How The Legend of Vox Machina Fixed Grog 

Yes! They’ve done an amazing job showing his big ol heart.

I’m new to CR so I am not an OG critter, so from a new perspective Grog was comic relief, but his Craven Edge arc and the Killbox episode turned him into a full bodied character. I love Grog so much now.

I think during S1 he was a bit flat but they made up for it in S2, also there was a bit of a menacing quality he had in the stream that kind of got replaced by “teddy bear that can go insane”

I mean, I think you might be taking this way too serious. It's a trope of "The power of friendship and the real reward is the friends we made along the way", it's kinda trash. I'm not saying it's not the worst portrayal of this trope, but it's tired and is very much a "beating the dead horse" scenario. Is it better? Sure, I guess, since it's an arc for the character, but it's not really that brilliant or unexpected, quite the opposite if you have consumed much media. I'm not saying you're wrong to enjoy it, but the idea of it messing you up emotionally makes me think you haven't seen this a million times as I have.

If not then this video would be a waste of time.... wink wink

I was cheering like a hardcore fan at the Super Bowl lol.

I thought Grog shouting it against Brimscythe was the best it was going to get, until this moment. Bravo to everyone who did anything related to that scene.

It’s the most reactive I’ve been to a single episode of television in years.

Bro i had to keep rewatching and kept losing my sssshhhhhhiiiiiiittttttt!

When I watched the first two episodes of season 1 early from being part of the Kickstarter, I cried when Grog said "I would like to rage". It was at that moment where everything just felt real and it was crazy that I was seeing an animated adaptation of a story I've spent so much time obsessing over. Its a real testament to everyone in the creation of the series that when Grog says "I would like to rage" again in season 2 that it made me cry again for different reasons.

I thought it was "Does it drop you below zero?", no?

Technically, no. Matt has said that Vax being fate-touched was something he'd long had in planning, and given what it does, it's unlikely anyone else would have earned the Death-walkers Ward. Laura rolling that badly, and Liam offering himself were just excellent excuses for those reveals

@@alearnedman If I remember correctly from the campaign wrap up, it's not that he planned for Vax to be fate touched, it's that he gave it to him and thought "this probably won't come up or be explained for a long time". He also says multiple times in the wrap up that he didn't know who would wear the ward. I believe he said he gave it to him in the moment specifically because Liam was going through a really hard time in his life and Matt wanted to do something special for him.

@@alearnedman ru-vid.comUgkxdwmEaMjYgCg6z_KnES7te3Wok0u7wdYH Clip of what I mentioned

But calling her a bitch was uncalled for and rude

Im dumb but my guess is you implying the insane roll odds to overcome its influence on him??

@@thefoxwolfdraconis yeah thou craven edge was frustrated a bit cuz was hard to find common lanuage with grog

Almost, its int was 16, charisma was 18.

@@Avenus112 my mistake

@@sober667 all good my dude, i checked on the sword myself and that is a brutal item for grog to use. Would absolutely dominate him.

I mean Pike IS a MONSTA after all! lol

I had to rewind that but,she's fast and brutal! Well done episode

Scanlan didn’t kill Umbrasyl in the campaign?

@@zach415 nope it was Grog

It’s the difference of mediums. Remember what happened when Avatar TLA got a film adaptation? (I’m going to ignore the other problems with the film). Since it had a runtime of 5 episodes, they couldn’t worldbuild as well as a 20-episode series; so the film focused on Aang and his growth into accepting the Avatar responsibilities, adding in The Blue Spirit for any future film. Critical Role is an improv show. Legend of Vox Machina is a scripted animation. Animation is why the party was split. As stated in the watch party, the animators didn’t want to draw 7 protagonists (plus NPCs) in every scene, so the party split into 3 and 4. In a script, it’s easier to identify character arcs and write into them. Such as Scanlan finding his courage, or how Keyleth reacted to Vax’s declaration of love in Whitestone (Marisha blue screened at the table). The writers can then go back and adjust little moments or entire scenes to lead up to the payoff moment. Scripts also can fix weaknesses in the tabletop medium. Exanoles pointed out in the watch party was Grog losing his muscles or the “not-Beholder” petrifying the players. Narratively, death doesn’t mean much if Revivify always works. So creating stakes or consequences other than death makes for more interesting visuals or storytelling. A strength of the tabletop show was the tension of the fight scenes. Each roll could be the player’s last. This wasn’t as easily translated to a tv show without feeling a little chaotic. Hence, most fights focused on the characters instead of the battle. The opening bar fight that introduced abilities and personalities, Craven Edge not getting blood from fire plane denizens, the Sphinx testing insecurities, and so on. Even in combat, characters grew.

