what they don't tell you is that after you turn 30 you have ocasional but powerful bouts of home ownership fever, which is like baby fever but instead of randomly really wanting a baby you go on zillow and look at modest properties you will nonetheless never be able to afford. and then it passes and you're like wtf was that about. yay time for another $6 coffee to stave off the dread

Whatever C4 ends up being and whenever it is, I really hope we see a return of the consistent "I go over to *insert character*" that was lacking this campaign. It's something so simple but so foundational to why I love CR. It used to be so consistent and made even the most mundane things like setting up camp, night guard duty and travel something to look forward to.

I can't tell you how many of these moments with characters just simply talking to each other about anything and everything became some of my favorite moments in all of CR. I remember so many episodes where I looked forward to these breaks more than even combat or some story elements because it immersed me so much in every aspect of the campaign.

To me this is when CR is at its best, it is the foundation that separates it from other AP's and is what pulls you in and hooks you so you're equally as invested to the story or action or honestly anything just like the characters and the cast.

I think you kinda hit the nail on the head here. I think it's a big part of why a lot of people left the campaign feeling less attached to Bells Hells compared to the Mighty Nein.

You got a little of this flavor in the beginning as Bells Hells got to know one another and kind of tackled some of their background baggage, but as the campaign left the honeymoon period and headed into The Main Plot, you got less and less inter-character moments. Huge stretches between them that left you going 'so how are they feeling??? When are they going to get some downtime to process all this?' We kept being left waiting, sometimes for like three episodes. We as the viewers were used to having that after C2, its like the treat at the end of the stressful fight. All we got instead was Stress Stress Stress for like 70 straight episodes.

Once all hell had broken loose on the apogee solstice, the whole thing felt like a big rush to the finish line, and Character Time was mostly over. It's dnd and you can play it however you want, but I think not getting that time contributed to them not really knowing where they all stood at the end or what they should do, which then caused us frustration as viewers.

To expand just a bit, to me, it felt like we had a specific group of heroes who were very suddenly thrown into some other group's religious story narrative and forced to make a decision that very few of them had personal stakes in other than 'I hate Ludinus'. Their backstories were not religion focused other than FCG. They didn't really have the chance to form new beliefs until after they already had the weight of the world on their shoulders and every interaction with the gods made them feel they were just being used for survival. If a god had reached out previously to help them unbidden in a time of need (other than The Cleric), they would have had a completely different motivation to pick a side bc it would feel like the gods genuinely cared for their children. Even a storyline to pit them against the gods instead of just feeling like they were invisible to them could have been beneficial to their larger character arcs in relation to The Plot.

It was an interesting experiment to put these very neutral unbiased people in charge of that kind of situation, don't get me wrong, but then the vast majority of Character Moments we did get were the constant confused/angry circles of 'why do we care about Them?' and 'but what happens if we do nothing' and it got repetitive and tiresome and people got pissed off at different characters and none of them really even changed. They still didn't really understand one another. In the end, even after learning about the eidolons and the Dawnfather being a dick and talks with the Matron and the Arch Heart, the only thing that STILL tethered them personally to the story was 'Let's stop Ludinus because we hate him for getting Laudna/Oryms husband killed and at least we know he's bad and we'll figure it out this god shit when we get there.'

Not the most compelling but hey, it got them to that finish line.

I think at least some of these unsatisfying pitfalls could have been avoided if they'd had more chances for character/relationship exploration beyond like the first third of episodes and maybe with some more religious theme overtones. It was also kind of a shame that all that build up of the new setting at the start was completely left by the wayside. They Needed a Longer Honeymoon. The apocalypse just rolled around way too early.

I love the C3 characters a lot, but its not the same kind of way I love the M9, and I think its mainly because this campaign was a vehicle for the world's next historical era. There's nothing wrong with that, necessarily, but it is polarizing, and a huge shift from C2. With the M9 we had 140 episodes exploring these characters and who they really were as people and where they came from and how they helped each other heal. You can't get that in just 40 episodes leading into an apocalypse speedrun. They are just two completely different kinds of campaigns. It really is a matter of taste but I'm also quite certain that if Matt could go back and do it from scratch knowing what he now knows, he might have approached this very differently. I do think even the players were left floundering and trying to understand what the narrative wanted from them. This kind of Big Picture History Story needed characters at least a little bit built to theme, I think. This is why Brennan's EXU mini-series are so successful.

Sorry if I took your post a little off topic I just suddenly had a lot of thoughts and I haven't talked about any of this yet lol.

I got a wild card commission from @mellifera38 and it turned out so adorably! Thank you again, this is such a delightful depiction of Naia (and skeleton friend!)

i think you should be able to emoji react to MyChart lab results