Miscommunication and Frustration - Vox Machina Ep. 11 | Critical Role Demystified 

Do you have a timestamp :)?

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@@noone-ld7pt It's in Episode 11, right after the 4 hour 15 minute mark.

And then he eventually rages and screams “it’s my cask of ale!”

When does this happen

The Natural 20 with Matt’s wtf face is gold.

And Pike saying "I'll buy you 10 casks of ale...if we live" was the most adorable Pike moment for me.

Ben there done that. Now I live in NorCal.

ive gotten out of my car, gotten a coffee and returned in the time it took for traffic to move lmao

Never hurts to explain the factors behind less than likeable decisions.

This is my go-to. I've since gotten the reputation of being the player least likely to metagame because of it, but all I'm trying to do is avoid situations like the one in the video.

As a DM I've seen players who will try to do something detrimental to the party because their character doesn't know something. However If another party member tries to tell their character the context of a situation that would prevent them from acting in that way, they seem to be annoyed by it, or they say its not that persons turn. Which is why I always remind such players that talking is a free action, and as long as the length of the conversation is reasonable its completely allowed for exactly this kind of situation

I do this too, especially if I'm playing a character with a "dump stat". Like I was recently playing a pretty similar character to Grog, where I had very low intelligence, but was very smart about tactics. So we may approach a situation that may set my battle sense on edge, and I'd make a third person declaration of my belief with an in character statement. Or similarly if I'm doing someone I know is wrong/will lead to a bad outcome/isn't effective. I'll do that exact same thing. I'll state something like "As a player I know pulling this lever probably isn't a good idea, but *my character* knows levers open doors so he's just going to pull it" I think that's one of the hardest things about RP, is that a lot of times there is bad behavior and awkwardness and it's not always clear what's in game and what's out of game.

It also helps in situations where "It's what my character would do!" ... Somewhat. Little things like, say... I'm a dwarf who has just encountered some elves that the party needs for some quest, except the elves hate and distrust dwarves. This leads to the elves pissing off my dwarf, so my dwarf does something really spiteful that sours the elve's relationship with the party somewhat. It helps when the party finds the situation particularly hilarious out of character because these elves have managed to piss off most of the party as well simply due to my character's presence. In character, however, my dwarf got chewed out heavily by one of the other party members. However, (from the same campaign in fact), it doesn't help when what your character is trying to do (leaving the party in the lurch, right as the campaign is coming to a climax), even if there is a perfectly reasonable in-character explanation for it. (Which is different from a party member leaving the party in the lurch AFTER the climax has mostly been resolved because they got a better offer from the BBEG. Which also happened.).

Exactly. That’s why I do try (and hopefully succeed) in these videos to separate my advice from just, you know, having the benefit of hindsight for these specific examples. I do have the benefit of not having been at that table, having played a lot more 5e than they had at this point, and also having thought about this episode for the past 7 years 😁

Also with glasses 👓

yeah i honestly envy him so much, to be able to both be in the story, in the character and at the same time keep yourself from taking the game too much to heart is something phenomenal and I wish I could learn to do the same. It often seems like either one or the other is possible sommetimes

I do think he learned the wrong lesson from this episode, unfortunately. We do enter a new phase of his behavior with episode 13.

@@SupergeekMike Indeed so. What's sad is that in one of the later Tibs Episodes, the Vox Moochina one, he's legit great. No shenanigans, or anything. And then the Old Woman happens...

The entire group was responsible for killing her. There are other vids out there presenting the evidence they are all guilty.

I loved Dungeon Craft’s recent video on the subject because he totally pointed out the issue of the Old Woman - yes, they all killed her. But when local law came knocking and said, “Hey, you killed an old woman? That’s messed up, that doesn’t look good and you’re already in hot water…” Tiberius dug his heels in and refused to acknowledge that their actions might have unintended consequences regarding their status in the political/legal world.

@@wolfox7776 Vox Moochina was the response to the Old Woman - it was Uriel's and Allura's admonishment that drove them to go help the farms that were losing livestock.

8 party members plus 2 NPCs.

That is exactly what people mean by metagaming, though. Its possible that Tiberius has maybe heard of a beholder before, and I'm sure he's heard that they are strong, but they're Vox Machina, and have faced innumerable powerful foes up until this point. It's Orion's out-of-game knowledge that would lead him to be this scared of a beholder, and that fear is exacerbated by the fact that he very obviously doesn't trust Matt to not throw them against a creature that they're incapable of facing.

This was around the time Orion got some medical news and thought he was going to die irl. From this point on he gets kind of protective of his character, gets kind of edgy, and just slowly starts devolving into "that guy."

@@Demonrifts Which is pretty funny considering Matt is literally *the* softest DM I've ever seen.

​@@TheDapperDragon I'm curious; what makes Matt soft in your opinion?

