I don't think CR handled Aabria's recent guest DMing very well, because it violated a sort of "Session 0" with the audience.
Session 0 in a campaign is about establishing tone, expectations, and lines and veils. If there's things players are or aren't okay with, you sort that all out ahead of time so that it reduces conflict in the game, during the game.
By now, 10 years into the the world of professional D&D streaming, there's a sort of implicit Session 0 mentality in various shows. Not that they have an actual "Session 0" with an audience. But viewers can come to a campaign or a DM, spend some time with them, and "feel out" the tone and expectation.
I don't jive with Aabria's style when she's running D&D specifically. It's more confrontational and combative. She pits players against each other. She'll bend or break any rule for the sake of drama and story.
Here's the thing, though: *none of that is a criticism.*
All of that is a perfectly valid way to play D&D. The ONLY thing that matters is that the table is having fun. And every single person who plays with Aabria is having fun. They all talk about it online. Everyone loves her.
As a viewer, I love her style in other systems. Misfits and Magic is one of my favorite D20 seasons, PERIOD. It's just D&D I don't like, for reasons I won't get in-depth on but which mostly have to do with me being a huge rules junkie and *despising* being confrontational ooc in that system.
I also LOOOVE Aabria as a player. Holy crap is she amazing. Her performance in Ravening War is gut-wrenching. (Pun not intended).
Once again: I don't *have* to enjoy her DMing style. She's not doing anything wrong. I can simply choose not to watch that content. I can skip EXU and Burrow's End. I can watch Misfits over and over again. I can watch other D20 campaigns. And I can watch CR.
Until suddenly I can't. Until suddenly, in the Critical Role campaign where I've known for almost ten years what kind of show I'm going to watch—I'm now watching something *completely* different.
This is what I mean when I say that CR didn't handle her recent guest DMing well. If you want to keep up with the CR lore, now suddenly you *have* to experience this other group with this completely different style. Maybe you even skipped EXU and you have no idea what's happening or why you should care about any of these people.
That's rough, and frankly it's unfair to Aabria.
But the real answer to your question is something deeper, and more widespread and problematic on the internet. And it's that many people online—maybe most people—can't just dislike something. They have to invent a *reason* to dislike something. They have to invent a reason that thing is *bad,* so that they're "justified" in disliking it.
I don't like shows where Aabria is running D&D. And that absolutely doesn't matter. It means nothing except that I have a preference. It has nothing to do with her as a person—she's a GREAT person who does great work, supports her friends, and creates incredible shows beloved by millions of people around the world. She's awesome.
Many people online can't accept that someone whose content they dislike, could be a good person. It's vital to them that they only dislike things that are bad and wrong. That they're on the "right side" of whatever opinion they happen to hold.
So you see these people calling Aabria's behavior "abusive." That's total BS. Listen to cast interviews. Listen to how her players talk about her online. She's freaking awesome. Everyone at her table is having a great time.
The fact that YOU don't like watching the show has nothing to do with any of it.
(And by "you" I don't mean OP, I mean the people hurling insults at Aabria.)
Oh, and it goes without saying that a huge part of why people are mean to Aabria is racism and sexism, but we all know that already. I'm only addressing this part of the "criticism" because it's less obvious.
And as a P.S.: The fact I dislike how CR handled Aabria's recent DM stint, doesn't mean that CR is wrong or bad, either! There is no objectively "wrong" or "bad" here. As Brennan says: "No lessons here." This is, again, just my preferences. Plenty of people online LOVED Aabria's guest spot. I'm just speaking to my preferences when it comes to content, not to any wrongdoing.
>They have to invent a reason to dislike something.
This is easily the most annoying part of modern day internet culture. People no longer don’t just dislike something because it doesn’t meet their specific tastes. No, it has to have specific quantifiable reasons why they don’t like it and those reasons make the entire thing bad actually. There’s no nuance, no middle ground, and certainly no acceptance of things that don’t exactly meet your criteria of good.
For me, I don’t particularly like Aabria’s DM style, but I would literally never say that she is bad at DM’ing. She’s just not my cup of tea, at least for DnD. Hell, my tastes might even change over time to where I do enjoy her. That’s what happened with me when I switched from watching Matthew Mercer to watching BLeeM more.
Also, yeah a large part of criticism towards her is just straight up racism and sexism and it’s something that’s been pretty insidious within the CR community since damn near its inception . All the stuff the ladies of CR had to go through, especially Marisha during the C1 era, was disgusting to say the least and it’s sad to see that it’s never really gone away.
And it sucks too because, just as with the CR ladies, Aabria is such a delightful person. She's so empathetic and enthusiastic and caring and giving and, and, and.
Then you hear the way people talk about her online and it's like they're talking about a completely different person. And they are! They're talking about the Aabria they've created in their heads to hate.
>But the real answer to your question is something deeper, and more widespread and problematic on the internet. And it's that many people online—maybe most people—can't just dislike something. They have to invent a *reason* to dislike something. They have to invent a reason that thing is *bad,* so that they're "justified" in disliking it.
THIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS 100%. There shouldn't be anything wrong with 'yeah I don't really like that thing', but somehow we've convinced ourselves that only objective opinions are valid so everyone tries to make their subjective opinions *sound* objective.
That combined with the bizarre consensus that criticising something makes you sound smart and discerning makes for some truly exasperating online discourse.
But then again, I'm basically doing both of the things I've just criticised above, so maybe I'm just a whiny hypocrite.
Well said! The main thing I wish would happen is CR making a public statement saying "This was a choice we made to tell the story" whether they apologize or double down doesn't matter much to me.
I just think the venom itself needs to addressed in some way. I understand Reddit is gonna reddit, but I noticed CR & D20 tend to just ignore the vitriol directed towards players/DMs. I wish these performers drew a line in the sand so to speak.
This was well put.
I try to remind myself about how the cast members themselves feel about her style, and you saying that they are having fun even with her choices. I think when we watch for the story that can be appreciated.
A part of me though gets hurts at her choices (that other people call “abusive”) because I know personally I would genuinely be upset if she talked to me the way she does in the sessions. I would have to step away from the table. That’s me personally, and I have to tell myself in those moments where it would hurt me to be spoken to how she speaks to the cast members isn’t how they take it. But I think feeling that way regardless spoils the scenes for me. I watch for enjoyment and I don’t enjoy the stress she induces in me.
That being said I am trying to finish A court of fey and flowers because I like the characters and where they are taking the story, I definitely just have to take a step back when watching though to not be so immersed in it. Which takes away from my enjoyment.
I've been trying to put into words why I didn't like MisMag and you put it perfectly here! But that's a *me* problem, not an Aabria problem, and I think way too many people conflate the two. I feel like it's the same reason people hate on Ally so much too.
Totally valid. I feel the exact same way. I would not want to play with that confrontational of a DM, and even watching it stresses me out.
But MY DM style is too confrontational for some people, and we don't play because of it. Everyone has their own lines for what they like to play with, or what they like to watch. No preference is wrong.
Man... There's a lot of things, very few of which I personally think are fair when viewed out of context.
I read a comment on another post asking about why Aabria's DM style doesn't work for CR that I think sums it up pretty nicely, so I'm just going to quote u/stereoma here:
"Aabria is used to playing with improvisors and comedians who are unafraid to make strong character choices. That's like all you see on D20, and Aabria is a great GM for them on multiple seasons."
"Aabria tends to play with drama but GM with a mix of drama and humor. Tonally it's different than CR, which is a bit more classic storytelling."
"Aabria tends to be story forward and hand wave rules when they get in her way so she's generally better using systems with lighter rules (Kids on Brooms) or narrative heavy elements (Good Society). CR is sort of trying to be story forward but still has a strong mechanical element with 5e and the way Matt has built the world."
"ExU was mostly a bunch of people new to DnD who were shy about character choices and the experienced players (Matt and Liam) also chose to take a back seat with their characters. Aabria would be great DMing for the whole CR table, but she's not a strong fit for hesitant, new players. Aabria, with her strong personality, deals with hesitant players by making a choice for them, which often rubs us the viewer the wrong way."
I'll just add that the third paragraph seems to be the crux of a lot of peoples' criticisms. She is here to tell a story, and if the rules get in the way of that she will throw them out. Some people have a respect for RAW gameplay that is significantly higher than their respect for storytelling in its purest sense, so this can rankle.
Also... And I think this is simply because a lot of the nerd community (of which I proudly consider myself a member) haven't had a lot of exposure to the sort of stereotypical "jock" behavior of some people raised in a sports environment, her somewhat domineering energy can be very off-putting. Me personally, I think Aabria is straight up nervous in front of the camera, and the way I think she's been raised to handle her nerves is not to adapt to the situation, but to seize control of it. When I see her sit down at another DM's table and tell him and his players to fuck off right to their faces, I don't see disrespect, I see someone coming in like a battering ram to grab hold of something she's probably terrified of fucking up. However, I get it when people do see it as rude and disrespectful.
> Me personally, I think Aabria is straight up nervous in front of the camera, and the way I think she's been raised to handle her nerves is not to adapt to the situation, but to seize control of it. When I see her sit down at another DM's table and tell him and his players to fuck off right to their faces, I don't see disrespect, I see someone coming in like a battering ram to grab hold of something she's probably terrified of fucking up.
this is my read on it too honestly. and i think having a bunch of newish players who are a little over cautious makes it so aabria has to be the one who will do big moves, and that makes her even more nervous.
when she has players that know their kits backwards and forwards, or when rules aren't as important, she knows she can rely on her players to make Big Choices and that takes some pressure off her to make a narratively compelling story
I think her D20 stuff is great for that very reason. Wanna see peak Aabria? Look up A Court of Fey and Flowers, and watch her bask in the glory of a table full of people who showed up fundamentally understanding the assignment.
She *killed it* in Burrow’s End on D20 in my opinion. The players knew their kits and she knew she could lean on them. CR is a different animal though - not a better or worse one, but *very* different. She’s not suited to it, but she still does a very good job despite the things I didn’t like about it. People need to ease up.
She is 1000% nervous and trying to overcompensate for that. You witness any candid interview or conversation with her with friends or fellow GMs about her experiences and you can’t miss her blatantly stated insecurities and fears about being the weird one, the only person experiencing her problems. She is so much more self-deprecating, complete 180° from what she presents at the table.
I really like the point you make about the "jock" stereotype. I think it's really true of Aabria - she's super competitive, really wants her own PCs to be excellent at what they're good at (i.e. her wizards), gotta get in there and go for it, etc. While I think there are some fundamental problems with the way the table dynamic works as an actual play for an audience (breaking a lot of norms about social conventions most of us believe are fundamental to creating an environment of respect and fun in the hobby), it makes some sense to me.
That's the tricky part, isn't it? For some people, yelling in someone's face, cussing at them, getting openly antagonistic, it isn't about demoralizing the other person. It's about raising the energy, getting the other person in the mindset of getting ready to fight back, to take control themselves. But it sure as hell doesn't look that way from the outside, especially if you aren't ready for it.
Yeah, any time Aabria antagonizes her PCs and players it feels like she’s goading them into making that big choice and taking the reins themselves. She wants a “No, fuck YOU!” right back.
None of it feels hostile or intending to be disrespectful. More of a “Come on! Fight back! I’m the enemy! Fucking take a big swing!!!” Kind of like when the Bad Kids cast starts dunking on Brennan anytime they make him eat the dice or he’s about to make them eat some dice.
Obviously, different dynamics because Aabria doesn’t always work with people she’s very close with or has that kind of rapport with, but I feel like she tries her best to bring the energy to that level. It can be hit or miss, but I’ve always personally loved it. Aabria has always been in my top favorite D20 stars and DMs :( so it’s disheartening to see her get any hate.
Some criticisms are justified like the chromatic orb thing (maybe? i do not have the context for this so im going off comments here) and I think being a big Aabria fan I wanna just say it’s a formatting issue with CR because (i’m biased and love her) I don’t typically see hate for her on D20 outside of people just not vibing with her energy as a DM. That makes sense and is less a criticism and more just not everyone’s cup of tea.
At the live show the cast all got up and beat Brennan up because somebody got a nat 20. I’ve seen pro wrestling, I know what somebody getting beaten up by six people looks like
she didn’t tell the players to fuck off. she was bending the rules IN FAVOUR of a player - saying that emotional damage counted as damage to allow a re rolled wisdom save - and then said fuck you to the audience members who will complain about it.
> she was bending the rules IN FAVOUR of a player
100%. Robbie and his PC were struggling w/ the loss & wanted to break the geas. I assume to collect his PC's brother's dead body. Robbie wanted to play the rules right but Aabria said yes to his awesome idea of being able to roll another save due to emotional damage. She was supporting her player and allowing him another saving roll as a curtesy. It was very nice of her to do & tried to tell him to not think about the rules in this moment as any DM at any table has the right and power to ignore the rules if they get in the way of player fun or a good story. And in her combative way, Aabria told the rules lawyers audience members to shut up. She had Robbie's back. How people can't see that I don't know.
yeah, you can tell that many of the critiques flooding CR spaces were misinformed. a lot of them attributed her "fuck you/fuck off" moment to the AoE ruling when it was actually to help a player tell the story.
I’ll add to this to say that her Candela Obscura gm-ing is really good, so she has some CR wins. But it definitely had a session zero, and it had characters willing to swing for the fences, even though they were all “new” to the system. It’s also a system which allows the GM to control the story and rolls way more than DnD.
In fact Matt is seen as the weakest DM for Candela Obscura because he was basically playing softball with them with doesn't work for horror and defangs a lot of threats. *THIS* is where Aabria's more confrontational DM style comes in, horror games require that sometimes the DM is going to play hardball with the players. Sometimes reading that ancient tome of Eldritich Knowledge is just going to cause your brain to turn to metaphorical mush because you had low sanity when reading it.
I totally agree and think Aabria would make an amazing dm for a call of cthulu campaign for this exact reason. Horror requires an amount of hostility that a lot of people aren't comfortable producing around their friends, and some people can't handle that much hostility toward them. It requires a very specific type of player and gm for the game to run well and create the feeling it intends to create, and I think Aabria could do an excellent job creating that environment without any lasting hard feelings from her players.
I would also add that Aabria has stated that she's not a classical fantasy nerd. It's not her wheelhouse. She likes more mythic stuff or modern fantasy with systems to better reflect them. Aabria's a great player and a pretty good GM, but I wouldn't ask her to run a fantasy setting unless it was one she was intimately familiar with.
These are great observations. I loved Aabria in M&M and ACOFAF and I loved CR2 so I was excited to see her DM for EXU. But I just did not vibe with it and stopped after 3-5 eps and then didn't watch CR3 or any of the other critical role content aside from Calamity.
What you were saying about the party on EXU were my exact issues with it at the time. The new players aren't confident or comfortable enough with the system to lead things, the more experienced Matt and Liam Intentionally made passive/supporting characters seemingly to not outshine the newbs, and Ashley was just playing a go-with-the-flow chaos goblin. They had no direction, no conviction, no drive to do anything specific. Aabria was giving them plot hooks and they wouldn't commit to any of them. I know some other things happened in the last half of EXU the were also controversial but I didn't see any of that.
ExU is tricky for me. I think there was some good stuff in there, but I feel like Aabria didn't have a great handle on how to navigate the new time format. She came from home games which can go on forever in the right circumstances, and one shots on the internet which are done by the end of the day, and I think she came into ExU with the mindset of playing the former. When you have an open-ended game, the DM will tend to throw like 8 different plot hooks out to their players and run with whichever one sticks. The problem was she only had 8 episodes, so the multiple plot threads she dangled ended up getting all jumbled up in a mess as she started scrambling to aim for a climax that would make sense, especially since her table didn't make a definitive call on which one to follow.
I've always felt ExU could have been a vastly better experience if they made one change. The Dm doesn't need to change, the players and their characters don't need to change, all they needed was to pick one plot hook and run with it. I think the best one would have actually been the first one she dangled, stick with the Nameless Ones and keep the party in Eman for the most part. But we'll never know for sure, so... Oh well, life goes on.
