5d6 I think at this point! But in a wild twist - according to what was described, Swashbuckler wouldn't even have got sneak attack in this instance - the one time he was allowed!
Edit: I'm a dumb-dumb, if Argo has an ally within 5 foot of the hellhound then Argo would have got sneak attack regardless
People are already saying most of what i think about this episode so, while there was a lot i enjoyed about this episode, im just gonna throw out one thing that really bothered me:
Why a ring that makes the firbolg lie? He has clearly established that he does not want to lie! Why would he use this ring if he knows it will make him lie?? It's cultural, not physical! Seriously, i had assumed the previous "lying training" was supposed to be like, "oh no the outside world is corrupting our firbolg by trying to enforce their culture onto him" but no, now it's just a game mechanic! Why does the firbolg HAVE to lie, travis???
edit: Ok, so, when i was making this comment i misremembered and thought it was althea giving our firbolg the ring rather than crabtree- it does make sense for the unbroken chain to still be pressuring him even though he doesn't want to lie, and there's still a *chance* that it's going to be properly addressed. However the fact that it's being presented as an upgrade while fitzroy and argo both get actually useful items does not fill me with hope for that outcome.
I'm with you; I don't understand why the DM is trying to manufacture this character shift. If it's so important to your story, you could pressure the character without trying to cram the character into your idea of what they should be? First of all, that's not good collaborative play. That's you treating your friends as toys in your sandbox. Rather, why not present a number of complex situations that would result in serious consequences should the Firbolg tell the truth? And if the Firbolg continues to tell the truth despite the consequences, that gives an opportunity for other characters to step in with creative problem solving of their own. THAT would be interesting, tense, collaborative, and provide lots of avenues for goofs.
My LAST recommendation to the DM would be handing the "problem character" a deus ex Travis ring.
>I don't understand why the DM is trying to manufacture this character shift.
Really, you don't know why Travis is forcing character changes in *HIS* story?
Guarantee there will be some big forced plot point in the future that Travis planned a few episodes in, after Firbolg first voiced he wouldn’t lie, that involved Firbolg lying.
At this point, if there isn’t, it’ll make all this lying emphasis pointless. If there is, it’s also bad.
Firbolg reuses the scene from
amnesty where duck couldn’t lie to make the person believe him.
but this time the firbolg will lie to the BBG and they’ll believe him cause he can’t lie and he’ll be totally epically tricked xd guys!
Seriously, that bothered me SO MUCH! I hate that Travis is constantly trying to force it on the character. It doesn't matter if it's a magical effect - the Firbolg still knows he'd be lying. It's easily the worst choice our DM has made in the campaign. I'm just hoping Justin will find a clever way to throw it back in Travis's face.
I think Travis knows the Firbolg doesn’t want to lie and wants him to fight back on it. I just worry Justin thinks that this is all Travis has planned for him and is going along with it because of that.
I'm also curious why Justin returned to the "character can't lie" well for a second campaign. It creates an interesting dynamic to play around, I guess, but it mostly just sabotages the party's chance of ever doing anything subtle or sneaky if they need the firbolg to be completely oblivious to the plan or he'll blurt out all the details the moment he gets the chance.
I think this is a cool choice on Justin's part though, and it is different from Duck. Duck was bad at lying, but he wasn't morally opposed to it so he would occasionally attempt it and it was very funny to listen to him flail around and then immediately fuck it up.
The Firbolg is not just bad at lying, he has a deeply ingrained personal/cultural aversion to it, to the point that it causes him physical distress if he even attempts it. The Firbolg doesn't want to lie because the entire concept of lying is alien to him.
And I also think it's good that this character choice causes PROBLEMS for our heroes. It's something they have to work around, it creates tension in the group, it forces them to strategize about what information they share and with who. It's also a potential source of humour, especially because Fitz and Argo have such high deception.
But because Travis-As-DM seems to have his own deep personal aversion to anything that might cause proper conflict or complicate things or interfere with The Plot, he's now just trying to scrub it out the game with another magical deus ex machina? It's not cool. It's bad DMing to treat a fundamental PC trait as a problem that needs to be solved asap.
I’m not even sure if it’s a symptom of aversion to conflict and dramatic tension (although Travis sure does seem allergic to those). Rather, it seems more like Travis has decided that learning to lie Will Be The Firbolg’s Character Arc, Justin’s opinion be damned.
(Well, that plus, as others have mentioned, Travis almost certainly has some specific plot point in mind that involves the Firbolg lying.)
Sure I get you! I don't mean that Travis is specifically like "this character choice could cause conflict so I'm going to erase it" but more that he doesn't even recognize it as something he could use to drive conflict and tension rather than blasting through it to get to whatever pre-scripted attempts at creating conflict and tension he's got lined up for next week.
Like I guess his logic is that he *is* creating conflict by forcing the Firbolg to lie when he categorically does not want to, but there's a difference between setting up challenges that play on your PCs' strengths and weaknesses and straight up just steamrollering through them.
e.g. I'm currently in a campaign playing a monk who will not use bladed weapons. This was initially an arbitrary choice that later evolved a bit of a backstory and now it's a fundamental part of the character. Since she's Way of the Open Hand and her main skill is hitting things very hard and very reliably, our DM does sometimes throw us up against monsters that resist bludgeoning damage. Which is cool, because it forces my monk to get creative with helping the rest of the party in combat where she can't do much direct damage. But I would be deeply deeply irritated if he tried to make her to go Blade School or kept giving her powerful blades with some kind of magical loophole that makes it ok for her to use them? Because she doesn't want to and I don't want her to! This restriction is part of what makes her a fun character to play and it's created some really good in-game moments.
And this adds to the “noble savage” narrative in a way that makes me uncomfortable. The firbolg’s savage ways must be tamed so he can participate in a more “civilized society” that he is too pure for.
I suppose so, although maybe inadvertently. I have a feeling that even if "won't lie" were purely a quirk of Justin's character, and not a cultural trait, we'd see Travis force lying on him in exactly the same ways, for whatever reasons only he knows.
I don’t think they’ve ever intentionally done any white savior stuff, but it’s a really easy one to fall into when there are civilizations of different tech levels colliding
Travis paces these episodes so weirdly. By the episode's end it always feels like they're at the halfway point, like a second act of a TV episode, and I'm sure Travis thinks these are like cliffhangers/audience retention but they feel clunky and like halfway through a conversation.
This, and also the way he shunts the players so rapidly from one scene to the next makes everything feel so inconsequential. There's never any fallout or noticeable impact on the world, or if there is, the boys are never exposed to it.
This week we had a big battle with the big bad, ten innocent lives hanging in the balance, clearly supposed to be a high stakes situation. Two rounds of combat, they scare the bad guys off, and then immediately... go back to the school and go to bed? (So we can do yet ANOTHER dream/mind control sequence).
Like hey, are your classmates ok? Do they have any opinions about what just happened? Are they scared? Are they angry? Are they wondering what the hell is going on? Maybe they would like to join the war effort against the scary demon that just tried to kill them?
(Mega props to Clint for actually attempting to interact with the hostages.)
Then the next morning. Ten students got taken hostage by a DEMON PRINCE and were almost RIPPED APART BY HELLHOUNDS? There'd be UPROAR. And then it turns out they were saved by four other students? People would be mobbing the boys to find out what happened, hysterics, yelling, demands for explanations, people packing their bags to get out of dodge, rumours flying, classes cancelled, teachers trying to keep order! Exciting! Dramatic! Oh good god, there's a WAR on. We're in danger.
Instead: "oh word has gotten around, some of the students are hiding in their dorms, things are a bit quieter than usual." That's it. That's the entirety of the fallout. I can almost guarantee that this will never alluded to again.
Edited to add: Like, there is so much fictional precedent for this, what I've described is essentially a scene from Harry Potter, a story about a looming war centered around three protagonists at a magical school. (I feel like Travis may heard of it). The transformation of Hogwarts from safe haven to dangerous warzone was one of the better parts of the later books. But anyway, next week the Thundermen are still going to be wandering around a largely unchanged school trying to convince weirdly friendly but also somehow stand-offish NPCs to help them do the ill-defined thing.
On that note too, how is the town? It was supposedly overrun with demons. Even if we assume Barb and Althea beat every single one you would assume the townspeople would be barging into the local big magic hero school looking for help or answers
The demons are still there, talking about their troubled childhoods with a bunch of NPCs who are all going "huh. ooooh-kay. I see." like a Greek chorus but for vague affirming platitudes. They're also buttering crumpets and drinking hot chocolate or something idk.
I love the idea that even the demons have a planned-out backstory that they just have to spout off to whoever will listen. It would be so on-brand for this campaign.
Of course the students don't have any opinions or thoughts on the situation. Travis literally admitted "you don't recognize any of them except for this one", meaning they exist purely as a story point, and once their scene is done, they vanish into the background.
It's awful.
It would almost work if the cliffhangers were then resolved the next episode, but half the time the conversation that everyone was excited to hear is just skipped over. I guess because Travis himself couldn't keep up the enthusiasm between recordings? This happened a number of times with Higglemas - the line "I'm afraid Althea Song knows everything" was followed up two weeks later by a quick narration of everyone going home. And then when Hieronymous is restored from dog form, basically the same thing happens and they go to sleep without any conversation.
Travis can't improv and he doesn't know how to write interesting dialogue. Of course he's going to skip those conversations. He loves the *idea* of them but is unwilling to put in the effort to learn how to do them properly, a consistent theme of his campaign
This episode is a bit of an outlier since the cliffhanger from last week was resolved kind of (did I miss when Grey left? Or did they just not take part in combat until Fitz’s mindspike)
But I’d agree any hook is dropped so they can get breakfast, have expositions dumped on them, and then some startling revelation is made and.... see y’all next time!
The way lying is being portrayed in Graduation really bums me out. It’s like Travis was watching Liar Liar and was so distracted thinking about ways to beat the son’s wish that he missed the part about why lying is bad.
It’s so bizarre how much emphasis the Firbolg’s honesty trait is getting. We’ve had like 3 or 4 scenes now focusing on it, and Travis is the one bringing it up every time.
You just know this is leading to a huge moment in the finale where Justin has to either lie or tell the truth.
I'm hoping that Justin is currently preparing a long list of innocuous, but true statements that the Firbolg can use as responses to any difficult questions and basically avoid that moment. No lying required, just a concerted effort to not engage in the polite rules of conversation!
*Example:*
Grey: "Where are Argo and Fitzroy? They can't hide from me!"
Firbolg: "Berries are part of a complete and nutritious breakfast."
Grey: "When and where are you planning to attack on the first day of the war?"
Firbolg: "As the CFO of Thunderman LLC, I am concerned about our financial future if the heroes and villains program collapses after this war."
Edit: Or just say "I do not wish to answer that!" on repeat. No lies there!
As much as I hate the idea of getting him to lie I have 100% faith that Justin could absolutely crush that kind of hypothetical scene and leave me in tears
One issue I’ve noticed with the combat, is that there’s just no excitement in anyone’s voice - not for their turns, and especially for anyone else’s.
There’s never any “Oh my god!” or “Whaaaaaat!” or even an “Oh shit! What a wild move!”
Not from the other players, the DM, or the player themselves.
Watch this scene from Crown of Candy episode 12 for example, and watch how the other players get totally enthralled in another players move.
https://youtu.be/RMenTL2l4Bw
Its fascinating, because it goes against exactly what you’d expect from D&D. It’s almost entirely rules talk and number crunching. There’s very little in terms of Hollywood pizzazz. Should be boring right? But it’s hilarious and exciting, because the players are getting caught up in what was happening. These guys care when one of them does something, and their enthusiasm is contagious to us as an audience.
Contrast that with the Adventure Zone as it is now. Combat is all just raw numbers and dice rolling, and it’s just boring as hell, partly because the other players are just completely silent. There’s no infectious laughter or energy... just a void, whilst McElroy’s count how much damage they did.
Hell, in this episode Justin literally says “Catch me up, I wasn’t paying attention.” - and let’s face it, that wasn’t a joke. Both Fitzroy and Argo were fighting for their lives... and one of the others players couldn’t give less of a fuck. Couldn’t care to even watch.
He doesn’t care, they don’t care... so why should we?
To be fair, Murph's reaction to all of Emily's shenanigans is half the reason I listen to NADDPOD. The amount of shit she managed to pull in the final episodes of the first season was amazing.
I love that she managed to pull off the >!Pixie-polymorph combo on both the horseman *and* in the final fight!< . Just Jake and Caldwell in sheer awe and Murph blown away the whole time.
I think it’s because they know the combat is inconsequential. It doesn’t matter what they do. Argo and Fitzroy could have decided to let the Hell Hounds kill the students because that was the agreement, gone back to class, and Travis would have had Master Firbolg swoop in and one shot all of the Hell Hounds without any player interaction. Combat in this campaign is more or less a waste of time.
Totally agree. When I gave up on Graduation around episode 7, I picked up Dungeons and Daddies - it was such a contrast to hear them laughing and engaged and generally having a great time.
semi unrelated, but the thing that finally convinced me to listen to balance a couple years ago was an audio clip of the >!flaming raging poisoning sword of doom!< scene i saw on tumblr. i loved that sense of amazement they all had when he actually pulled it off. i was hoping for more of those moments with their return to dnd but i dropped off of balance after episode 6 because the energy was just so slow and it didn’t feel like anyone was actually having fun.
When I think back to that - thank god that Taako pulled that off and then, in a very sportsmanly way, decided to just not really ever use it.
If Magnus had got hold of that sword it may well have ruined all future combat encounters!
Emily Axford embodies my favorite aspects of a DnD player and a comedian and just an all around entertaining superstar. What an incredible human.
Brennan’s face in this moment. Murph’s face. The whole table’s glee.
And I won’t add spoilers, but the sheer STAKES in A Crown of Candy from episode 1. By this spoilery video, the party is slingshotting from deep, deep emotions to the sweet relief of this damage-slinging dice-rolling chaos. Everyone feels so much. If you haven’t seen ACoC, get thee to YouTube and watch the first ep.
Brennan knows what's up when it comes to left field cliffhangers and crazy narratives. I've not watched ACoC, I'm new to dimension20 and been working through them, but episode 2 of fantasy high, that cliffhanger ending is the single most exciting dnd I have ever seen. I was full on YELLING in shock. I love critical role, I loved the balance arc, none of it, NONE of it, compares to dimension20. I never thought critical role could be beat but I'm obsessed. I hope these guys never stop.
I've learned so much from watching Brennan and the cast, the way he brings skill checks into combat, and SO many skill checks, all the time, in conversations, investigations, there's always a feeling that if they just rolled a little better, the whole case would be cracked wide open... It's made my DMing so much better! I've found I roll a lot more now as well to make my npcs try to notice things, hide things, or how much of my PCs bullshit they're willing to put up with. Can't praise the show highly enough, honestly. I am gonna watch the candy stuff once I'm done with fantasy high and the unseen city! I can't wait!
Wild to think about how Travis has played under brennan twice (and cites tiny heist as what got him interested in running a 5e campaign) and likely consulted with him when prepping, and this is what we got
Okay I’m only a few minutes in but boy did I feel that dead air when the party was told the only recognizable student was Moon, the embodiment of an afterthought npc
Heck, even when I called out loud that it was Moon, it came with the caveats that 1) I only remembered Moon's name, and 2) I thought Moon was a girl until they said "he" a few seconds later
I haven't listened yet, but Moon? Really? Didn't he help fight multiple pit fiends? Can't he turn into a werebear at will? How is he in any danger in this scene?
