like Bertram a lot but I’m not convinced he’s a permanent character. Something fishy is going on with him, between being a higher level than the rest of the party (though a lower level than he was in campaign 1), and the fact that, despite his age being played for laughs, he’s actually much younger than he should be based on the time gap between campaign 1 and campaign 3.

He's definitely an NPC. No idea why Matt isn't playing him instead of Travis. Or what Travis' actual character will be.

Personally, I found campaign 1 by far the most enjoyable, I checked out halfway through campaign 2 and I couldn't get into Exandria Unlimited at all (I REALY hated the DM's style for the campaign, like A LOT).

I absolutely hated Aabriya's DM style. It's almost a how not to DM 101 course. I checked out after 2-3 episodes. I haven't gotten past the first 5-6 episodes of C1 either. All the audio problems and the chat scroll are just too much. I know they get fixed fairly quickly, by episode 20-something. But that's a chunk of time to skip over.

 

[Burnside]

can you elaborate on the characters from EU as I am a new watcher?

The three recurring characters from EU (of which I only watched 1.5 episodes):

Fearne, a faun (satyr from the Theros book) wildfire druid, played by Ashley. Has a companion named Little Mister who is a mischievous, monkey-like fire elemental. Ashley does a great job playing a fey character whose moral code is quite different from mortals.

Dorian is an air genasi bard (not sure of subclass) played by Robbie, who is billed as a guest player. His character is clearly good-aligned and is among the more likely to object to the party doing questionable stuff.

Orym is a halfling battle master fighter played by Liam. As others have mentioned, Liam has mostly stayed out of the spotlight with this character and we don't know a lot about him. Like all of Liam's characters, Orym is a bit of a depressive.

 

[Burnside]

Laura and Marisha are both playing Southern Gothic belles.

Marisha is going for a posh British accent with her character. She did occasionally go southern accidentally here and there when talking to Laura's character.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah. Really. It's fine to have one joke character. But now it's what...half the group are basically one-trick pony joke characters. As you mention, Sam's a literal healbot. Taliesin's a literal punk rock. Laura and Marisha are both playing Southern Gothic belles. Liam's playing the boring halfling fighter. Fearne's voice...ugh...a kleptomaniac druid. Okay. I mean, I know it's CR so they're going to do something dramatic and amazing with all of them...and this is only episode one...but I

I don’t really see them as joke characters. Sure, FCG and Ashton have built-in puns, but there’s more to the characters than just those puns - FCG seems to be driven to uncover people’s insecurities and traumas and help them work through them. Ashton seems to be a crude, blue-collar kind of person who I wouldn’t even think of as a joke character but for the pun, which doesn’t seem to be a significant part of his characterization at all. Laura’s and Marisha’s characters don’t seem like jokes to me at all. Fearn’s voice is adorable, and I guess I could see the klepto thing getting old, but… She stole one thing.

I dunno, your opinion is your opinion, and if you’re not liking the characters so far, fair enough. I’m just not seeing what you’re seeing from them at all.

 

[Charlaquin]

Marisha is going for a posh British accent with her character. She did occasionally go southern accidentally here and there when talking to Laura's character.

So did Taleisin once or twice, but I think he hid it a bit better than Mariah’s did.

Also, Laura’s character isn’t gothic at all.

 

[Burnside]

He's definitely an NPC. No idea why Matt isn't playing him instead of Travis. Or what Travis' actual character will be.

I think people will be appearing as NPCs throughout the campaign. I think it's a good idea for a performance game.

I pro DM live site-specific D&D games with elaborate props, handouts, terrain, etc and we use actors in the roles of major NPCs at those events. Works quite well. And it's a help to the DM when occasionally you want more than one important NPC "on stage" at the same time and don't want to play them all yourself, and don't want to run the NPC ally during combat when you're also running all the enemies.

 

[Bolares]

Yeah. Really. It's fine to have one joke character. But now it's what...half the group are basically one-trick pony joke characters. As you mention, Sam's a literal healbot. Taliesin's a literal punk rock. Laura and Marisha are both playing Southern Gothic belles. Liam's playing the boring halfling fighter. Fearne's voice...ugh...a kleptomaniac druid. Okay. I mean, I know it's CR so they're going to do something dramatic and amazing with all of them...and this is only episode one...but I

Well, I thought Nott was a joke character too at first. I don't think punk rock is a joke character. Taliesin has a punk side and can be pretty nasty when they want so I think he will be on fire...

 

[Burnside]

So did Taleisin once or twice, but I think he hid it a bit better than Mariah’s did.

Also, Laura’s character isn’t gothic at all.

"Southern gothic" is a different thing from "goth". I have an idea of where the character is going; I think what I mean will be clearer in a few episodes.