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loquaciousquark · 4 years

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Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E83 (Nov. 5, 2019)

A day late and many dollars short, but we’re here! Tonight’s preroll: minifigs & what I assume are tonight’s guests of Liam & Matt:

which is followed by lazy susan rotating the D&D minis from eldritch-foundry.com for the rest of the cast. Cute! Anyway, Dani is back and ready to rumble! Brian is briefly lambasted for only getting through mumblemumble questions last week, but it’s all smoothed over soon enough and we move right along.

Tonight’s announcements: Undeadwood finale is delayed one week due to some post-production tech issues. Should premiere Friday, Nov. 15. Brian marvels over Matt’s speech about God being just as feral as what he creates. Matt is also surprised. Marisha is apparently the living dice Snitch of both campaign 2 and Undeadwood - everyone wonders if it’s the seat, the chair, the floor, or some innate karmic sense Marisha herself creates. CR is also partnering with Operation Supply Drop for the month of November to support veterans. Matt announces (re-announces?) that they are partnering with Amazon to create a full second animated season, as well as two more episodes to the original season one. All backers will be able to still watch the full season one for free. Everyone is so excited & I’m excited for them. Good job, tiny D&D friend group. More details on the CR Kickstarter Updates page.

And now! Episode 83: Dark Bargains

CR Stats: Liam poured wine for 49 seconds. Brief sidebar as Liam expresses genuine nervousness being on the couch beside Matt; he normally talks behind his back on TM, since he��s not sure if Matt ever watches it, but now he has to watch what he says. Caleb’s smell has been mentioned 60 times. Matt acknowledges that he is clean and washed. [doubt] Nott’s death was the 60th knockout and 8th player death of C2. Half of those deaths were Frumpkin. Liam calls Frumpkin a magic fart with a weak wifi signal.

Our first question (23 minutes in, NOT THAT ANYONE’S COUNTING), reveals that Matt did design the HFB with some “big red buttons” for the characters to press, or want to press. He expected more group approval before some of them were pressed, though (the dreadnought). Liam wanted to clear all the corners of the Baldur’s Gate map.

Caleb fears Halas because he’s one of the most powerful mages ever, he fears the lab setup/experimentation angle, he still fears the siren song, and is scared of the grains of similarity he sees between the two of them.

Liam knows they’ve continually seen fun stuff come from shitty situations, but Caleb sees the story of the HFB as “you’re not welcome here; this is going to suck for YOU! You thought you were going to have fun here? Fuck you!”

Matt loves those climactic moments though, because he loves it when the dice tell the story. Liam loves that there was a day where Matt rolled terribly in Undeadwood and played it as being embarrassed to be around all these amazing people.

Matt enjoyed getting to dig into the backstory of his world. He’s had references to pre-divergence stuff before, and it was a big joy to give more context to some of the things the M9 have been encountering.

Liam: “[Caleb] is gambling big when he thinks there’s something of worth to gain.“ He’d heard of a long-vanished mage who was messing with time stuff, and thought there might be a chance this was him. Then, once they found the gem, he started feeling this might be the real chance he needed to start messing with the crazy stuff he wants to do with time.

The bound devil was a general temptation, but in hindsight he can see why Jester was drawn to him. Matt often builds scenarios and has no idea how they will react to them (and acknowledges that the M9 did not fully read the poem that would have given them more info here), and sometimes he’s right and sometimes he’s very wrong.

Caleb is very distrustful of other arcanists and always assesses their level of threat to the group. Liam does think Caleb has come a long way since the start of the campaign. “A lot is changing for him. He’s very reactive in a lot of ways. Whatever is laid out for him in the moment that he can take advantage of, or that he cares about...I don’t know. The Betrayer Gods coming back is so much more important, and I don’t know if it’s going to make him let go of that stuff. He has to re-evaluate. He has to. He’s like an addict who has a weak day.”

Brian comments that Caleb seems to be a clinic in self-forgiveness. He wants him to do well, but at the end of the day he wants him to forgive himself. He also points out that it’s possible to get addicted to grief, and he sees that in Caleb; he’s choosing to stay in that space, and we are watching what that does to a person. Brian feels that he forms an attachment to the grief because it is the only emotional connection he has to the family he lost.