Honestly this is why I put luck rolls in my game. you you think a feature of the world might be there and make sense, roll a d20 on a 1-10 that feature doesn't exist on a 11-20 it does. So say your ducking into an ally to try and escape some and you ask is their a trash bin roll for luck. Now a Dm might increase or decrease that success or failure threshold based on how likely they think a particular feature is to be in the world so trust and things still need to be there like any table but I find it's a fun way to incorporate a cool feature into the game.

yeah that’s a massive pet peeve, especially if the DM says “Nope you said it” when you realize you misunderstood what was being described. Sure _I_ misunderstood, but my character would have seen there’s no room!

to quote a great DM "Asking questions is a great way to improve your standing in the game of dungeons and dragons"

This is very true. I am reminded of when Matt killed Keyleth when she dove off a cliff, misjudged, falling toward rocks, then tried to save herself by changing into a goldfish. It all screams to me that what she was imagining was simply NOT what Matt thought he was describing. This is the kind of situation where I think the DM has to step back and ask themselves, would the *character* have been able to see how (blatantly) dangerous it was, since the character is supposedly seeing it, while the player is trying to imagine it in their head. The fact she turned into a fish to save herself instead of a bird is basically proof that she wasn't imagining the same thing as Matt at all, but Keyleth the character would have seen it in stark detail as the rocks rushed up to meet her. This is where there really should have been a little retconning to avoid a ridiculous, credulity-straining scene, since Keyleth really *wouldn't* have done what Marisha made her do, if she had really been there and seen what it was Matt intended her to.

"Matt killed Keileth". I think it's more likely that Marisha initially misjudged the situation and then decided to play around with that misunderstanding, instead of retconning the whole thing. After all, at that level, death is more of a discomfort. You can afford to get yourself killed for the lolz. Also, it's not like Matt went and said: "Nope, what's done is done, now die". He instead reiterated the cliff's description, and Marisha could have chosen to change her course of action. Luckily they went for the wacky option instead, since the whole thing was funny as hell.

Glad I'm not the only one lol

It's the beard and mullet combo

@@MollymaukT He also just sorta looks like he's balding in the beginning lol

Wasn't Liam going through some pretty heavy stuff at the beginning of Campaign 1 ?

@@telarr9164 yup, he sure was

I’d say requesting the Draconian army to fight the Briarwoods is probably worse in comparison because that is _Percy’s_ character arc. Sending an army to do the work for you robs Tal of agency as a player. Not to mention Delilah is a necromancer and Sylas is a vampire. What is the Draconian army going to do against an army of the undead and an immortal creature that can only be killed by sunlight or the equivalent spells. If they don’t have the necessary resources available Tiberius would be sending them to their deaths and potential use as puppets against him and the rest of the party. Of course I can’t remember if the intent was to send the army to do the work while they sat back and did nothing (with the argument being that they can’t leave the city to go fight the Briarwoods themselves) or to have the army join them in the fight. Either way it’s still Percy’s quest and really their strategy of quietly sowing the seeds of rebellion and taking down the Briarwoods’ generals one by one was probably better than broadcasting their arrival with an army of hundreds at their backs.

Maybe I'm just more oldschool in my sensibilities (even though I basically started with 5e) but to me, part of the game is using every resource at your disposal to make sure you win a fight. Now, that's just my style of game -- Matt likes to run a more cinematic game with big setpiece encounters, and that's fine. But I like when players color outside the lines to give themselves an advantage because it means they're invested and actually thinking about the game, not just running in and using whatever they have on their character sheet in an all-out brawl hoping it'll work out. They found a creative way to eliminate the mind control. It seems silly to not reward the same level of creativity to make the fight easier just because it might not feel as epic or climactic. I'm sure we've all had encounters that we designed to be these big, harrowing action sequences, only for a cheeky player or a series of bad rolls to end it faster than expected. It's a learning experience. In the meantime, I don't see why a small army of Illithids coming in like the Riders of Rohan at the battle of Helm's Deep wouldn't be cool as hell. I love Matt Mercer as much as the next TTRPG nerd, but I smell a little bit of DM pride coming through here.

@@Boundwithflame23 Oh, that was way worse. Rallying people to rise up against the monster oppressing them is completely legitimate, and the party was invested in the arc of getting Clarota a redemption arc with his people (even though he was a monster himself who was likely always going to betray them). That's a justified character journey. Trying to call in a squadron of knights who have no connection to the plot and your character hasn't been closely connected to and asking them to ride in makes no sense in the world and no sense for the campaign. Vex even said, "Uhm, I wasn't aware we had an army we could just call in this whole time," because of course they didn't, that would make no sense. Despite that, there's still a way you could let your character try it in a way that fits. They needed an army, but they couldn't use the connections they'd build up in Emon to help because Uriel was under control and the party had burned their local political capitol. So have Tiberius be more tentative about his proposal. "It may be possible to convince my father to aid us, if we can find evidence. Should I try to call him in?" Matt was super generous about letting the players start an insurrection with very minimal effort because it was the overall plan. If they'd had to plan to come up with evidence to send to Tiberius' father to get the army, Matt might have allowed it. But Tiberius tried to draw them in by sending off a single letter-he was trying to shortcut major issues instead of putting in a bit of team effort. In short, don't just have your character say he's solved a problem and pretend it's going to fly.

Matt gave *very* clear indications that the other Illithid were not going to be friendly. He also clearly held back when Tiberius ignored those warnings and went in, he stated that he could have mind blasted him three times in that round, and most DMs I know would not allow someone to Persuade out of an attack in that situation, given that he was clearly trying to deceive them, neither speaking Undercommon nor communicating via telepathy while in the guise of Clarota.

