Hey I wanted to know, is Veeky Forums was a fan of the adventure zone...

I like it a lot the fan base is HARD on the tumblr side of things but the stories are good and the characters are funny. Solid 9 for me

it got me into 5e, actually. casting seemed way more an exercise in innovation instead of book-keeping, which always kept me from pure casters in 3.5 and pathfinder. rolled up my first 5e wizard and i'm having a blast so far.

it IS railroad-y as hell as a campaign, but i don't mind it because it's in a macro-sense, not micro. they're following a set story arc, but within the confines of that there's enough improv action to satisfy me.

also i gotta say for all that being a tumblr darling means choking through some goddamn terrible content they DO have the monopoly on nice fanart.

It's railroaded, but at the same time it typically feels at least mostly natural. It helps that the players aren't going out of their way to derail things.
I've seen some people complaining about stuff like Griffin saying "you decide you have no hope of finding the light" in The Stolen Century, but there tends to be at least a reason for it - for example, the pitch of the last cycle was basically "how do you react to ending up on a world you can't save". I imagine that if the boys had decided to go after it anyway, and rolled really fucking well, they would have managed to find it, but Griffin was essentially saying "it's going to be nigh-impossible to do this".

I'm fine with how railroady it gets sometimes because it makes for better listening. Same with how much of the actual rolling and crunching he edits out. I can't listen to stuff like Critical Role with too much staring at character sheets and 20 collective minutes of "ummm"s while they look up stats or rules. I want to listen for the story and the interaction not the same stuff I listen to at my table every week.

Its SJW shit.

Man, fuck Griffin.

Taaco best boy

Because tumbler likes it?

Why come user?

That makes sense I think, as this is all of their first game, Griffins first time as DM and they are all trained in improvisational sketch comedy.

Unless he railroads they would never keep to any track at all.

And since this is a podcast first and a fund game second, he wants some kind of story content, as thats what he thinks a game should be and what everybody else wants , as a first time DM.

If they had complete control over the story progression I can't help but think it would be just dick jokes and alot less story. Like you said with the improvement comedy shit someone has to keep them on track somewhat and as DM it falls to griffon. I also think he does allow a fair amount of improvisional game play while balancing the story telling which in all fairness is a hard role to play well

Plus like you said it is a podcast with a story to tell, they're being paid to do this it's not a free roam game that can go on forever

Travis is pretty invested in telling the story even when Justin and Clint don't play along, it wouldn't really be that bad.

Yea fair enough, his play style could quickly take then far off the rails though. He could get out of control pretty easily though

The McElroys have the faggiest voices in the world and they're tumblrcuck trash

Stop shilling their shit, every fucking day with this shit, ffs

Tumblr loves this show, yeah, and it's a fucking feedback loop between this show and the tumblrinas that love it. The show introduced a lesbian romance in the narrative in a pretty well done way in one of the early arcs? This made tumblr sit up and pay attention to the show pretty fast. Since that moment, they've added more "representation" to the show every single arc. I think that with the exception of Magnus and Julia and one of the spoiler related relationships from the town of Refuge...I think that the majority of the relationships in the show have been LGBTQ. And I only say "majority" and not "all" because I'm not sure if I'm forgetting any?

But I think the moment that cemented this show was full SJW was when they stop and directly state that a certain character is trans. And not only does this not matter for any reason whatsoever, it has no plot relevance, it wasn't done for a joke, and there's no way it could ever come up naturally without them going way out of their way to make sure the listeners know. But they needed to make it clear how progressive they are...so they needed to tell us this.

Haven't listened/watched it yet. How does it compare to Critical Hit?

The "majority" is what, three?

Are you the same person from the other TAZ thread complaining because you thought there were too many "brown" people in the show?

Really depends on why you like Critical Role.

TAZ started out as an actual play podcast, but somewhere around the 2nd arc became a radio play with D&D interactions from time to time. They're pretty rules lite, which I'm fine with because a lot of the rules they eschew are rules my own party did away with, and some of the spell tweaks they make work for their narrative-driven style so I can deal with that too.