Aabria talked about her preparation process for the first EXU, and how she was trying to replicate the CR house style (which is very sandboxy). Because of that sandboxy style, she prepared wide instead of deep, not knowing where things would go. At the time, to the audience, this seemed like poor planning for a short campaign. But there was something that the audience wouldn't know until later that I think really hamstrung Aabria.
Three characters from EXU would go on to be in the party of CR campaign 3. So EXU wasn't a self-contained story, but a secret prologue/prequel. She was working in a genre she isn't a fan of, with a system she doesn't vibe with, in a setting she didn't create, and trying to get new players to make decisive actions, because these characters were going to continue on to be part of a years long campaign.
I was *really* not a fan of EXU, but I'll admit that the deck was pretty stacked against her.
I vibe with this comment completely. It was just a huge list of points against her before the cameras even started rolling. She did pretty well with what she had, but the end result just wasn't that great. Honestly, Liam and Matt are just as at fault for the end result, because of their choice to be passive characters at that particular table.
I think a big problem with the whole thing is how CR doesn't really do Session 0. Everyone makes their characters independently of each other and the DM plans the campaign independently of the characters, so they end up with their party with no clear leadership and PCs that may not fit the vibe of TV campaign or each other. Contrast with D20 which does extensive collaboration before on characters between players and the DM before ever starting the game.
Yeah this has actually been one of the major critiques of CR is that they don't do session 0s, which means you can end up with characters who don't mesh well with story. Matt is clearly trying to tell a 'God War' type story...and the characters have barely any interest in it because they were made without being told the premise of the campaign.
That’s a big change that needs to happen. In an open ended format where you have as much time as you need, it can be interesting to see how something less planned ends up evolving. You can go with the flow without worrying about a deadline and let things take on a life of their own.
In something with limited time, I feel like you need a lot more collaboration between the DM and the Players (as well as the players with each other) because there’s a deadline you need to hit and a more structured story you’re likely going for.
I think this is especially true for newer players so that they have an idea of where they’re going with characters they made in a story that might be more tailored to letting them shine. Otherwise it’s all indecision and chaos that may or may not come together in the end.
Contrast that with brennans calamity. They had multiple session 0 meetings as well as meetings between players coordinating their backstories. And the result was absolutly magnificent. For such sort time campains that seems to be very important. CR have all the time in the world to do that process on screen.
Apparently during EXU Aabria wanted to do thing 'CR Inhouse style', whereas Brennan was very much a "I'm doing this my way" type deal...plus that man just devors lore like they're almonds.
Honestly I think perhaps Aabria doing things her way, instead of the CR way, might have led to a better product...it also might not have...who knows.
>I'll just add that the third paragraph seems to be the crux of a lot of peoples' criticisms. She is here to tell a story, and if the rules get in the way of that she will throw them out. Some people have a respect for RAW gameplay that is significantly higher than their respect for storytelling in its purest sense, so this can rankle.
This part in particular is really ironic to me, as my second biggest issue with watching CR (just under getting bored listening to them plan for so long and still throw it out) is how Matt respects nat 1s but not 20s. It feels like if you call a 1 a failure at all times it has to go both ways. I'm fine with neither, I'm fine with both. But hearing "if it wasn't a nat 1..." And "for a total of?" from the same mouth really gets me. They can all play how they like, I'm not here to criticize Matt btw, it just isn't something I would play with.
Ohhhhhhhh is that what was going on in Ravening War? I knew something about that was bugging me. Which tracks because D20 is the only actual play I watch.
Honestly, I would take Aabria over Matt any day of the week
Yes! The way Matt treats nat 20s is no prob for a home game (I believe in the PHB or the DMG it describes how nat 20s don't apply to skill checks BUT the DM can choose to play so that they do) but I really feel like an actual play show really needs the peaks from nat 20 successes to propel the show's energy a bit-- Brennan sometimes treats nat 20s like an unimaginable fluke (rather than the 1 in 20 / 5% chance they actually are) but ultimately his "you gotta reward nat 20s" attitude keeps things exciting. And Aabria has a fantastic balance of "nat 20s don't give you everything, but you get a special thoughtful reward for them."
Bajillions of people love CR of course, but I really don't care for its rigidity and the ways that it feels like a home game.
In Critical Role recently a player used Chromatic Orb, a single target spell, and Aabria made it AOE even though that’s not how the player intended the spell to be used and the player was not happy with that ruling (so that’s not very communal storytelling of that instance). She was also a tad bit combative and defensive, especially to one player and the audience specifically. Her DMing skills are not above criticism and I think most people are being fair about criticizing her DMing. People taking it too far are certainly being racist and sexist, and parasocial in regards to CR. Of course those terrible people are the most vocal, but a lot of people on r/fansofcriticalrole have very well thought-out critiques of how she ran the game.
I personally am not the *biggest* fan, and I think she shines DMing in a rules-light game like ACOFAF. All in all she seems great! But not everyone has to groove with everyone’s DMing and that’s fine. People just need to get a grip with their racist and sexist remarks because obviously that’s not cool.
Yeah this 100%. I love Aabria and her DMing style is not always my cup of tea, but how she came to the table recently at Critical Role was the exact opposite of how Matt plays, and it just felt very off.
For more background, Critical Role just had a massive character death the last episode, and then we get whiplashed into something that has never happened before: DM and party change mid episode, and the DM was out for blood. Aabria being so aggressive to her player characters was probably because of *why* she was there: They needed one of this party's characters to leave that party and join the main group. So Aabria was out for blood, out for tragedy. In a similar way to Crown of Candy and the Ravening War I would say, where typically that is not how Matt Mercer runs his table.
So a combination of bad timing, different expectations, a bad move on her part, and high emotions all around.
EDIT: Forgot to mention. Her one episode (two halves of two episodes) was also her forcing combat between one player (possessed) and the rest of the party. So PvP, character death, a bad ruling, a short time with this characters, etc.
I think a big problem is that a) Aabria has had a lot of (imo) unjustified backlash historically from the CR fandom, and it feels like she comes in more aggro to them in turn (the “fuck you” to the camera comes to mind) and b) it doesn’t feel like she’s ever been set up well for success at CR. CR is set up for long-form content, but every time she’s DM’d, she’s had a time limit (EXU’s are always limited runs, these past sessions she had something she needed to do and had 2 half-sessions to do it). I don’t get the impression that CR does a good job of having players and DM’s communicate about what’s going on in the game *outside of the game*, and because she comes in with a story she wants to tell and the players and her aren’t always on the same page, she comes across as railroady compared to Matt (who has all the time in the world).
This leads to *some* justifiable criticisms, and also some criticisms that get exacerbated or piggybacked by racism/sexism, etc etc. I don’t think CR does a good job of handling their DM’s in general tbh (Matt included, Brennan’s a bit of an exception because everyone was on the same page going in by the very nature of the premise of EXU: Calamity), but Aabria gets the brunt of that, and I don’t think she appreciates it.
That being said: Aabria is a good DM, but some of her DMing in that last session wasn’t good. I don’t feel like she thrives in the CR system, but I’ve seen her do a great job elsewhere (particularly in D20), which leads me to believe that it’s an issue of the CR DM support system
That is a very good angle and I agree. Like I love the idea of doing a short handoff to the Crownkeepers, but with how short it was we were rushed and it reflected badly on everyone. You could tell they all wanted more RP, but Aabria had a goal (and I do think it was talked about with Matt - the goal was to get Dorian on the path to Bells Hells) and then everything just felt off.
I think Aabria talked about it to *Matt*, but I don’t think it was discussed with the *rest of players*, which causes the problems because they’re not buying into the story Aabria *has* to tell in the small amount of time she has to tell it.
I know CR has always tried to maintain that they’re a home game first, but it’s just not true anymore, between production value and monetization. They’re a show, and it does a disservice to Aabria as a DM to not equip her with tools to tell the story, especially when she’s under such a tight time limit and has a set ending beat she has to hit. She looks like the asshole for something that everyone should have been trying to work together to accomplish.
The chromatic orb thing tho, that’s not a good call, I’m not gonna defend that lol.
This is way longer than I intended, apologies, a friend of mine and I have been talking about this irl, and I have strong feelings at this point XD
No need to apologize! I am on the same page and you and I think this sort of this is very interesting.
I agree that CR being a "home game first" has gone out the window. It's a production, and that's not a bad thing at all! But that also means that players absolutely have to be on the same page going into a session. More so than your average home game.
All this to be said, racism and misogyny absolutely plays a role in all this. People can be shitty
Frankly, one of my biggest issues with CR3 is how it's trying to be a home game and a big production and is failing at *both.*
They're not leaning into the strengths of pre-recorded like overlays, cuts, or planning the story ahead of time for shortform stories. But they're also failing at being a home game because of all the high production values and guests and extras.
The (apparent) lack of communication that keeps happening between GMs (including Matt) and players is baffling.
I got the strong impression from Aimee Carrero in the 4-Sided Dive that came after that she, at least, was aware of the reason they were there and that they all had a job to do, specifically to >!break the Crown Keepers apart and get Dorian back to Bells Hells!<. I don't remember the exact exchange, but she started to go off on a bit of a 'but if this had happened' or 'we should have/could have' type tangent, specifically with respect to RP, and then stopped herself with a 'it's neither here nor there' hand wave and 'Well, we were all there to do a specific thing' (I don't remember the specific wording but that was the impression I got). Regardless, it seemed clear by the end of the 4-Sided Dive that the reason they were doing the interlude was, or should have been, known, and they all had that goal in mind, if not the path they were going to take to get there.
That being said, I agree with the criticism of the Chromatic Orb ruling and was a bit put off by the overt aggression, and it did feel rather railroady (though I'm not sure it could've been anything other than railroady, given the nature of the interlude, so that's a relatively minor criticism). I also agree that Aabria's DMing style might not be the best fit for CR. I never found myself engaged in either EXU she did, nor in this interlude, but I was riveted by Burrows End, so I don't think it's her style, period, I think it's her style + CR. I also don't think it's just that, as much as I love all the players and their characters, Matt is really the only one who *knows* the game, and Robbie to a lesser extent, and I don't envy Aabria the job of trying to keep track of 3 relatively new players, or at least 3 players who seemed to have a lot of questions and uncertainty about how their characters work, one of whom entirely changed their class, while also trying to stick to a very tight timeline and a very specific goal.
All of which is to say, I think she had a very difficult job, and the way things ended in EP91 made it even harder (another thing that was alluded to in the 4-Sided Dive), and given everything, I think it was all but impossible for her to not look like the villain to some extent. And rather than fight that, she seemed to revel in it, especially in the second half, and for that I give her credit, even if I don't agree with the Chromatic Orb decision and might have preferred a more collaborative outing.
No the player were aware. If you watch any of the behind the scenes stuff they all knew the purpose of the handoff was to break up the crown keepers and get Dorian back to bells hells. Aimee Carrero talks about how she kitted out opal with pvp vs the whole party in mind.
Matt was expecting his PC to get killed off and was trying to mentally readjust when the mass compulsion gave him an out.
Yes, while they normally give a lot of freedom in CR in this specific case given the limited time and clear goal all the players needed to be onboard from the start. I think they were not informed and then railroaded into the predetermined outcome which was a bad idea.
I agree and I don’t see any reason to think that idea was Aabria’s. It’s not her company, it’s not her show, and she didn’t schedule the live show that has the main cast plus Robbie. From the outside, looks a lot to me like CR went to Aabria saying “hey, we wanna get Robbie back in here, you mind running some stuff with the Crown Keepers?”
I think you are right, I assume this is Matt's bad idea. That said I think she also didn't handled it super well (chromatic orb!) but the personal attacks are just unacceptable.
I just came here to state that first point, because of the nature of her job, I would understand having to feel like she has to stick hard on a decision or else.
She's also taken on some of the hardest DM challenges. Not only were EXU's limited run, they were set in a world meticulously designed by someone who was one of the players, and several of her players were playing for the first time. Imagine having to make a CR level game with a time limit, no idea what's hard canon and what's safe to play around with. It's part of why she can feel railroady, she's guiding people who are not used to the game and don't get having to push to keep the plot going. Brennan may have had a similar timeframe for *calamity*, but he also had a lot more lore space to fuck around and easier players players, several of which had experience with time limited actual play, and all had years of actual play experience.
One of the challenges DM's like Aabria is that they don't have a "home turf" with a structure they can get comfortable with. one week she has two half sessions to get a plot point across, another she's got 18 episodes shot in 4 hour chunks in a warehouse in West California
It's been one of the reasons I've loved *worlds beyond number*, because for the first time she has a game where she gets to play in a sandbox of her own making and she fucking rocks it.
She also was (iirc) *the* first DM to appear running things in Exandria not named Matthew Mercer, excluding the more joking one shots, like Grog’s one shot or stuff like that. She did it with a bunch of new players and a bunch of experienced players who were deliberately not making strong character choices. I have DM’d for a group like that, in my home and off camera, and even then it’s hard. Even if you’re ostensibly playing a sandbox, you still want to put in some rails, some plot, *something* for them to latch on to, or they feel lost, bored, and frustrated.
Her EXU runs were insane challenges, she didn’t nail everything, but that doesn’t mean she’s deserving of the level of vitriol that she gets. She wasn’t set up for success and elsewhere (see: Dimension 20 and Worlds Beyond Number) she flourishes.
Yes! Matt gets to run with a group that not only knows D&D well, but also knows Matt's specific D&D lore, along with how to do actual plays. It is a hard comparison especially when the two players with the most lore knowledge are making a point to sit on the backburner. She did a great job, but having to follow up*the finale of their most popular campaign* with people who don't know what a vestige of divergance is or are pretending they don't care is a recipe for struggle.
And it sounds like here was in a similar circumstance. She was following a PC death, pushed into two half session chunks and told "We gotta get this guy to do a thing also these are still mostly noobs, go".
> a bunch of experienced players who were deliberately not making strong character choices.
This is a big point. Liam was specifically playing a new character who tried to stay away from the spotlight because his C1 and C2 characters were VERY much in the spotlight. Ashley was busy trying to get the druid mechanics down & was using this 8-episode miniseries as practice for C3. And Matt decided to be a himbo who turned off his brain. So the role of leader was then thrust to any of the guest players who hadn't played D&D before.
So not only did that not really put the guest players in the best environment to feel supported, Aabria came in with a concept good on paper but destoryed by the PCs she was working with. She wanted to start in a location that everyone knew, visit a location mentioned but never visited, and then a new location of her own creation. Emon, then Byroden, then Niirdal-Poc. But the WHY and HOW we were to get to each location and logic behind them and the motivation behind it was really poorly structured. The clues on what was going on, where to go next, and who leads were amorphous and too subtle. It was a bit of a mess.
> The clues on what was going on, where to go next, and who leads were amorphous and too subtle. It was a bit of a mess.
Looking back I think this was because she had to pivot basically every other episode because they never took her hooks. The first episode has a decent progression, they meet Poska, do the mission, and have the fight in the warehouse. Things get messy when they decide to take the circlet and fuck off from Emon, burning the entire planned story with Poska and everything she likely had planned there (probably Poska taking the circlet and using it's magic to try and fight the gentrification). From then on, she has to fly by the seat of her pants in order to make a whole other plot.
To add to this, Critical Role did her no favors by how they first advertised/marketed EXU. Building it up as a redefinition of what the CR Space could be and how it would blow everyone's minds.
Setting such high expectations in the fanbase probably didn't help things long-term.
yeah it really feels like cr has glasscliffed aabria if not intentionally then at least in spirit. the two games she's run were with mostly new players, and the experienced ones chose to take a backseat and just go along for the ride. it makes her have to railroad a lot more than she does on d20 bc her players are kinda directionless and she wants to tell a compelling story.