Sending Cannon fodder against a master necromancer might not be the best plan of action. Might aswell abuse his arrogance now before the mind flayer consolidate the city.

Matt says that and the DMG says that, too. I believe almost word for word, even. And I agree, except I wouldn't put it as lucky, more that Matt was anticipating Orion to throw a fit/derail things even more and found a way to shut things down without giving him angrier by having things backfire

@@niedude Matt is a good dude so he would totally do that but he wasn't cutting anyone a break that fight. Grog was restrained for mostly the entire fight and Scanlan and Pike were almost killed via their brains being extracted if I remember correctly. I genuinely think Matt was prepared to psychically blast him out of the sky but who knows

😭😭😭

Oof.

I'm with you on that. I for one am quite fond of Tiberius as a character and it's a shame that irl troubles had to cut that short.

@@forfaerghus8092 Yeah Tiberius the character is great. The real shame is that Orion claimed Tiberius so he had to be removed from the comic adaptation series. It would've been neat to at least see more of the dynamic there.

@@smoogieboogie1694 I cannot fault Orion for that since he did create Tiberius and probably still cares a lot about his character. And if I may add, what Matt did in episode 64 felt just plain spiteful.

@@forfaerghus8092 I disagree. He had to write Tiberius out somehow and he and Orion talked about it beforehand.

@@forfaerghus8092 It's not spiteful at all lul wut? It was super respectful and gentle, with the cast and their characters getting a chance to say a real goodbye to what was their friend for a large part of the beginning. Spiteful would have been completely ruining his memory by like having him get absolutely destroyed a couple episodes after Orion left. 30+ episodes (like >6 months) later is not spite.

They’ve also been building their own lore and their own artifacts, which I think has made them less reliant on going back to the second Horn.

I had a theory about it, but I'm wondering if it's actually even plausible since this arc might only be loosely considered canon at this point. When Clarota told them the name of Yug'Voril, he referred to it as the "city of secrets." They also later figured out that the temple that housed the elder brain was probably actually one of Ioun's ziggurat temples. A ziggurat located in the "city of secrets" is definitely reminiscent of a certain lich. So the question is, if you were a lich and you were aware of your one main weakness, that you would die or at least be vulnerable to death if your phylactery was destroyed, what would be an ideal item to use? Maybe an item linked to a fiend who was the closest being to claiming the title of god of undeath, had the useful ability to enhance necromantic abilities, and was indestructible? Maybe in the past Yug'voril was inhabited by Ioun's worshippers, but was taken over by Vecna. Maybe when K'varn was possessed by the horn, he was actually possessed by a certain soul connected to the horn, and was drawn to that city and driven to create an army to march on the surface, coincidentally around the same time that the Briarwoods were also making plans to build up an army of their own in preparation for Vecna's return.

Matt's clearly building towards Tharazdun at this point. I think that's the ultimate big bad Matt wants to work towards. As with the whole cult arc in C2 and the ending with Kingslys dreams revealing Tharazdune was behind the corruption of the Somnovum.

I agree. I didn’t notice a lot of the earlier Tiberius/Orion problem player behavior at first because as someone who only had rudimentary D&D experience, I was so enthralled by everything else going on. I had noticed some things that annoyed me from him, but a lot of the players had done things that annoyed me too so I just saw it as my preference vs. theirs. It wasn’t until I started reading the comments sections of this episode foreshadowing the bad behavior to come that I realized how many early signs I’d missed and started looking for the bad behavior. I’m glad I started with the Underdark Arc as well because not only did I enjoy it it did create a contrast to just how good the briarwood arc was too and how much better it could get

Agreed! I really, really loved that first arc and especially that fight against K'varn because everyone was so terrified. Like, the players were visibly shaken up by going up against this beholder. It was definitely one of the things that cemented the need to keep going with this series because it was so powerful. At that time I really wasn't that irked by Orion/Tiberius yet. Sure, I understood how the others were annoyed because Tiberius was so adamant not to step into the lair of this beholder and ended up barely being helpful in a moment they all thought they'd get wiped out by this thing they were going up against.

I really liked this arc when I first watched it. If I ever get around to rewatching it, I hope beyond all hope that I'll still be able to enjoy it.

I love the Kraghammer arc so much. I really really love it. It’s a shame things went so wrong at the end of this arc/the beginning of the briarwoods arc because it’s really really good.

Vax's foot. *(mic drop)* no more need to be said about how great that arc was.