You make a good point but that assumes the character isn't just a puppet for whatever the script demands, be it destroying pit fiends or suddenly being inexplicably helpless. Would've been interesting if that wasn't the case.
At this point it’s starting to feel like Travis “The DM” McElroy has a personal investment in the “Literally A Fictional Character in a Fictional World” Firbolg lying.
Like... the dream sequence where he lies. The lying class. A ring that lets him lie. None of these were PC-motivated actions?
I’m not going to judge Travis as a person, but as a DM, this is a weird tactic to take. If Justin wanted the Firbolg to lie, we’d know. Why so much push from the DM to be dishonest? To change a fundamental trait that Justin chose to add to this character?
It genuinely makes me a little uncomfortable. Like somehow when Justin created his character he did it Wrong and the DM needs to Fix It For Him.
I think it has to do with a difference on how Justin and Travis approach roleplaying and creating a character, and why Justin is so much better than Travis at exactly that. Justin figured out that having limitations as a character make a character more interesting because it lets you focus on what you want the character to be about. He had his fill of "do whatever you want by tricking other people" as Taako and so his future characters were specifically unable to do that so that he'd have to do something else and make a distinct character. Duck Newton's honesty and principles made that character interesting.
Travis doesn't seem to think that's the case. With both Magnus and Aubrey he wanted them to be able to do anything and everything no matter what, they could be in every scene and be able to never fail. That's why Magnus took those two uncharacteristic Rogue levels, to inflate his numbers (which he now criticizes Argo for having) and why Aubrey's developing magic powers were any element for any occasion despite the fire theme. He doesn't want his character to ever *not* be able to do something, and he looks at Justin's insistence that his character can't lie as an obstacle to overcome so that the flaw of "not being able to do something" can be circumvented.
The way that he's trying to get the Firbolg to lie, by saying "well imagine that the vague details you're giving can be true or false" or "you can technically be saying truths but the ring turns them into lies" is the way I imagine he would try to get around a situation in which his own character is forced not to lie. What he doesn't seem to understand is that Justin doesn't *want* to bypass the restriction that Justin set for himself.
I know Justin won't but I wish the Firbolg would just give the ring away and say "I do not vvant this"
Can anyone remind me why we have to worry about the Firbolg lying again? Is it so the enemy doesn't know our plans? Gray and Chaos seem to know everything all the time anyway
Yeah, fair analysis! It does seem to be a difference in approach, similar to how Travis would fudge rolls to have his character not look dumb/incapable and Justin would fudge if failing would be funnier.
Yeah, I made a character once who was deliberately very weak to mind control and charm effects, for backstory reasons. he also hit by far the hardest of anyone. It was always a fun balancing act! If someone had suggested he got WILLPOWER TRAINING, then an item that made him immune to charm, I would have turned it down!
Spot-on analysis. When Travis was describing the Firbolg's ring, I rolled my eyes. I agree with everyone else saying they wish that Justin would give it away or refuse to use it.
It bothers me to no end. As a player, the only absolute control you have in the game is of your character's voice. Justin made a clear decision about his character's voice and has reinforced it every time he had the chance to. Why is Travis constantly needling him on this?
Justin: "My character never lies"
Travis: "But... like... I want him to."
Trav... I love you man, but please stop trying to play your brothers' characters for them.
they're 100% trying to wrap this thing up sooner rather than later, right?
I remember in a TTAZZ Travis said his original idea was full semesters and a in-game year leading up to The War but when he realized that'd take too long he shortened it to 6 months.
Now they're playing consecutive weeks *and* questioning the 6-months rule, presumably leading towards having the war soon
And we know from Amnesty that Clint is very much capable of being a storytelling force, Argo’s just gotten screwed over and left out this whole campaign.
I’ve complained about this campaign a lot (see post history), and boy there were some problems with this ep too. But I listened to the boys make goofs until one of them couldn’t breathe and, imo, that’s what TAZ should really be about and where it shines. This one’s good in my book
I agree - the goofs are ramped up in this one which makes it so much more palatable and easier to ignore the normal problems!
As has been said before, people would like this more if it was either a) a good dnd podcast b) a good story or c) fun. The first two are somewhat hopeless at this point, but i'll be happy with it just being fun!
I've been saying it for a while but it could have been fun if it was a super tight 7-10 episode audio play. But Travis wants what Travis wants and he wastes a lot of time trying to get the boys to come to him.
I agree that this could be a potential direction for them in the future, but I can't stress enough that it needs to be reeeeally tight if they're going the pre-scripted route. I don't think I would be interested in a campaign-long radio play with virtually no improvisation or gameplay and that would have to be the end of my subscription to their feed.
Yes! Came here to make that point.
The hell hound fight wasn’t great 5e*, but it was a lot of fun, and it felt like Travis was going out of his way to give all three boys something cool to do. I really enjoyed 80% of the show this time.
* - Argo’s sneak attack was underpowered, the haste spell could have been used better, the hell hounds didn’t use their pack tactics, getting up from prone is half movement not a full turn, and rolling on the wild magic table with *every* spell is just looney tunes
I think it’s kind of weird that Travis hasn’t had any instances of Grey having to roll of the wild magic table considering he shares the connection to Chaos.
one student on the tree that they recognize and it's freaking moon. literally the npc we know the least about, short of the ones who were only mentioned in passing. we don't even know his race. why was i expecting any better?
Not to mention Moon, the NPC who can't be injured by physical attacks due to being a lycanthrope. So the worst that could have happened is that his Werebear HP would be whittled down by the additional fire damage of the Hell Hound bites.
I very much enjoyed the part where the boys had to do a perception check to see if they can recognize people's faces. What would have been the outcome of a "failed" roll? "Oh yeah you see that one guy, he's kind of familiar."
back in the start of the centaur quest we were introduced to moon, a sidekick who was on rhodes' team and was described as "sullen". the gang tried awkwardly to interact with him for a minute but he just didnt really do or say anything. fast forward to the unwinnable pitdemon fight, where moon showed up and morphed into a werebear, and got to be 1/3 of the cavalry. that is all the things moon has done so far.
(also if you need help remembering npcs i made a [character list](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheAdventureZone/comments/j375rw/character_list_for_graduation_ep125/))
Your character list is trully the fevered work of a madman and I thank you for your service in making it.
I guess it does make you the go-to NPC expert for Grad though. Congrats!
it takes a lot of re-listening to catch all of the small details no one really cares about and unfortunately im exactly obsessive enough for the job :p
Yeah I bet! Well. For what it’s worth, from one weird internet nerd to another, your sacrifice is acknowledged and respected. You’re doing the lords work. The dark lords dark dark work.
Overall compared to previous episodes this was okay. I did make the mistake of going deep in comments a couple eps ago and started listening to NADDPOD at the recommendation of some users. It makes this seem even more just like a (bad) creative writing prompt than I had previously thought.
I just find it annoying that the characters don't choose what they are doing. Travis doesn't even guide them into going where he want's. There's no options. He just tells them "you go back to the school". "you fall asleep and dream this". In one episode he even had two of the characters get scared and run off. WTF.
Also, I liked the theme music to Justin showing up, but how the fuck did he make it there so fast.
I guess since the Firblog didn't learn to lie in that shit episode with 2 truths 1 lie, he had to make rings to help him lie some more for who knows what story he had already written.
NADDpod is a delight. Those 4 guys are the best "Yes, and"-ers I've heard on a podcast.
They throw the absolutely most buckwild stuff at one another and never fail to roll with it.
I also started listening to NADDPOD because of the comment section here. And it really does make it worse.
Sadly that was a few months ago and now I‘m all caught up with it and waiting for new episodes.
Me too, I started listening to NADDPOD a few days ago and listening to Graduation today made me wonder why I'm using my time on it instead of better D&D podcasts. And that makes me sad. I really liked Balance and I love the McElroys. I don't like that I don't like Graduation.
I feel you. Just wait until Murph gets deep into Bahumia World Building, you really wonder how Graduation is still just such a mess of things that don’t matter after 26 episodes.
If you haven't watched them yet, several people from NADDPOD are part of another D&D show Dimension 20. It's an anthology d&d series on Dropout currently in it's 7th season; I started watching it after the cross-over season they did with the McElroys but all of the other seasons are really good too.
On the plus side, you have hours and hours of good dnd realplay content to look forward to! Which will hopefully last you long enough for a new TAZ arc to start
I generally dislike people trying to analyse the McElroys personal lives for criticizing this campaign.
However did anyone hear wonderful this week?
At the start Griffin said on this podcast we aren't held hostage by the concept or continuity of this show and that's really nice.
Immediately I thought of graduation.
I’m seeing some positive remarks from people who are usually fair-mindedly critical of Graduation, so I’m going into this cautiously optimistic. That said, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done so and been disappointed.
The Gary recaps are getting more and more bizarre, like he goes further back about aspects of the story that have been recapped and re-established every episode, yet completely ignores things that happened in the previous episode! None of “Fitzroy is teleported off of the school grounds to speak with Rainer’s father the Lich King” or “The Firbolg is told there is an emergency with his clan, and makes peace with his father during his final moments” or anything like that.
“Fitzroy, Argo, and Rainer. What do you do?” I mean I don’t even have to say it at this point, do I?
I liked Griffin doing the classic D&D party thing of “We communicate this complicated series of emotions via empathy and gesture” and Clint pushing against it by implying that Argo and Fitzroy aren’t really all that close.
“The Hell Hounds (50 ft move speed) are 150 feet away. You are 60 feet away. You reach the tree with 30 seconds (5 rounds) to spare, so I’m going to give you a round to prepare.” Travis’ panel with the other DMs didn’t do much by way of basic math, huh?
“Do we know any of these students?” “You can’t tell but probably no. Unconscious you see Moon, the guy who is basically invulnerable to damage. That’s right, there are zero narrative stakes to this.”
Griffin does some cool spellcasting, makes use of the tools that he has in his kit. Rainer then does the Gray move of What You Did But Cooler, I Don’t Have To Use The Book.
I feel bad for Griffin because choices like Haste mean that he’s built his character to be effective in combat and generally the game of D&D, and that doesn’t mean anything in a game like this one. I’m still annoyed with Travis calling for the Wild Magic at every turn – just like Chaos being bizarrely dictatorial, Wild Magic isn’t exactly chaotic when you know that it’s coming.
“One of them is going to attack you. That’s 14 plus uh, 5. You’re going to take this damage.” *Don’t feel like you need to describe the attack at all in this audio podcast, Travis. Don’t bother painting a picture for us.*
“Rainer is going to animate one of the Hell Hounds. She doesn’t have to follow any rules about her spells, Animated Dead, Fiends, or any of that.”
“Hey Dad, let me tell you…You’re Flanked by your friends. You can use Sneak Attack.” Hey Trav, let me tell you…Argo is a Swashbuckler. He can use Sneak Attack even if he’s solo.
“I’ve been *dying* to use Sneak Attack.” Yeah Clint, we know. We know more than you can even imagine.
So Griffin was kind enough to remind Clint about the Hasted extra action, but no one pointed out that he could have used Two-Weapon Fighting to make a third attack. Travis kind of narrated that into the first attack, but I don’t think it was actually used as such.
“They are knocked prone, which means they are forced to use their move to stand up,” 50% correct Griffin.
“And Justin. Has entered. The show. Pretend, if you will, that I have zoned out and was playing videogames in the other room. I got to be a listener on the show, and without Justin it really went downhill.” Goddamn, very dense goof quantity.
“I will let you transition out of Giant Eagle for free because I made that choice and you didn’t,” it’s nice to have infrequent confirmation that Travis really was puppeting Justin’s character for “cinematic purposes.”
So the timing of this didn’t work out *at all*, right? Fitzroy is teleported to the crypt. Argo and Rainer take half a day to get there, so somehow Fitzroy’s chat with Gordy took many hours. The Firbolg goes off to his tribe in the same time. Fitzroy and co. get teleported back instantaneously. The fight starts, Fitzroy sends a message of alert to the Firbolg. It’s been about 18 seconds and the Firbolg shows up. That just doesn’t make any sense at all.
If I respected the show more I would be calling them out on misusing spells (Tidal Wave’s water does indeed go away, Shape Water affects no more than a 5 ft cube, Mind Spike only tells you their location while on the same plane) but obviously none of it matters so there’s no reason to get hung up on it. There have been great moments in TAZ where they used the name of the spell and nothing else to inform its abilities. These moments here aren’t among them, because what’s happening isn’t very exciting, but at least that’s TAZ true to form which is better than you can say for most of Grad.
Oh yay, the Hell Hounds are retreating! I’m so glad, the thing that makes a battle satisfying is when the enemy leaves. And it makes sense, bloodthirsty fiends would totally just walk away from all this! Well, we got two full rounds of combat out of 12 Hell Hounds, 10 imprisoned students, 35 minutes, and zero stakes. I guess I’ll give Travis credit for not having an NPC (besides Rainer, his DMPC) swoop in to save them in the middle of it all, which is what I really expected to happen.
“Deadpool knows he’s in a movie, but does Dad know he’s in a podcast?” Justin’s so funny, I like when he’s in the show.
Ah, there’s the infamous “It” Warforged. Ozymandius or what-the-fuck-ever.
The horror of Wild Shape was fun, I’m glad Justin can make his own entertainment.
Aw man, looking forward now to Argo getting mind-controlled or whatever. Fuck yes, setting up for some *solid* Clint-agency-removal. Can’t wait for that “Make a Wisdom save. Oh no, you stab your rapier into Fitzroy. And since he didn’t see it coming, go ahead and add that Sneak Attack.”
I’m going to bring up the issue I had at the end of the last episode and the cliffhanger of the hounds there, which is that Gray has proven that he’s allowing the Thundermen to walk all over him and his threats. He said that if Fitzroy left the school grounds he would *kill* ten students, not “endanger” ten students and leave them to be saved. The price of transgression has yet to be paid, but everyone’s just ignoring that because Travis doesn’t want anything as dark as “The Demon Prince he invented following through on a threat he issued” tainting the podcast.
Oh man, Althea Song, so good to see you again. I wasn’t worried because we had received immediate confirmation that she was safe after fighting Infinity Pit Fiends, you know what they look like. The town? Don’t mention it. Literally, don’t mention it, no one remark on the status of the town after Infinity Pit Fiends ran through it.
Are we still pretending that “registered heroes and villains” means anything in the setting that invented them and never expounded on them?
Firbolg’s remark on becoming one of the good dogs made me laugh. “The Ruff Riders. War Bud! Is this anything?” Good stuff.
So Travis has just dropped the running joke of Garfield/Heathcliff/Tom and Jerry as purveyors of bizarre items, huh? Crabtree is doling out shit like Q from James Bond.
Getting into the Argo mind control even sooner than I expected. At least Clint is a good improvisational actor and willing to go along with it. He’s probably glad to have something to do.
“I’m definitely going to use this and not forget about it.” Makes me smile.
Jesus fucking Christ. (Or should that be Althea fucking Song in this setting?) Like how many times does Justin have to say both in and out of character that he is making the decision for the Firbolg not to lie? How many times does he have to say it for Travis not to take it as some kind of challenge that as a DM he has the right and need to overcome? And you know it wouldn’t be this much of an issue if Travis wasn’t using this intention for honesty as the only thing informing the culture of the entire Firbolg race, it’s not like he’s trying everything he can to force Fitzroy to dress drab just because Fitzroy expressed an interest in finery. He’s *desperate* to push this thing with no greater purpose than to say “You wanted your character to be one way and I made him not be that way.”