Honestly as well done as Critical Role is, I prefer listening to The Adventure Zone. I'm a fan of theirs and like their style of humor, and I've enjoyed the writing of the campaign until the most recent arc, it's actually awful but it's the prelude to the end so whatever as railroady as it is. I listen to Crit Role to better my own DMing and play more than anything.

I do have my issues with TAZ, which I wrote here I never said there were a lot of relationships to begin with.
>Magnus and Julia
>Taako and Kravitz
>Killian and Carey
>Sloane and Hurley
this one is a spoiler but:
>Barry & Lup

so yeah, unless i'm forgetting any...they're really ALL of the relationships except for one?

no, and the fact that you're even trying to bring some kind of race nonsense into a show that has only ever slightly hinted at the race of one of its characters until they decided not to name Lup Chalupa because they were scared of some potential outrage. However, I agree that Latinx is actually one of the stupidest words ever

sorry, i forgot to finish my thought in , and that finished thought would be "is stupid and annoying"

That's two straight if you count your spoiler, unless Barry's got a secret I don't know about. And one of those relationships was blatantly a redo of the other, which really just shows how little a role romance has played in this show.

yeah even if you're going to be super PC about a trans person, that's literally not a straight relationship

I could see Merle and the director being in a relationship during the stolen century arc or even after

Clint keeps going for it, but none of the brothers have played along on that front. They keep pulling it back to platonic.

They've already expressed their discomfort with roleplaying a relationship with each other and so it's not crazy to see why Griffin is shying away from roleplaying a relationship with his dad

shit, my bad user. Well, is Critical Hit any good? I'm apprehensive because 4E seems like the worst possible system to try to podcast

I said Critical Hit, not Critical Role.

Critical Hit is a D&D 4E podcast (though they're doing a small pathfinder game between seasons at the moment) done by the Major Spoilers podcast crew.

I guess since I'm behind I'll let you guys know what I think about the tumblr bs when I'm caught up. I haven't been on tumblr on years so wouldn't know about any oresence, honestly they crack me up and the story is pretty good alot of times. Also thanks for heavy spoiler use, really appreciate that shit guys

I'll agree with the useless trans person info thiugh, seems unimportant and like shit idgaf about. Haven't gotten to that point yet so I hope the pandering ain't too bad

Well LucreciaxMerle will be head canon for me I guess
Also there's MerlexPlants

I get the tumblr complaints, but given that it really doesn't take up much of the show I wouldn't think about it too much.

If The Stolen Century wasn't a big giant wet fart of a pause button on the campaign, you'd see a lot less bitching about the tumblr aspect of the show. We need good to make us ignore the bad.

Catch up user, they're about to enter the end game. Are you at least up to The 11th Hour arc? It's flat out my favorite arc of the campaign, and one I wish i could steal for my own. Only reason I wont is because one of my players is a fan of the show lol

see

I recommend the bit where they argue about taking from the bank in Petals to the Metal. A transcript of that one is why I started listening.

Yea that's where I'm at bro, finished 11th hour

I think the stolen century is a good way to build up the characters before the final and personalize the last arc and their final choice to them. They could hop in their ship and fuck off again, get Lup back but they'd be abandoning the world and everyone on it.
Fuck I want to see them use The Hunger as the final dungeon.

Then let me feel free to gush about that arc: every single member of the McElroy clan knocked it out of the park in that arc. The role playing was great, all of the players acted in character in really fantastic ways, even when they go against what you think the character should do. The way the story unveiled itself in that repeating world could have been awful and felt very forced. Instead, it felt very smooth and it gave them a chance to cut loose in a rules-free manner that made sense in the story. And I feel like the music in this arc SOLD it, every time the worm broke through, my heart started pumping. That arc is really probably the reason that I bounce off every other arc. I don't know if any moment they've done yet will the Roswell scene in the bank for me. My only wish was that Magnus took the chalice. I understand why Travis didn't, but with Magnus' basically having a death wish to get exactly what the Chalice can give him, I can't understand why he didn't go with it, and Travis should have trusted Griffin to be ready for it. And it turned out Griffin WAS ready for it, so...shit

use your spoiler tags man. Also, I'm pretty confident that you're right about the hunger as the final dungeon. I think that's the third choice. GO into The Hunger and fight it there, thats why we got that scene with Kravitz

Very good podcast. However this arc is shitty and Griffin's waifu (male) is an insufferable cunt. Let Taako be Taako Griff, it's okay if your players don't follow you down your pre-set path.