I agree with everything you said, however I disagree completely that it's a disconnect. That is to say, yes, when one player is not on the same page as everyone else, THAT'S a disconnect which should have been handled is Session 0, and obviously Tiberius/Orion was guilty of selfish tunnel-vision. But not every group takes the timing of combat rounds literally. And I don't just mean _"Okay a round is six seconds, but we're going to fudge the numbers for certain exceptions",_ I mean _"Homebrew: a round is NOT six seconds, it's an ambiguous period of combat that happens CLOSE TO simultaneously but plays out narratively just like any other scene"._ This is most games I play or GM. The (accurate) reasons you're describing are exactly why we DON'T want a round to be six seconds. An "epic" 24 second battle feels dumb and realistic. You heard me. DUMB and REALISTIC. D&D is a form of escapism. The rules are designed to bring foundation and consistency to the game, while simulating any possible action a character might take. The real disconnect is trying to make as many rules feel "as real as possible" instead of "as fun as possible", despite 99% of the rules absolutely failing to do this. ESPECIALLY rules which measure time/distance. Move Speed, Travel, Falling, Drowning... when put against a drop of scrutiny, they fail miserably to simulate real life. Why force them to, when that has little-to-nothing to do with gameplay? Especially when everything else about D&D is absurd, and hand-waved for the cool factor? It's attempting to do the GM's job for them. I _want_ the witty banter between the villains and the characters. I _want_ the "Desperate times call for desperate measures" wildcard plays. I _want_ the dramatic pause when a beloved character is run through unexpectedly. I _want_ reinforcements to show up and turn the tide of battle. I want these things without tiptoeing around "realistic" rules which cause every encounter to feel like it's happen inside a time vortex. If the Fighter is engaged in combat against two brigands, they are CONSTANTLY exchanging blows. The hero is backpedaling to keep from being flanked, swipes are being dodged, swords and shields are clanging against one another, a near-miss leaves a small cut on someone's face. A fireball scatters the combatants, burning one to a crisp as the other two, scorched scorched and bleeding, gather themselves and continue their deadly dance. Who gives a shit how long that takes? (INB4 other than tracking the duration of longer spells, which are never relevant to a single combat anyway, and whose currency is fungible regardless of how it's measured). The actual attack roll represents a moment where someone shoots their shot, takes their chance to land a deadly blow or miss badly and re-position. You know, like cool fantasy battles which have NEVER been realistic. A hero can survive being stabbed fifteen times and exploded three times, but they can only endure more than a minute of swashbuckling because "that's how fights work"? Hard pass. I'm not saying that consistency is bad - far from it. Consistency is key. Six-second intervals suck narratively AND for consistency. It's okay to let them go - they don't serve D&D.

Bo every combat where they make fun of her by saying "and that's your turn."

If anything this also highlights the problem with six second rounds, it's completely unbelievable by any metric. Number 1, how can dozens of individual turns occur in 6 seconds, I've heard people argue that it all happens at the same time, but that doesn't make sense when the wizard's fireball takes into account all movement in turns before. Number 2, most of the actions described in spells or even attacks can't happen in 6 seconds without superhuman speed (I'm not even gonna get into movement speed) Number 3, if you scale this concept up, every large-scale combat in the d&d world would end in 2 minutes or less. (Armies of thousands of men collide on the battlefield, and after barely a minute, one has lost). The 6 second round concept has and always will be one of the biggest problems with RAW, because it just doesn't make sense. Just adjust spell durations to be round based and have time be a DM judgement.

@@Eshajori a Session 0 isn't solving the issues that Orion had in the rest of the table. Session 0s aren't a panacea that preemptively solves all issues, especially when I guarantee you Orion never believed he was in the wrong. Sometimes you have to play with someone to realize they aren't a fit at the table, and at that point you need to react accordingly which I what they eventually did.

It's been a whiileee

Honestly I think I’d be more surprised if he didn’t lol.

Regal is in his name.

But you see, its Sam Riegel, so his chauffeur is clearly just going to be Sam in a comically fake moustache. Possibly with a mannequin of himself that he swaps with in the back seat.

@@MrRusty103 So Sam’s chauffeur is his Bert Reynolds persona?

*ahem* Grammy Award Winning Sam Riegel lol

The way initiative reprograms players’ brains will definitely be the subject of a future video for exactly this reason.

@@SupergeekMike And thus a lesson that all DMs should learn: don't declare initiative unless you know for certain that ALL other options have been exhausted OR unless the players themselves resort to aggression. Case in point... SPOILERS FOR C3, EPISODE 29 The standoff with Yu. Initiative had been held off, diplomacy was still in effect... until Fearne took aggressive action with her Flame Blade. THEN initiative was called and it did not deescalate until efforts were made to do so. THAT is how you handle diplomacy and weigh it against conflict: when efforts are made on both sides as to whether the aggression is perpetuated or quelled to a point where diplomacy takes the floor again.

@@AdamEspersona ...which emphasizes that, even Matt still grows as a DM based off of the experiences and examples of others. He demonstrates the grace of humility often not spoken of for being a GM.

@@theargawalathing Hell of a lot better than all those “Never MY Fault” DMs you hear about a lot in RPG Horror Stories. The kind that are the actual “That Guys” instead of the typical “problem players”.

@@AdamEspersona Good example. I was thinking of C3E30 myself where Matt even more clearly states "you have made a (very) aggressive move, so now we move to initiative", because the group has actually physically attacked the NPCs.

Right, that’s the biggest lesson I discuss in the video, you have to be in control of how your frustration manifests at the table. (It was Iron Man 3 BTW, although I don’t remember the context of why Taliesin referenced it, but it was yet another example of Orion’s frustration manifesting in really aggressive and unhelpful ways at the table.)

Don’t forget when they are planning he continues to iterate how he doesn’t want to face Kvarn, yet they ask him in character why don’t you want to face him. Instead of saying something he says nothing.

It's true most of what he did really wasn't that bad, some of it was but most of it is pretty normal just made to look worse with the back drop of excellent players. That being said their is plenty of evidence that he's a problem person full stop who was a straight up abusive boyfriend.