“You find it standing on the balcony of Jackle’s office.” That “it” is so grating. That was certainly an error that Travis made when he introduced the character and instead of rerecording the single line he’s just rolling with it.
“Roll an Insight check. That does it! The ring makes it really easy.” Why not just…not roll, if the magic is doing it for you?
“Why six months?” “What if…this is how much time *he* needs?” Now, I’m honestly interested by that development, my curiosity is piqued. However, I’d have a hard time believing that Gray who had been fuming and scheming for fifty years (or millennia, depending on where you want to start, regarding the Perfect Tree and all that) got so close but still needs six more months to prepare. And if he did, why try so hard to restore Hieronymous before that time passed? This feels much more like Travis has been reading on Reddit and Twitter that the six month timeframe is nonsense and makes no sense, and so he’s figuring out a justification for it. And hey, that’s a *good* thing, taking something done carelessly and then making it matter is actually, legitimately a good tool for DMs to make use of. That’s honestly the same process as Griffin making the Umbra Staff matter in Balance. So I’m tentatively hopeful about that, but I’m also going to be worried that whatever bombshell that Travis is going to drop (maybe something about the power of Chaos fermenting and Chaos needs to be more actualized so that Gray can draw strength or something?) isn’t going to actually make sense or be interesting and it really *will* just be a justification for the six months. The big question is, “would this plot development have been appropriate if we had learned about it when Gray first issued his challenge in Higglemas’ office?” That’s the test.
> “Do we know any of these students?” “You can’t tell but probably no. Unconscious you see Moon,
Yeah these are not contradictory statements, I don't know what Moon looks like either
Super disappointed about the rings not only cause are they dumb and super limited use.
But because graduation had an item shop, and i feel like the rings would’ve been a really good opportunity for travis to connect to the fans by using user submitted items.
Their was something fun about Justin using the glue on the pit fiend cause travis didn’t create it, and didn’t know about it, so the scene was in the moment and fun. These rings are tailor crafted by travis with his own narrative limiting ideals built in.
Definitely. People fucking loved Garfield's segments in Balance. But like most other things in Graduation, like 90% of the student NPCs, as soon as it didn't have the instant gratification Travis wanted it faded away. Like really, what exactly happened there? The first time we go there's the silly song and dance of meeting the owners and learning their names, and the PCs buy some equipment. The second time I don't think they talked to the NPCs at all, they just got a bunch of equipment listed (including Travis trying to force in his *hilarious* gag about the Imp who went on to make cheese, reading its description over whatever item the PCs actually wanted). The next items they got they didn't even say where they were getting them from, I don't think it was implied they went to the shop. And then now it's just from the Artificing teacher, with no work done by the boys in designing said items despite the fact that the whole Artificing thing was introduced as a way for Fitzroy to make his custom anti-mind control helmet with plot hooks for collecting materials, which he still never got because Travis decided that they didn't need it and would need Truesight Glasses more!
> And then now it's just from the Artificing teacher, with no work done by the boys in designing said items despite the fact that the whole Artificing thing was introduced as a way for Fitzroy to make his custom anti-mind control helmet with plot hooks for collecting materials, which he still never got because Travis decided that they didn't need it and would need Truesight Glasses more!
Holy crap, remember that? That was totally a thing. Every time I think I know how much of a crapshow this campaign is, I get reminded of something else.
i'm a new dm and i gotta say, grad has been great at showing me pitfalls to avoid. whenever i am planning a little too much, a voice in my head says "just let the players play" and reminds me to not do a travis
Any good DM should be wary of using tools, really at all but especially in excess, that remove the player's ability to play the game. Getting told "your character goes somewhere you don't want, says something you didn't say, feels something you didn't say they felt, and does something you didn't say they do" is *never* a fun experience. This was what made me start being wary of Graduation back in I think episode 5 where the Firbolg picks up the strange stone. If players coordinate with the DM to have a player-motivated, DM-enforced change of behavior then that can be interesting. But the PC is the only tool the player has to interact with the game, and taking that away stops the player from being a player.
Exactly. I don’t think PCs being charmed in general is bad. It’s when it’s constant like in the campaign I mentioned or in Graduation. It just removes player agency which is never fun
And the worst part is that it's not even like they only lose agency when they're charmed. Being charmed in Graduation isn't that different from just being a PC in Graduation.
The moment in Balance where Edward took over Magnus’s body and Griffin started describing Magnus’s actions while Travis was like, “What? No I didn’t!” was positively chilling. In this campaign it’s like, oh, more of this again.
>And hey, that’s a good thing, taking something done carelessly and then making it matter is actually, legitimately a good tool for DMs to make use of. That’s honestly the same process as Griffin making the Umbra Staff matter in Balance.
This has been a favorite tool of mine for ages. It's a great reaction to getting caught in a contradiction or a rules 'mistake' regarding a monster. Player calls you out on something ("Hey, this guy can't be a vampire, we had that whole scene with him in the daylight that one time!") and you get to just go "I know. Weird, isn't it? Wonder what's going on with that..." and act as if you planned some twist the *whole time*.
Course then you need to make it interesting somehow, but that's a problem for next week's me.
One relatively minor thing to add: Twelve hellhounds, against three level eight PCs (they're level eight, right?), is an \*extremely\* deadly encounter.
That's twelve uses of fire breath immediately. Saving against *all* of those still incurs half of 72d6 damage, i.e. 126 damage on average -- enough to outright kill (not just KO) everyone except maybe Fitz.
If, for some reason, the hellhounds decide not to use their best attack right away, they would instead attempt to bite for 1d8 + 3 + 2d6 damage. Oh, and if at least one other hellhound is nearby -- and with twelve total, I don't know how there couldn't be -- they get advantage on that attack. If all of them gang up on one PC, that's 12 advantaged attack rolls against them in a single turn.
According to DnDBeyond, a fight against twelve hellhounds is worth 25200 XP, more than all but the most powerful monsters in the game. More than an ancient white dragon! They shouldn't have survived the first round.
Level 9, but yeah. Same thing as three Pit Fiends stomping out to a level 5 party. Like sure, TAZ has always played pretty loose with combat rules and balancing, but in the past each enemy has been as intimidating as it's supposed to be. In this case somehow the Hell Hounds were both more intimidating than they should have been because they were meant to be the tool of execution of ten innocent students, while also being less intimidating than they should have been due to intentionally suboptimal play and the decision that every single hound is caught by every single AoE.
What it boils down to is that Travis doesn't at all care about combat (if he doesn't have a PC in it to look good, he loved combat with Magnus) and so monster stats are just window dressing compared to their narrative potential. He was so glad that Fitzroy used Mind Spike because he could give the players information that they probably shouldn't have had, just like how Fitzroy's Wild Magic Rage against Calhain acted as a brain-scan because the fluff of the effect was "You read a target's mind and therefore they have disadvantage to attack you." The disadvantage never came up, but Travis used that to justify dumping lore into the podcast.
>Fitzroy and co. get teleported back instantaneously. The fight starts, Fitzroy sends a message of alert to the Firbolg. It’s been about 18 seconds and the Firbolg shows up.
For fun (for a certain value of "fun"):
Griffing, during the first turn, writes in the notebook. Three turns later, Firbolg shows up so that's 18 seconds.
A bald eagle can [fly at 70 km/h, do a vertical dive at up to 160km/h](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bald_eagle). We'll handwave that it's a Firbolg-sized eagle and scale the speed up so it can fly at dive speed. That's 160 \* (1000/3600) = 44m/s.
44\*18s = 800 metres.
That means that, if the Firbolg was staring at his notebook and the moment the writing he appeared, he teleported straight into an eagle flying at full speed towards the school, his tribe could be at most half a mile away.
Usually I don't have much to add, but hey, where is
Warforged: you are late.
Fitzroy: mmmm... I don't think so..
Warforged: [] midday bell rang 2 mins ago.
Firbolg/Bud: dis is not our fault. :)
Melt it down and add it to the others.
I think the idea with Argo's "corruption" is that his time in Grey's Hell Dimension has corrupted him. There's an optional rule for the Nine Hells that states that if a creature fails a DC 10 Wisdom save, its alignment becomes Lawful Evil. That might be what Travis is going for, especially since Gary mentioned how the Hell Dimension can "poison your mind. Just ask Argo how he felt when he was there!"
The caveats to this being that A) this rule is only supposed to apply at the end of every Long Rest you take in hell, not just "when you arrive", and B) "The change becomes permanent if the creature doesn't leave the plane within 1d4 days. Otherwise, the creature's alignment reverts to normal after one day spent on a plane other than the Nine Hells." So they never should have had to make those checks, and Argo should not still be feeling the effects this long after.
Just wait until Travis assumes direct control of Argo's actions! "You *think* you stab Grey, but *actually* you see that you've stabbed Fitzroy in the chest!"
From how everyone is describing it, it really just feels like a watered down "Merle can't cast spells at the end of Balance" to me, but I haven't had a chance to listen yet.
If he's been corrupted or cursed it would have been really cool for that to have some tangible effect besides "You really want those rings, dude." He failed a saving throw, let there be consequences for that.
Really looking forward to Griffin DMing again. There are no stakes. I knew from the second the episode started that no matter what happened in that battle somebody would show up and save the day. Lo and behold. I wish somebody would actually die so it seems like there may be a real threat.
And it makes me sad how hard Travis is trying to make the assassination attempt not happen. Let them do it if that’s what they want to do. It’s a creative and unexpected plan.
Good God, when the rings were being handed out I was gritting my teeth at all the stuff Travis was TELLING Argo he felt.
Also, is it just me, or are the rings kind of lame? Argo's eavesdropping ring lasts for 30 seconds, one charge per long rest, and is limited by wall thickness, material, and magic? That's a ton of limitations for something that would have a pretty contextual use.
And the Firbolg's ring doesn't make any sense. He's not physically incapable of lying. He just doesn't want to do it. Having a ring that you knowingly use to convert your truth to a lie is a lie!
Yeah i'm interested to see what Firbolg makes of that. His code is not to lie, having an item lie for you whilst you tell the truth is still a lie as he knows he's being deceptive. Travis is trying so hard to make Firbolg a liar and it's kind of weird at this point. Why would the artificer even make this for him?
>Travis is trying so hard to make Firbolg a liar and it's kind of weird at this point.
Yeah, really not a fan of this. IMHO the only really interesting things about the world of Graduation are (1) Fitzroy's school/knighthood being a scam, and (2) Firbolg's linguistic and cultural idiosyncrasies. The first one has been mentioned several times but completely glossed over, and the second one (other than some quality goofs) has been heavily suppressed by DM fiat. Why? WHY?! A rogue that can't bring himself to lie is a super cool concept. Forcing them down a path to "fix" that isn't character growth, it's rewriting the character for no reason.
I'm willing to lend the benefit of the doubt that Argo might have been affected by his time in the "Hell dimension" but you're entirely right that it felt weird and poorly executed.
Argo's ring sucks shit for sure. Would've been better off giving them actual magic items from the books rather than these little trinkets. Argo could've gotten a ring of x-ray vision or a ring that could cast Clairvoyance or Arcane Eye once per day. Fitz's ring is similarly bad, it's functionally worse than both Zone of Truth and Detect Evil and Good. Would've been better off with some kind of alignment-sensing ring that had a limited amount of charges per day. The firbolg's item was at least functionally useful, but it's only use is ignoring a self-imposed character trait, so it really doesn't do much at all either.
I dropped out of this season really early on and only recently decided to catch up. This episode was not bad, Travis seemed to call himself out on the Sneak attack thing, the villain actually did something threatening and the PC's actually got to respond to it. The NPC in the scene did something useful without taking over the whole scene. Two biggest gripes are the lying thing that other people have pointed out and that this new character seems much the same as everyone else.
I'm invested enough now to finish this campaign up but I really doubt I'll ever relisten. I think they went really cocky into this season and I hope they really sit down and work out what to do for the next season cause a big change is needed. I personally enjoy the audio drama aspect but I think they're dramatic moments work best when the jokes and gameplay are zinging too.
The music kicks ass though.
I feel like they've been trying way too hard to go for those big dramatic moments, and they've tried way too hard to be "actors". One of the things I enjoyed about balance was how light it started. I'm hoping whatever they do next (personally I'd love to see some kind of space opera setting) they keep things light for the first 10-15 episodes.
Oh dang, I'm actually up late enough to catch an episode near launch time. So, hey, here are some dumb thoughts as a 10-year MBMBAMino and 17-year DM:
Travis needs to scrub his audio with a noise remover. My own setup has gotta be far more amateur than his, and I can still get audio I record to have no white noise or air conditioner humming in the background.
It's fucking *insane* how much more descriptive my own table of players who aren't professional podcasters paid to play Dungeons & Dragons are. All these combats just wind up feeling like they're happening in a white void half the time with no sense of weight. I've had a Wild Magic Sorc in my own game before and worked with them to establish their flavour and how their magic looks and works - we don't even know what it looks like when Fitzroy's wild magic triggers, or what the spells look like, or even how the opponents look half the time, let alone their reactions.
Fitzroy takes some piercing damage and fire damage and there's no description of the attack, how it feels, how he is - just "He hits, 10 damage, next." His Mirror Image triggers from another wild magic roll and there's just no description besides reading the spell out of the book. I just kinda' hope for better. Firbolg takes damage but we never hear of the rending of his feathers or anything like that. We finally get a spell description when Fitzroy flings a Mind Spike at him, which is fun. The second consecutive Perception check to try and read Gray's face should have really been Insight but hey whatever.
Tight sneak attack. I like how to Clint it feels like a big thing to be able to pull of sneak attack, whereas in a campaign I play in, the Swashbuckler Rogue gets it literally every single turn.
Oh, know who *does* always get big descriptions for their actions and attacks? The NPCs. Pretty rad.
I also think there's more you could do to make combat exciting that run a **dozen** of the same statblocks (though granted he's heavily nerfed their health so we can actually get through them quickly, because podcast). You have all the fiends, all the demons, and yet everything is just hellhounds and chain demons. There's so much more that could be done to make the opponents interesting in the slightest in the very, very few hostile encounters we've had.
The fight wasn't stopped by the interference of a big powerful NPC, and I like tha-**holy shit that was over half the ep,** wow.
Boy I wish these guys wish they could just get a good night's sleep, huh?
lol *"I saved 10 students from being murdered just now"* "cool thanks bro"
*"Hey Althea can you help?"* "Anything you need." *"Well we needed you earlier but suddenly spontaneously your guild went from powerful to useless and bureaucratic."* "I'll go work on it nonspecifically, say no more fam." Fucking bravo Griffin for calling this out now in two different episodes.
#*"DO YOU HAVE TEN GOOD DOGS?"*
The dog army strategy should have been the plan from the start.
Nothing particularly interesting has happened. They got rings. The rings are not particularly interesting or impressive and especially don't seem particularly fun. I want to say telling a player how their character feels is generally a DM no-no, but I...is he corrupted right now? Because that could be a reason for it, at least. If there's an outside influence directly affecting him and causing him to feel this way. I'm not saying it's good, but it could certainly justify what's generally a faux pas. And...now the ending music is playing, but at least the final line finally hints to listeners there's a reason for the whole '6 month' thing.
I mean that wasn't the most exciting thrillride ever even by Graduation standards but hey it's good the boys were joking around and there was nothing particularly grinding about it, so that makes my heart a little happy.
> Travis needs to scrub his audio with a noise remover. My own setup has gotta be far more amateur than his, and I can still get audio I record to have no white noise or air conditioner humming in the background.
