Story over Plot: [Spoiler]'s Sacrifice in Critical Role c3 ep91

what's up YouTube your boy GM Jim here and this isn't the video I was expecting to publish today um because some things happened and that'll get shifted to a later date um another thing you know I usually like to heavily script my videos so that I don't ramble and I can keep them as short as possible I made some brief outline notes I might refer to over here but I'll probably going to ramble a little bit I'm still going to try to keep it toght keep it very toght um uh I just finished watching critical rooll campaign 3 episode 91 and I have some thoughts about it I want to talk about um uh placing story above plot because I think that's the great lesson to come out of this episode I'll put a thing down here when there's going to be minor spoilers coming I'm going to do just kind of an intro and then talk about some minor spoiler things and then some major spoiler things so you'll have time to click away if you don't want things to get spoiled if you're not caught up or if you don't care about uh critical role being spoiled then you know feel free to ignore all that and just keep watching hello I had a hard time with campaign 3 of critical role at first I didn't connect with the characters over the first several episodes I really liked um Robbie Damon as Dorian and that's why I kept watching but maybe it was because I just had a hard time I came came into critical role during campaign 2 that's when I fell in love with all those nerdy voice actors and their character characters and so when they changed from mighty n to Bells Hells I had a difficult time seeing them as different characters perhaps or I don't know I don't know why I didn't connect with the campaign 3 uh cast of characters at first but by the time they got to around episode 40 or 45 when they started doing the malas key Arc um I was hooked and I think the one thing that's really really cool about campaign 3 compared to campaign one and two is that those those I I've started watching crit crit roll in campaign 2 but I've since gone back and watched chunks of of campaign one I haven't watched the whole thing all the way through but I've seen Parts is that it feels like in campaign one and in campaign two there were a series there were a whole bunch of small arcs and then the the the climax was sort of developed in the end stages of those campaigns um but I hope that makes sense but campaign 3 feels like basically from episode 15 or 20 on it's all been building toward one central conflict and I really like that and that's super hard to do in a campaign you know because um it's hard to it's hard to have a single central conflict in any uh D and D or any tabletop campaign because you know baddies get killed or twists get figured out by the players and so you have to change and adapt and give them a new baddy a bigger baddy or or change is because the twist but this whole like from episode 20 to episode 91 where we are currently everything has been building toward this one big thing and that's what's happening on the moon and the people involved in that um so here are some mini spoilers going forward um I think the last five or six episodes of critical role campaign 3 in particular about episode 80 to 85 to where we are now have been absolutely fantastic this whole little arc on the Moon is incredible um because it's filled with a lot of really weird crap and I think D and D is at its best when it's weird that's why I think the wild Beyond The Witch light is one of my all-time favorite 5e Adventures uh maybe one of my all-time favorite ttrpg adventures in general because it's just full of such weird and wonderful stuff um and this this ruus Arc this Moon Arc in critical role has done exactly that okay let's get into our Major Spoilers now um campaign 3 episode 91 uh last Thursday April like 12th 11th somewhere around there 2024 this this episode was absolutely Bonkers um it was gut-wrenching it was hilarious it was heroic it was a 4 and 1 half hour episode and about 3 hours of that was uh all combat you could tell it was G to be an intense combat because they took the break about an hour into the episode and then the last three hours was this big epic battle between Bell's hells and odan th thu odan thu um who was like basically Matt Mercer invented the uh Echo night fighter subass which I've played and is a really awesome fighter subass it's kind of overpowered um compared to other fighter sub classes especially but it's really awesome very fun to play because you get a copy of yourself and you can really strategize and gritted combat with that copy anyway that's a topic for a different video um but last time they fought somewhere around episode 30 or 40 somewhere in there um Odo hanu killed ladna in that battle because even just the seven of them just against her she was way overpowered it seemed like around then she was probably like a CR 10 or 12 creature um and she killed ladna and they basically I think they had to run or they got saved I don't know something happened they didn't finish the fight they definitely didn't kill odan THU but they had to go on this mini Arc into the shadow realm I think I don't remember exactly I'm just kind of talking off the out of my ass here they had to go on this mini Arc to save Laden and it was a big deal and notan thul has been not the big bad but like definitely one of the big bad's generals and a very imposing figure like they had a brief encounter with her about five episodes ago on the moon and that ended with fcg casting banishment on himself which I've never seen anyone do before it was a pretty smart move on Sam Regal's part and that's how they essentially got out of the fight was banishing themselves away for a minute so then they could come back and and run away um and then but this time they're all level 13 and they Odo Haun they went on a big thing moon mission and now they're running away after completing this this Mission and Odo hanul was chasing them caught up with them in the caves and they took her on and they felt very cocky about it because you know they were like level five when that first encounter happened and now they're all level 13 but obviously odan THU um leveled up in the meantime and it seemed like I don't know exactly how much Matt Mercer built her but it seemed like he was just giving her fighter level she seemed like a 20th level fighter because she had four attacks she had um uh two action surges so that's basically sounds like a 20th level fighter so the com they even me in the combat they even managed to get her backpack off her which prevented her from creating