C1 e27 is the biggest problem player episode

@@yaboijdg6312 it and the first Briarwood fight episode definitely showed the most significant of it But something it seems viewers forget is we were all problem players at some point; you don't just start TTRPGing perfectly. It takes self awareness, intent to be better and dedication but eventually you evolve.

@@doesntmatter2467 I can't say anything regarding his personal life beyond internet hearsay I find as reliable as thyme but it definitely seems it had more than just his cheating and MCS that led to his being booted. Things behind the scenes that likely be best left to the people involved respectfully for their privacy

Wrong. Marisha and others do plenty of the same mistakes, and people aren't as up and arms about it. You should also stop insulting people's intelligence with your pseudo-psychoanalysis, people are better than that, most people aren't "that guy", not being perfect doesn't mean you were as terrible as Orion. " I can't say anything regarding his personal life beyond internet hearsay I find as reliable as thyme " So you aren't actually interested in the actual screenshots, videos and further proof of what happened yet you claim it's unreliable? You're just being really disingenuous at this point. People are still talking about Orion because he was that bad, if you still don't get it it's because you are willfully trying to stay ignorant about it.

Yeah I think if he hadn’t been totally locked into his plan he wouldn’t have been as frustrated and hostile here. And who knows how the campaign would’ve been different if that had happened… Ah well.

@@SupergeekMike I think you perfectly pointed out how he didn't respond in the best way here and how he could have been much more civil/understanding. In the end it is what is and his later actions were still 100% his own fault Honestly it's just kind of a shitty situation all around because not only did the cast end up losing a great friend but Tiberius is still absolutely one of my favorite characters from the Vox Machina campaign. Thank you for giving such an extensive breakdown, It was a great video!

Thank you!

Thank you. There aren’t any clips in that episode because I felt it could be frustrating and potentially triggering to people, and unfortunately I felt it wasn’t worth it. I also try not to include clips of Orion’s misdeeds in these recaps for the same reason. (It’s also not my content so since I am at G&S’s/CR’s mercy about how I use it, I try not to use those clips.) I also just personally don’t enjoy seeing those clips over and over, which I’d have to do if I include them, so that’s another reason I try not to use the worst clips in the videos.

You're right; if this was a one-off situation, people/viewers might have been annoyed but probably wouldn't have thought much more than 'miscommunication/a bad day'. the problem was this player continued to have worse problems

@@liizumi3337 And it doesn't look like anyone really talked to him about it. That's the biggest thing that I did pick up on this whole situation is that there wasn't really a in between session talking of things out that connected with him.

@@leadpaintchips9461 I don't think we can say that; we have no idea what happened off stream, what conversations they did or didn't have. We weren't there, and they haven't said anything.

@@liizumi3337 All we can see is what is in the streams, and it _is_ obvious that his behavior only annoyed people more as time went on, which is why I said nothing connected, because nothing changed positively. His behavior didn't change. We don't know what was happening when the cameras were not on the table, which is why I specifically didn't say no one tried. But I can look at the results as to when the cameras were rolling.

I think the difference between assuming interpersonal relationships from ONE moment of interaction versus Orion's constant disinterested body language is the difference. He would ALWAYS seem like he's rather be elsewhere when scenes not involving Tiberius were happening....the vast majority of the time. So because of that consistancy...it's hard to not notice it when it happens, I think. Because he really does stick out like a sore thumb in those moments compared to every other actors body language. The only time Travis has those moments is during shopping episodes and he has explained that's due to his disinterest in shopping in-game and IRL and also his ADHD.

Sometimes you can see he is texting under the desk while Matt had a very clear no phones on the table rule

@@MollymaukT to be fair Sam also breaks this rule and will sometimes check twitch chat while they are streaming...but yeah, I think Orion did it more frequently than Sam does.

@@AnxietyRat I think that's also early on enough before they had a dedicated team to track chat. And that goes for Orion, too; I'd wager a lot of it was keeping track of chat

Also Travis is always everyone's biggest fan, which is great. Nobody is more into the show than him sometimes

Agreed, I think he learned the wrong lesson from this experience, and started communicating less with the other players.

I came into CR late after orion was out, and from what I saw when I joined in was that he wasn't that bad in the show and a lot of the hate was community spiraling and off screen drama

@@reddevved it really wasn't until the last few episodes he was was he really bad. But a lot of his problems came to light later on and he's done quite a bit of bad stuff over the years. I'm glad he never came back to be honest. Hopefully he's turned a new leaf and doing better now he's clean from the drugs etc.

I think he did deserve the hate. His constant attempts at cheating and generally being a poor team player were worthy enough of hate. He always seemed to bring a tension between the players that I think was inimical to what makes the show (and D&D proper) work. The stealing and harassing and other real life stuff should similarly not be hand-waved away.

Orion Acaba is an improbably great D&D name

I always thought his real name sounded more like a DnD character's name than his actual DnD character did

All while subject to whims of the Creator God: Matt.

Thank you so much!