In this arc, it's literally not OK. Which is an inherent problem, they HAVE to be railroaded for this arc to work. The show's always been railroaded, but they've still had some degree of agency in how the story moves.

But in this arc, it's prewritten by the fact that the story has progressed past this point, and so the 3 players have no actual impact on how this story is moving forward right now. So because none of them including the named NPCs can die here, there can not be real combat because of the new system, and the majority of their own character's thoughts and motivations are being told to them by the DM , we're not listening to them role play. We're listening to them being told the story by Griffin, and I for one can't WAIT to get back to listening to them play the damn game.

Sadly, this also cements something that I'm not super happy about: Griffin will always be the DM for TAZ. And that's not actually a knock on Griffin, even if i've been shiting on him a lot this thread I like him. But they've set an expectation for what kind of show this is: an audio drama. Travis is not that DM, his TAZ Nights is a regular game. Justin doesn't want to, and Clint can barely play the game so he'll be DMing side stuff like Nights. So it's just gonna be Griffin all the time. Not bad, just...not as cool.

There was literally no reason for Griffin to stop Taako from killing the robots last episode. It was over the line for him to throw a bitch fit and act like he understands Taako better than Justin does. It's okay for NPCs to show disapproval, and to have negative consequences for a player's actions, but you should NEVER make a character choice for your players.

There's ONE reason for it: the outcome for that world was already written and he cant actually change it. If Taako goes on a robot killing spree,
then there aren't any robots for them to possibly save, which throws off Griffens bullshit. . So yeah, there's a reason. Not a GOOD reason, but it's there. It's also worse when you realize that He literally has Lup, a character tailor made to knock some sense into Taako when he proposes something that Griffin doesn't like. He literally just had to have Lup voice some disapproval and Taako would IMMEDIATELY flip to the opposite path. God I hope this arc doesnt go for much longer. Hopefully, the back to back episodes mean that we speed through this and get to the next arc

Iktf breh, everything has been garbage since Magnus died.

I dunno man, I really liked the mannequin character sheet, the return of BBJ, and the entirety of the assault on the moonbase. Actually, that goes DOUBLE for the assault. I really like that both Travis had the presence of mind to not go straight to his body. And the mental imagery if Magnus in a wooden body,
strapping his weapon on and walking off to what he knows is his death, again? Fucking flawless

>eXtreme Teen Bible

Welp, I've got something new to listen to.

The Railroading works, I think, because it IS a podcast, and without a solid direction, it just devolves into a barely listenable mess, like Blaine DMing on Nerd Poker.

I forgot about the mannequin character sheet, that was fucking classic. The assault on the BoB was great from Magnus's perspective, but you could tell that Justin and Clint weren't really into it. It would have been a whole lot better if either of them were actually given a reason not to trust the director.

>They've already expressed their discomfort with roleplaying a relationship with each other and so it's not crazy to see why Griffin is shying away from roleplaying a relationship with his dad

Their mom has been dead a long time and Clint has NEEDS Pan damn it.

>Griffin will always be the DM for TAZ.

Wait, didn't the Adventure Zone Zone confirm that WASN'T the case, and that they hadn't even known what they were doing next?

That is exactly what they said. But I really dont see them bucking the trend that is a very narrative heavy campaign. And I don't think that Travis or Clint are going to be able to do that style. And so they're either going to change it back to that narrative light style that the podcast abandoned around episode 5, or they stick with Griffin.

I don't think they were lying, I just think that they have yet to realize that their plan isn't going to happen

Sorry, was on the phone waiting for my friend to empty his stomach before taking him home
Go listen to DnD is for Nerds, one of the players (Jackson) i could never imagine running a game before I listened to Dinosaur Park and Dinosaur World, he is an amazing DM, just not for a game like D&D and the TaZ crew pretty clearly said they're not going to be doing D&D next arc