@@LocalMaple I agreed with the reasoning but disagreed with your example. more time couldn`t fix the avatar. you had earth benders being arrested at a quarry and needed 5 guys to move a rock. more time wouldn't save that mess.

@@JayJayM57 Like I said, “(I’m going to ignore the other problems with the film).” I know the earthbenders were dumb, as well as darkening the overall tone and others. I used the atrocity of a film solely for the runtime example.

Hell yes

That probably would be too problematic for them to put in.

Awesome quote but I can see why they didn't "find it necessary" to put that in

Actually, I believe most of the writing is Sam and Travis, weirdly enough. Though I guess it makes sense with Matt needing to focus on the actual campaigns

@@CrownofMischief yeah from my understanding Matt is more involved in the art design of the locations

Sam and Travis but yes

I just watched a cast reaction with Critical role and Sam mentioned that they had hired writers or story editors that help them edit the campaign to tighten the storytelling so they keep the themes, character moments that are much beloved and help with little tweaks that will help improve a character moment of add tension etc. So they are changing little things here and there to hopefully improve on the story they were trying to tell. It did seem like Sam and Travis are doing a lot of the storyboarding and season plotting at least from what I could tell.

@@TheAciddragon069 Yeah Matt's main role is consulting on the world, especially in regards to character and location design, but also the general lore as well so that the artists can use knowledge of the lore to make better and more accurate designs from the outset. Talked about it somewhere about how he had to essentially explain the divergence and all that to the titmouse people for the whole introduction to the vestiges and scenes of the calamity when we meet Osysa

I’m pretty sure that happens later, right? Like, they just met Kayley.

@@redmonsoon8228 Yes, much later, but I specifically remember part of the rant being "we went into the fey realm to deal with your daddy issues" But in the new adaptation he never goes. It'll be interesting to see what they do with the story. I'm super excited to find out.

@@Unoriginal1987 i mean, "we" can be "me and the party" or a more general "the party", here. Like, even if he didn't go, the "we" of Vox Machina did, ya know?

@@weebjeez True, but it doesn't really resonate with how it all went for me, up until that point they really hadn't gone on any big adventure to delve into Scanlan's backstory. I guess the point is still there, but it kind of speaks volumes that it had been nearly a year of buildup to that point. I really just hope they can do the scene justice.

I definitely see them building up to it for season 3. There's been a lot of small scenes where scanlan has been ignored or made to feel like the black sheep of the group. Along with him later in the season coming to grips with his responsibilities and future choices in his life. You can see it all building up really well in a way that I think will be really organic, especially compared to the original campaign where it did feel quite forced.

I loves campaign 1 and the series is brilliantly done. They kept the feeling from the campaign and made smart changes.

Hello, I’m one of those people who dislikes the adaptation, and I’d like to clarify why. There are a couple major reasons, but the cinematography is not one of them. It’s great if the new medium allows for epic visuals. One reason I dislike significant deviations from the original campaign (which, at several hundred hours, I would contest is not a serious alternative to a few-hour season of LVM) is that it undermines the novelty of adapting a DnD campaign. Part of the reason the CR stories are so amazing is that they’re largely improvised and somewhat determined by dice rolls. By airbrushing the story to make it exactly how “we wished” it was, that largely takes away that aspect and makes the work less unique compared to any other medium that’s completely scripted. But the number one reason I dislike the adaptation is that the adapted versions of my favorite characters (especially Grog and Scanlan) are simply not likable to me in LVM. In the original, I cared about them and cheered for them regardless of whose arc it was. In LVM, it seems like they intentionally stripped them down to childlike memes with the intention of making their “redemption” arcs more impactful. I prefer characters that I can take seriously throughout their entire story. To me, that’s what makes the whole thing (especially the character arcs) worth watching.