I might agree that language is an under utilized element of DnD role play, but I think that’s for practical reasons, not cultural ones. At their core, tabletop rpgs are games about talking: to players and NPCs alike. Because of that, there are very few situations where language barriers can be used to actually produce fun play. Commonly, they’re used in two different ways. 1. To block off most players from communicating in a social encounter so that a character who isn’t high charisma gets to take on the role temporarily. (Like a half orc negotiating with an orc chieftain) 2. To add flavor to a lore dump. (Like having a secret letter encoded in abyssal so that one specific character can read it. And while those situations can be fun, it’s on a once or twice per campaign basis. I know half a dozen GMs who tried to emphasize languages in their games and wound up dropping the idea after just a couple of sessions. Common was literally introduced to provide a mechanic for tables to ignore languages.

Totally agree and it's come up a lot in my current campaign with my party not having the languages to speak to their foes. It is really fun!

In one of my group’s campaigns my second/backup character was the only one who could speak goblin (I gave her the outlander background and reasoned that maybe she just kinda picked it up) so she effectively became the party translator and designated negotiator. Bonus was the goblins couldn’t understand common so we could discuss plans freely in front of them but it also meant my character might have to lie. Which put a lot of weight on me cuz I’m not all that confident when it comes to RP. Im getting better at it but it’s still intimidating when I have to improv something on the spot and have and no clue what to say. 😅

Right? You never see him without a beard anymore. Imagine starting with C2 or 3 and then randomly coming across a clip of C1 with pre-beard Travis. You might think it was a completely different person whom Travis replaced if you weren’t told it was him. (“Who is that guy sitting next to Laura? Is it someone who left the group?” “Nah it’s Travis.” “That’s _Travis?!_ Really?!”)

@@Boundwithflame23 lol right like I watched all of campaign 1 and thought ok this might have been a guest I don't remember lol till I noticed grog was speaking lol

Yeah, the path of becoming “That Guy” has to start somewhere, and for him, it was this episode. And the cast did try to remain civil and friendly… only for him to just get worse and worse until it came to a head.

@@AdamEspersona I more so think the path to "That Guy" started in the previous episode, and now 11 is where he began full on powerwalking it.

While he had some troubling behavior prior to this episode (like one instance of silencing Vax and then answering his question anyway), I think this is where he learns the wrong lesson and starts communicating even less with the other characters/cast members.

That incident had a HUGE net positive though. When Scanlan moves to dispel it Orion counterspells it to which Sam says “countercounterspell” and Orion points out Bards don’t have it. Because of this when they leveled up he used “Additional Magical Secrets” to learn the spell and we all know how clutch that was later on

@@MollymaukT I don't like thinking that it's thanks to HIM that Sam had Scanlan learn Counterspell. It makes every single Counterspell used by him since feel so wrong. No, he could have simply picked it on his own.

Thank you so much, Melissa! I really appreciate it 😁♥️

That shit with the arrow was so irritating. She hit a nat20 man, let her have the glory.

@@highspeedstrongstyle9061 I know... Orion is the worst. I did not like him at all as a player, but finding out the real life things he did just made it all so much worse. Absolute trash fire of a human being.

@@highspeedstrongstyle9061That’s by far the most egregious example of him butting into other people’s moments but he did it several times in the few episodes I’ve watched (just finished episode 11 today) to the point where I as a new watcher noticed it without even knowing to look for it. It’s like the “Here’s your equal attention cake” meme from Family Guy. There’s a moment a few episodes behind that, where the group need to get passed a Boulder and Grog being a gigachad lifted it over his head and out of the way for them. Even after it was clear that Grog had cleared the way, Tiberius needed his equal attention cake and “helps” by magically pushing it even though Grog had already passed the strength check and solved the issue. There was that time where Scanlan grappled the giant with a spell and everyone was impressed at how cool that was. Guess who immediately needs to also try to magically grapple the giant moments later?

@@Duckman_Drake just keep pushing through. You’re almost halfway to the cast visibly being happier and Sam and Tal being more willing to speak.

@@highspeedstrongstyle9061 Oh I'm still very much enjoying it, I even find Tiberius has some genuinely charming moments despite some of his negative behaviour. It's just hard to not notice his "What about me! look how cool I am guys!" attitude, but it's only mildly annoying at worst, at least so far.

Thank you! This is a big one, for sure.

@@SupergeekMike I thought you belabored the Tiberius problem a bit too much at the beginning of this playlist, but you backed off after you made it clear that the character (and player) became a problem and exhausted the reasons why. You then made a point (intentional of not) of showing that early on Tiberius was a good character and a benefit to his party. But when he started to go off the rails (as by this point he has) … it's important to point out that he's not the only one who's not on the same page with everyone else. The issue is that while everyone else is going to start working together and communicating with one another, he's going to be the exception to that.

Pulling out some random rubbish and making it work for a plan is the BEST.

I could teach a year-long college course on EXU Calamity 😁

@@SupergeekMike as a Law Student, WOW! Would that be the perfect change of pace I need

“Watching a couple have a public argument” really does match the vibes of this episode.

More on that in Monday’s video 😉

Yep. Had a power gamer guy similar to this in the last group I played with. He always had to be the leader, the smartest guy in the room, the one with the coolest items, the one who dealt the most damage. Which I kinda could have lived with if he wasn't also a manipulative snake, both as a player and in real life. I always felt like was only being nice to people to get his way or to get information he could use against you behind your back. Sadly the DM was his best friend and enabled him all the time.

thats... not power gaming tho?