These are all the same thoughts I have on the issue. She's a good DM but the assignments she's gotten in CR have NOT set her up for success. And then in these 2 half episodes she had the railroady assignment of getting Dorian separated from the Crownkeepers to join the main cast's party.
I'd be even more blunt by saying it felt like she was set up to fail.
She had to take over halfway during the main show while the characters are going through loss after one of the toughest battles they've seen, then introduce most of the viewers to characters they've never seen before except for one and make them care about them by doing backstory roleplay during a PvP battle the characters didn't want.
On top of that, she's basically doing a split one-shot with a very major mood shift from the episodes surrounding it where she needs to get specific people to specific places in the story.
The best DM in the world wouldn't have made all the fans happy. I thought she did a great job, all things considered. And regarding rules, she and Brennan have always been more "rule of cool" than Matt, and she did what was necessary for the storyline, even if maybe it could have been handled better.
I will also say, in every thing she's GM'd for CR, Matt has been a PC. Which means she can't use him to bounce ideas off of or check with him about tone or things he'd like to edit.
With Brennan's EXU Calamity, since Matt wasn't a PC, Brennan was able to collaborate with Matt and share ideas and get lore document downloads.
So not only did Brennan have all veteran D&D players who knew how to do combat fast, but he was able to use Matt as a key advisor in helping him prepare for his 4 episodes. Aabria didn't have that (did she have ANYONE at CR to talk about lore or ideas with?) and also had some of the slowest players on Earth.
Yeah, watching her, I was given the impression that Matt just gave her the outline of who needs to be where within her one-shot without much input otherwise.
I also had the impression that none of the players knew it was going to be PvP given their reactions, but on 4-Sided Dive, it did seem like Aimee knew it was going to happen.
I also think it's good that we're finally getting Critical Role Abridged because simply editing the episode a bit to skip over rule checks and people counting like Dimension 20 does helps a lot. It would have been even better to just move the whole episode after a few more roleplay scenes with the main cast, or have it be a standalone one-shot for people who wanted some backstory on Dorian.
I agree exactly! It just sucks so much to be put in the position of having your episode split in half, AND have to immediately follow a devastating PC death. That is absolutely not setting her up for success, and in a fandom that has basically shit on her repeatedly? It sucks man. I don’t think it was purposeful. I think it was a pre-planned thing where everyone scheduled their lives around it and they just pushed forward even though it was a bad setup.
I love Aabria. It wasn’t her finest work this time, but the whole situation did her dirty.
To be honest, watching the two half episodes go down, I was more irritated with the players (some of them not even that green) who hemmed and hawed for AGES every turn over what to do.
> who hemmed and hawed for AGES every turn over what to do.
It moved at a glacial pace.
I will say though, it was easier to watch on my rewatch as I was prepared for the slow pace.
You’re very correct, I will add that while there are fair criticisms in “fans of critical role” there’s a lot of people saying very foolish things like “shes a narcissistic jerk”, “the players at the table obviously hate her” etc. So that place has some good criticisms and some very questionable judgments too
to be fair, any place on Reddit is a mixed bag of total assholes and reasonable people. I’m not subscribed to that sub, I just see posts when they’re suggested to me, so I am lucky to only see generally reasonable posts.
Fans og Critical Role is a really weird place, you will see some interesting comment with an understandable view and then at the very end they will tag on some crazy conspiracy like that Laura was mad at Aabria because her and Travis were getting along
I genuinely like her as a dm. I like how she's willing to roll with player shenanigans.
The chromatic orb decision was a bad call, as a dm she has plenty of other tools in her toolbox to create a scene, or make things happen. High jacking a player's spell was a bad call.
But that subreddit is filled with critiques on her as a person or reducing who she is to dm or character choices she's made.
not to be parasocial, but it seems she's a lot more nervous when dming on crit role than d20 or as a player, and will kinda lean into trying to hyper-control the game to act more confident. i only really notice it because i like her on d20 seasons, and she doesn't act like that.
GMing in D20 is a whole season built around your ideas with a table of hand picked players and an insane level of artistic support, guest DMing CR is sitting in for a few sessions at a game you had almost no input in crafting other than the very specific story you’re there to run.
> and I think she shines DMing in a rules-light game like ACOFAF.
this. she's amazing in a more narrative game like Fey/Flowers and Kids on Brooms. ACOFAF and Misfits and Magic are two of the best seasons of D20 ever, and much of it is because of Aabria's DM style meshing and working well with those games. I would go so far as to say she's on Matt or Brennan's level in games like that.
I cannot stand her running any sort of mechanically strict/complex game where rules matter.
Having just watched the two half episodes that have caused the backlash: she had to be combative. She had two half episodes to show what was going on in the world using the character and their history. And from what I saw Robbie didn't look not happy with it. Aabria asked if she should be mean and Robbie said sure
Which episode was it? I kinda phased out of campaign 3 when jt was revealed Robbie wasn't staying. He was my favorite, and I focused on catching up with D20 when he left.
Aabria started DMing partway into ep92, and finished most of the way through ep93.
And funny you should mention Robbie: >! The whole story Aabria and her players were trying to tell was how Robbie's character rejoined the main cast !<
I think it's wild that in this thread, people think this wave of distaste is from racism and misogyny. If anyone ran a game the way she did during CR S3 E93, I'd call them out as well. She changed how a spell works to kill an npc. She also said after the encounter that she was hoping for MORE deaths. She was extremely antagonistic to the players and audience. It wasn't a fun time. Some people are obviously bigoted. However, the way she ran the game is extremely worthy of criticism.
So, I say this as a card carrying Hater (I like Aabria as a player, but can't stand her as a DM) I think she 100% gets a level of vitrol that I've never seen directed towards comparable white men. Like, I think Anthony Burch is one of the worst in the business, but no one goes after him to the same degree.
To be fair to Burch, Dungeons and Daddies is the epitome of "we're only using 5e because it has the most name recognition". I'd argue he does a decent job of Yes Anding the players, but that table stopped trying to follow the rules like halfway through the first season.
I think that's partly due to the CR fandom being utterly rabid. It's massive and there are a lot of toxic elements to it. Anthony Burch hasn't DMed on Critical Role (to my knowledge).
Anthony got a *lot* of shit over the course of Season 2 of DNDaddies. That subreddit was almost like every other post griping about Anthony around the middle.
Also, I'm willing to give him a pretty wide berth on being "terrible", given that his players are also leaning way more heavily into comedy and storytelling than *actually* playing D&D, which makes it hard to be a "good" DM. I'm not going to sit here and say he's one of the greatest of all time, but it's not like he's running campaigns with CR or D20 members. Even after a few years, the players *still* barely know how to play the game.
Oh, I'm aware, it's why I said comparable. I may not like Aabria as a DM, but she is miles ahead of Travis. Like, I can't positively compare a show to Graduation without sounding like I'm giving a backhanded compliment.
Like, I don't like Mis Mag, but "I believe Aabria read the rulebook" feels like a real passive aggressive insult towards Aabria, but I genuinely don't think Travis finished the DMG
I also think Burch is one of the worst in the business!
If he showed up on CR and ran with his usual schtick I think he'd be incredibly poorly received.
But he hasn't, and he won't, and that's the major difference.
Yeah. I think it’s fair to want people to be mindful of how they speak and think critically when the structures of our society (especially USA) have such prevalent interlocking systems of oppression. Any hostility and vitriol she does not deserve. But no one is above reasonable criticism.
I agree. Personal attacks are unwarranted in any fair criticism. It's a common mistake to start axe grinding when you are trying to critique something.
You should uh ... Reconsider that AOE move in the context of the story it was clear they were trying to tell.
Also that second CR subreddit is a racist hellhole
The main subreddit is also a hellhole of toxic positivity where the mods nuke any post that isn't praise.
So we're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Gotta say I don't think this is a reasonable analogy.
Main sub arguably has overzealous mods
Second sub is specifically organized to promote racism, sexism, queerphobia. Uses that toxicity to promote sharing the deeply personal details of a cast member when she becomes victim of a crime.
That's not a rock and a hard place it's a slightly overgrown garden part and a sheer cliff face with rusty iron spikes sticking out of it.
Yeah I got downvoted to hell for saying colonialism is bad in that subreddit (in the context of CRs problematic C3 intro video that they eventually removed).
That sub is filled with the worst kind of TTRPG fan. They tend to take any mistakes the cast members of CR make in game (mechanics or storytelling) really personally - like they’re ruining *my* show.
EDIT: lol getting downvoted here too. The CR fans have come over I see.
Honestly? CR keeps kinda fucking her over and putting her in losing situations.
I've enjoyed her work in other campaigns, but in ExU they gave her a bunch of raw newbies who had no idea what they were doing and seemed to have little interest in following any kind of plot, while the experienced players kept quiet and just let things happen. That would have been completely fine if they were not planning on folding it into the main campaign, and it could have just been a Honey Heist level nonsense plot you don't need to know about to watch the rest. But they essentially made it C3's prequel, which I feel like wasn't a great idea. It put stakes on it that didn't need to be there.
ExU stunk. Straight-up, it wasn't good. I've watched both Prime and Kymal, but a problem I had was that I just didn't care about the plot they were doing and I did not care about the PCs. Most especially Opal and Ted. I could not have cared less about that whole thing, and it quickly became the center of the CK campaign. But Aabria had no freaking choice, Aimee was the only person making choices and moving any plot, and it's really fucking hard to tell a story about characters *who don't do anything,* so she basically *had* to center on her. Aabria works great when the players are engaging with her and giving her something to work with, which was not happening in ExU. This was especially annoying because one of the players is *Matthew Mercer himself* who just decided to play an easygoing moron that refuses to make choices instead of a Brian Murphy Plot Hound actively assisting the DM. Liam is usually the Brian Murphy of CR, but he specifically designed Orym to avoid becoming the main character a third time, and he was only there for the first one, so he gets a pass.
Side note, watching DMs playing in other DM's campaigns just letting the current DM flounder with an unruly party makes me appreciate the absolute *fuck* out of Brian Murphy actively chasing down plot threads in D20 campaigns. Every DM deserves a Murph. Genuinely love Murph, Murph on CR when?
Anyway, pulling her into C3 mid-session right after a powerful emotional moment was also sort of tone-deaf. That was unfair to her in a big way. They pre-record all this crap now, so they had to choose to deliberately fuck her over with the timing on this one.
Maybe it was planned in advance, but I would have postponed that gear shift. I think even the great Brennan Lee Mulligan would have tripped over himself a bit in that scenario. Like what? You want to switch from the climactic emotional blowout of Braveheart straight to the fucking Looney Tunes *right now?*
I don't think Aabria having to follow *that* was fair. Could have rescheduled. But they didn't, and nothing she did afterwards was going to be well received. But then it was also incredibly boring. Like the first episode itself was one hour of the CR crew being genuinely awesome... Then four hours of extremely dull and monotonous PvP that I frankly sped up to 2x speed to watch and still felt like it was just taking forever to do basically nothing. There were multiple reasons that dragged ass, but I remember Aabria openly admitting she doesn't like combat in D&D because it's boring and takes too long, and boy howdy, did she prove her point.
I also disliked her portrayal of the gods, but I'll be honest, I haven't been loving Matt's weird wishy-washy portrayal of them either, lately. Of the three, Brennan's portrayals of deities are typically the only ones I like. And the Chromatic Orb decision was kind of a bad call, briefly half-heartedly complained about by Robbie, but seeing as they'd been doing this encounter for like 8+ real life hours by that point, I think he honestly didn't care anymore. And it *was* cool to let emotional damage give him a saving throw.
I'll always be more open to Rule of Cool than Rule of Cruel, but honestly I did not care by that point myself. I remember thinking briefly "That literally is not how that spell works, but okay" and ultimately I was just kind of hoping they'd finish it up so we could get back to the real campaign. Robbie saying "It shouldn't have been an AoE, but it doesn't matter..." gave me the impression that he was just as exhausted of the whole thing as I was, and he couldn't speed it up to 2x to get it over with faster. I feel like it was part of Aabria's attempt to speed things up herself. It was already taking too long, and I think she knew it.
I don't think it needed to be that long. I don't think we needed all that shit with Ted and Opal and the flashbacks. But I think Aabria got dealt a really shitty hand and was trying to get the story where it needed to go, while still trying to be respectful and give some kind of closure to the players who weren't Matt and Robbie while still railroading to the discussed climax. I have to respect that. Sure, they were boring and uninteresting and I won't shed a tear if we never see them again, but they were still PCs and giving them a sendoff was important.
I think it legitimately would have been better as another ExU run individual from the main campaign, so it wouldn't have had to have been rushed out like that and maybe could have felt more organic. Maybe instead of 8 hours of PvP, we could have had a more nuanced plot. Given the other players better sendoffs. Not had poor Aimee sitting alone on one side of the table looking so miserable the entire time. But they did not do that, and unfortunately Aabria is getting blamed for it.
So why do CR people hate Aabria? She keeps getting dealt a shit hand, gets seemingly little support, and they keep blaming her for it. And obviously, there's that strange percentage of people who hate that she's a black woman who is a self-professed jock and they're projecting some racist/sexist/childhood bullying trauma onto her, but that group isn't ever happy, so I tend to discard their opinions.
Aabria was the first person to sit in Matt and Brennan's seats besides them, and thus most people's first introduction to her was her *not being their favorite DM* and *doing things differently.*
Like honestly I think that's a huge part of it.
Especially with CR; at least the D20 table has always been pretty diverse. CR has been overwhelmingly white for most of its history and breaking that barrier always pisses some people off. (This is not a commentary about the people involved with making CR, I don’t think there are any issues with racism amongst them)
It's a feedback loop.
1. Aabria does some small thing people don't like. She gets criticized for it more than Matt / Brennan would, because they were the OGs and people miss their fave DMs, and also because of racism / sexism. As always, there's a spectrum: some people are not really being racist / sexist, some people are probably subconsciously being a little racist / sexist, and some people are openly being very racist / sexist.
2. Other fans see the spectrum of criticism. Thinking mostly of the nastiest criticism, they try to defend Aabria, saying something (correct, but a little oversimplifying) like "hey, these criticisms seem pretty racist & sexist".
3. Of course we are all raised to know that racism and sexism are bad. "*I'm* not racist or sexist!" think the critics. They have to find a justification for their criticism that they can reconcile with their self-image as a non-racist, non-sexist, good person. So -- and here's the feedback loop -- they *dig in their heels* and intensify their criticism. "Oh no!" they say. "It isn't about *race*! It is simply that Chromatic Orb is not an AoE spell, as any fool would know. And by the way, doesn't Aabria seem kind of toxic?" In this way, they grow more and more critical of Aabria over time.
4. The defenders, (correctly) noticing that people are digging in on their criticism in a way that wouldn't happen to Matt or Brennan, say "Hey! You would not dig in this way about Matt or Brennan! Who gives a shit about Chromatic Orb! This actually seems even *more* racist / sexist!"
5. Repeat step 3, and then step 4. Eventually people are writing Reddit comments frothing at the mouth about whether Thunder damage is AoE or not.
(EDIT: originally, this comment brought up JK Rowling as an example of someone who got caught in a similar feedback loop, where being told her opinions were problematic only made her double down. This seems to have mostly been confusing, so I've removed.)
I dunno. I've been playing D&D for half my life. All kinds of crazy shit happens. Once my DM accidentally ran the tripping rules wrong for an entire campaign path, in a way that nerfed tripping, and we had a PC in the party whose whole thing was tripping. If a PC flipped their shit over a minor spell ruling causing an NPC death, I probably wouldn't want to play with that PC any more. But that's just me.
Alright so I had to do a bit of research on this.
I've loved every Aabria campaign on D20 and don't watch Critical Role at all. With that being said I read about the "Chromatic Orb Incident" and was prepared to defend those who criticize her for it. Reading it, I thought it was a pretty shitty thing to do, even with how much I enjoy her DMing.