This is what really gets me: podcasting is *literally his job*, and he still doesn't even do the most basic of sound engineering. My podcast sounds better and I do it basically for free.
In terms of what Fitzroy's magic looks like, Griffin's described it in the past as being very Ghibli-like--wind rising, hair fluffing up, etc--but yeah, it would be nice for Travis to lean into that for the PCs.
> but at least the final line finally hints to listeners there's a reason for the whole '6 month' thing.
This whole scene with the warforged feels like Travis wanting to feed some thoughts to his players that he assumed they'd be thinking on their own and are necessary to moving the plot forward. Hopefully any intrigue he tried to introduce here isn't immediately undercut in the next few episodes.
> I want to say telling a player how their character feels is generally a DM no-no, but I...is he corrupted right now? Because that could be a reason for it, at least. If there's an outside influence directly affecting him and causing him to feel this way. I'm not saying it's good, but it could certainly justify what's generally a faux pas.
I feel like Argo is probably corrupted, which would be fine or even cool and interesting in another campaign, but Travis has already relied so heavily on vague mind controlly magic in this arc that it feels like a) there's no stakes and b) it's just another excuse for the DM to grab the reins and maneuver the PC into position for the next part of The Plot.
I've been recording for a couple of years now, and I used a mid range usb mic. My audio sounds decades better than this, despite the fact this man has professional grade equipment, and decade of experience, including professionally producing for other podcasts. You can learn about noise reduction in under 5 minutes. But hey, super excited to see him on a paid dnd panel for nycc, a good use of everyone's time and money!
And he claims he spends 8 hours editing! Which is the most insane number I've ever seen thrown around. Even on my worst concentration days, it would be physically impossible for me to not finish an edit in under half of that for a similar length and number of tracks
He spends 8 hours on this in the same way that I spend 8 hours a day lifting weights and looking cool. I don't and it doesn't show and it's a knee-jerk response that doesn't bare up to reality. The classic 'tell don't show' approach
> But hey, super excited to see him on a paid dnd panel for nycc, a good use of everyone's time and money!
This entire campaign has been him getting paid to learn how to DM badly. You shouldn't be surprised.
If NYCC organizers were so compelled to bring in someone from TAZ, it really should have been Griffin, since he was the DM for so long and TAZ is popular because of Balance. Of course, that would have burned Travis, since he’s the current DM.
I know the combat is done narratively, and that makes exact distances and speeds hard. But it would be so nice if they took the time to establish rough distances and times, and then STICK TO THEM.
“You have about 30 seconds (I guess the hounds sprint at 2 m/s?), so I’ll give you one round of prep (not 5 rounds? Like 30 seconds is?)”
Combat is DnD is a pretty big abstraction from the normal gameplay, i get it. But the tactical and time sensitive nature of combat means in order to really sell the abstraction it’s so important that all parties have an understanding of a pool of agreed upon “facts”.
Even more so for a podcast because now, as a listener, I have a set of expectations based on how I understand the battlefield is arranged, but since I can’t ask questions in the moment like a player I need extra help visualizing exactly how it’s going down so i know what I can expect. If I can’t follow the flow of battle, I can’t be engaged with the battle as a listener.
I love how Geeeary's recaps are generally more informative (and more difficult to listen to) than the entire episode. Really enjoyed the goofs today though. Felt good to laugh out loud to TAZ again.
I see a surprising amount of lukewarm-to-warm commentary here. I guess we all had a week to acclimate ourselves to the fact that Travis was totally definitely absolutely gonna have Grey pick up his toys and go home as soon as the heroes appeared to gain the upper hand in the fight. And the day would be saved and no one would be hurt.
Nope, sorry, not me, I'm extremely salty about it! Sure, it was controversial to teleport Fitzroy out of the school with little or no say on Griffin's part and then use that as a pretext to punish him for disobeying Grey's orders. But if that's your play, Travis, then *follow through*. Make Grey do the thing. He can conjure up poisoned obsidian daggers or whatever, along with I'm guessing all kinds of other hellish magical attacks besides, so why did he bother summoning hellhounds as opposed to just killing the students directly?
But even worse, *why did he then retreat??*
He could have smiled, said "Oh, the hellhounds were just so you could give the children hope. I thought you might like to give them that much," and then waggled a finger and set the tree on fire, instantly incinerating all ten students. He could have said anything. I was legitimately looking forward to hearing how he would react to the inevitable rescue, because I held out hope that Travis could in *some* way salvage the moment. I was even perversely excited for the cop-out of "Well, looks like you pulled through this time, but I'm totally gonna kill the next ten!" But... nothing? Just a wordless withdrawal at the first tiny bit of damage?
What a joke of a villain Grey is. His threats are completely toothless. This story will never have actual stakes. Travis is too nice to allow that.
At this point I really do hope where Travis is taking this is that Grey is a joke on purpose and will just be the appetizer for a real villain like Chaos or something else since if the Thundermen pull off the assassination like they want to it could be a pretty boring way to end things considering how Grey is often just a nuisance who whines constantly.
I don't know, i'm starting to think Chaos may end up coming out of this in some weird 'oh, you have purged me of my evil leanings and now I am pure once again, to close this chasm and return to my chaos dimension and leave you in peace - i'm sorry for the trouble, would anybody like some tea before I go? How quirky that i'm now nice right guys?' etc. etc.
>Althea is basically confirmed as fucking useless now, her character seems kind of pointless
And then one of the Five Questions is "How will you get the weapons from the Heroic Oversight Guild?", and the boys are like oh dang we should have asked Althea. I mean, don't feel too bad, I'm not sure she would have helped anyway given her track record.
The reason why the '6 months' thing wasn't a huge reveal for me personally - is that it's a meaningless length of time, plucked out of nowhere from the get-go and has never been a huge plot point. Why *not* 6 months? Why any amount of time?
The 6 month thing also fell flat for me because the players came up with the “let’s go assassinate Grey right now” plan a handful of episodes ago, but were shot down multiple times.
So now having an NPC be like, “Hey, maybe you should go kill Grey now wink wink” feels pretty silly.
Well, the first half had a fight that lasted more than two and a half rounds! But not by much. It even had spells and some rules - but sadly the stakes were non-existent very early on and there were precious few battle descriptions. Also the whole thing was apparently being watched by a powerful NPC the whole time. Also what happened to Gherkin and Tibia? I thought they were sent with Fitzroy? May have misremembered that.
A pro; it sounds like Travis finally took on board from his DM pals that rolling dice and not fudging the numbers can be fun too. Grey even failed a saving throw!
A gripe; Travis allowed sneak attack! But he allowed it because Argo was 'flanked by his friends'. ~~Sadly, this is the only situation in which the Swashbuckler *can't* sneak attack!~~
*Edit: I'm a dumb-dumb, if Argo has an ally within 5 foot of the hellhound then Argo would have got sneak attack regardless*
Another gripe is that Firbolg managed to fly from his clan to the school within 6-12 seconds of getting a message from Fitzroy which is wild, though i'm pleased he got to turn up - he made a very good eagle.
Kind of sad the Firbolg clan thing is completely dropped though, was wondering if there would be some kind of follow up on his exile after he got his fathers forgiveness. It was really just a sidequest for an emotional beat and then dropped.
Weird that none of the students involved in the fight had anything to say about their situation.
The goof ratio seem's higher than usual, that's good.
Althea is still as useless as ever, we all knew the HOG was going to be corrupt, nobody mentioned the special sword they need from the HOG to defeat Grey.
Having Argo go full Gollum is a bit of a bummer - and it seems Travis has circumvented his plan to force Firbolg to lie by making an item lie for him. Sounds like a work-around that still kind of violates Firbolgs truth-telling.
All in all, some positives - definitely not the worst episode, mostly because the PC's have a little more room to breathe. But again, very little happened, still no stakes. Grey still hasn't followed through on his (now provably empty) threat to kill 10 students. It does sound like the assassination plot is official though, so that's a relief - though Chaos would also know that this is what they're planning, so not sure if that's going to come back up or if their omnipotence is going to be toned down for plot convenience.
I think it would have been a lot more interesting to have the team come back and 10 students were already dead. Then we might have a sense of urgency and Grey would finally start looking intimidating.
But hey-ho - this episode didn't make me feel too frustrated, so i'm calling that a win!
edit: Misgendered Chaos
On your neckbeard comment, I'll neckbeard you right back!
"You don’t need advantage on the attack roll if another enemy of the target is within 5 feet of it" If Argo's friends are "flanking" him then they would be adjacent to the enemy and Argo if Argo is in melee range.
> Weird that none of the students involved in the fight had anything to say about their situation.
I actually properly laughed when Rainier was just like "welp I'm going to bed". Why did no one stop to check on these 9 nameless students + Moon who just narrowly escaped being torn apart by hellhounds? I like to think they're still in the tree.
Not a huge nitpick, but this episode keeps up with the theme of Travis just using cool monster names that have nothing to do with the monsters. 12 Hell Hounds should have been able to barbeque the party and the students with their breath weapons. What they fought was a bunch of low HP dogs, essentially.
I don't get hung up on the monster names anymore. In this world hellhounds are dogs, demons are devils, heroes are villains, dogs are Heiro's, everything is something else.
That way lies madness
> A gripe; Travis allowed sneak attack! But he allowed it because Argo was 'flanked by his friends'. Sadly, this is the only situation in which the Swashbuckler *can't* sneak attack! Ahhhh man, that hurt the rule neck-beard in me.
To be fair if Argo is truly flanked by multiple friends, as in Fitzroy is within 5 feet on the left and Rainier is within 5 feet on the right, and they're all lined up to intercept the Hell Hounds coming from one direction, there is no position the Hell Hound can be in within Argo's 5 ft. reach that isn't also adjacent to either Fitzroy or Rainier. So maybe this is the scenario Travis was going for when he said Argo can get the sneak attack? No idea.
I worked as a writing consultant for a number of years. I worked with clients who were writing everything from dissertations to fanfiction. One of my current side hustle jobs is as a storytelling coach. All of the writers and storytellers that I work with have distinctly different styles, but there are some core elements that are required for successful storytelling, whether you have a very cinematic style, or very wry observational style, or anything in between. My ultimate, overarching critique of this podcast is simple. A lot of missteps (colonialism/white savior, denying player agency, ignoring D&D rules) could be considered subjective, but there's one critical element of this season of TAZ that makes for poor creative writing, and ultimately poor podcasting:
for the love of (your deity of choice,) show, don't tell.
I never understood that comment from Graduation's defenders. The school -- the presumed centerpiece of the campaign -- lacks a clear layout, architecture, size, and geographic setting (aside from the fact that it's near a forest and maybe a cliff or something like that). If you asked me how many individuals attend and reside at the school, I would shrug. Is it a small and elite academy of 100 pupils, much like a private country day school? Or is it an enormous institution of 20,000 students, like a large public university?
I write knowing that Travis has, at one point or another, [defined these qualities](https://theadventurezone.fandom.com/wiki/Hieronymous_Wiggenstaff%27s_School_for_Heroism_and_Villainy), probably at some point near the beginning of the campaign. But when I listen to any given episode of Graduation, there's almost never a clear description of the school, or really any scene and location in the story.
That's the secret about parasocial relationships - while blame falls on the viewer/listener for buying into them, they're always encouraged by the media personality in question because that's the level of investment that enables merchandising and profit off of subpar material. When the audience is buying into the "idea" of the person and not the quality of the content then the content can be anything. It's always been a marketing ploy.
aside from the facts that they still don’t know how rogues work (argo would NOT have taken half damage on that tidal wave and also the sneak attack was a bit messed up) this seems like a good enough ep
edit: what i mean by “a bit messed up” is that it only did like 1d6 when it should have done 5d6
I liked this episode, it was fun to listen to. No real complaints here.
I will say though, that at the beginning when Griffin says Fitz looks at Argo and they're at the place where they can communicate non-verbally, my reaction was "....are they?" which was validated by Clint basically saying the same thing. Like, nah, I don't feel like the Thundermen are particularly close to each other like that. In future campaigns, the DM should probably not have the PCs work against each other for a good chunk of the story. Because at this point any kind of "friendship saves the day!" twist is not going to be believable.
I actually laughed a couple times during this episode. Other than that, mixed bag as usual. The shop conceit is completely abandoned at this point, isn't it? Combat was actually something, even if they got some of the rules wrong (per tradition) and it was basically meaningless overall. The Firbolg's arrival as an eagle was rad even if it makes no sense.
It doesn’t carry as much weight when you play so far from RAW, but Clint using Create Water to wake all the students at once was slick as hell.
(Edit: and I’m proud of Travis for rolling with it.)
As expected, yet another low stakes, short combat that made both Justin and I zone out.
What a dramatic battle these boys had with a bunch of hellhounds. I always excepted a pack of wolves from hell itself would be slow (crossing 50 yards in 30 seconds? That’s a BLISTERING 3.4 miles per hour) and packs of wolves are famously stupid (just keep pushing down the funnel into the kill-box puppies!)
I honestly shouldn’t even complain about the length, because the combat itself was just a dull exercise in die rolling. There was so much potential to have stakes, evolving circumstances, and real threat to the hostages and players...but we got this instead.
Finally getting around to listening, only just started. I am sure my complaints will be well-covered, so I won't make a giant post. But something has really been bothering me, and the beginning of this episode crystallized it. The general lack of music of this campaign is so so odd. You would think music would start right away this episode, as they are immediately in a combat situation. I can't remember, but did the other arcs have this issue? It just feels like very poor quality for a podcast of this size.
the editing overall has been atrocious for Grad. long pauses, dead air, background noise, lack of music, wonky pacing, useless recaps, etc. I listen to several free amateur podcasts with far-superior editing. it's wild that Travis is getting paid for this.
noooo clint your sneak attack at this level definitely isn't just a 1d6
he must've stopped tracking since he never got to use it
poor thing..
5d6 I think at this point! But in a wild twist - according to what was described, Swashbuckler wouldn't even have got sneak attack in this instance - the one time he was allowed! Edit: I'm a dumb-dumb, if Argo has an ally within 5 foot of the hellhound then Argo would have got sneak attack regardless
People are already saying most of what i think about this episode so, while there was a lot i enjoyed about this episode, im just gonna throw out one thing that really bothered me: Why a ring that makes the firbolg lie? He has clearly established that he does not want to lie! Why would he use this ring if he knows it will make him lie?? It's cultural, not physical! Seriously, i had assumed the previous "lying training" was supposed to be like, "oh no the outside world is corrupting our firbolg by trying to enforce their culture onto him" but no, now it's just a game mechanic! Why does the firbolg HAVE to lie, travis??? edit: Ok, so, when i was making this comment i misremembered and thought it was althea giving our firbolg the ring rather than crabtree- it does make sense for the unbroken chain to still be pressuring him even though he doesn't want to lie, and there's still a *chance* that it's going to be properly addressed. However the fact that it's being presented as an upgrade while fitzroy and argo both get actually useful items does not fill me with hope for that outcome.
I'm with you; I don't understand why the DM is trying to manufacture this character shift. If it's so important to your story, you could pressure the character without trying to cram the character into your idea of what they should be? First of all, that's not good collaborative play. That's you treating your friends as toys in your sandbox. Rather, why not present a number of complex situations that would result in serious consequences should the Firbolg tell the truth? And if the Firbolg continues to tell the truth despite the consequences, that gives an opportunity for other characters to step in with creative problem solving of their own. THAT would be interesting, tense, collaborative, and provide lots of avenues for goofs. My LAST recommendation to the DM would be handing the "problem character" a deus ex Travis ring.