There's nothing wrong with power gaming. The problem comes when roleplaying takes a backseat. He never took a backseat in roleplaying, his style of RP just never meshed well with the groups casual bullshit. To be fair, I only really watch Critical Role for Matt, as the players themselves not remember their classes most of the time after years is... stupid.

@@Adanu191 : I find power gaming to be something that inherently divides a table, though. Every person who plays in a group wants to have that optimized situation where their character gets to shine -- like Pike taking out over half of the undead in Whitestone in one shot. She was a Cleric, and Clerics are the bane of low-power undead. A Rogue wants to have that assassination kill. But when you have a power gamer present, they want to take credit for what other people do, in terms of solutions they didn't think of themselves. Or, barring that, they become narcissistically angry at another character succeeding. My own tabletop experience shows this. Over a decade, probably 15 years-plus ago, I was playing in a Star Wars campaign with people who I had been friends with for few years. My character was a Solustan, who, in the rules, got a bonus to Dex. This translated into being better than humans and most other races when it came to Dex-based things (Solustans in Star Wars struck me as being similar to Elves in D&D). This includes piloting vehicles, whether speeder bikes or ships. I also had taken Weapon Finesse to use my Dex instead of Strength, and had a double-ended lightsaber like Darth Maul from Episode 1. Anyway, early on in the campaign, I won a speeder bike race by rolling 4 nat-20s in a row. This got us some upgrades for our transport we were using. Later on, the Gods of the Dice gave me a nat-20 against a Yuzhon-Vong Corvette (Corvettes are small scout ships), when I fired a concussion missile and managed to hit the Corvette, despite a gravity well that had been deployed as a defensive tactic. I say all this because the one guy who was the power gamer thought he was just as good as a pilot as I was, despite his stats being nowhere near as focused in Dex as I was, and the fact I was pulling off seemingly impossible feats in various situations. It was garnering support and attention away from him, and I didn't know this, as I thought I was helping the group succeed. It was only a couple of sessions later that I was told not to come back, and some BS reason was made up, as what I was told made 0 sense. I respectfully accepted what I was told, rather than argue and disagree with it. I just felt that it was not justified to kick me out, when I knew I had done nothing wrong. It was at that point I started thinking about why it had happened, especially when I had another friend who knew the same people I did, who then told me a couple of situations he had been in that had been power-gaming situations. For this mutual friend, it wasn't the first time he had pulled something like what had happened to me. So, after examining the information I knew, particularly behavior, I came to the conclusion that this friend who I thought was a decent game player was a power gamer. I haven't played any RP or TT games with him since that time, and for good reason. Power gaming isn't a playing style or a character traits of a character in-game. Power gaming is basically one person acting like they are the ones that get to have all the cool moments, and everybody else is just minor supporting characters. I find that power gamers are the kind of people who read a book which centers and focuses on only one character, the main character, and they take that focus and bring it into a collective group tabletop game, where the story centers around a group, rather than a single, character. And when a power gamer fails to understand this, or fails to realize the game group isn't a high-powered gaming group, what they do ends up breeding a severe dislike and resentment among the other players in the group. And if the power gamer senses this, it's either, they'll do everything they can to ruin everybody's fun, because they sense that their time grows short playing, or, they'll do what they can to kick out the biggest threat to their dominance. In my case, because the power gamer I dealt with, knew I wouldn't stand for the inherent bias from the GM that was allowing him to do what he was doing, he convinced the GM to just kick me out of the game. The situation with Orion was the former reason for letting him go, not the latter. It also didn't help that the main cast of Critical Role had probably been hearing about the various things Orion had been doing outside the game.

Not to excuse Orion's faults - in time it became clear he was the square peg in the round hole - but in my opinion one can't raise "anything you can do, I can do better" without also noting, in the interests of balance, that others around the table weren't always innocent of this... specifically around RP elements (which probably shouldn't be a surprise; pro actors and all). Example: revisiting these early episodes it's striking to count the number of times, after Matt's rebuffs someone's persuasion attempt, Laura follows in with a substantively identical argument; feeling less "appeal to an alternative bond or flaw of the NPC" and more "perhaps they'd be convinced if someone just did a more epic job of asking". Have no doubt there are tables out there where this'd rub people the wrong way as much as any other 'power gaming' moves. Yep, there were times Orion was an ass and yep, it was totally understandable why Laura and others became uncomfortable. Unfortunately though, when people have different expectations and are looking for different things from their D&D, it isn't always possible to lay responsibility for dysfunction and miscommunication in a group solely at one person's feet. It's a tough situation.

I do think one of the big reasons he left the show is because the culture of the table changed around him, and he didn’t. That’s not a bad thing on its own (although it manifested in some pretty gross ways), it’s natural that playing every week would change the game. And it must’ve been isolating to feel like you’re the odd man out who isn’t a part of things anymore. But I do think this is one of many reasons we start seeing his behavior get worse starting with episode 13.

This really came to a head with Scanlan's death and daughter arc. It is interesting to see them learn to walk a line in public vs private play.