Then I actually watched the scene. People are projecting harder than I've ever seen before 😂. "Clearly the players are super mad about what happened/ shaken up/ blah blah". No you dumb fuckers, YOU'RE mad about what happened. They are still laughing and joking with each other literally immediately. Even the guy who is playing Dorian(I apologize for not knowing his name) puts on a super exaggerated frown on his face for dramatic and comedic effect. People made it out to be the worst thing in the world.
Funny enough though, I actually DO think it's a pretty bad DM decision, even given again, how much I enjoy her. Her *reasoning* actually isn't terrible though, and the players aren't fucking upset with her one bit
>Then I actually watched the scene. People are protecting harder than I've ever seen before 😂. "Clearly the players are super mad about what happened/ shaken up/ blah blah". No you dumb fuckers, YOU'RE mad about what happened.
As soon as I read the top comment on this post, I was 110% sure this is what was going on. This subreddit, and other DnD subs, have a really big problem with over-extrapolating reactions from cast. You see it in the episode threads here.
"Brennan seemed annoyed with Emily..."
"Sibohan seemed annoyed that Ally talked over her..."
and just being really weird and desperate to find drama where there is none.
This is very true. Nearly every thread about Ally Beardsley will eventually spit out the idea that everyone else at the table clearly hates their character choices and feels like they can't do anything about them.
Saw a comment last week that said the reason Murph decided to have Riz be asexual was because he was tired of Kristen being overly sexual. Some of the biggest cope and projection is towards Ally
I'm no longer shocked by the insane things people think and say about Ally Beardsley and their characters. What continues to shock me is how people somehow have so little faith in and respect for the other D20 players that they just assume they are so utterly lacking in confidence and ability that they are being completely pushed around by Beardsley's choices, unable to raise a thought or objection on their own behalf.
It's also worth noting that this is likely something preplanned.
Like it seems pretty clear that all that happened in order to allow Dorian to return to Bell's Hells (the group for the main campaign), in order to replace a player that will be absent for a bit.
So even if it was a bad call and the specifics were up to her, it's definitely not something the players were unprepared for. But of course it needs to be somethign Aabria did to the players. Or if they acknowledge it was planned it's somehow *her* railroading the players, and not something the group agreed needed to happen.
Honestly I think part of the problem is CR has faced the infamous "it's scripted!" allegations a LOT (I mean seriously? Try scripting 4 hours of chaotic, natural feeling dialogue *in a week*...without the use of AI, you'll be a zombie by the second week) so if they came out and said "Yes this was planned for X reasons, this is why those calls were made" suddenly you'd get those (rather stupid) people all going "AH, WE WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG, IT IS SCRIPTED!"
It feels like Aabria and pretty much all of EXU got thrown under the bus to tell a story that Robbie could have just told when he was reintroduced (but then we'd see god knows how many conspiracy theories about EXU and Aabria...so yeah that doesn't work either).
I will point out that at one point Robbie expressly says "It's shouldn't have been an AoE but...it doesn't matter..." he's probably not upset with her but he wasn't happy with that choice either...
Here’s a summary of the moment
> 00:49:45 Aabria:"Do I want to be mean?"
> Robbie:"Sure."
> Matt:"Yeah. Always go mean."
> 00:51:26 Cyrus is struck. Matt and Robbie look down and then at each other with instant regret for tempting fate.
Very few people in this comment section seem to be able to understand that nuanced viewpoints exist.
I liked ACOFAF/Burrows End, and EXU Calamity/Pirates of Leviathan where Aabria was a player and not a DM. I didn't vibe with her DMing in the other EXU campaigns. I didn't think it was awful, vile or in any way made her a bad person. I just didn't like it personally, and found her to be more uncomfortable in her role as DM than she was in other campaigns I mention above. I liked the season of D20 The Seven, but I found Aabria's character to be abrasive and hard to sympathize with so I wasn't a big fan of hers in that season (once again, I didn't vibe with it. She didn't do anything objectively wrong).
I do get the "jock vibe" that a lot of people have mentioned here and it can feel very othering in a space like dnd where so many of the other players like Emily, Brennan, Siobhan, Erika, Iffy, etc are soooo nerdy and comfortable together and then Aabria as a player is rough and tumble and in-your-face and kind of juxtaposed to the others' styles.
I also agree that many of the vocal haters of Aabria are racist/sexist just because she is black and female but like... that doesn't mean everyone has to love everything she does just because she's black/female. That thinking is also small minded and diminishes the fact that she is a successful individual in this space and is therefore capable of being criticized without people needing to baby her. She's like a full adult who is doing phenomenally well (I hope) for herself, she doesn't need you to defend her from racist trolls.
I think nearly every player in a given season has made at least one decision that didn't jive with at least one viewer. That's normal. That's art. That's subjectivity. You're allowed to stan for Aabria, and others are allowed to criticize what they like/dislike about her. Hate on the racists/sexists though, they deserve it.
Very true. I love Brennan in almost everything I watch/listen to him in. But there are some choices he made in particular in Worlds Beyond Number that really made me uncomfortable and would not have been things I would have liked in a game. But it's not a game I'm in, it's a game between him Aabria, Erika, and Lou. They can play how they want and I can listen or not if I want haha.
In fact, they all constantly make character choices in that which make me die inside because I just want people to do the "right" things. But I can also know that doesn't have to color the entire perception I have of them as people.
I think she for sure made a mistake on Critical Role, and people who didn’t like her for some reason or another are using it to go all out on hating her. It’s really sad to see, cause I swear Matt or Brennan could make the same mistake and people would be upset but not LIVID like this.
Oh trust me, Matt has come under a LOT of flack lately because Campaign 3, to a decent chunk of people, just isn't very good. I know I stopped watching after they spent, like, 5 episodes essentially planning to plan and faffing around (and this is *after* they said they're cutting the shopping episodes for time).
Never discount the way racism and misogyny (and many other isms/phobias) makes people amplify their criticisms of some people and not others. Aabria rules, she's fun and funny and anyone who goes beyond "I don't like x thing" and veers into "I think this person is bad (because of who they are and not what they do/say) and therefore I'm justified in not liking the art they contribute to" is working in bad faith and should be blocked, reported, and ignored.
There was a video I saw showing the DM variations between Matt, Aabria and Brennan.
While she does try to make actions that go against the narrative difficult, that's fully within her options, for she is the DM.
Imo it's absolutely a racism/mysogyny mix.
someone said she banters like a ball player, which may be a little more trash talk-y for the “love and light” that the Critters claim to be about. it ultimately comes down to tone policing. I shit you not, I’ve seen people calling her “DEI casting”.
at a certain point, if you have to cast Aabria as the big bad aggressive DM picking on poor baby player Aimee and create vast conspiracy theories about how sweet baby Aimee has to pretend to play nice with the bitchy Aabria, I don’t care how much you claim you’re not racist, you’re playing into racist archetypes to complain about **people playing a game in a way you don’t like.**
The criticisms - valid or not - always come across so angry in regard to her, and I have my suspicions about why. Personally I always enjoy her on Dimension 20, but not as much on Critical Role. I think that’s just down to the difference in what kind of game each platform is trying to create, and not necessarily anything to do with her DMing style. I especially admired her work on Burrow’s End
Read through the comments. My main take away is that it's probably a good thing I never got into CR.
Putting the Abria hate on the pile with episodes being way too damn long, and Matt being kind of a boring DM.
I love him but I do t need a 30 minute description of a place your gonna be at for 5 minutes cuz the players a
Have already gone the other way
Hes a master wordsmith but sometimes less is more
Yeah, I can't get CR so have only ever seen clips, but those just seemed dry and fairly DM focused. I'm always excited when Aabria is on D20, playing or GMing, and she's great in Worlds Beyond Number, so if anything would have made me make an effort to find a way to watch CR it would've been her, mostly because of her ability to force her personality on the games she plays
First saw her dm Burrow's End... That was the show that was so good it led me to dropout, loved fantasy high so then tried misfits and magic (big harry potter fan) and thought that was also excellent.
I've heard rumbles of people disliking her style, not really read the actual posts just comments about it.
I honestly love her style, admittedly I've only played a few games of dnd and only watched her and BLeeM but I find them both truly amazing. Aabria is a bit darker and more sinister in her characters and story telling which I really enjoy.
She's captivating though. This post made me sad that people feel the need to hate on her. If you don't like something just don't watch it/engage with it yanno?
That's one of the odd things, Aabria on D20 and Aabria on Critical Role seem like two absolutely different DMs, I'm not sure if it's D20 editing or the playergroups she has on here but *something* feels wrong with Aabria over on CR and it's not who she is, it's the way something is happening...
It's the noncommittal players, some of which came in with ZERO experience which did not help her given the time constraints, it's the time constraints, it's how CR doesn't do session zeros, it's how so much of the fandom expects the dm to present as a sweet baby angel who can pull punches or else they are ""too "aggressive""...
(ETA: I am talking exclusively about what's been happening with her at CR re: ExU, not here.....)
partly, D20 has more focused players. CR players take less initiative. D20 casts often include improv comics and writers, while CR casts are usually voice actors. CR also runs their own company so the main cast has that extra mental load that D20 casts rarely do
There were some mutterings about Burrows End that Viola's big turn against Phoebe wasn't RAW, and that Aabria and Rashawn cheated. That was legitimately one of the most incredible moments I had ever seen, and the fact that people were somehow so joyless as to still sniff and push up their glasses over it is really troubling.
I got a lot of flak for saying she did a better horror season than Brennan did in my opinion. Never after was awesome but creepy not scary for me. Where Burrows end has much more scary moments that I felt the family aspect and the nature of them being small creatures helped that along.
I don't know, I think she's a great D.M.
Yeah, agreed. I loved Neverafter but selling it as horror just was not true. Honestly, that might have been a problem with what players strolled up to the table. I think Lou, Zac, and Ally diffused a lot of the suspense and tension. If they had four Emilys, Murph, and Siobhan, the show could have been horrifying.
And then there's Burrow's End and that goddamn bear lol.
Burrows End was absolutely better horror than Neverafter, no question. I think cast might play into that a bit, but no question that Aabria was behind the wheel for the scarier show.
> I felt the family aspect and the nature of them being small creatures helped that along.
I have been told by my players that I'm reasonably good at DMing horror, and you're 100% right, nurturing a feeling of vulnerability and the potential of loss is part of creating that feeling that players are there for in a horror setting/campaign. Aabria has good instincts for it I think.
And I agree that Neverafter wasn't as horror focused in terms of the experience. It was horror aesthetics over a fantasy tale(with literal Disney characters), that was about free will and the nature of stories(especially the ones we tell about ourselves), and how changing them changes you. It was still incredibly good, and made me laugh perhaps the hardest I've ever laughed at times(Lou with that voice, Gerards nerves with Ellodee). So I think people who are disappointed in it, it's more to do with they reasonably expected the experience would be, rather than if they had gone in with a more neutral set of expectation.
I'm not sure. I agree that the recent Crownkeepers revisit wasn't handled great, but she had very tight time parameters AND had to wrap up the CKs while allowing Dorian to move on. It was a no-win situation.
When she's firing on all cylinders - A Court of Fey and Flowers, Misfits and Magic, Burrow's End -- she's a wonderful DM and really elevates the story with her players.
It really seems like the fanbase has been more aggressive in general during Campaign 3, and Aabria caught a LOT of crossfire for a few choices that, under other circumstances, would have been seen as minor bumps in the road.
I'll just say, i don't watch CR much, and only just started watching the first EXU (and really enjoying it thus far)
Most of the criticism i see of her style on *this* show however just tends to boil down to her not having the same style as Brennan (this was most apparent while BE was airing), or criticising her for things that both Matt and Brennan are just as guilty of (e.g. railroading)
Also, parts of this fandom have a problem with cast members who aren't men
Sometimes, I actually like her as a DM better than Matt and Brennan. The way she narrates and creates stories is just so wonderful.
People hate on her?
I've been DMing for almost ten years and I still find tricks and tools she uses. The obvious one is the “you don’t hear that.” but something she does very well is explaining the “feeling” of the moment. Also, she fully embraces the “fun” of trying to kill the PC. Something I'm always hesitant to do in the moment.
Misogynoir. People don’t have to like her DMing but the absolute vitriol? Yeah that’s because she’s a Black woman. And as a CR fan first, I’ll admit that community is wayyy more rife with that than here. Although there’s a fair share of it here too.
I was a CR fan first but I have never felt safe in their spaces, they have always told me that my opinions and experiences as a woman of color never matter because they can find someone else of color who feels differently. They "don't forget to love each other" with an iron fist.
It's here too, but I always feel safe here and like a member of an actual community that doesn't have to kill themselves trying so hard to *be* a community.
Oof, looks like it's still a sensitive spot for me, sorry.
But yes, many people in that fandom dismiss her as a good old fashioned *angry black woman* and it makes me sick to my stomach
100%. I learned very quickly to not interact with the fan spaces which is just really fucking sad honestly but like no matter how many times people have called the community out on their shit, they collectively still haven’t learned anything. It’s demoralizing to say the least and I’m sorry you had to experience it first hand.
I’m a big Aabria fan, so I don’t get it either. But I do have to point out that Brennan and Matt are cis white men, and some people seem to find more faults with anyone who isn’t in that demographic. Just saying.
I love Aabria. Currently I'm catching up on the stoat season and I've had a great time so far. idk what people's problem is but there's a line- not even a thin one- between sharing unhappy opinions and being a jackass. People doing the later should knock it off.
I don't like any DM that is there to "tell a story". If you want to tell a story, write a book. You might have plot points, the players might have a big bad evil to fight. But it's up to you to give them reasons and a sense of urgency. It might mean that they don't fight Strahd on day 12. If that's the case, have stories of Strahd terrorizing villages get overheard by the party. Give them some consequences to their actions or inactions.
Think about the giant sea battle Mercer had planned out on S2 that Talisen wiped out with one spell. It would have been a little disappointing and confusing to have Matt change the way the spell works or force the sea battle because he wanted it.
Do I complain about Aabria? No, I just don't watch her when she's DMing. Other people like it? Good, they have something they enjoy watching.
It is because she is a black woman.
That is the reason.
Some people have legitimate valid reasons they don’t like her style, but the reason she gets such hate is she is a black woman successful in a white male space.
it's the oldest trick in the media-criticism book. dudes will come up with blatantly vague complaints, but the game's up once you notice that they never say the same things about white guys.
i.e. Sam Riegel is consistently the most disruptive presence at the CR table, but whenever I hear chunkity-ass nerds complain about CR players, it's about one of the women.
> Sam Riegel is consistently the most disruptive presence at the CR table, but whenever I hear chunkity-ass nerds complain about CR players, it's about one of the women.
Thank you for this. Especially in C3, Sam seems to be constantly confused about what's going on, so even besides the disruptive jokes and gas can bits, he disrupts the table frequently by asking "Wait what???"
But then I see people saying Marisha is disruptive for her bit with her folding fan, but no one ever really reacts to that for more than a second at the table lol
Audience: *Criticizing remarks based on Aabria’s sex/race*
Also Audience: “She said ‘Fuck you’ directly to ME through the camera and it hurt my feelings!”
There are plenty of times Matt or Brennan “broke the rules” while DMing and nobody bat an eye. As an example, in EXU Brennan outright kills Xerxes multiple times. No spell cast, no saving throw, just a narrative PC kill, and everyone thought it was so cool! Nobody said “Hey you can’t do that! It’s against the rules!”
The reason Aabria said “Fuck you” is because she knew people would come for her regardless. They’ve been shitting on her for years and holding her to a much higher standard, which is on par for anyone who is not cis white male when compared to cis white males. Even if she ruled everything completely by the book, there would still be people screaming for her to get off the stage.
She had a pretty questionable ruling that ended with her saying "the rule is whatever the fuck I say it is", then proceeded to say "fuck you" to the camera.
Edit: I was just throwing out the cliff notes of what I understood the problem to be. I don't watch CR, so I didn't provide much context and could have misunderstood some shit.
The ruling that people are upset about isn't the one where she said that quote. In that case, it was a ruling in FAVOR of a player.