Echoes but she still she killed chetney which fcg brought chetney back with a um vivify downed several characters they were constantly having to spend their action economy on bringing down PCS back up which made the fight extra difficult because she was just swinging her sword four times every round and they were having to spend their actions to revive people who'd been dropped to zero HP but the the main thing about the fight and here we get into the super duper spoilers is that near the end of the fight fcg had fcg has this this I don't know why I'm telling you this cuz if you're watching this then you know the show probably and so you know what's going on but fcg has this stress mechanic that's specific to his character that if he does too many uses too much of his powers he gets stressed out and if he hits a certain like red red warning phase he freaks out and behaves chaotically and he reached that phase because he was giving out Boons and handing doing support for other characters and they tipped him over the edge and then at the very end Odo hanul was chasing him was going to kill him and he pointed a guiding bolt at his own own heart his CPU or what I don't know exactly what it is he said the red glowing thing inside him and he guiding bolted himself and I think it was Matt Mercer said are you doing a blaze of glory which is the thing from dagger har I'll probably put a card up here telling you uh more about dagger heart because I do think I've got a video coming out in like a week about death saves I should have just I should re-edit that video but I probably won't cuz I'm lazy um but in in dagger heart you can when you drop his Zer HP you can do this thing called The Blaze of Glory which is you get you accept that you're going to die you don't roll death saves or anything like that you just die but before you do you get to have do one super cool last thing and so fcg basically Matt let him home brew in the moment and an improv moment let him home brew doing the blaze of glory shot himself detonated fcg detonated himself which killed odan through he rolled Matt decided in the moment that it would be 20 d8 which killed the both of them it killed Odo hanul saved the lives of everyone in the uh in the party and it was a super intense crazy moment you know everyone at the table was crying Matt was shocked Matt was crying and fcg gave this amazing speech right here and it is so uh it is so intense that for the first time I realized that I am made of metal and wires but I am I am alive I am alive for the first time and I am alive not because I was made by D or dancer or even the changebringer I'm alive because they made me alive and and it's the connections that I made with all of them and it's a feeling of of joy and um and I I'm happy to do this because they saved my life and I'll save theirs okay uh so here's the point of what I want to talk about that the story is more important than the plot the plot is the thing that happens the things that happen the plot is the individual glory of the characters the plot is the decisions we make it is leveling up it is killing monsters it is exploring dungeons it is solving puzzles that's the plot the story is about the characters and how they grow and change Sam's plot for fcg would have been leveling up higher 14 15 16 17 who knows how high this campaign is going to go uncovering his backstory because there's still unexplained things we know that fcg is from aore he's an automaton there's there's only been one other like him in the campaign that we've seen um played by Christian Navaro I can't remember that character's name the actor Christian Navaro guested there's still a lot of unresolved and unknown things in F CG's backstory and that's all plot but the story here is the surprise and the drama of what happened when he decided to sacrifice himself it was a completely unexpected moment and that's what gave it such emotional weight wait if they knew they were going to the moon and that fcg was going to kill himself that would have been the drama would have been spaced out over several episodes um but it was all compacted into this one moment when you know F I don't think fcg I don't think Sam Regal knew this was going to happen Matt Mercer certainly didn't know this was going to happen you could see it on his face how shocked he was and the other players didn't know it was going to happen and that's what gave the moment such drama such great story was that it was unexpected and who knows what could happen in the future maybe they will resurrect fcg I mean it would be kind of cool to find out the rest of his plot the rest of his backstory and to see the the the decisions that fcg makes in the future but it would lessen that sacrifice you know and um the uh Star Wars rise of the Skywalker rise of the Skywalkers I don't even know you know there were a couple times in that movie where our characters died and then just came back and it was like okay okay well why did we have that emotionally impactful moment and why did the music swell and get so dramatic if C3PO was going to get killed and then just brought back a scene later what was the point of all that um anyway I do Star Trek Star Wars tangents way too much um it would lessen the sacrifice if they brought him back because that sacrifice was what made the story so impactful and so the lesson here I think for people playing ttrpgs for people running ttrp pgs is that look for those moments of Story look for those moments where you can make emotional changes at the table by you know not always you don't always have to off your character that's a great thing to do in a one shot but it's definitely not as emotionally impactful to kill off a character in a one shot because you know you've only everybody at the table's only known that character for two or three hours at that point but if you can make a big swing if you can make a big emotional moment that catharsis that big change especially if it's unexpected that is when those are the moments that you're going to remember at your table those are the moments that you will the players will be talking about two 5 10 years later remember when that character sacrificed themselves to save everyone else those are the moments that we should look for all right I think I've rambled on enough here this is GM Jim catch you later

Channel: Wizards & Wordslingers

Views: 7,763

Keywords: 5e, d&d, dungeons & dragons, wizards & wordslingers, gm tips, gamemaster advice, dm tips, TTRPGs, critical role, fcg, letters, fresh cut grass

Id: 9OBpOx7jU88

Length: 14min 28sec (868 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 16 2024