We have/had a similar issue in a game I was in. Where the characters are all pretty morally grey which means that the player feel actions are justified and the rest of the table sees the character as a dick. Which we have had bleed over to bad feelings out the game. We didnt even notice how rough it had gotten until an outside person went “Man… yall are horrible to each other. Why do your characters even hang out anymore??”. So now we are taking a break to figure out what we want to do about it. We are playing some other games until then. Bc we have played so long we are all really invested in those characters, but we will have to openly ignore past actions and feelings in a lot of areas to justify new behavior.

@@slktool could you elaborate what you mean by that example?

U mean there young

Glad I could help!

That’s a goal on my Patreon, but it would only come once I was able to bring on an editor to help with the workload. But I would love to!

@@SupergeekMike Ah! Alrighty 👍

Yeah I unfortunately think he learned the wrong lesson from this experience and started sharing less instead of more. Episode 13 really does kick off a new pattern of behavior, unfortunately.

That’s a subject I’ve seen some folks bring up - some audience members just had bad vibes early. Like you said, it’s possible some context of what happened colored their perceptions, but everyone also has different thresholds for bad behavior and stuff that bothers them early on. Some commenters never noticed any of Orion’s poor behavior, and boy I’m envious of their experience with these episodes of CR lol. I think another factor is that the tone of the game changed a lot when they started playing weekly, and that’s why a lot of the cast members do some of the same things as Orion early on/why his behavior doesn’t seem that bad to them. But as they changed, he didn’t.

@@SupergeekMike I don't exactly regret watching the early episodes, I really wrestled with it but I wanted to see it for proper historical value. But then after going ahead and doing that, with my wife when she got annoyed that I kept laughing at stuff she couldn't hear we just watched Legend of Vox Machina on Amazon and then restarted started on episode 39 or so, and I highly recommended avoiding watching the roughness at the start, other than the Slayer's Take so she knew who Zahra was. I'd say this is a really solid way for people to get into CR now and have context without getting really turned off by the shaky start. I agree with you that it's a transition thing, I suspect if Orion wasn't aware that a bunch of people were watching he could have been a lot more chill about things, problems wouldn't have happened so much, etc etc. Also monthly to weekly is a big shift too where there's less time to cool down, when added with the pressure of actually playing your game as a business and a true audience show, it was tough. And despite not liking Orion and often not liking Tiberius because of Orion, there was the occasional shining through of excellence and comedy like the whole section where he keeps getting shuffled to middle manager to middle manager, but then again things like that were when it was just Tiberius riffing off of Matt (and vice versa) and didn't happen as much when he had to interact with his fellow players.

SPOILERS and OPINIONS here: Sam built in a lot of issues with his character that none of the other players caught on to. Sam loves being a troll, but he also loves playing deeply conflicted, complex characters, and Scanlan was still mostly just being seen as class clown. My impression is that he wanted Scanlan to have as much emotional weight as the others, but no one was picking up on it, so he conspired with Matt to have a big epic "You guys don't appreciate me!" scene and then bring in another character. It freshened up the arc they were in, it made the other characters appreciate Scanlan more, it let Sam do a LOT more trolling, and it also rejuvenated the players - whatever the fans thought of him, you can see how much everyone both loves and hates this new addition, and then how overjoyed they are when Scanlan comes back. Matt also loved every minute of it. We have no idea how long they'd been planning it together.

I do think it gets worse later in the campaign (curious if I’ll be able to see the plans that went wrong and caused the issue? I dunno!), and they seem to have forgotten the other quote: “The plan is nothing, the planning is everything.”

@@SupergeekMike It definitely gets worse later in the campaign. There are a couple episodes specifically in one of the future arcs that you could skip entirely because they literally spend the entire session planning and/or bickering about said plan but never committing to anything. Let's just say there's a reason that the phrase "At dawn, we plan" has become a somewhat notorious running gag for CR.

Yea, but that happens in D&D don't know how many fights my rogue has gotten dropped by an unlucky crit early in a fight to just basically wind up taking a nap while the party cleans house

@@chrisbennett9048 The difference was he had agency still, he was still taking turns. If he was unconscious, he would be resigned to saying "well, it's out of my hands!", but he was trying to do something cool and be a hero and it just didn't work out.

@@MorningDusk7734 yea once again that happens. Unlucky rolls or someone else's rolls get some lucky crits or whatever. Yea it sucks you talk the DM try to adjust and hope it works out better next time. I understand it can be aggravating sometimes, but it's to be expected sometimes. Plus yes he had agency, so he could've abandoned it at any time when he realized it wasn't going to work as quickly or as well as he thought it would, but he chose to be stubborn and stick with it so unfortunately that was his end result.

I think, if it just was a bad persuation roll from Tib's that let to the mindflayers refusing it wouldn't have been a big issiu, but rolling high and still go back empty handet after loosing 2 Turns, had to sting a lot more. I could see how Orion could think that Matt is just "blocking his idea becaus he didnt like it", specialy given that Orion is more in a Player VS GM Mindset. I Personaly would probably given Tibs one ore two Mindflayers becaus i tend to reward hight rolls and ressource investment (But that is MY gm style and Matt has clearly a different one than me and that is fine). So i can see why it got worst mit Orion later on, if i have the feeling that that the GM seems to decide against me if i think i have a good idea i just stopp communicating. I'm not excusing Orions beheavour I just try to give my explanation for the worsening of his beheavour