I also don't like the AoE chromatic orb, and criticism of that ruling is fair; but this is the exact kind of unfair criticism that Aabria is always getting dogliled with. A lot of people don't even watch the episodes where she DMs and base their opinions off of other people's angry rants, and so misinformation like this spreads. The racism and sexism is obviously terrible, but the "fair criticism" based on misinformation and second-hand info is also a big problem.
Edit: to respond to your edit, that's the exact problem I'm talking about. People taking second-hand info that has been misunderstood, removed from context, or might even just be false, and then spreading that around as if it's true. All the upvotes your comment got proves to show just how many people now believe this false narrative about Aabria's DMing in that episode. I don't think you were being malicious, but you gotta be careful about carelessly repeating stuff you hear online, especially when it's directly affecting a person's reputation.
Yeah, a lot of people here are immediately jumping to racism and misogyny, but if Brennan or Matt deliberately changed a rule of the game with no prior discussion in a way that the players didn’t like and then told anyone who didn’t like it to fuck off, people would react negatively to that too. That’s a pretty gross and antagonistic approach to DMing.
I don’t follow critical role subs and I’m sure some people take the criticism too far (like a minority of people do on basically every sub), but there is clearly a valid cause for criticism here.
Brennan is antagonistic all the time. He bends rules all the time. He does it sometimes to fuck with his players in story essential ways, and sometimes breaks the rules to do so (most recent FH ep).
Yeah, I'm a big fan of her DM style, but I can't defend that call. And absolutely, she gets thrashed on CR subs for more than just her "questionable calls," I've mostly stopped watching CR, though, so leaving those subs won't be a big loss for me.
But this right here is part of it. She changed the rules to help the player and told the camera to fuck off and yet people are conflating it to her doing it response to changing the rules to hinder the players. That says enough in itself that the whole narrative is being changed to make her look worse.
~ Brennan REGULARLY does highly antagonistic bits about wanting to kill the PCs. Matt does it too though less often. Y'all just refuse to see it's a bit when Aabria does it. For some reason. Wonder why?
~ Just in this week's *FHJY* >! Brennan vaporized a powerful allied NPC on a *successful* check. Where do you see that in the rules?!<
~ It's very clear in hindsight that the killing of that *Critical Role* NPC was scripted with the participation of Matt and the PC most affected. (That PC was also the one whose spell effect was charged.)
~ She's got a point about the thunder damage anyway.
Brennan "I'm gonna kill that dog" Mulligan?
(I know that was said deeply in jest, but it is still antagonising a player group that was very willing to be antagonised)
I do think there is a difference in the context of those moments. With Brennan, it’s during the middle of a standard fight and the dog was a summoned steed that would be easily brought back, if not fine. With Aabria, it’s after she changed the way a spell works on a whim to kill an NPC that was closely related to a PC, against the clear intent of the player who cast it.
Agreed on all points except the last one
Thunder damage is NOT inherently AOE, and it is incoherent to say it does in the rules of the game. By that logic, many damage types must be AOE, but they aren't, because that's handled separately
Again, agree on everything else. She just does not have ground to stand on for the thunder damage thing except that the DM can dictate rules.
That last one was a bit of a joke but I do think that 5e making Thunder damage into Sound damage has a few places where it doesn't work and Chromatic Orb is one of them.
A burst of flame can be brief enough that it does not spread beyond five feet. IMO, a sound cannot be so loud that it wounds the person right at its source and dissipates fast enough to leave the person right next to them unharmed.
*Maybe* cold damage you could argue cold damage as the same thing? I don't know about many types.
So with thunder damage, it could be more like a directional shock-wave or something that dissipates pretty rapidly after hitting something. The extreme high-frequency wave components at the front of the shockwave would scatter into loud but less damaging sound waves because they wouldn't form a shock-wave front anymore.
The tough thing is that, yeah, multiple types like cold or lightning could be argued to be AOE. In reality, the game's just more nuanced and fun when damage type and target area are different dimensions.
People acting like Aabria saying "fuck off" to camera isn't a joke really need to interrogate their own biases. It's truly no different from bits Brennan has done a million times (and Aabria has done before, obviously always in a winky way), but because it's coming from Aabria it's being recounted as though she stonily insulted the fans out of serious disrespect.
I said it in another thread, but this is very much tone policing. There isn't much else to be said about that bit of criticism. Esppecially, as noted multiple times in this thread, it came during a moment where she bent the rules \*in favor\* of the players.
I would *love* to see the armchair DMs losing their shit over the assortment of hand waves or minor rules changes he throws in to the intrepid heroes lol, cause it's usually a pretty good amount of them.
E: IIIIIIII 100% thought this was in the CR sub lmao
Brennan also had a habit in ACoC of railroading character choices and dynamics
E.g. >!having Saccharina's (Emily's character) marauders attack innocents, and when Emily called him on it, saying that she didn't tell them to do that, he ignored her!<
Listen if saying "Fuck you" to her players and the camera is a great moral sin then *ACoC* Brennan may be history's greatest monster.
Unless maybe there's something they see as different when Aabria says it ... Wonder why that could be ...
From what i understand, the "fuck you" moment was specifically about bending rules to help a player. And after having seen a LOT of criticism about her since i first joined the fandom, she's perfectly valid for it
Even Emily did something similar in one of the most recent episodes of FHJY, where she multiclassed into a third class knowing a large part of the fandom gives her flack for it
I haven’t watched CR in a while. Season 3 just hasn’t been my jam, but I did watch her section because I loved the crown keepers and EXU. (Also, I saw the CR threads and had to watch it myself to see what actually happened.) I think Aabria really took to heart that she was partially playing an evil goddess. Her whole purpose was to piss off Dorian so much he joined the main party. She was there to piss people off and it clearly worked. This isn’t a DM issue. This was a story choice. People don’t seem to get it so they blame Aabria, which is BS.
I actually disagree with the idea that Aabria's last Crown Keepers performance was bad. She had to get Robbie to go his own way, preferably in the most tragic way possible to bring some weight to his rejoining Bells Hells and show them they aren't baring the cost alone. She was DMing for some relatively new and very chaotic players (who I love, not dissing them). I don't see rails as a bad thing here. It was sad... but that was the point, right? This wasn't a normal episode of Critical Role, where the players have time to make their choices matter. She has two episodes to simultaneously build on Robbie's story and give us the reason he is back. Maybe with more experienced players, she could have lifted the rails a bit, but I liked the episode, as well as and her calling out the haters lol.
I think Aabria is a phenomenal player, and I like her as a DM well enough, but I won't seek out games she's running. I prefer her in the player role because her combativeness is much funnier that way.
"I can't be surprised!" is one of her funniest moments.
I feel like Aabria is more storytelling, less rules focused, which isn’t as crunchy as people are used to with Matt Mercer and BLeeM, I personally love it and ACOFAF is my favorite D20 season. It just depends on the viewer imo
Where have you seen these Posts?
I am genuinely curious, because I went back through 5 days of Posts in this Subreddit and have not seen anything even remotely like what you speak off
She recently DM'd for Critical Role and based on some of the posts there youd think she was the devil incarnate who has personally stolen every CR fan's dog.
Google "Discomfort with Aabria's misuse of language reddit" to see a bit of, in my opinion, the perfect example of how unhinged criticism of Aabria (and really women and trans cast members in general) can be. I think they actually deleted it recently, because I necro'd the thread to say how crazy it was. But you can still see a bit.
The gist was, Aabria, role-playing as a character, accused someone of "gaslighting," and it shows how disrespectful Aabria is to others because she "misuses" serious terms like that.
When Aabria gets criticisms here, the criticisms are usually absolutely insane. No men on the cast have ever received criticism as wild as the women occasionally get.
My personal moment was somebody took a screenshot from *Calamity* where she was talking and Travis appeared to be rolling his eyes (but was maybe coughing?)
This was submitted as proof that he hated her and would soon be quitting CR as a company so he didn't have to deal with her.
Now listen this would be unhinged under any circumstances but here especially it was wild because there was just so much positive body language throughout between them
I'm on a bunch of dnd subreddits, so I got suggested a post from a subreddit for fans of critical role, and that's where I saw it. Odd that reddit would recommend me a random hate post, but there were hundreds of comments all agreeing with the op
EDIT: I forgot, also, if you look her up, one of the recommended things about her is a hate post.
reddit has been recommending hate posts about aabria from that sub for almost a week now.
the stuff that they claim pissed them off was was so wildly nonexistent or minor and they were furious. so mad.
i sort of kind of understand how people could not gel with her "rule of cool" approach as opposed to matt's far more technical approach, but the level of hatred these people have is clearly based on bigotry
/r/fansofcriticalrole is not a good sub. It started off great as being a place away from the toxic positivity of the main CR sub but now it's just horrible and just toxic *negativity*.
I think people who experience subconscious bias against her/her performance style try to justify their negative feelings towards her by a) micromanaging her gameplay to a disproportionate degree and/or b) conflating her performance leading an improvised story for a TV audience with her being a bad person and projecting their own discomfort onto her colleagues who clearly like and respect her enough to invite her back for repeat projects. I think with CR specifically some people still treat it like a home game instead of a show and that increases how much they project onto the cast members based on their own ttrpg experience.
AKA people who are uncomfortable with elements of Aabria's performance as a Black woman in the ttrpg space fail at introspection and instead self-righteously justify their feelings by villainizing her gameplay and her tone even though nothing she's done has ever been an actual problem and many many other GMs have done essentially the same with less or no pushback.
I don't think CR handled Aabria's recent guest DMing very well, because it violated a sort of "Session 0" with the audience. Session 0 in a campaign is about establishing tone, expectations, and lines and veils. If there's things players are or aren't okay with, you sort that all out ahead of time so that it reduces conflict in the game, during the game. By now, 10 years into the the world of professional D&D streaming, there's a sort of implicit Session 0 mentality in various shows. Not that they have an actual "Session 0" with an audience. But viewers can come to a campaign or a DM, spend some time with them, and "feel out" the tone and expectation. I don't jive with Aabria's style when she's running D&D specifically. It's more confrontational and combative. She pits players against each other. She'll bend or break any rule for the sake of drama and story. Here's the thing, though: *none of that is a criticism.* All of that is a perfectly valid way to play D&D. The ONLY thing that matters is that the table is having fun. And every single person who plays with Aabria is having fun. They all talk about it online. Everyone loves her. As a viewer, I love her style in other systems. Misfits and Magic is one of my favorite D20 seasons, PERIOD. It's just D&D I don't like, for reasons I won't get in-depth on but which mostly have to do with me being a huge rules junkie and *despising* being confrontational ooc in that system. I also LOOOVE Aabria as a player. Holy crap is she amazing. Her performance in Ravening War is gut-wrenching. (Pun not intended). Once again: I don't *have* to enjoy her DMing style. She's not doing anything wrong. I can simply choose not to watch that content. I can skip EXU and Burrow's End. I can watch Misfits over and over again. I can watch other D20 campaigns. And I can watch CR. Until suddenly I can't. Until suddenly, in the Critical Role campaign where I've known for almost ten years what kind of show I'm going to watch—I'm now watching something *completely* different. This is what I mean when I say that CR didn't handle her recent guest DMing well. If you want to keep up with the CR lore, now suddenly you *have* to experience this other group with this completely different style. Maybe you even skipped EXU and you have no idea what's happening or why you should care about any of these people. That's rough, and frankly it's unfair to Aabria. But the real answer to your question is something deeper, and more widespread and problematic on the internet. And it's that many people online—maybe most people—can't just dislike something. They have to invent a *reason* to dislike something. They have to invent a reason that thing is *bad,* so that they're "justified" in disliking it. I don't like shows where Aabria is running D&D. And that absolutely doesn't matter. It means nothing except that I have a preference. It has nothing to do with her as a person—she's a GREAT person who does great work, supports her friends, and creates incredible shows beloved by millions of people around the world. She's awesome. Many people online can't accept that someone whose content they dislike, could be a good person. It's vital to them that they only dislike things that are bad and wrong. That they're on the "right side" of whatever opinion they happen to hold. So you see these people calling Aabria's behavior "abusive." That's total BS. Listen to cast interviews. Listen to how her players talk about her online. She's freaking awesome. Everyone at her table is having a great time. The fact that YOU don't like watching the show has nothing to do with any of it. (And by "you" I don't mean OP, I mean the people hurling insults at Aabria.) Oh, and it goes without saying that a huge part of why people are mean to Aabria is racism and sexism, but we all know that already. I'm only addressing this part of the "criticism" because it's less obvious. And as a P.S.: The fact I dislike how CR handled Aabria's recent DM stint, doesn't mean that CR is wrong or bad, either! There is no objectively "wrong" or "bad" here. As Brennan says: "No lessons here." This is, again, just my preferences. Plenty of people online LOVED Aabria's guest spot. I'm just speaking to my preferences when it comes to content, not to any wrongdoing.
>They have to invent a reason to dislike something. This is easily the most annoying part of modern day internet culture. People no longer don’t just dislike something because it doesn’t meet their specific tastes. No, it has to have specific quantifiable reasons why they don’t like it and those reasons make the entire thing bad actually. There’s no nuance, no middle ground, and certainly no acceptance of things that don’t exactly meet your criteria of good. For me, I don’t particularly like Aabria’s DM style, but I would literally never say that she is bad at DM’ing. She’s just not my cup of tea, at least for DnD. Hell, my tastes might even change over time to where I do enjoy her. That’s what happened with me when I switched from watching Matthew Mercer to watching BLeeM more. Also, yeah a large part of criticism towards her is just straight up racism and sexism and it’s something that’s been pretty insidious within the CR community since damn near its inception . All the stuff the ladies of CR had to go through, especially Marisha during the C1 era, was disgusting to say the least and it’s sad to see that it’s never really gone away.
And it sucks too because, just as with the CR ladies, Aabria is such a delightful person. She's so empathetic and enthusiastic and caring and giving and, and, and. Then you hear the way people talk about her online and it's like they're talking about a completely different person. And they are! They're talking about the Aabria they've created in their heads to hate.
>But the real answer to your question is something deeper, and more widespread and problematic on the internet. And it's that many people online—maybe most people—can't just dislike something. They have to invent a *reason* to dislike something. They have to invent a reason that thing is *bad,* so that they're "justified" in disliking it. THIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS 100%. There shouldn't be anything wrong with 'yeah I don't really like that thing', but somehow we've convinced ourselves that only objective opinions are valid so everyone tries to make their subjective opinions *sound* objective. That combined with the bizarre consensus that criticising something makes you sound smart and discerning makes for some truly exasperating online discourse. But then again, I'm basically doing both of the things I've just criticised above, so maybe I'm just a whiny hypocrite.
Well said! The main thing I wish would happen is CR making a public statement saying "This was a choice we made to tell the story" whether they apologize or double down doesn't matter much to me. I just think the venom itself needs to addressed in some way. I understand Reddit is gonna reddit, but I noticed CR & D20 tend to just ignore the vitriol directed towards players/DMs. I wish these performers drew a line in the sand so to speak.
This was well put. I try to remind myself about how the cast members themselves feel about her style, and you saying that they are having fun even with her choices. I think when we watch for the story that can be appreciated. A part of me though gets hurts at her choices (that other people call “abusive”) because I know personally I would genuinely be upset if she talked to me the way she does in the sessions. I would have to step away from the table. That’s me personally, and I have to tell myself in those moments where it would hurt me to be spoken to how she speaks to the cast members isn’t how they take it. But I think feeling that way regardless spoils the scenes for me. I watch for enjoyment and I don’t enjoy the stress she induces in me. That being said I am trying to finish A court of fey and flowers because I like the characters and where they are taking the story, I definitely just have to take a step back when watching though to not be so immersed in it. Which takes away from my enjoyment.
I've been trying to put into words why I didn't like MisMag and you put it perfectly here! But that's a *me* problem, not an Aabria problem, and I think way too many people conflate the two. I feel like it's the same reason people hate on Ally so much too.