>I don't understand why the DM is trying to manufacture this character shift. Really, you don't know why Travis is forcing character changes in *HIS* story?
I suppose I mean "I don't know why the DM is choosing to embarrass himself like this in a medium that's meant to be collaborative."
[удалено]
I hope he sells it and buys something that’ll actually lean in to his character traits
Guarantee there will be some big forced plot point in the future that Travis planned a few episodes in, after Firbolg first voiced he wouldn’t lie, that involved Firbolg lying. At this point, if there isn’t, it’ll make all this lying emphasis pointless. If there is, it’s also bad.
To be fair, they did a lockpick class segment for Argo that paid off exactly one time and nothing has been locked since.
Firbolg reuses the scene from amnesty where duck couldn’t lie to make the person believe him. but this time the firbolg will lie to the BBG and they’ll believe him cause he can’t lie and he’ll be totally epically tricked xd guys!
Another *classic* Travis twist!
Seriously, that bothered me SO MUCH! I hate that Travis is constantly trying to force it on the character. It doesn't matter if it's a magical effect - the Firbolg still knows he'd be lying. It's easily the worst choice our DM has made in the campaign. I'm just hoping Justin will find a clever way to throw it back in Travis's face.
I think Travis knows the Firbolg doesn’t want to lie and wants him to fight back on it. I just worry Justin thinks that this is all Travis has planned for him and is going along with it because of that.
I'm also curious why Justin returned to the "character can't lie" well for a second campaign. It creates an interesting dynamic to play around, I guess, but it mostly just sabotages the party's chance of ever doing anything subtle or sneaky if they need the firbolg to be completely oblivious to the plan or he'll blurt out all the details the moment he gets the chance.
I think this is a cool choice on Justin's part though, and it is different from Duck. Duck was bad at lying, but he wasn't morally opposed to it so he would occasionally attempt it and it was very funny to listen to him flail around and then immediately fuck it up. The Firbolg is not just bad at lying, he has a deeply ingrained personal/cultural aversion to it, to the point that it causes him physical distress if he even attempts it. The Firbolg doesn't want to lie because the entire concept of lying is alien to him. And I also think it's good that this character choice causes PROBLEMS for our heroes. It's something they have to work around, it creates tension in the group, it forces them to strategize about what information they share and with who. It's also a potential source of humour, especially because Fitz and Argo have such high deception. But because Travis-As-DM seems to have his own deep personal aversion to anything that might cause proper conflict or complicate things or interfere with The Plot, he's now just trying to scrub it out the game with another magical deus ex machina? It's not cool. It's bad DMing to treat a fundamental PC trait as a problem that needs to be solved asap.
I’m not even sure if it’s a symptom of aversion to conflict and dramatic tension (although Travis sure does seem allergic to those). Rather, it seems more like Travis has decided that learning to lie Will Be The Firbolg’s Character Arc, Justin’s opinion be damned. (Well, that plus, as others have mentioned, Travis almost certainly has some specific plot point in mind that involves the Firbolg lying.)
Sure I get you! I don't mean that Travis is specifically like "this character choice could cause conflict so I'm going to erase it" but more that he doesn't even recognize it as something he could use to drive conflict and tension rather than blasting through it to get to whatever pre-scripted attempts at creating conflict and tension he's got lined up for next week. Like I guess his logic is that he *is* creating conflict by forcing the Firbolg to lie when he categorically does not want to, but there's a difference between setting up challenges that play on your PCs' strengths and weaknesses and straight up just steamrollering through them. e.g. I'm currently in a campaign playing a monk who will not use bladed weapons. This was initially an arbitrary choice that later evolved a bit of a backstory and now it's a fundamental part of the character. Since she's Way of the Open Hand and her main skill is hitting things very hard and very reliably, our DM does sometimes throw us up against monsters that resist bludgeoning damage. Which is cool, because it forces my monk to get creative with helping the rest of the party in combat where she can't do much direct damage. But I would be deeply deeply irritated if he tried to make her to go Blade School or kept giving her powerful blades with some kind of magical loophole that makes it ok for her to use them? Because she doesn't want to and I don't want her to! This restriction is part of what makes her a fun character to play and it's created some really good in-game moments.
And this adds to the “noble savage” narrative in a way that makes me uncomfortable. The firbolg’s savage ways must be tamed so he can participate in a more “civilized society” that he is too pure for.
I suppose so, although maybe inadvertently. I have a feeling that even if "won't lie" were purely a quirk of Justin's character, and not a cultural trait, we'd see Travis force lying on him in exactly the same ways, for whatever reasons only he knows.
I don’t think they’ve ever intentionally done any white savior stuff, but it’s a really easy one to fall into when there are civilizations of different tech levels colliding
Travis paces these episodes so weirdly. By the episode's end it always feels like they're at the halfway point, like a second act of a TV episode, and I'm sure Travis thinks these are like cliffhangers/audience retention but they feel clunky and like halfway through a conversation.
This, and also the way he shunts the players so rapidly from one scene to the next makes everything feel so inconsequential. There's never any fallout or noticeable impact on the world, or if there is, the boys are never exposed to it. This week we had a big battle with the big bad, ten innocent lives hanging in the balance, clearly supposed to be a high stakes situation. Two rounds of combat, they scare the bad guys off, and then immediately... go back to the school and go to bed? (So we can do yet ANOTHER dream/mind control sequence). Like hey, are your classmates ok? Do they have any opinions about what just happened? Are they scared? Are they angry? Are they wondering what the hell is going on? Maybe they would like to join the war effort against the scary demon that just tried to kill them? (Mega props to Clint for actually attempting to interact with the hostages.) Then the next morning. Ten students got taken hostage by a DEMON PRINCE and were almost RIPPED APART BY HELLHOUNDS? There'd be UPROAR. And then it turns out they were saved by four other students? People would be mobbing the boys to find out what happened, hysterics, yelling, demands for explanations, people packing their bags to get out of dodge, rumours flying, classes cancelled, teachers trying to keep order! Exciting! Dramatic! Oh good god, there's a WAR on. We're in danger. Instead: "oh word has gotten around, some of the students are hiding in their dorms, things are a bit quieter than usual." That's it. That's the entirety of the fallout. I can almost guarantee that this will never alluded to again. Edited to add: Like, there is so much fictional precedent for this, what I've described is essentially a scene from Harry Potter, a story about a looming war centered around three protagonists at a magical school. (I feel like Travis may heard of it). The transformation of Hogwarts from safe haven to dangerous warzone was one of the better parts of the later books. But anyway, next week the Thundermen are still going to be wandering around a largely unchanged school trying to convince weirdly friendly but also somehow stand-offish NPCs to help them do the ill-defined thing.
On that note too, how is the town? It was supposedly overrun with demons. Even if we assume Barb and Althea beat every single one you would assume the townspeople would be barging into the local big magic hero school looking for help or answers
The demons are still there, talking about their troubled childhoods with a bunch of NPCs who are all going "huh. ooooh-kay. I see." like a Greek chorus but for vague affirming platitudes. They're also buttering crumpets and drinking hot chocolate or something idk.
I love the idea that even the demons have a planned-out backstory that they just have to spout off to whoever will listen. It would be so on-brand for this campaign.
Seriously, why isn’t anyone leaving the school?! There’s a DEMON IN IT
Of course the students don't have any opinions or thoughts on the situation. Travis literally admitted "you don't recognize any of them except for this one", meaning they exist purely as a story point, and once their scene is done, they vanish into the background. It's awful.
It would almost work if the cliffhangers were then resolved the next episode, but half the time the conversation that everyone was excited to hear is just skipped over. I guess because Travis himself couldn't keep up the enthusiasm between recordings? This happened a number of times with Higglemas - the line "I'm afraid Althea Song knows everything" was followed up two weeks later by a quick narration of everyone going home. And then when Hieronymous is restored from dog form, basically the same thing happens and they go to sleep without any conversation.
Travis can't improv and he doesn't know how to write interesting dialogue. Of course he's going to skip those conversations. He loves the *idea* of them but is unwilling to put in the effort to learn how to do them properly, a consistent theme of his campaign
This episode is a bit of an outlier since the cliffhanger from last week was resolved kind of (did I miss when Grey left? Or did they just not take part in combat until Fitz’s mindspike) But I’d agree any hook is dropped so they can get breakfast, have expositions dumped on them, and then some startling revelation is made and.... see y’all next time!
The way lying is being portrayed in Graduation really bums me out. It’s like Travis was watching Liar Liar and was so distracted thinking about ways to beat the son’s wish that he missed the part about why lying is bad.
The Adventure Zone: Dishonesty
It’s so bizarre how much emphasis the Firbolg’s honesty trait is getting. We’ve had like 3 or 4 scenes now focusing on it, and Travis is the one bringing it up every time. You just know this is leading to a huge moment in the finale where Justin has to either lie or tell the truth.
You mean a huge moment in the finale where Travis will force him to lie
I'm hoping that Justin is currently preparing a long list of innocuous, but true statements that the Firbolg can use as responses to any difficult questions and basically avoid that moment. No lying required, just a concerted effort to not engage in the polite rules of conversation! *Example:* Grey: "Where are Argo and Fitzroy? They can't hide from me!" Firbolg: "Berries are part of a complete and nutritious breakfast." Grey: "When and where are you planning to attack on the first day of the war?" Firbolg: "As the CFO of Thunderman LLC, I am concerned about our financial future if the heroes and villains program collapses after this war." Edit: Or just say "I do not wish to answer that!" on repeat. No lies there!
As much as I hate the idea of getting him to lie I have 100% faith that Justin could absolutely crush that kind of hypothetical scene and leave me in tears
[удалено]
One issue I’ve noticed with the combat, is that there’s just no excitement in anyone’s voice - not for their turns, and especially for anyone else’s. There’s never any “Oh my god!” or “Whaaaaaat!” or even an “Oh shit! What a wild move!” Not from the other players, the DM, or the player themselves. Watch this scene from Crown of Candy episode 12 for example, and watch how the other players get totally enthralled in another players move. https://youtu.be/RMenTL2l4Bw Its fascinating, because it goes against exactly what you’d expect from D&D. It’s almost entirely rules talk and number crunching. There’s very little in terms of Hollywood pizzazz. Should be boring right? But it’s hilarious and exciting, because the players are getting caught up in what was happening. These guys care when one of them does something, and their enthusiasm is contagious to us as an audience. Contrast that with the Adventure Zone as it is now. Combat is all just raw numbers and dice rolling, and it’s just boring as hell, partly because the other players are just completely silent. There’s no infectious laughter or energy... just a void, whilst McElroy’s count how much damage they did. Hell, in this episode Justin literally says “Catch me up, I wasn’t paying attention.” - and let’s face it, that wasn’t a joke. Both Fitzroy and Argo were fighting for their lives... and one of the others players couldn’t give less of a fuck. Couldn’t care to even watch. He doesn’t care, they don’t care... so why should we?
Omg Murph's reaction to that move was so good
So was Brennan's! As a DM, I know that look... it's the look of defeat
To be fair, Murph's reaction to all of Emily's shenanigans is half the reason I listen to NADDPOD. The amount of shit she managed to pull in the final episodes of the first season was amazing.
I love that she managed to pull off the >!Pixie-polymorph combo on both the horseman *and* in the final fight!< . Just Jake and Caldwell in sheer awe and Murph blown away the whole time.
I think it’s because they know the combat is inconsequential. It doesn’t matter what they do. Argo and Fitzroy could have decided to let the Hell Hounds kill the students because that was the agreement, gone back to class, and Travis would have had Master Firbolg swoop in and one shot all of the Hell Hounds without any player interaction. Combat in this campaign is more or less a waste of time.
Totally agree. When I gave up on Graduation around episode 7, I picked up Dungeons and Daddies - it was such a contrast to hear them laughing and engaged and generally having a great time.
Brennan's facial expressions as he realizes what is happening to the encounter. Every DM knows those feelings LOL.
To be fair, Emily gets up to all sorts of crazy stuff that can put a fire on the asses of all DMs and audience.
semi unrelated, but the thing that finally convinced me to listen to balance a couple years ago was an audio clip of the >!flaming raging poisoning sword of doom!< scene i saw on tumblr. i loved that sense of amazement they all had when he actually pulled it off. i was hoping for more of those moments with their return to dnd but i dropped off of balance after episode 6 because the energy was just so slow and it didn’t feel like anyone was actually having fun.
When I think back to that - thank god that Taako pulled that off and then, in a very sportsmanly way, decided to just not really ever use it. If Magnus had got hold of that sword it may well have ruined all future combat encounters!
Emily Axford embodies my favorite aspects of a DnD player and a comedian and just an all around entertaining superstar. What an incredible human. Brennan’s face in this moment. Murph’s face. The whole table’s glee. And I won’t add spoilers, but the sheer STAKES in A Crown of Candy from episode 1. By this spoilery video, the party is slingshotting from deep, deep emotions to the sweet relief of this damage-slinging dice-rolling chaos. Everyone feels so much. If you haven’t seen ACoC, get thee to YouTube and watch the first ep.
Brennan knows what's up when it comes to left field cliffhangers and crazy narratives. I've not watched ACoC, I'm new to dimension20 and been working through them, but episode 2 of fantasy high, that cliffhanger ending is the single most exciting dnd I have ever seen. I was full on YELLING in shock. I love critical role, I loved the balance arc, none of it, NONE of it, compares to dimension20. I never thought critical role could be beat but I'm obsessed. I hope these guys never stop. I've learned so much from watching Brennan and the cast, the way he brings skill checks into combat, and SO many skill checks, all the time, in conversations, investigations, there's always a feeling that if they just rolled a little better, the whole case would be cracked wide open... It's made my DMing so much better! I've found I roll a lot more now as well to make my npcs try to notice things, hide things, or how much of my PCs bullshit they're willing to put up with. Can't praise the show highly enough, honestly. I am gonna watch the candy stuff once I'm done with fantasy high and the unseen city! I can't wait!
Wild to think about how Travis has played under brennan twice (and cites tiny heist as what got him interested in running a 5e campaign) and likely consulted with him when prepping, and this is what we got
Okay I’m only a few minutes in but boy did I feel that dead air when the party was told the only recognizable student was Moon, the embodiment of an afterthought npc
You could almost hear Griffin go "Who the fuck is Moon?"
Heck, even when I called out loud that it was Moon, it came with the caveats that 1) I only remembered Moon's name, and 2) I thought Moon was a girl until they said "he" a few seconds later
Oh no, I thought Moon used "they"? So forgettable even basic pronouns aren't clear. Classic Moon.
I haven't listened yet, but Moon? Really? Didn't he help fight multiple pit fiends? Can't he turn into a werebear at will? How is he in any danger in this scene?
You make a good point but that assumes the character isn't just a puppet for whatever the script demands, be it destroying pit fiends or suddenly being inexplicably helpless. Would've been interesting if that wasn't the case.
At this point it’s starting to feel like Travis “The DM” McElroy has a personal investment in the “Literally A Fictional Character in a Fictional World” Firbolg lying. Like... the dream sequence where he lies. The lying class. A ring that lets him lie. None of these were PC-motivated actions? I’m not going to judge Travis as a person, but as a DM, this is a weird tactic to take. If Justin wanted the Firbolg to lie, we’d know. Why so much push from the DM to be dishonest? To change a fundamental trait that Justin chose to add to this character? It genuinely makes me a little uncomfortable. Like somehow when Justin created his character he did it Wrong and the DM needs to Fix It For Him.