Liam nods and says these are things he’s been thinking about for months and months. He does not and did not have the answers when he created the character, and is looking forward to seeing where he ends up. He is not railroading his character; he’s letting the other players affect his character so that Caleb can remain malleable.

Matt loves how it reflects how real people inform the lives and actions of their friends in real life.

Cosplay of the Week: @suchamantis on twitter for a Caleb/spellbook cosplay. It’s gorgeous work!

Brief derailment into Liam pulling a Bane out of his mug and Matt hypersensually smelling the winner’s dice vault. I don’t even know what’s happening.

Revivify in this campaign is being used as a CPR/AED type thing. If they fail, the DC goes up and a longer-form raise dead spell must be used out of combat.

It did occur to Liam that this is the second time his bestie has been killed by a treasure box. Would Caleb make the same sacrifice? Liam says in a spooky voice that nothing is as strong as the twin bond...but when Caleb goes into full-on survival mode where all emotions are pushed to the side, he doesn’t know what would happen. He knew he was with two very magical people who could work miracles and was focused on just getting her up the steps to them. Matt was sure everyone would figure it out and was shocked when no one checked it for traps.

The effect of the diamond on Nott being different from the diamond on Cad was flavor related to the Power Word Kill trap that was on the chest. He built the revivify around that imagery in the moment. A lot of Matt’s flavor text around spells is built around the moment, the characters themselves, their gods, etc. as much as possible.

Caleb is glad to find the signs of magic that may be able to return Nott to a halfling, but was way too concerned about the gem to think about anything else at that time.

Fanart of the Week: @acemasters4 on twitter for a beautiful pastel stylized portrait of Caduceus and mushrooms.

Ashley is almost here! Brian allllmost tells us how many days but refrains. COME BACK ASHLEY.

The Angel of Irons thread has been planned since the very beginning: everything with chains and hunger was planned. He pulled it together with Yasha when he realized they would mesh well. She had created her backstory, and as the campaign proceeded he was able to marry some threads together to make story points. Liam compliments Matt’s ability to weave character & world backstory together; specifically, the crystals in Caleb’s arms were Matt’s idea after Liam sent the first draft of his backstory to Matt. Liam loved it and ran with it.

Everyone is so excited that she is coming back and Matt won’t have to plan for her to be suddenly absent again.

In a moment that shakes my world, Matt is discovered to be wrong about what class of magic Cure Wounds is in 5e. The question is about how Halas’s comment on healing being necromantic is a throwback to older editions of D&D where CW was a necromancy spell, and Dani reveals to us all that in 5e it is now Invocation. Matt chooses to accept this as a deliberate throwback to older editions to emphasize that “man out of time” feel.

Chris Perkins apparently once described BWF’s personality as “Power Word Kill for someone’s joy.” He also apparently did MMA & figure skating, because why not.

Caleb’s reference to Jester suffering in the ruby was purely coincidental regarding her mother. He didn’t realize until it popped out of his mouth.

BWF talks about how he likes where the campaign is at. He has a weird gut feeling that something exciting is about to happen. “I’m finally invested in this campaign after 83 episodes.”

Everyone pauses to talk about how beautiful Matt’s hair is blowing in the wind. BWF tells a story about how based on how they were sitting in Undeadwood filming, Matt’s hair would blow ever-so-slightly in the A/C and people thought they did it on purpose.

Matt had a good time at Blizzcon! He was glad to see people gathering for the Hong Kong protests; he understands it’s a very complicated situation where the initial punishment was way too harsh and caused a ripple effect, but he was glad to see the space where the activism was welcomed in response.

Matt enjoyed cosplaying again for the first time in a long time, both at Blizzcon and as McCree for the Halloween episode. When he was buying adhesive a shop worker upsold him on an inferior product, which is why his beard started falling off during the show. Sad times, Matt. :(

And that’s all! Is it Thursday yet?

#critical role #critical role spoilers #talks machina #talks machina spoilers #long post for ts

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