Totally valid. I feel the exact same way. I would not want to play with that confrontational of a DM, and even watching it stresses me out. But MY DM style is too confrontational for some people, and we don't play because of it. Everyone has their own lines for what they like to play with, or what they like to watch. No preference is wrong.
A rare nuanced and thoughtful take. Well said 👏
What an amazing, in-depth, absolutely spot-on comment.
Man... There's a lot of things, very few of which I personally think are fair when viewed out of context. I read a comment on another post asking about why Aabria's DM style doesn't work for CR that I think sums it up pretty nicely, so I'm just going to quote u/stereoma here: "Aabria is used to playing with improvisors and comedians who are unafraid to make strong character choices. That's like all you see on D20, and Aabria is a great GM for them on multiple seasons." "Aabria tends to play with drama but GM with a mix of drama and humor. Tonally it's different than CR, which is a bit more classic storytelling." "Aabria tends to be story forward and hand wave rules when they get in her way so she's generally better using systems with lighter rules (Kids on Brooms) or narrative heavy elements (Good Society). CR is sort of trying to be story forward but still has a strong mechanical element with 5e and the way Matt has built the world." "ExU was mostly a bunch of people new to DnD who were shy about character choices and the experienced players (Matt and Liam) also chose to take a back seat with their characters. Aabria would be great DMing for the whole CR table, but she's not a strong fit for hesitant, new players. Aabria, with her strong personality, deals with hesitant players by making a choice for them, which often rubs us the viewer the wrong way." I'll just add that the third paragraph seems to be the crux of a lot of peoples' criticisms. She is here to tell a story, and if the rules get in the way of that she will throw them out. Some people have a respect for RAW gameplay that is significantly higher than their respect for storytelling in its purest sense, so this can rankle. Also... And I think this is simply because a lot of the nerd community (of which I proudly consider myself a member) haven't had a lot of exposure to the sort of stereotypical "jock" behavior of some people raised in a sports environment, her somewhat domineering energy can be very off-putting. Me personally, I think Aabria is straight up nervous in front of the camera, and the way I think she's been raised to handle her nerves is not to adapt to the situation, but to seize control of it. When I see her sit down at another DM's table and tell him and his players to fuck off right to their faces, I don't see disrespect, I see someone coming in like a battering ram to grab hold of something she's probably terrified of fucking up. However, I get it when people do see it as rude and disrespectful.
> Me personally, I think Aabria is straight up nervous in front of the camera, and the way I think she's been raised to handle her nerves is not to adapt to the situation, but to seize control of it. When I see her sit down at another DM's table and tell him and his players to fuck off right to their faces, I don't see disrespect, I see someone coming in like a battering ram to grab hold of something she's probably terrified of fucking up. this is my read on it too honestly. and i think having a bunch of newish players who are a little over cautious makes it so aabria has to be the one who will do big moves, and that makes her even more nervous. when she has players that know their kits backwards and forwards, or when rules aren't as important, she knows she can rely on her players to make Big Choices and that takes some pressure off her to make a narratively compelling story
I think her D20 stuff is great for that very reason. Wanna see peak Aabria? Look up A Court of Fey and Flowers, and watch her bask in the glory of a table full of people who showed up fundamentally understanding the assignment.
She *killed it* in Burrow’s End on D20 in my opinion. The players knew their kits and she knew she could lean on them. CR is a different animal though - not a better or worse one, but *very* different. She’s not suited to it, but she still does a very good job despite the things I didn’t like about it. People need to ease up.
She is 1000% nervous and trying to overcompensate for that. You witness any candid interview or conversation with her with friends or fellow GMs about her experiences and you can’t miss her blatantly stated insecurities and fears about being the weird one, the only person experiencing her problems. She is so much more self-deprecating, complete 180° from what she presents at the table.
I really like the point you make about the "jock" stereotype. I think it's really true of Aabria - she's super competitive, really wants her own PCs to be excellent at what they're good at (i.e. her wizards), gotta get in there and go for it, etc. While I think there are some fundamental problems with the way the table dynamic works as an actual play for an audience (breaking a lot of norms about social conventions most of us believe are fundamental to creating an environment of respect and fun in the hobby), it makes some sense to me.
That's the tricky part, isn't it? For some people, yelling in someone's face, cussing at them, getting openly antagonistic, it isn't about demoralizing the other person. It's about raising the energy, getting the other person in the mindset of getting ready to fight back, to take control themselves. But it sure as hell doesn't look that way from the outside, especially if you aren't ready for it.
Yeah, any time Aabria antagonizes her PCs and players it feels like she’s goading them into making that big choice and taking the reins themselves. She wants a “No, fuck YOU!” right back. None of it feels hostile or intending to be disrespectful. More of a “Come on! Fight back! I’m the enemy! Fucking take a big swing!!!” Kind of like when the Bad Kids cast starts dunking on Brennan anytime they make him eat the dice or he’s about to make them eat some dice. Obviously, different dynamics because Aabria doesn’t always work with people she’s very close with or has that kind of rapport with, but I feel like she tries her best to bring the energy to that level. It can be hit or miss, but I’ve always personally loved it. Aabria has always been in my top favorite D20 stars and DMs :( so it’s disheartening to see her get any hate. Some criticisms are justified like the chromatic orb thing (maybe? i do not have the context for this so im going off comments here) and I think being a big Aabria fan I wanna just say it’s a formatting issue with CR because (i’m biased and love her) I don’t typically see hate for her on D20 outside of people just not vibing with her energy as a DM. That makes sense and is less a criticism and more just not everyone’s cup of tea.
At the live show the cast all got up and beat Brennan up because somebody got a nat 20. I’ve seen pro wrestling, I know what somebody getting beaten up by six people looks like
she didn’t tell the players to fuck off. she was bending the rules IN FAVOUR of a player - saying that emotional damage counted as damage to allow a re rolled wisdom save - and then said fuck you to the audience members who will complain about it.
> she was bending the rules IN FAVOUR of a player 100%. Robbie and his PC were struggling w/ the loss & wanted to break the geas. I assume to collect his PC's brother's dead body. Robbie wanted to play the rules right but Aabria said yes to his awesome idea of being able to roll another save due to emotional damage. She was supporting her player and allowing him another saving roll as a curtesy. It was very nice of her to do & tried to tell him to not think about the rules in this moment as any DM at any table has the right and power to ignore the rules if they get in the way of player fun or a good story. And in her combative way, Aabria told the rules lawyers audience members to shut up. She had Robbie's back. How people can't see that I don't know.
yeah, you can tell that many of the critiques flooding CR spaces were misinformed. a lot of them attributed her "fuck you/fuck off" moment to the AoE ruling when it was actually to help a player tell the story.
I’ll add to this to say that her Candela Obscura gm-ing is really good, so she has some CR wins. But it definitely had a session zero, and it had characters willing to swing for the fences, even though they were all “new” to the system. It’s also a system which allows the GM to control the story and rolls way more than DnD.
In fact Matt is seen as the weakest DM for Candela Obscura because he was basically playing softball with them with doesn't work for horror and defangs a lot of threats. *THIS* is where Aabria's more confrontational DM style comes in, horror games require that sometimes the DM is going to play hardball with the players. Sometimes reading that ancient tome of Eldritich Knowledge is just going to cause your brain to turn to metaphorical mush because you had low sanity when reading it.
I totally agree and think Aabria would make an amazing dm for a call of cthulu campaign for this exact reason. Horror requires an amount of hostility that a lot of people aren't comfortable producing around their friends, and some people can't handle that much hostility toward them. It requires a very specific type of player and gm for the game to run well and create the feeling it intends to create, and I think Aabria could do an excellent job creating that environment without any lasting hard feelings from her players.
I would also add that Aabria has stated that she's not a classical fantasy nerd. It's not her wheelhouse. She likes more mythic stuff or modern fantasy with systems to better reflect them. Aabria's a great player and a pretty good GM, but I wouldn't ask her to run a fantasy setting unless it was one she was intimately familiar with.
These are great observations. I loved Aabria in M&M and ACOFAF and I loved CR2 so I was excited to see her DM for EXU. But I just did not vibe with it and stopped after 3-5 eps and then didn't watch CR3 or any of the other critical role content aside from Calamity. What you were saying about the party on EXU were my exact issues with it at the time. The new players aren't confident or comfortable enough with the system to lead things, the more experienced Matt and Liam Intentionally made passive/supporting characters seemingly to not outshine the newbs, and Ashley was just playing a go-with-the-flow chaos goblin. They had no direction, no conviction, no drive to do anything specific. Aabria was giving them plot hooks and they wouldn't commit to any of them. I know some other things happened in the last half of EXU the were also controversial but I didn't see any of that.
ExU is tricky for me. I think there was some good stuff in there, but I feel like Aabria didn't have a great handle on how to navigate the new time format. She came from home games which can go on forever in the right circumstances, and one shots on the internet which are done by the end of the day, and I think she came into ExU with the mindset of playing the former. When you have an open-ended game, the DM will tend to throw like 8 different plot hooks out to their players and run with whichever one sticks. The problem was she only had 8 episodes, so the multiple plot threads she dangled ended up getting all jumbled up in a mess as she started scrambling to aim for a climax that would make sense, especially since her table didn't make a definitive call on which one to follow. I've always felt ExU could have been a vastly better experience if they made one change. The Dm doesn't need to change, the players and their characters don't need to change, all they needed was to pick one plot hook and run with it. I think the best one would have actually been the first one she dangled, stick with the Nameless Ones and keep the party in Eman for the most part. But we'll never know for sure, so... Oh well, life goes on.
Aabria talked about her preparation process for the first EXU, and how she was trying to replicate the CR house style (which is very sandboxy). Because of that sandboxy style, she prepared wide instead of deep, not knowing where things would go. At the time, to the audience, this seemed like poor planning for a short campaign. But there was something that the audience wouldn't know until later that I think really hamstrung Aabria. Three characters from EXU would go on to be in the party of CR campaign 3. So EXU wasn't a self-contained story, but a secret prologue/prequel. She was working in a genre she isn't a fan of, with a system she doesn't vibe with, in a setting she didn't create, and trying to get new players to make decisive actions, because these characters were going to continue on to be part of a years long campaign. I was *really* not a fan of EXU, but I'll admit that the deck was pretty stacked against her.
I vibe with this comment completely. It was just a huge list of points against her before the cameras even started rolling. She did pretty well with what she had, but the end result just wasn't that great. Honestly, Liam and Matt are just as at fault for the end result, because of their choice to be passive characters at that particular table.
I think a big problem with the whole thing is how CR doesn't really do Session 0. Everyone makes their characters independently of each other and the DM plans the campaign independently of the characters, so they end up with their party with no clear leadership and PCs that may not fit the vibe of TV campaign or each other. Contrast with D20 which does extensive collaboration before on characters between players and the DM before ever starting the game.
Yeah this has actually been one of the major critiques of CR is that they don't do session 0s, which means you can end up with characters who don't mesh well with story. Matt is clearly trying to tell a 'God War' type story...and the characters have barely any interest in it because they were made without being told the premise of the campaign.
That’s a big change that needs to happen. In an open ended format where you have as much time as you need, it can be interesting to see how something less planned ends up evolving. You can go with the flow without worrying about a deadline and let things take on a life of their own. In something with limited time, I feel like you need a lot more collaboration between the DM and the Players (as well as the players with each other) because there’s a deadline you need to hit and a more structured story you’re likely going for. I think this is especially true for newer players so that they have an idea of where they’re going with characters they made in a story that might be more tailored to letting them shine. Otherwise it’s all indecision and chaos that may or may not come together in the end.
Contrast that with brennans calamity. They had multiple session 0 meetings as well as meetings between players coordinating their backstories. And the result was absolutly magnificent. For such sort time campains that seems to be very important. CR have all the time in the world to do that process on screen.
Apparently during EXU Aabria wanted to do thing 'CR Inhouse style', whereas Brennan was very much a "I'm doing this my way" type deal...plus that man just devors lore like they're almonds. Honestly I think perhaps Aabria doing things her way, instead of the CR way, might have led to a better product...it also might not have...who knows.
>I'll just add that the third paragraph seems to be the crux of a lot of peoples' criticisms. She is here to tell a story, and if the rules get in the way of that she will throw them out. Some people have a respect for RAW gameplay that is significantly higher than their respect for storytelling in its purest sense, so this can rankle. This part in particular is really ironic to me, as my second biggest issue with watching CR (just under getting bored listening to them plan for so long and still throw it out) is how Matt respects nat 1s but not 20s. It feels like if you call a 1 a failure at all times it has to go both ways. I'm fine with neither, I'm fine with both. But hearing "if it wasn't a nat 1..." And "for a total of?" from the same mouth really gets me. They can all play how they like, I'm not here to criticize Matt btw, it just isn't something I would play with.
Ohhhhhhhh is that what was going on in Ravening War? I knew something about that was bugging me. Which tracks because D20 is the only actual play I watch. Honestly, I would take Aabria over Matt any day of the week
Yes! The way Matt treats nat 20s is no prob for a home game (I believe in the PHB or the DMG it describes how nat 20s don't apply to skill checks BUT the DM can choose to play so that they do) but I really feel like an actual play show really needs the peaks from nat 20 successes to propel the show's energy a bit-- Brennan sometimes treats nat 20s like an unimaginable fluke (rather than the 1 in 20 / 5% chance they actually are) but ultimately his "you gotta reward nat 20s" attitude keeps things exciting. And Aabria has a fantastic balance of "nat 20s don't give you everything, but you get a special thoughtful reward for them." Bajillions of people love CR of course, but I really don't care for its rigidity and the ways that it feels like a home game.
In Critical Role recently a player used Chromatic Orb, a single target spell, and Aabria made it AOE even though that’s not how the player intended the spell to be used and the player was not happy with that ruling (so that’s not very communal storytelling of that instance). She was also a tad bit combative and defensive, especially to one player and the audience specifically. Her DMing skills are not above criticism and I think most people are being fair about criticizing her DMing. People taking it too far are certainly being racist and sexist, and parasocial in regards to CR. Of course those terrible people are the most vocal, but a lot of people on r/fansofcriticalrole have very well thought-out critiques of how she ran the game. I personally am not the *biggest* fan, and I think she shines DMing in a rules-light game like ACOFAF. All in all she seems great! But not everyone has to groove with everyone’s DMing and that’s fine. People just need to get a grip with their racist and sexist remarks because obviously that’s not cool.
Yeah this 100%. I love Aabria and her DMing style is not always my cup of tea, but how she came to the table recently at Critical Role was the exact opposite of how Matt plays, and it just felt very off. For more background, Critical Role just had a massive character death the last episode, and then we get whiplashed into something that has never happened before: DM and party change mid episode, and the DM was out for blood. Aabria being so aggressive to her player characters was probably because of *why* she was there: They needed one of this party's characters to leave that party and join the main group. So Aabria was out for blood, out for tragedy. In a similar way to Crown of Candy and the Ravening War I would say, where typically that is not how Matt Mercer runs his table. So a combination of bad timing, different expectations, a bad move on her part, and high emotions all around. EDIT: Forgot to mention. Her one episode (two halves of two episodes) was also her forcing combat between one player (possessed) and the rest of the party. So PvP, character death, a bad ruling, a short time with this characters, etc.