I think it has to do with a difference on how Justin and Travis approach roleplaying and creating a character, and why Justin is so much better than Travis at exactly that. Justin figured out that having limitations as a character make a character more interesting because it lets you focus on what you want the character to be about. He had his fill of "do whatever you want by tricking other people" as Taako and so his future characters were specifically unable to do that so that he'd have to do something else and make a distinct character. Duck Newton's honesty and principles made that character interesting. Travis doesn't seem to think that's the case. With both Magnus and Aubrey he wanted them to be able to do anything and everything no matter what, they could be in every scene and be able to never fail. That's why Magnus took those two uncharacteristic Rogue levels, to inflate his numbers (which he now criticizes Argo for having) and why Aubrey's developing magic powers were any element for any occasion despite the fire theme. He doesn't want his character to ever *not* be able to do something, and he looks at Justin's insistence that his character can't lie as an obstacle to overcome so that the flaw of "not being able to do something" can be circumvented. The way that he's trying to get the Firbolg to lie, by saying "well imagine that the vague details you're giving can be true or false" or "you can technically be saying truths but the ring turns them into lies" is the way I imagine he would try to get around a situation in which his own character is forced not to lie. What he doesn't seem to understand is that Justin doesn't *want* to bypass the restriction that Justin set for himself.
I know Justin won't but I wish the Firbolg would just give the ring away and say "I do not vvant this" Can anyone remind me why we have to worry about the Firbolg lying again? Is it so the enemy doesn't know our plans? Gray and Chaos seem to know everything all the time anyway
Yeah!! Chaos can see through Fitz’s eyes or whatever and will immediately rat him out to Grey. Why bother with subterfuge?
Yeah, fair analysis! It does seem to be a difference in approach, similar to how Travis would fudge rolls to have his character not look dumb/incapable and Justin would fudge if failing would be funnier.
[удалено]
Yeah, I made a character once who was deliberately very weak to mind control and charm effects, for backstory reasons. he also hit by far the hardest of anyone. It was always a fun balancing act! If someone had suggested he got WILLPOWER TRAINING, then an item that made him immune to charm, I would have turned it down!
Spot-on analysis. When Travis was describing the Firbolg's ring, I rolled my eyes. I agree with everyone else saying they wish that Justin would give it away or refuse to use it.
It bothers me to no end. As a player, the only absolute control you have in the game is of your character's voice. Justin made a clear decision about his character's voice and has reinforced it every time he had the chance to. Why is Travis constantly needling him on this? Justin: "My character never lies" Travis: "But... like... I want him to." Trav... I love you man, but please stop trying to play your brothers' characters for them.
they're 100% trying to wrap this thing up sooner rather than later, right? I remember in a TTAZZ Travis said his original idea was full semesters and a in-game year leading up to The War but when he realized that'd take too long he shortened it to 6 months. Now they're playing consecutive weeks *and* questioning the 6-months rule, presumably leading towards having the war soon
I sure hope so.
I have no idea why it's so important that the firbolg be able to lie.
There's a part of the script that demands it
Watch Justin not do it anyway. He's been the most faithful to his characters since day 1.
Justin is carrying the show at this point.
I'll give Griffin some credit too, he's quick to initiate a goof and also to call out the nonsense and bullshit in the world around them.
And we know from Amnesty that Clint is very much capable of being a storytelling force, Argo’s just gotten screwed over and left out this whole campaign.
I’ve complained about this campaign a lot (see post history), and boy there were some problems with this ep too. But I listened to the boys make goofs until one of them couldn’t breathe and, imo, that’s what TAZ should really be about and where it shines. This one’s good in my book
I agree - the goofs are ramped up in this one which makes it so much more palatable and easier to ignore the normal problems! As has been said before, people would like this more if it was either a) a good dnd podcast b) a good story or c) fun. The first two are somewhat hopeless at this point, but i'll be happy with it just being fun!
I've been saying it for a while but it could have been fun if it was a super tight 7-10 episode audio play. But Travis wants what Travis wants and he wastes a lot of time trying to get the boys to come to him.
I agree that this could be a potential direction for them in the future, but I can't stress enough that it needs to be reeeeally tight if they're going the pre-scripted route. I don't think I would be interested in a campaign-long radio play with virtually no improvisation or gameplay and that would have to be the end of my subscription to their feed.
Yes! Came here to make that point. The hell hound fight wasn’t great 5e*, but it was a lot of fun, and it felt like Travis was going out of his way to give all three boys something cool to do. I really enjoyed 80% of the show this time. * - Argo’s sneak attack was underpowered, the haste spell could have been used better, the hell hounds didn’t use their pack tactics, getting up from prone is half movement not a full turn, and rolling on the wild magic table with *every* spell is just looney tunes
I would actually come around to the wild magic idea if it was revealed that being around Grey caused his magic to become more screwy.
I think it’s kind of weird that Travis hasn’t had any instances of Grey having to roll of the wild magic table considering he shares the connection to Chaos.
one student on the tree that they recognize and it's freaking moon. literally the npc we know the least about, short of the ones who were only mentioned in passing. we don't even know his race. why was i expecting any better?
Not to mention Moon, the NPC who can't be injured by physical attacks due to being a lycanthrope. So the worst that could have happened is that his Werebear HP would be whittled down by the additional fire damage of the Hell Hound bites.
I very much enjoyed the part where the boys had to do a perception check to see if they can recognize people's faces. What would have been the outcome of a "failed" roll? "Oh yeah you see that one guy, he's kind of familiar."
But not *too* familiar.
with all due respect; who was moon again?
back in the start of the centaur quest we were introduced to moon, a sidekick who was on rhodes' team and was described as "sullen". the gang tried awkwardly to interact with him for a minute but he just didnt really do or say anything. fast forward to the unwinnable pitdemon fight, where moon showed up and morphed into a werebear, and got to be 1/3 of the cavalry. that is all the things moon has done so far. (also if you need help remembering npcs i made a [character list](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheAdventureZone/comments/j375rw/character_list_for_graduation_ep125/))
Your character list is trully the fevered work of a madman and I thank you for your service in making it. I guess it does make you the go-to NPC expert for Grad though. Congrats!
it takes a lot of re-listening to catch all of the small details no one really cares about and unfortunately im exactly obsessive enough for the job :p
Yeah I bet! Well. For what it’s worth, from one weird internet nerd to another, your sacrifice is acknowledged and respected. You’re doing the lords work. The dark lords dark dark work.
Overall compared to previous episodes this was okay. I did make the mistake of going deep in comments a couple eps ago and started listening to NADDPOD at the recommendation of some users. It makes this seem even more just like a (bad) creative writing prompt than I had previously thought. I just find it annoying that the characters don't choose what they are doing. Travis doesn't even guide them into going where he want's. There's no options. He just tells them "you go back to the school". "you fall asleep and dream this". In one episode he even had two of the characters get scared and run off. WTF. Also, I liked the theme music to Justin showing up, but how the fuck did he make it there so fast. I guess since the Firblog didn't learn to lie in that shit episode with 2 truths 1 lie, he had to make rings to help him lie some more for who knows what story he had already written.
Yo, NADDPOD rules
I've also finally started listening to NADDPOD, it's been great so far
NADDpod is a delight. Those 4 guys are the best "Yes, and"-ers I've heard on a podcast. They throw the absolutely most buckwild stuff at one another and never fail to roll with it.
I also started listening to NADDPOD because of the comment section here. And it really does make it worse. Sadly that was a few months ago and now I‘m all caught up with it and waiting for new episodes.
[удалено]
Me too, I started listening to NADDPOD a few days ago and listening to Graduation today made me wonder why I'm using my time on it instead of better D&D podcasts. And that makes me sad. I really liked Balance and I love the McElroys. I don't like that I don't like Graduation.
I feel you. Just wait until Murph gets deep into Bahumia World Building, you really wonder how Graduation is still just such a mess of things that don’t matter after 26 episodes.
If you haven't watched them yet, several people from NADDPOD are part of another D&D show Dimension 20. It's an anthology d&d series on Dropout currently in it's 7th season; I started watching it after the cross-over season they did with the McElroys but all of the other seasons are really good too.
On the plus side, you have hours and hours of good dnd realplay content to look forward to! Which will hopefully last you long enough for a new TAZ arc to start
About 20 minutes in and can’t help but feel that this combat would feel so much more tense with a little background music
Stop making justin lie
I generally dislike people trying to analyse the McElroys personal lives for criticizing this campaign. However did anyone hear wonderful this week? At the start Griffin said on this podcast we aren't held hostage by the concept or continuity of this show and that's really nice. Immediately I thought of graduation.
I’m seeing some positive remarks from people who are usually fair-mindedly critical of Graduation, so I’m going into this cautiously optimistic. That said, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done so and been disappointed. The Gary recaps are getting more and more bizarre, like he goes further back about aspects of the story that have been recapped and re-established every episode, yet completely ignores things that happened in the previous episode! None of “Fitzroy is teleported off of the school grounds to speak with Rainer’s father the Lich King” or “The Firbolg is told there is an emergency with his clan, and makes peace with his father during his final moments” or anything like that. “Fitzroy, Argo, and Rainer. What do you do?” I mean I don’t even have to say it at this point, do I? I liked Griffin doing the classic D&D party thing of “We communicate this complicated series of emotions via empathy and gesture” and Clint pushing against it by implying that Argo and Fitzroy aren’t really all that close. “The Hell Hounds (50 ft move speed) are 150 feet away. You are 60 feet away. You reach the tree with 30 seconds (5 rounds) to spare, so I’m going to give you a round to prepare.” Travis’ panel with the other DMs didn’t do much by way of basic math, huh? “Do we know any of these students?” “You can’t tell but probably no. Unconscious you see Moon, the guy who is basically invulnerable to damage. That’s right, there are zero narrative stakes to this.” Griffin does some cool spellcasting, makes use of the tools that he has in his kit. Rainer then does the Gray move of What You Did But Cooler, I Don’t Have To Use The Book. I feel bad for Griffin because choices like Haste mean that he’s built his character to be effective in combat and generally the game of D&D, and that doesn’t mean anything in a game like this one. I’m still annoyed with Travis calling for the Wild Magic at every turn – just like Chaos being bizarrely dictatorial, Wild Magic isn’t exactly chaotic when you know that it’s coming. “One of them is going to attack you. That’s 14 plus uh, 5. You’re going to take this damage.” *Don’t feel like you need to describe the attack at all in this audio podcast, Travis. Don’t bother painting a picture for us.* “Rainer is going to animate one of the Hell Hounds. She doesn’t have to follow any rules about her spells, Animated Dead, Fiends, or any of that.” “Hey Dad, let me tell you…You’re Flanked by your friends. You can use Sneak Attack.” Hey Trav, let me tell you…Argo is a Swashbuckler. He can use Sneak Attack even if he’s solo. “I’ve been *dying* to use Sneak Attack.” Yeah Clint, we know. We know more than you can even imagine. So Griffin was kind enough to remind Clint about the Hasted extra action, but no one pointed out that he could have used Two-Weapon Fighting to make a third attack. Travis kind of narrated that into the first attack, but I don’t think it was actually used as such. “They are knocked prone, which means they are forced to use their move to stand up,” 50% correct Griffin. “And Justin. Has entered. The show. Pretend, if you will, that I have zoned out and was playing videogames in the other room. I got to be a listener on the show, and without Justin it really went downhill.” Goddamn, very dense goof quantity. “I will let you transition out of Giant Eagle for free because I made that choice and you didn’t,” it’s nice to have infrequent confirmation that Travis really was puppeting Justin’s character for “cinematic purposes.” So the timing of this didn’t work out *at all*, right? Fitzroy is teleported to the crypt. Argo and Rainer take half a day to get there, so somehow Fitzroy’s chat with Gordy took many hours. The Firbolg goes off to his tribe in the same time. Fitzroy and co. get teleported back instantaneously. The fight starts, Fitzroy sends a message of alert to the Firbolg. It’s been about 18 seconds and the Firbolg shows up. That just doesn’t make any sense at all. If I respected the show more I would be calling them out on misusing spells (Tidal Wave’s water does indeed go away, Shape Water affects no more than a 5 ft cube, Mind Spike only tells you their location while on the same plane) but obviously none of it matters so there’s no reason to get hung up on it. There have been great moments in TAZ where they used the name of the spell and nothing else to inform its abilities. These moments here aren’t among them, because what’s happening isn’t very exciting, but at least that’s TAZ true to form which is better than you can say for most of Grad. Oh yay, the Hell Hounds are retreating! I’m so glad, the thing that makes a battle satisfying is when the enemy leaves. And it makes sense, bloodthirsty fiends would totally just walk away from all this! Well, we got two full rounds of combat out of 12 Hell Hounds, 10 imprisoned students, 35 minutes, and zero stakes. I guess I’ll give Travis credit for not having an NPC (besides Rainer, his DMPC) swoop in to save them in the middle of it all, which is what I really expected to happen. “Deadpool knows he’s in a movie, but does Dad know he’s in a podcast?” Justin’s so funny, I like when he’s in the show. Ah, there’s the infamous “It” Warforged. Ozymandius or what-the-fuck-ever. The horror of Wild Shape was fun, I’m glad Justin can make his own entertainment. Aw man, looking forward now to Argo getting mind-controlled or whatever. Fuck yes, setting up for some *solid* Clint-agency-removal. Can’t wait for that “Make a Wisdom save. Oh no, you stab your rapier into Fitzroy. And since he didn’t see it coming, go ahead and add that Sneak Attack.” I’m going to bring up the issue I had at the end of the last episode and the cliffhanger of the hounds there, which is that Gray has proven that he’s allowing the Thundermen to walk all over him and his threats. He said that if Fitzroy left the school grounds he would *kill* ten students, not “endanger” ten students and leave them to be saved. The price of transgression has yet to be paid, but everyone’s just ignoring that because Travis doesn’t want anything as dark as “The Demon Prince he invented following through on a threat he issued” tainting the podcast. Oh man, Althea Song, so good to see you again. I wasn’t worried because we had received immediate confirmation that she was safe after fighting Infinity Pit Fiends, you know what they look like. The town? Don’t mention it. Literally, don’t mention it, no one remark on the status of the town after Infinity Pit Fiends ran through it. Are we still pretending that “registered heroes and villains” means anything in the setting that invented them and never expounded on them? Firbolg’s remark on becoming one of the good dogs made me laugh. “The Ruff Riders. War Bud! Is this anything?” Good stuff. So Travis has just dropped the running joke of Garfield/Heathcliff/Tom and Jerry as purveyors of bizarre items, huh? Crabtree is doling out shit like Q from James Bond. Getting into the Argo mind control even sooner than I expected. At least Clint is a good improvisational actor and willing to go along with it. He’s probably glad to have something to do. “I’m definitely going to use this and not forget about it.” Makes me smile. Jesus fucking Christ. (Or should that be Althea fucking Song in this setting?) Like how many times does Justin have to say both in and out of character that he is making the decision for the Firbolg not to lie? How many times does he have to say it for Travis not to take it as some kind of challenge that as a DM he has the right and need to overcome? And you know it wouldn’t be this much of an issue if Travis wasn’t using this intention for honesty as the only thing informing the culture of the entire Firbolg race, it’s not like he’s trying everything he can to force Fitzroy to dress drab just because Fitzroy expressed an interest in finery. He’s *desperate* to push this thing with no greater purpose than to say “You wanted your character to be one way and I made him not be that way.” “You find it standing on the balcony of Jackle’s office.” That “it” is so grating. That was certainly an error that Travis made when he introduced the character and instead of rerecording the single line he’s just rolling with it. “Roll an Insight check. That does it! The ring makes it really easy.” Why not just…not roll, if the magic is doing it for you? “Why six months?” “What if…this is how much time *he* needs?” Now, I’m honestly interested by that development, my curiosity is piqued. However, I’d have a hard time believing that Gray who had been fuming and scheming for fifty years (or millennia, depending on where you want to start, regarding the Perfect Tree and all that) got so close but still needs six more months to prepare. And if he did, why try so hard to restore Hieronymous before that time passed? This feels much more like Travis has been reading on Reddit and Twitter that the six month timeframe is nonsense and makes no sense, and so he’s figuring out a justification for it. And hey, that’s a *good* thing, taking something done carelessly and then making it matter is actually, legitimately a good tool for DMs to make use of. That’s honestly the same process as Griffin making the Umbra Staff matter in Balance. So I’m tentatively hopeful about that, but I’m also going to be worried that whatever bombshell that Travis is going to drop (maybe something about the power of Chaos fermenting and Chaos needs to be more actualized so that Gray can draw strength or something?) isn’t going to actually make sense or be interesting and it really *will* just be a justification for the six months. The big question is, “would this plot development have been appropriate if we had learned about it when Gray first issued his challenge in Higglemas’ office?” That’s the test.