@@doptimusdx743 maybe they didn’t want to recreate exactly what already exists? That seems redundant to do an exact recreation that doesn’t respect new audience’s time. Not to mention the cost of trying to recreate 100’s of hours of streaming into animation.

@@majorlazor5058 Being faithful to the source material while adapting it to a new medium is not "recreating exactly what already exists". Obviously the animated show can't have anywhere near the same runtime as the original campaign, but that doesn't mean they need to significantly alter the story or characters. Think about the Lord of the Rings movies. Those, while long, are much more condensed than the books but manage to tell the same story. Despite their long runtime they are certainly considered well worth the audience's time. In fact, the main criticisms of those movies are where they deviate from the books. When you have great source material, you don't need to mess with the story or characters. It is sufficient (and widely preferred by those who respect the original) to simply tell the same story via a new medium.

@@doptimusdx743 not fair to compare the TV show to a film. LOTR didn’t spend a lot of time explaining backstories of everyone. Secondly LOTR made major changes to the story, but we forgave it because the LOTR was a thought out planned series of novels that spent more time describing meals the characters ate than the battles they fought. LoVM was an aimless unplanned game that painstakingly describes every swing of a weapon, every spell casted, every dialogue spoken. Despite loyal fan’s opinions honestly is far too much to squeeze into a digestible story. Also, in D&D players make out of character choices for a gag or meta game reasons. In a TV show they have the ability to fix these oddities and clean up backstories.

there on amazon prime

Pretty sure they’ve already been greenlit for season 4 as well as 3, so hopefully s3 will be the rest of the chroma conclave, and s4 will be vecna

@@Jas_rivia I hope this too

I even heard that the last arc around Vecna will be split in two seasons too. So Season 4 and 5. But nothing is confirmed afaik. With their success, my hopes are high that it will happen.

@@derKuchenPhips that would be awesome

No shot they'll try to fit that all into one season

I still don't understand that whole thing. Especially since the conclusion was the same as what Earthbreaker said was wrong.

@@bessieburnet9816Grog told Groon that his strength came from his heart (internal, himself) and was told that was wrong. In this episode Grog says his strength comes from his friends. Not speaking on his literal, physical strength. His strength is in working as a team. Relying on them as they rely on him. His strength comes from his friends.

The friends thing?

@@scolack123 the spliting up coming back together in the perfect time, a lot of things in first series when it was super rushed and only meshed together. Not saying its bad, only that they took a story where anything could happen, and turned it into hollywood movie with every encounter, episode, arch following the basic plot diagram of exposition, conflict, action, climax, falling action and resolution. Which is fine i guess, but it loses the real life aspect. Grog died to a sword out of nearly out of nowhere in the campaign, no build up, it was an "oh shit" moment. In the show you see everything coming a mile away cause it follows the popular format. For me its just sad that they lost that uniqueness just for the idea of making it more popular. And anybody who says "I really thought he might kill pike in this scene" is lying that situation was basic anime, -all hope lost- -no chance of winning-, -oh dam he is strong now and everybody is here suddenly, they won-... Not saying they couldnt improve it, but meshing it into this is.. at least very basic and takes away some charm.

Blood Axe

So this is a spoiler for campaign / show if included In the campaign grog actually got a hammer that he could only use cause of the belt. The hammer was a dwarven hammer that could only be used by dwarfs. However the belt was known as the belt of dwavern kind and allowed him to speak / write in dwarvish the beard was just a side affect. Matt then ruled that it also allowed him to use the hammer as well I’m interested to see if the same thing will happen here. He would regularly switch between the blood axe and hammer in the campaign as they had different uses