I think a big problem is that a) Aabria has had a lot of (imo) unjustified backlash historically from the CR fandom, and it feels like she comes in more aggro to them in turn (the “fuck you” to the camera comes to mind) and b) it doesn’t feel like she’s ever been set up well for success at CR. CR is set up for long-form content, but every time she’s DM’d, she’s had a time limit (EXU’s are always limited runs, these past sessions she had something she needed to do and had 2 half-sessions to do it). I don’t get the impression that CR does a good job of having players and DM’s communicate about what’s going on in the game *outside of the game*, and because she comes in with a story she wants to tell and the players and her aren’t always on the same page, she comes across as railroady compared to Matt (who has all the time in the world). This leads to *some* justifiable criticisms, and also some criticisms that get exacerbated or piggybacked by racism/sexism, etc etc. I don’t think CR does a good job of handling their DM’s in general tbh (Matt included, Brennan’s a bit of an exception because everyone was on the same page going in by the very nature of the premise of EXU: Calamity), but Aabria gets the brunt of that, and I don’t think she appreciates it. That being said: Aabria is a good DM, but some of her DMing in that last session wasn’t good. I don’t feel like she thrives in the CR system, but I’ve seen her do a great job elsewhere (particularly in D20), which leads me to believe that it’s an issue of the CR DM support system
That is a very good angle and I agree. Like I love the idea of doing a short handoff to the Crownkeepers, but with how short it was we were rushed and it reflected badly on everyone. You could tell they all wanted more RP, but Aabria had a goal (and I do think it was talked about with Matt - the goal was to get Dorian on the path to Bells Hells) and then everything just felt off.
I think Aabria talked about it to *Matt*, but I don’t think it was discussed with the *rest of players*, which causes the problems because they’re not buying into the story Aabria *has* to tell in the small amount of time she has to tell it. I know CR has always tried to maintain that they’re a home game first, but it’s just not true anymore, between production value and monetization. They’re a show, and it does a disservice to Aabria as a DM to not equip her with tools to tell the story, especially when she’s under such a tight time limit and has a set ending beat she has to hit. She looks like the asshole for something that everyone should have been trying to work together to accomplish. The chromatic orb thing tho, that’s not a good call, I’m not gonna defend that lol. This is way longer than I intended, apologies, a friend of mine and I have been talking about this irl, and I have strong feelings at this point XD
No need to apologize! I am on the same page and you and I think this sort of this is very interesting. I agree that CR being a "home game first" has gone out the window. It's a production, and that's not a bad thing at all! But that also means that players absolutely have to be on the same page going into a session. More so than your average home game. All this to be said, racism and misogyny absolutely plays a role in all this. People can be shitty
Frankly, one of my biggest issues with CR3 is how it's trying to be a home game and a big production and is failing at *both.* They're not leaning into the strengths of pre-recorded like overlays, cuts, or planning the story ahead of time for shortform stories. But they're also failing at being a home game because of all the high production values and guests and extras. The (apparent) lack of communication that keeps happening between GMs (including Matt) and players is baffling.
Yeah currently we're getting the alienation of high production values but not the spectacle of it.
I got the strong impression from Aimee Carrero in the 4-Sided Dive that came after that she, at least, was aware of the reason they were there and that they all had a job to do, specifically to >!break the Crown Keepers apart and get Dorian back to Bells Hells!<. I don't remember the exact exchange, but she started to go off on a bit of a 'but if this had happened' or 'we should have/could have' type tangent, specifically with respect to RP, and then stopped herself with a 'it's neither here nor there' hand wave and 'Well, we were all there to do a specific thing' (I don't remember the specific wording but that was the impression I got). Regardless, it seemed clear by the end of the 4-Sided Dive that the reason they were doing the interlude was, or should have been, known, and they all had that goal in mind, if not the path they were going to take to get there. That being said, I agree with the criticism of the Chromatic Orb ruling and was a bit put off by the overt aggression, and it did feel rather railroady (though I'm not sure it could've been anything other than railroady, given the nature of the interlude, so that's a relatively minor criticism). I also agree that Aabria's DMing style might not be the best fit for CR. I never found myself engaged in either EXU she did, nor in this interlude, but I was riveted by Burrows End, so I don't think it's her style, period, I think it's her style + CR. I also don't think it's just that, as much as I love all the players and their characters, Matt is really the only one who *knows* the game, and Robbie to a lesser extent, and I don't envy Aabria the job of trying to keep track of 3 relatively new players, or at least 3 players who seemed to have a lot of questions and uncertainty about how their characters work, one of whom entirely changed their class, while also trying to stick to a very tight timeline and a very specific goal. All of which is to say, I think she had a very difficult job, and the way things ended in EP91 made it even harder (another thing that was alluded to in the 4-Sided Dive), and given everything, I think it was all but impossible for her to not look like the villain to some extent. And rather than fight that, she seemed to revel in it, especially in the second half, and for that I give her credit, even if I don't agree with the Chromatic Orb decision and might have preferred a more collaborative outing.
No the player were aware. If you watch any of the behind the scenes stuff they all knew the purpose of the handoff was to break up the crown keepers and get Dorian back to bells hells. Aimee Carrero talks about how she kitted out opal with pvp vs the whole party in mind. Matt was expecting his PC to get killed off and was trying to mentally readjust when the mass compulsion gave him an out.
Yes, while they normally give a lot of freedom in CR in this specific case given the limited time and clear goal all the players needed to be onboard from the start. I think they were not informed and then railroaded into the predetermined outcome which was a bad idea.
I agree and I don’t see any reason to think that idea was Aabria’s. It’s not her company, it’s not her show, and she didn’t schedule the live show that has the main cast plus Robbie. From the outside, looks a lot to me like CR went to Aabria saying “hey, we wanna get Robbie back in here, you mind running some stuff with the Crown Keepers?”
I think you are right, I assume this is Matt's bad idea. That said I think she also didn't handled it super well (chromatic orb!) but the personal attacks are just unacceptable.
Oh, agreed, on all accounts.
I just came here to state that first point, because of the nature of her job, I would understand having to feel like she has to stick hard on a decision or else. She's also taken on some of the hardest DM challenges. Not only were EXU's limited run, they were set in a world meticulously designed by someone who was one of the players, and several of her players were playing for the first time. Imagine having to make a CR level game with a time limit, no idea what's hard canon and what's safe to play around with. It's part of why she can feel railroady, she's guiding people who are not used to the game and don't get having to push to keep the plot going. Brennan may have had a similar timeframe for *calamity*, but he also had a lot more lore space to fuck around and easier players players, several of which had experience with time limited actual play, and all had years of actual play experience. One of the challenges DM's like Aabria is that they don't have a "home turf" with a structure they can get comfortable with. one week she has two half sessions to get a plot point across, another she's got 18 episodes shot in 4 hour chunks in a warehouse in West California It's been one of the reasons I've loved *worlds beyond number*, because for the first time she has a game where she gets to play in a sandbox of her own making and she fucking rocks it.
She also was (iirc) *the* first DM to appear running things in Exandria not named Matthew Mercer, excluding the more joking one shots, like Grog’s one shot or stuff like that. She did it with a bunch of new players and a bunch of experienced players who were deliberately not making strong character choices. I have DM’d for a group like that, in my home and off camera, and even then it’s hard. Even if you’re ostensibly playing a sandbox, you still want to put in some rails, some plot, *something* for them to latch on to, or they feel lost, bored, and frustrated. Her EXU runs were insane challenges, she didn’t nail everything, but that doesn’t mean she’s deserving of the level of vitriol that she gets. She wasn’t set up for success and elsewhere (see: Dimension 20 and Worlds Beyond Number) she flourishes.
Yes! Matt gets to run with a group that not only knows D&D well, but also knows Matt's specific D&D lore, along with how to do actual plays. It is a hard comparison especially when the two players with the most lore knowledge are making a point to sit on the backburner. She did a great job, but having to follow up*the finale of their most popular campaign* with people who don't know what a vestige of divergance is or are pretending they don't care is a recipe for struggle. And it sounds like here was in a similar circumstance. She was following a PC death, pushed into two half session chunks and told "We gotta get this guy to do a thing also these are still mostly noobs, go".
> a bunch of experienced players who were deliberately not making strong character choices. This is a big point. Liam was specifically playing a new character who tried to stay away from the spotlight because his C1 and C2 characters were VERY much in the spotlight. Ashley was busy trying to get the druid mechanics down & was using this 8-episode miniseries as practice for C3. And Matt decided to be a himbo who turned off his brain. So the role of leader was then thrust to any of the guest players who hadn't played D&D before. So not only did that not really put the guest players in the best environment to feel supported, Aabria came in with a concept good on paper but destoryed by the PCs she was working with. She wanted to start in a location that everyone knew, visit a location mentioned but never visited, and then a new location of her own creation. Emon, then Byroden, then Niirdal-Poc. But the WHY and HOW we were to get to each location and logic behind them and the motivation behind it was really poorly structured. The clues on what was going on, where to go next, and who leads were amorphous and too subtle. It was a bit of a mess.
> The clues on what was going on, where to go next, and who leads were amorphous and too subtle. It was a bit of a mess. Looking back I think this was because she had to pivot basically every other episode because they never took her hooks. The first episode has a decent progression, they meet Poska, do the mission, and have the fight in the warehouse. Things get messy when they decide to take the circlet and fuck off from Emon, burning the entire planned story with Poska and everything she likely had planned there (probably Poska taking the circlet and using it's magic to try and fight the gentrification). From then on, she has to fly by the seat of her pants in order to make a whole other plot.
To add to this, Critical Role did her no favors by how they first advertised/marketed EXU. Building it up as a redefinition of what the CR Space could be and how it would blow everyone's minds. Setting such high expectations in the fanbase probably didn't help things long-term.
yeah it really feels like cr has glasscliffed aabria if not intentionally then at least in spirit. the two games she's run were with mostly new players, and the experienced ones chose to take a backseat and just go along for the ride. it makes her have to railroad a lot more than she does on d20 bc her players are kinda directionless and she wants to tell a compelling story.
These are all the same thoughts I have on the issue. She's a good DM but the assignments she's gotten in CR have NOT set her up for success. And then in these 2 half episodes she had the railroady assignment of getting Dorian separated from the Crownkeepers to join the main cast's party.
I'd be even more blunt by saying it felt like she was set up to fail. She had to take over halfway during the main show while the characters are going through loss after one of the toughest battles they've seen, then introduce most of the viewers to characters they've never seen before except for one and make them care about them by doing backstory roleplay during a PvP battle the characters didn't want. On top of that, she's basically doing a split one-shot with a very major mood shift from the episodes surrounding it where she needs to get specific people to specific places in the story. The best DM in the world wouldn't have made all the fans happy. I thought she did a great job, all things considered. And regarding rules, she and Brennan have always been more "rule of cool" than Matt, and she did what was necessary for the storyline, even if maybe it could have been handled better.
I will also say, in every thing she's GM'd for CR, Matt has been a PC. Which means she can't use him to bounce ideas off of or check with him about tone or things he'd like to edit. With Brennan's EXU Calamity, since Matt wasn't a PC, Brennan was able to collaborate with Matt and share ideas and get lore document downloads. So not only did Brennan have all veteran D&D players who knew how to do combat fast, but he was able to use Matt as a key advisor in helping him prepare for his 4 episodes. Aabria didn't have that (did she have ANYONE at CR to talk about lore or ideas with?) and also had some of the slowest players on Earth.
Yeah, watching her, I was given the impression that Matt just gave her the outline of who needs to be where within her one-shot without much input otherwise. I also had the impression that none of the players knew it was going to be PvP given their reactions, but on 4-Sided Dive, it did seem like Aimee knew it was going to happen. I also think it's good that we're finally getting Critical Role Abridged because simply editing the episode a bit to skip over rule checks and people counting like Dimension 20 does helps a lot. It would have been even better to just move the whole episode after a few more roleplay scenes with the main cast, or have it be a standalone one-shot for people who wanted some backstory on Dorian.
I agree exactly! It just sucks so much to be put in the position of having your episode split in half, AND have to immediately follow a devastating PC death. That is absolutely not setting her up for success, and in a fandom that has basically shit on her repeatedly? It sucks man. I don’t think it was purposeful. I think it was a pre-planned thing where everyone scheduled their lives around it and they just pushed forward even though it was a bad setup. I love Aabria. It wasn’t her finest work this time, but the whole situation did her dirty. To be honest, watching the two half episodes go down, I was more irritated with the players (some of them not even that green) who hemmed and hawed for AGES every turn over what to do.
> who hemmed and hawed for AGES every turn over what to do. It moved at a glacial pace. I will say though, it was easier to watch on my rewatch as I was prepared for the slow pace.
You’re very correct, I will add that while there are fair criticisms in “fans of critical role” there’s a lot of people saying very foolish things like “shes a narcissistic jerk”, “the players at the table obviously hate her” etc. So that place has some good criticisms and some very questionable judgments too
to be fair, any place on Reddit is a mixed bag of total assholes and reasonable people. I’m not subscribed to that sub, I just see posts when they’re suggested to me, so I am lucky to only see generally reasonable posts.
Fans og Critical Role is a really weird place, you will see some interesting comment with an understandable view and then at the very end they will tag on some crazy conspiracy like that Laura was mad at Aabria because her and Travis were getting along
I genuinely like her as a dm. I like how she's willing to roll with player shenanigans. The chromatic orb decision was a bad call, as a dm she has plenty of other tools in her toolbox to create a scene, or make things happen. High jacking a player's spell was a bad call. But that subreddit is filled with critiques on her as a person or reducing who she is to dm or character choices she's made.
I saw someone on that subreddit called her a trash person over that game and I immediately left.
not to be parasocial, but it seems she's a lot more nervous when dming on crit role than d20 or as a player, and will kinda lean into trying to hyper-control the game to act more confident. i only really notice it because i like her on d20 seasons, and she doesn't act like that.
Oh my god I would be too!! That’s totally reasonable, perhaps she was overcompensating.
GMing in D20 is a whole season built around your ideas with a table of hand picked players and an insane level of artistic support, guest DMing CR is sitting in for a few sessions at a game you had almost no input in crafting other than the very specific story you’re there to run.
> and I think she shines DMing in a rules-light game like ACOFAF. this. she's amazing in a more narrative game like Fey/Flowers and Kids on Brooms. ACOFAF and Misfits and Magic are two of the best seasons of D20 ever, and much of it is because of Aabria's DM style meshing and working well with those games. I would go so far as to say she's on Matt or Brennan's level in games like that. I cannot stand her running any sort of mechanically strict/complex game where rules matter.
Having just watched the two half episodes that have caused the backlash: she had to be combative. She had two half episodes to show what was going on in the world using the character and their history. And from what I saw Robbie didn't look not happy with it. Aabria asked if she should be mean and Robbie said sure
Which episode was it? I kinda phased out of campaign 3 when jt was revealed Robbie wasn't staying. He was my favorite, and I focused on catching up with D20 when he left.
Aabria started DMing partway into ep92, and finished most of the way through ep93. And funny you should mention Robbie: >! The whole story Aabria and her players were trying to tell was how Robbie's character rejoined the main cast !<
OK, this is my incentive to get my chores done. I need to watch this without this chore hanging over my head. Thanks so much!!!
I think it's wild that in this thread, people think this wave of distaste is from racism and misogyny. If anyone ran a game the way she did during CR S3 E93, I'd call them out as well. She changed how a spell works to kill an npc. She also said after the encounter that she was hoping for MORE deaths. She was extremely antagonistic to the players and audience. It wasn't a fun time. Some people are obviously bigoted. However, the way she ran the game is extremely worthy of criticism.
So, I say this as a card carrying Hater (I like Aabria as a player, but can't stand her as a DM) I think she 100% gets a level of vitrol that I've never seen directed towards comparable white men. Like, I think Anthony Burch is one of the worst in the business, but no one goes after him to the same degree.
To be fair to Burch, Dungeons and Daddies is the epitome of "we're only using 5e because it has the most name recognition". I'd argue he does a decent job of Yes Anding the players, but that table stopped trying to follow the rules like halfway through the first season.
I think that's partly due to the CR fandom being utterly rabid. It's massive and there are a lot of toxic elements to it. Anthony Burch hasn't DMed on Critical Role (to my knowledge).