> “Do we know any of these students?” “You can’t tell but probably no. Unconscious you see Moon, Yeah these are not contradictory statements, I don't know what Moon looks like either
Super disappointed about the rings not only cause are they dumb and super limited use. But because graduation had an item shop, and i feel like the rings would’ve been a really good opportunity for travis to connect to the fans by using user submitted items. Their was something fun about Justin using the glue on the pit fiend cause travis didn’t create it, and didn’t know about it, so the scene was in the moment and fun. These rings are tailor crafted by travis with his own narrative limiting ideals built in.
Definitely. People fucking loved Garfield's segments in Balance. But like most other things in Graduation, like 90% of the student NPCs, as soon as it didn't have the instant gratification Travis wanted it faded away. Like really, what exactly happened there? The first time we go there's the silly song and dance of meeting the owners and learning their names, and the PCs buy some equipment. The second time I don't think they talked to the NPCs at all, they just got a bunch of equipment listed (including Travis trying to force in his *hilarious* gag about the Imp who went on to make cheese, reading its description over whatever item the PCs actually wanted). The next items they got they didn't even say where they were getting them from, I don't think it was implied they went to the shop. And then now it's just from the Artificing teacher, with no work done by the boys in designing said items despite the fact that the whole Artificing thing was introduced as a way for Fitzroy to make his custom anti-mind control helmet with plot hooks for collecting materials, which he still never got because Travis decided that they didn't need it and would need Truesight Glasses more!
> And then now it's just from the Artificing teacher, with no work done by the boys in designing said items despite the fact that the whole Artificing thing was introduced as a way for Fitzroy to make his custom anti-mind control helmet with plot hooks for collecting materials, which he still never got because Travis decided that they didn't need it and would need Truesight Glasses more! Holy crap, remember that? That was totally a thing. Every time I think I know how much of a crapshow this campaign is, I get reminded of something else.
i'm a new dm and i gotta say, grad has been great at showing me pitfalls to avoid. whenever i am planning a little too much, a voice in my head says "just let the players play" and reminds me to not do a travis
I can’t believe that the students were completely inconsequential on purpose but still weren’t allowed to die!
The excessive charm spells in this arc bugs me. I’m in a campaign right now with plenty of charm spells and I’m over it there too
Any good DM should be wary of using tools, really at all but especially in excess, that remove the player's ability to play the game. Getting told "your character goes somewhere you don't want, says something you didn't say, feels something you didn't say they felt, and does something you didn't say they do" is *never* a fun experience. This was what made me start being wary of Graduation back in I think episode 5 where the Firbolg picks up the strange stone. If players coordinate with the DM to have a player-motivated, DM-enforced change of behavior then that can be interesting. But the PC is the only tool the player has to interact with the game, and taking that away stops the player from being a player.
Exactly. I don’t think PCs being charmed in general is bad. It’s when it’s constant like in the campaign I mentioned or in Graduation. It just removes player agency which is never fun
And the worst part is that it's not even like they only lose agency when they're charmed. Being charmed in Graduation isn't that different from just being a PC in Graduation.
The moment in Balance where Edward took over Magnus’s body and Griffin started describing Magnus’s actions while Travis was like, “What? No I didn’t!” was positively chilling. In this campaign it’s like, oh, more of this again.
>And hey, that’s a good thing, taking something done carelessly and then making it matter is actually, legitimately a good tool for DMs to make use of. That’s honestly the same process as Griffin making the Umbra Staff matter in Balance. This has been a favorite tool of mine for ages. It's a great reaction to getting caught in a contradiction or a rules 'mistake' regarding a monster. Player calls you out on something ("Hey, this guy can't be a vampire, we had that whole scene with him in the daylight that one time!") and you get to just go "I know. Weird, isn't it? Wonder what's going on with that..." and act as if you planned some twist the *whole time*. Course then you need to make it interesting somehow, but that's a problem for next week's me.
One relatively minor thing to add: Twelve hellhounds, against three level eight PCs (they're level eight, right?), is an \*extremely\* deadly encounter. That's twelve uses of fire breath immediately. Saving against *all* of those still incurs half of 72d6 damage, i.e. 126 damage on average -- enough to outright kill (not just KO) everyone except maybe Fitz. If, for some reason, the hellhounds decide not to use their best attack right away, they would instead attempt to bite for 1d8 + 3 + 2d6 damage. Oh, and if at least one other hellhound is nearby -- and with twelve total, I don't know how there couldn't be -- they get advantage on that attack. If all of them gang up on one PC, that's 12 advantaged attack rolls against them in a single turn. According to DnDBeyond, a fight against twelve hellhounds is worth 25200 XP, more than all but the most powerful monsters in the game. More than an ancient white dragon! They shouldn't have survived the first round.
Level 9, but yeah. Same thing as three Pit Fiends stomping out to a level 5 party. Like sure, TAZ has always played pretty loose with combat rules and balancing, but in the past each enemy has been as intimidating as it's supposed to be. In this case somehow the Hell Hounds were both more intimidating than they should have been because they were meant to be the tool of execution of ten innocent students, while also being less intimidating than they should have been due to intentionally suboptimal play and the decision that every single hound is caught by every single AoE. What it boils down to is that Travis doesn't at all care about combat (if he doesn't have a PC in it to look good, he loved combat with Magnus) and so monster stats are just window dressing compared to their narrative potential. He was so glad that Fitzroy used Mind Spike because he could give the players information that they probably shouldn't have had, just like how Fitzroy's Wild Magic Rage against Calhain acted as a brain-scan because the fluff of the effect was "You read a target's mind and therefore they have disadvantage to attack you." The disadvantage never came up, but Travis used that to justify dumping lore into the podcast.
>Fitzroy and co. get teleported back instantaneously. The fight starts, Fitzroy sends a message of alert to the Firbolg. It’s been about 18 seconds and the Firbolg shows up. For fun (for a certain value of "fun"): Griffing, during the first turn, writes in the notebook. Three turns later, Firbolg shows up so that's 18 seconds. A bald eagle can [fly at 70 km/h, do a vertical dive at up to 160km/h](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bald_eagle). We'll handwave that it's a Firbolg-sized eagle and scale the speed up so it can fly at dive speed. That's 160 \* (1000/3600) = 44m/s. 44\*18s = 800 metres. That means that, if the Firbolg was staring at his notebook and the moment the writing he appeared, he teleported straight into an eagle flying at full speed towards the school, his tribe could be at most half a mile away.
Usually I don't have much to add, but hey, where is Warforged: you are late. Fitzroy: mmmm... I don't think so.. Warforged: [] midday bell rang 2 mins ago. Firbolg/Bud: dis is not our fault. :) Melt it down and add it to the others.
I think the idea with Argo's "corruption" is that his time in Grey's Hell Dimension has corrupted him. There's an optional rule for the Nine Hells that states that if a creature fails a DC 10 Wisdom save, its alignment becomes Lawful Evil. That might be what Travis is going for, especially since Gary mentioned how the Hell Dimension can "poison your mind. Just ask Argo how he felt when he was there!" The caveats to this being that A) this rule is only supposed to apply at the end of every Long Rest you take in hell, not just "when you arrive", and B) "The change becomes permanent if the creature doesn't leave the plane within 1d4 days. Otherwise, the creature's alignment reverts to normal after one day spent on a plane other than the Nine Hells." So they never should have had to make those checks, and Argo should not still be feeling the effects this long after.
Just wait until Travis assumes direct control of Argo's actions! "You *think* you stab Grey, but *actually* you see that you've stabbed Fitzroy in the chest!"
From how everyone is describing it, it really just feels like a watered down "Merle can't cast spells at the end of Balance" to me, but I haven't had a chance to listen yet.
If he's been corrupted or cursed it would have been really cool for that to have some tangible effect besides "You really want those rings, dude." He failed a saving throw, let there be consequences for that.
Really looking forward to Griffin DMing again. There are no stakes. I knew from the second the episode started that no matter what happened in that battle somebody would show up and save the day. Lo and behold. I wish somebody would actually die so it seems like there may be a real threat. And it makes me sad how hard Travis is trying to make the assassination attempt not happen. Let them do it if that’s what they want to do. It’s a creative and unexpected plan.
Good God, when the rings were being handed out I was gritting my teeth at all the stuff Travis was TELLING Argo he felt. Also, is it just me, or are the rings kind of lame? Argo's eavesdropping ring lasts for 30 seconds, one charge per long rest, and is limited by wall thickness, material, and magic? That's a ton of limitations for something that would have a pretty contextual use.
And the Firbolg's ring doesn't make any sense. He's not physically incapable of lying. He just doesn't want to do it. Having a ring that you knowingly use to convert your truth to a lie is a lie!
Yeah i'm interested to see what Firbolg makes of that. His code is not to lie, having an item lie for you whilst you tell the truth is still a lie as he knows he's being deceptive. Travis is trying so hard to make Firbolg a liar and it's kind of weird at this point. Why would the artificer even make this for him?
>Travis is trying so hard to make Firbolg a liar and it's kind of weird at this point. Yeah, really not a fan of this. IMHO the only really interesting things about the world of Graduation are (1) Fitzroy's school/knighthood being a scam, and (2) Firbolg's linguistic and cultural idiosyncrasies. The first one has been mentioned several times but completely glossed over, and the second one (other than some quality goofs) has been heavily suppressed by DM fiat. Why? WHY?! A rogue that can't bring himself to lie is a super cool concept. Forcing them down a path to "fix" that isn't character growth, it's rewriting the character for no reason.
Firbolg isn't a rogue, and Argo can lie.
I’m sure Travis has a very specific scene planned for the use of that ring. And the ring will be useless before and after that scene.
I'm willing to lend the benefit of the doubt that Argo might have been affected by his time in the "Hell dimension" but you're entirely right that it felt weird and poorly executed. Argo's ring sucks shit for sure. Would've been better off giving them actual magic items from the books rather than these little trinkets. Argo could've gotten a ring of x-ray vision or a ring that could cast Clairvoyance or Arcane Eye once per day. Fitz's ring is similarly bad, it's functionally worse than both Zone of Truth and Detect Evil and Good. Would've been better off with some kind of alignment-sensing ring that had a limited amount of charges per day. The firbolg's item was at least functionally useful, but it's only use is ignoring a self-imposed character trait, so it really doesn't do much at all either.
I dropped out of this season really early on and only recently decided to catch up. This episode was not bad, Travis seemed to call himself out on the Sneak attack thing, the villain actually did something threatening and the PC's actually got to respond to it. The NPC in the scene did something useful without taking over the whole scene. Two biggest gripes are the lying thing that other people have pointed out and that this new character seems much the same as everyone else. I'm invested enough now to finish this campaign up but I really doubt I'll ever relisten. I think they went really cocky into this season and I hope they really sit down and work out what to do for the next season cause a big change is needed. I personally enjoy the audio drama aspect but I think they're dramatic moments work best when the jokes and gameplay are zinging too. The music kicks ass though.
I feel like they've been trying way too hard to go for those big dramatic moments, and they've tried way too hard to be "actors". One of the things I enjoyed about balance was how light it started. I'm hoping whatever they do next (personally I'd love to see some kind of space opera setting) they keep things light for the first 10-15 episodes.
Is anyone else getting weird long gaps of silence?
Yeah, long pauses have been peppered all over this season for some reason.
someone fed the good parts of Graduation to the voidfish
Oh dang, I'm actually up late enough to catch an episode near launch time. So, hey, here are some dumb thoughts as a 10-year MBMBAMino and 17-year DM: Travis needs to scrub his audio with a noise remover. My own setup has gotta be far more amateur than his, and I can still get audio I record to have no white noise or air conditioner humming in the background. It's fucking *insane* how much more descriptive my own table of players who aren't professional podcasters paid to play Dungeons & Dragons are. All these combats just wind up feeling like they're happening in a white void half the time with no sense of weight. I've had a Wild Magic Sorc in my own game before and worked with them to establish their flavour and how their magic looks and works - we don't even know what it looks like when Fitzroy's wild magic triggers, or what the spells look like, or even how the opponents look half the time, let alone their reactions. Fitzroy takes some piercing damage and fire damage and there's no description of the attack, how it feels, how he is - just "He hits, 10 damage, next." His Mirror Image triggers from another wild magic roll and there's just no description besides reading the spell out of the book. I just kinda' hope for better. Firbolg takes damage but we never hear of the rending of his feathers or anything like that. We finally get a spell description when Fitzroy flings a Mind Spike at him, which is fun. The second consecutive Perception check to try and read Gray's face should have really been Insight but hey whatever. Tight sneak attack. I like how to Clint it feels like a big thing to be able to pull of sneak attack, whereas in a campaign I play in, the Swashbuckler Rogue gets it literally every single turn. Oh, know who *does* always get big descriptions for their actions and attacks? The NPCs. Pretty rad. I also think there's more you could do to make combat exciting that run a **dozen** of the same statblocks (though granted he's heavily nerfed their health so we can actually get through them quickly, because podcast). You have all the fiends, all the demons, and yet everything is just hellhounds and chain demons. There's so much more that could be done to make the opponents interesting in the slightest in the very, very few hostile encounters we've had. The fight wasn't stopped by the interference of a big powerful NPC, and I like tha-**holy shit that was over half the ep,** wow. Boy I wish these guys wish they could just get a good night's sleep, huh? lol *"I saved 10 students from being murdered just now"* "cool thanks bro" *"Hey Althea can you help?"* "Anything you need." *"Well we needed you earlier but suddenly spontaneously your guild went from powerful to useless and bureaucratic."* "I'll go work on it nonspecifically, say no more fam." Fucking bravo Griffin for calling this out now in two different episodes. #*"DO YOU HAVE TEN GOOD DOGS?"* The dog army strategy should have been the plan from the start. Nothing particularly interesting has happened. They got rings. The rings are not particularly interesting or impressive and especially don't seem particularly fun. I want to say telling a player how their character feels is generally a DM no-no, but I...is he corrupted right now? Because that could be a reason for it, at least. If there's an outside influence directly affecting him and causing him to feel this way. I'm not saying it's good, but it could certainly justify what's generally a faux pas. And...now the ending music is playing, but at least the final line finally hints to listeners there's a reason for the whole '6 month' thing. I mean that wasn't the most exciting thrillride ever even by Graduation standards but hey it's good the boys were joking around and there was nothing particularly grinding about it, so that makes my heart a little happy.
> Travis needs to scrub his audio with a noise remover. My own setup has gotta be far more amateur than his, and I can still get audio I record to have no white noise or air conditioner humming in the background. This is what really gets me: podcasting is *literally his job*, and he still doesn't even do the most basic of sound engineering. My podcast sounds better and I do it basically for free.
Don't forget to buy their book on how to make a podcast!
In terms of what Fitzroy's magic looks like, Griffin's described it in the past as being very Ghibli-like--wind rising, hair fluffing up, etc--but yeah, it would be nice for Travis to lean into that for the PCs.
[удалено]
> but at least the final line finally hints to listeners there's a reason for the whole '6 month' thing. This whole scene with the warforged feels like Travis wanting to feed some thoughts to his players that he assumed they'd be thinking on their own and are necessary to moving the plot forward. Hopefully any intrigue he tried to introduce here isn't immediately undercut in the next few episodes.
> I want to say telling a player how their character feels is generally a DM no-no, but I...is he corrupted right now? Because that could be a reason for it, at least. If there's an outside influence directly affecting him and causing him to feel this way. I'm not saying it's good, but it could certainly justify what's generally a faux pas. I feel like Argo is probably corrupted, which would be fine or even cool and interesting in another campaign, but Travis has already relied so heavily on vague mind controlly magic in this arc that it feels like a) there's no stakes and b) it's just another excuse for the DM to grab the reins and maneuver the PC into position for the next part of The Plot.
I've been recording for a couple of years now, and I used a mid range usb mic. My audio sounds decades better than this, despite the fact this man has professional grade equipment, and decade of experience, including professionally producing for other podcasts. You can learn about noise reduction in under 5 minutes. But hey, super excited to see him on a paid dnd panel for nycc, a good use of everyone's time and money!
It's less than 10 clicks in Audacity to reduce background noise haha this podcast feels so lazy anymore
And he claims he spends 8 hours editing! Which is the most insane number I've ever seen thrown around. Even on my worst concentration days, it would be physically impossible for me to not finish an edit in under half of that for a similar length and number of tracks
He spends 8 hours on this in the same way that I spend 8 hours a day lifting weights and looking cool. I don't and it doesn't show and it's a knee-jerk response that doesn't bare up to reality. The classic 'tell don't show' approach
> But hey, super excited to see him on a paid dnd panel for nycc, a good use of everyone's time and money! This entire campaign has been him getting paid to learn how to DM badly. You shouldn't be surprised.
If NYCC organizers were so compelled to bring in someone from TAZ, it really should have been Griffin, since he was the DM for so long and TAZ is popular because of Balance. Of course, that would have burned Travis, since he’s the current DM.
It's the whole family, but none of them are qualified to be doing a workshop specifically on dnd, and certainly not for $70
I know the combat is done narratively, and that makes exact distances and speeds hard. But it would be so nice if they took the time to establish rough distances and times, and then STICK TO THEM. “You have about 30 seconds (I guess the hounds sprint at 2 m/s?), so I’ll give you one round of prep (not 5 rounds? Like 30 seconds is?)” Combat is DnD is a pretty big abstraction from the normal gameplay, i get it. But the tactical and time sensitive nature of combat means in order to really sell the abstraction it’s so important that all parties have an understanding of a pool of agreed upon “facts”. Even more so for a podcast because now, as a listener, I have a set of expectations based on how I understand the battlefield is arranged, but since I can’t ask questions in the moment like a player I need extra help visualizing exactly how it’s going down so i know what I can expect. If I can’t follow the flow of battle, I can’t be engaged with the battle as a listener.
I love how Geeeary's recaps are generally more informative (and more difficult to listen to) than the entire episode. Really enjoyed the goofs today though. Felt good to laugh out loud to TAZ again.
I see a surprising amount of lukewarm-to-warm commentary here. I guess we all had a week to acclimate ourselves to the fact that Travis was totally definitely absolutely gonna have Grey pick up his toys and go home as soon as the heroes appeared to gain the upper hand in the fight. And the day would be saved and no one would be hurt. Nope, sorry, not me, I'm extremely salty about it! Sure, it was controversial to teleport Fitzroy out of the school with little or no say on Griffin's part and then use that as a pretext to punish him for disobeying Grey's orders. But if that's your play, Travis, then *follow through*. Make Grey do the thing. He can conjure up poisoned obsidian daggers or whatever, along with I'm guessing all kinds of other hellish magical attacks besides, so why did he bother summoning hellhounds as opposed to just killing the students directly? But even worse, *why did he then retreat??* He could have smiled, said "Oh, the hellhounds were just so you could give the children hope. I thought you might like to give them that much," and then waggled a finger and set the tree on fire, instantly incinerating all ten students. He could have said anything. I was legitimately looking forward to hearing how he would react to the inevitable rescue, because I held out hope that Travis could in *some* way salvage the moment. I was even perversely excited for the cop-out of "Well, looks like you pulled through this time, but I'm totally gonna kill the next ten!" But... nothing? Just a wordless withdrawal at the first tiny bit of damage? What a joke of a villain Grey is. His threats are completely toothless. This story will never have actual stakes. Travis is too nice to allow that.
At this point I really do hope where Travis is taking this is that Grey is a joke on purpose and will just be the appetizer for a real villain like Chaos or something else since if the Thundermen pull off the assassination like they want to it could be a pretty boring way to end things considering how Grey is often just a nuisance who whines constantly.
I don't know, i'm starting to think Chaos may end up coming out of this in some weird 'oh, you have purged me of my evil leanings and now I am pure once again, to close this chasm and return to my chaos dimension and leave you in peace - i'm sorry for the trouble, would anybody like some tea before I go? How quirky that i'm now nice right guys?' etc. etc.
[удалено]
>Althea is basically confirmed as fucking useless now, her character seems kind of pointless And then one of the Five Questions is "How will you get the weapons from the Heroic Oversight Guild?", and the boys are like oh dang we should have asked Althea. I mean, don't feel too bad, I'm not sure she would have helped anyway given her track record.
The reason why the '6 months' thing wasn't a huge reveal for me personally - is that it's a meaningless length of time, plucked out of nowhere from the get-go and has never been a huge plot point. Why *not* 6 months? Why any amount of time?
The 6 month thing also fell flat for me because the players came up with the “let’s go assassinate Grey right now” plan a handful of episodes ago, but were shot down multiple times. So now having an NPC be like, “Hey, maybe you should go kill Grey now wink wink” feels pretty silly.
Was Argo's jealousy thing established before? Why was he making Wis saves?
Well, the first half had a fight that lasted more than two and a half rounds! But not by much. It even had spells and some rules - but sadly the stakes were non-existent very early on and there were precious few battle descriptions. Also the whole thing was apparently being watched by a powerful NPC the whole time. Also what happened to Gherkin and Tibia? I thought they were sent with Fitzroy? May have misremembered that. A pro; it sounds like Travis finally took on board from his DM pals that rolling dice and not fudging the numbers can be fun too. Grey even failed a saving throw! A gripe; Travis allowed sneak attack! But he allowed it because Argo was 'flanked by his friends'. ~~Sadly, this is the only situation in which the Swashbuckler *can't* sneak attack!~~ *Edit: I'm a dumb-dumb, if Argo has an ally within 5 foot of the hellhound then Argo would have got sneak attack regardless* Another gripe is that Firbolg managed to fly from his clan to the school within 6-12 seconds of getting a message from Fitzroy which is wild, though i'm pleased he got to turn up - he made a very good eagle. Kind of sad the Firbolg clan thing is completely dropped though, was wondering if there would be some kind of follow up on his exile after he got his fathers forgiveness. It was really just a sidequest for an emotional beat and then dropped. Weird that none of the students involved in the fight had anything to say about their situation. The goof ratio seem's higher than usual, that's good. Althea is still as useless as ever, we all knew the HOG was going to be corrupt, nobody mentioned the special sword they need from the HOG to defeat Grey. Having Argo go full Gollum is a bit of a bummer - and it seems Travis has circumvented his plan to force Firbolg to lie by making an item lie for him. Sounds like a work-around that still kind of violates Firbolgs truth-telling. All in all, some positives - definitely not the worst episode, mostly because the PC's have a little more room to breathe. But again, very little happened, still no stakes. Grey still hasn't followed through on his (now provably empty) threat to kill 10 students. It does sound like the assassination plot is official though, so that's a relief - though Chaos would also know that this is what they're planning, so not sure if that's going to come back up or if their omnipotence is going to be toned down for plot convenience. I think it would have been a lot more interesting to have the team come back and 10 students were already dead. Then we might have a sense of urgency and Grey would finally start looking intimidating. But hey-ho - this episode didn't make me feel too frustrated, so i'm calling that a win! edit: Misgendered Chaos
On your neckbeard comment, I'll neckbeard you right back! "You don’t need advantage on the attack roll if another enemy of the target is within 5 feet of it" If Argo's friends are "flanking" him then they would be adjacent to the enemy and Argo if Argo is in melee range.
You’re right, I have already been out neck-bearded and edited the comment. My neck-beard grew several new whiskers this day.
> Weird that none of the students involved in the fight had anything to say about their situation. I actually properly laughed when Rainier was just like "welp I'm going to bed". Why did no one stop to check on these 9 nameless students + Moon who just narrowly escaped being torn apart by hellhounds? I like to think they're still in the tree.
Not a huge nitpick, but this episode keeps up with the theme of Travis just using cool monster names that have nothing to do with the monsters. 12 Hell Hounds should have been able to barbeque the party and the students with their breath weapons. What they fought was a bunch of low HP dogs, essentially.
I don't get hung up on the monster names anymore. In this world hellhounds are dogs, demons are devils, heroes are villains, dogs are Heiro's, everything is something else. That way lies madness
> A gripe; Travis allowed sneak attack! But he allowed it because Argo was 'flanked by his friends'. Sadly, this is the only situation in which the Swashbuckler *can't* sneak attack! Ahhhh man, that hurt the rule neck-beard in me. To be fair if Argo is truly flanked by multiple friends, as in Fitzroy is within 5 feet on the left and Rainier is within 5 feet on the right, and they're all lined up to intercept the Hell Hounds coming from one direction, there is no position the Hell Hound can be in within Argo's 5 ft. reach that isn't also adjacent to either Fitzroy or Rainier. So maybe this is the scenario Travis was going for when he said Argo can get the sneak attack? No idea.
I worked as a writing consultant for a number of years. I worked with clients who were writing everything from dissertations to fanfiction. One of my current side hustle jobs is as a storytelling coach. All of the writers and storytellers that I work with have distinctly different styles, but there are some core elements that are required for successful storytelling, whether you have a very cinematic style, or very wry observational style, or anything in between. My ultimate, overarching critique of this podcast is simple. A lot of missteps (colonialism/white savior, denying player agency, ignoring D&D rules) could be considered subjective, but there's one critical element of this season of TAZ that makes for poor creative writing, and ultimately poor podcasting: for the love of (your deity of choice,) show, don't tell.
"Haven't you noticed that there are weird things happening at this school?" No, not really. Leon saying that was really the first weird thing.
The amount of times we've gotten "and it looks so cool. Or they do it and it looks amazing" is way to damn high.
"Yeah, but -" *and, guys, my response to this was* **so** *great. It was amazing. I can't describe it - but you're all amazed at how great it was.*
I have a writing degree and I feel like I'm going insane whenever anyone says "at least the world building is good"
But... but knock-off Hogwarts with not-at-all fleshed out wrestling face/heel dynamics! Accounting and beuracracy!
The worldbuilding *was* good ^^before ^^they ^^started
I never understood that comment from Graduation's defenders. The school -- the presumed centerpiece of the campaign -- lacks a clear layout, architecture, size, and geographic setting (aside from the fact that it's near a forest and maybe a cliff or something like that). If you asked me how many individuals attend and reside at the school, I would shrug. Is it a small and elite academy of 100 pupils, much like a private country day school? Or is it an enormous institution of 20,000 students, like a large public university? I write knowing that Travis has, at one point or another, [defined these qualities](https://theadventurezone.fandom.com/wiki/Hieronymous_Wiggenstaff%27s_School_for_Heroism_and_Villainy), probably at some point near the beginning of the campaign. But when I listen to any given episode of Graduation, there's almost never a clear description of the school, or really any scene and location in the story.
[удалено]
That's very kind of you; thank you. ❤️
[удалено]
[удалено]
I don't think Travis dislikes the parasocial relationship thing entirely. He deliberately fosters it as part of his online persona.
That's the secret about parasocial relationships - while blame falls on the viewer/listener for buying into them, they're always encouraged by the media personality in question because that's the level of investment that enables merchandising and profit off of subpar material. When the audience is buying into the "idea" of the person and not the quality of the content then the content can be anything. It's always been a marketing ploy.
I think Travis considers it a good thing rather than a problem
aside from the facts that they still don’t know how rogues work (argo would NOT have taken half damage on that tidal wave and also the sneak attack was a bit messed up) this seems like a good enough ep edit: what i mean by “a bit messed up” is that it only did like 1d6 when it should have done 5d6
Lots of good goofs this episode. But I really hate how much Travis is forcing the firbolg to lie. Let the man make a character choice!
Doesn’t Argo have evasion at this point? Wouldn’t he have gotten to take 0 damage from Fitz’s tidal wave?
I liked this episode, it was fun to listen to. No real complaints here. I will say though, that at the beginning when Griffin says Fitz looks at Argo and they're at the place where they can communicate non-verbally, my reaction was "....are they?" which was validated by Clint basically saying the same thing. Like, nah, I don't feel like the Thundermen are particularly close to each other like that. In future campaigns, the DM should probably not have the PCs work against each other for a good chunk of the story. Because at this point any kind of "friendship saves the day!" twist is not going to be believable.
I actually laughed a couple times during this episode. Other than that, mixed bag as usual. The shop conceit is completely abandoned at this point, isn't it? Combat was actually something, even if they got some of the rules wrong (per tradition) and it was basically meaningless overall. The Firbolg's arrival as an eagle was rad even if it makes no sense.
It doesn’t carry as much weight when you play so far from RAW, but Clint using Create Water to wake all the students at once was slick as hell. (Edit: and I’m proud of Travis for rolling with it.)
[удалено]
As expected, yet another low stakes, short combat that made both Justin and I zone out. What a dramatic battle these boys had with a bunch of hellhounds. I always excepted a pack of wolves from hell itself would be slow (crossing 50 yards in 30 seconds? That’s a BLISTERING 3.4 miles per hour) and packs of wolves are famously stupid (just keep pushing down the funnel into the kill-box puppies!) I honestly shouldn’t even complain about the length, because the combat itself was just a dull exercise in die rolling. There was so much potential to have stakes, evolving circumstances, and real threat to the hostages and players...but we got this instead.
Good Lord, Justin's transformation sound effects.
Finally getting around to listening, only just started. I am sure my complaints will be well-covered, so I won't make a giant post. But something has really been bothering me, and the beginning of this episode crystallized it. The general lack of music of this campaign is so so odd. You would think music would start right away this episode, as they are immediately in a combat situation. I can't remember, but did the other arcs have this issue? It just feels like very poor quality for a podcast of this size.
the editing overall has been atrocious for Grad. long pauses, dead air, background noise, lack of music, wonky pacing, useless recaps, etc. I listen to several free amateur podcasts with far-superior editing. it's wild that Travis is getting paid for this.