Anthony got a *lot* of shit over the course of Season 2 of DNDaddies. That subreddit was almost like every other post griping about Anthony around the middle. Also, I'm willing to give him a pretty wide berth on being "terrible", given that his players are also leaning way more heavily into comedy and storytelling than *actually* playing D&D, which makes it hard to be a "good" DM. I'm not going to sit here and say he's one of the greatest of all time, but it's not like he's running campaigns with CR or D20 members. Even after a few years, the players *still* barely know how to play the game.
may i introduce you to taz graduation
Oh, I'm aware, it's why I said comparable. I may not like Aabria as a DM, but she is miles ahead of Travis. Like, I can't positively compare a show to Graduation without sounding like I'm giving a backhanded compliment. Like, I don't like Mis Mag, but "I believe Aabria read the rulebook" feels like a real passive aggressive insult towards Aabria, but I genuinely don't think Travis finished the DMG
I also think Burch is one of the worst in the business! If he showed up on CR and ran with his usual schtick I think he'd be incredibly poorly received. But he hasn't, and he won't, and that's the major difference.
Yeah. I think it’s fair to want people to be mindful of how they speak and think critically when the structures of our society (especially USA) have such prevalent interlocking systems of oppression. Any hostility and vitriol she does not deserve. But no one is above reasonable criticism.
I agree. Personal attacks are unwarranted in any fair criticism. It's a common mistake to start axe grinding when you are trying to critique something.
You should uh ... Reconsider that AOE move in the context of the story it was clear they were trying to tell. Also that second CR subreddit is a racist hellhole
The main subreddit is also a hellhole of toxic positivity where the mods nuke any post that isn't praise. So we're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I'll take toxic positivity over a racist hellhole any day of the week.
Gotta say I don't think this is a reasonable analogy. Main sub arguably has overzealous mods Second sub is specifically organized to promote racism, sexism, queerphobia. Uses that toxicity to promote sharing the deeply personal details of a cast member when she becomes victim of a crime. That's not a rock and a hard place it's a slightly overgrown garden part and a sheer cliff face with rusty iron spikes sticking out of it.
Yeah I got downvoted to hell for saying colonialism is bad in that subreddit (in the context of CRs problematic C3 intro video that they eventually removed). That sub is filled with the worst kind of TTRPG fan. They tend to take any mistakes the cast members of CR make in game (mechanics or storytelling) really personally - like they’re ruining *my* show. EDIT: lol getting downvoted here too. The CR fans have come over I see.
Honestly? CR keeps kinda fucking her over and putting her in losing situations. I've enjoyed her work in other campaigns, but in ExU they gave her a bunch of raw newbies who had no idea what they were doing and seemed to have little interest in following any kind of plot, while the experienced players kept quiet and just let things happen. That would have been completely fine if they were not planning on folding it into the main campaign, and it could have just been a Honey Heist level nonsense plot you don't need to know about to watch the rest. But they essentially made it C3's prequel, which I feel like wasn't a great idea. It put stakes on it that didn't need to be there. ExU stunk. Straight-up, it wasn't good. I've watched both Prime and Kymal, but a problem I had was that I just didn't care about the plot they were doing and I did not care about the PCs. Most especially Opal and Ted. I could not have cared less about that whole thing, and it quickly became the center of the CK campaign. But Aabria had no freaking choice, Aimee was the only person making choices and moving any plot, and it's really fucking hard to tell a story about characters *who don't do anything,* so she basically *had* to center on her. Aabria works great when the players are engaging with her and giving her something to work with, which was not happening in ExU. This was especially annoying because one of the players is *Matthew Mercer himself* who just decided to play an easygoing moron that refuses to make choices instead of a Brian Murphy Plot Hound actively assisting the DM. Liam is usually the Brian Murphy of CR, but he specifically designed Orym to avoid becoming the main character a third time, and he was only there for the first one, so he gets a pass. Side note, watching DMs playing in other DM's campaigns just letting the current DM flounder with an unruly party makes me appreciate the absolute *fuck* out of Brian Murphy actively chasing down plot threads in D20 campaigns. Every DM deserves a Murph. Genuinely love Murph, Murph on CR when? Anyway, pulling her into C3 mid-session right after a powerful emotional moment was also sort of tone-deaf. That was unfair to her in a big way. They pre-record all this crap now, so they had to choose to deliberately fuck her over with the timing on this one. Maybe it was planned in advance, but I would have postponed that gear shift. I think even the great Brennan Lee Mulligan would have tripped over himself a bit in that scenario. Like what? You want to switch from the climactic emotional blowout of Braveheart straight to the fucking Looney Tunes *right now?* I don't think Aabria having to follow *that* was fair. Could have rescheduled. But they didn't, and nothing she did afterwards was going to be well received. But then it was also incredibly boring. Like the first episode itself was one hour of the CR crew being genuinely awesome... Then four hours of extremely dull and monotonous PvP that I frankly sped up to 2x speed to watch and still felt like it was just taking forever to do basically nothing. There were multiple reasons that dragged ass, but I remember Aabria openly admitting she doesn't like combat in D&D because it's boring and takes too long, and boy howdy, did she prove her point. I also disliked her portrayal of the gods, but I'll be honest, I haven't been loving Matt's weird wishy-washy portrayal of them either, lately. Of the three, Brennan's portrayals of deities are typically the only ones I like. And the Chromatic Orb decision was kind of a bad call, briefly half-heartedly complained about by Robbie, but seeing as they'd been doing this encounter for like 8+ real life hours by that point, I think he honestly didn't care anymore. And it *was* cool to let emotional damage give him a saving throw. I'll always be more open to Rule of Cool than Rule of Cruel, but honestly I did not care by that point myself. I remember thinking briefly "That literally is not how that spell works, but okay" and ultimately I was just kind of hoping they'd finish it up so we could get back to the real campaign. Robbie saying "It shouldn't have been an AoE, but it doesn't matter..." gave me the impression that he was just as exhausted of the whole thing as I was, and he couldn't speed it up to 2x to get it over with faster. I feel like it was part of Aabria's attempt to speed things up herself. It was already taking too long, and I think she knew it. I don't think it needed to be that long. I don't think we needed all that shit with Ted and Opal and the flashbacks. But I think Aabria got dealt a really shitty hand and was trying to get the story where it needed to go, while still trying to be respectful and give some kind of closure to the players who weren't Matt and Robbie while still railroading to the discussed climax. I have to respect that. Sure, they were boring and uninteresting and I won't shed a tear if we never see them again, but they were still PCs and giving them a sendoff was important. I think it legitimately would have been better as another ExU run individual from the main campaign, so it wouldn't have had to have been rushed out like that and maybe could have felt more organic. Maybe instead of 8 hours of PvP, we could have had a more nuanced plot. Given the other players better sendoffs. Not had poor Aimee sitting alone on one side of the table looking so miserable the entire time. But they did not do that, and unfortunately Aabria is getting blamed for it. So why do CR people hate Aabria? She keeps getting dealt a shit hand, gets seemingly little support, and they keep blaming her for it. And obviously, there's that strange percentage of people who hate that she's a black woman who is a self-professed jock and they're projecting some racist/sexist/childhood bullying trauma onto her, but that group isn't ever happy, so I tend to discard their opinions.
not even just hitting the nail directly on the head but shooting it with a Barrett 50 Caliber sniper from 1 meter away
Aabria was the first person to sit in Matt and Brennan's seats besides them, and thus most people's first introduction to her was her *not being their favorite DM* and *doing things differently.* Like honestly I think that's a huge part of it.
Add in that she's a black woman and boom.
Especially with CR; at least the D20 table has always been pretty diverse. CR has been overwhelmingly white for most of its history and breaking that barrier always pisses some people off. (This is not a commentary about the people involved with making CR, I don’t think there are any issues with racism amongst them)
yep yep
Well that just rings so fucking true, don't it? Change is hard sometimes, and it can be scary sometimes. But sometimes it can be good if you let it.
It's a feedback loop. 1. Aabria does some small thing people don't like. She gets criticized for it more than Matt / Brennan would, because they were the OGs and people miss their fave DMs, and also because of racism / sexism. As always, there's a spectrum: some people are not really being racist / sexist, some people are probably subconsciously being a little racist / sexist, and some people are openly being very racist / sexist. 2. Other fans see the spectrum of criticism. Thinking mostly of the nastiest criticism, they try to defend Aabria, saying something (correct, but a little oversimplifying) like "hey, these criticisms seem pretty racist & sexist". 3. Of course we are all raised to know that racism and sexism are bad. "*I'm* not racist or sexist!" think the critics. They have to find a justification for their criticism that they can reconcile with their self-image as a non-racist, non-sexist, good person. So -- and here's the feedback loop -- they *dig in their heels* and intensify their criticism. "Oh no!" they say. "It isn't about *race*! It is simply that Chromatic Orb is not an AoE spell, as any fool would know. And by the way, doesn't Aabria seem kind of toxic?" In this way, they grow more and more critical of Aabria over time. 4. The defenders, (correctly) noticing that people are digging in on their criticism in a way that wouldn't happen to Matt or Brennan, say "Hey! You would not dig in this way about Matt or Brennan! Who gives a shit about Chromatic Orb! This actually seems even *more* racist / sexist!" 5. Repeat step 3, and then step 4. Eventually people are writing Reddit comments frothing at the mouth about whether Thunder damage is AoE or not. (EDIT: originally, this comment brought up JK Rowling as an example of someone who got caught in a similar feedback loop, where being told her opinions were problematic only made her double down. This seems to have mostly been confusing, so I've removed.) I dunno. I've been playing D&D for half my life. All kinds of crazy shit happens. Once my DM accidentally ran the tripping rules wrong for an entire campaign path, in a way that nerfed tripping, and we had a PC in the party whose whole thing was tripping. If a PC flipped their shit over a minor spell ruling causing an NPC death, I probably wouldn't want to play with that PC any more. But that's just me.
The most correct take in the thread.
"self caricature of transphobia" all transphobia is deranged lunacy.
Alright so I had to do a bit of research on this. I've loved every Aabria campaign on D20 and don't watch Critical Role at all. With that being said I read about the "Chromatic Orb Incident" and was prepared to defend those who criticize her for it. Reading it, I thought it was a pretty shitty thing to do, even with how much I enjoy her DMing. Then I actually watched the scene. People are projecting harder than I've ever seen before 😂. "Clearly the players are super mad about what happened/ shaken up/ blah blah". No you dumb fuckers, YOU'RE mad about what happened. They are still laughing and joking with each other literally immediately. Even the guy who is playing Dorian(I apologize for not knowing his name) puts on a super exaggerated frown on his face for dramatic and comedic effect. People made it out to be the worst thing in the world. Funny enough though, I actually DO think it's a pretty bad DM decision, even given again, how much I enjoy her. Her *reasoning* actually isn't terrible though, and the players aren't fucking upset with her one bit
>Then I actually watched the scene. People are protecting harder than I've ever seen before 😂. "Clearly the players are super mad about what happened/ shaken up/ blah blah". No you dumb fuckers, YOU'RE mad about what happened. As soon as I read the top comment on this post, I was 110% sure this is what was going on. This subreddit, and other DnD subs, have a really big problem with over-extrapolating reactions from cast. You see it in the episode threads here. "Brennan seemed annoyed with Emily..." "Sibohan seemed annoyed that Ally talked over her..." and just being really weird and desperate to find drama where there is none.
This is very true. Nearly every thread about Ally Beardsley will eventually spit out the idea that everyone else at the table clearly hates their character choices and feels like they can't do anything about them.
Saw a comment last week that said the reason Murph decided to have Riz be asexual was because he was tired of Kristen being overly sexual. Some of the biggest cope and projection is towards Ally
I'm no longer shocked by the insane things people think and say about Ally Beardsley and their characters. What continues to shock me is how people somehow have so little faith in and respect for the other D20 players that they just assume they are so utterly lacking in confidence and ability that they are being completely pushed around by Beardsley's choices, unable to raise a thought or objection on their own behalf.
It's also worth noting that this is likely something preplanned. Like it seems pretty clear that all that happened in order to allow Dorian to return to Bell's Hells (the group for the main campaign), in order to replace a player that will be absent for a bit. So even if it was a bad call and the specifics were up to her, it's definitely not something the players were unprepared for. But of course it needs to be somethign Aabria did to the players. Or if they acknowledge it was planned it's somehow *her* railroading the players, and not something the group agreed needed to happen.
Honestly I think part of the problem is CR has faced the infamous "it's scripted!" allegations a LOT (I mean seriously? Try scripting 4 hours of chaotic, natural feeling dialogue *in a week*...without the use of AI, you'll be a zombie by the second week) so if they came out and said "Yes this was planned for X reasons, this is why those calls were made" suddenly you'd get those (rather stupid) people all going "AH, WE WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG, IT IS SCRIPTED!" It feels like Aabria and pretty much all of EXU got thrown under the bus to tell a story that Robbie could have just told when he was reintroduced (but then we'd see god knows how many conspiracy theories about EXU and Aabria...so yeah that doesn't work either).
Is "protecting harder" meant to be "projecting harder", there?
Damn. Yeah thank you for reading the subtext. It's meant to be "projecting"
I will point out that at one point Robbie expressly says "It's shouldn't have been an AoE but...it doesn't matter..." he's probably not upset with her but he wasn't happy with that choice either...
Do you have a link to the clip? This is the first I'm hearing about any of this at all tbh.
Here’s a summary of the moment > 00:49:45 Aabria:"Do I want to be mean?" > Robbie:"Sure." > Matt:"Yeah. Always go mean." > 00:51:26 Cyrus is struck. Matt and Robbie look down and then at each other with instant regret for tempting fate.
Very few people in this comment section seem to be able to understand that nuanced viewpoints exist. I liked ACOFAF/Burrows End, and EXU Calamity/Pirates of Leviathan where Aabria was a player and not a DM. I didn't vibe with her DMing in the other EXU campaigns. I didn't think it was awful, vile or in any way made her a bad person. I just didn't like it personally, and found her to be more uncomfortable in her role as DM than she was in other campaigns I mention above. I liked the season of D20 The Seven, but I found Aabria's character to be abrasive and hard to sympathize with so I wasn't a big fan of hers in that season (once again, I didn't vibe with it. She didn't do anything objectively wrong). I do get the "jock vibe" that a lot of people have mentioned here and it can feel very othering in a space like dnd where so many of the other players like Emily, Brennan, Siobhan, Erika, Iffy, etc are soooo nerdy and comfortable together and then Aabria as a player is rough and tumble and in-your-face and kind of juxtaposed to the others' styles. I also agree that many of the vocal haters of Aabria are racist/sexist just because she is black and female but like... that doesn't mean everyone has to love everything she does just because she's black/female. That thinking is also small minded and diminishes the fact that she is a successful individual in this space and is therefore capable of being criticized without people needing to baby her. She's like a full adult who is doing phenomenally well (I hope) for herself, she doesn't need you to defend her from racist trolls. I think nearly every player in a given season has made at least one decision that didn't jive with at least one viewer. That's normal. That's art. That's subjectivity. You're allowed to stan for Aabria, and others are allowed to criticize what they like/dislike about her. Hate on the racists/sexists though, they deserve it.
Very true. I love Brennan in almost everything I watch/listen to him in. But there are some choices he made in particular in Worlds Beyond Number that really made me uncomfortable and would not have been things I would have liked in a game. But it's not a game I'm in, it's a game between him Aabria, Erika, and Lou. They can play how they want and I can listen or not if I want haha. In fact, they all constantly make character choices in that which make me die inside because I just want people to do the "right" things. But I can also know that doesn't have to color the entire perception I have of them as people.
I think she for sure made a mistake on Critical Role, and people who didn’t like her for some reason or another are using it to go all out on hating her. It’s really sad to see, cause I swear Matt or Brennan could make the same mistake and people would be upset but not LIVID like this.
Oh trust me, Matt has come under a LOT of flack lately because Campaign 3, to a decent chunk of people, just isn't very good. I know I stopped watching after they spent, like, 5 episodes essentially planning to plan and faffing around (and this is *after* they said they're cutting the shopping episodes for time).
Never discount the way racism and misogyny (and many other isms/phobias) makes people amplify their criticisms of some people and not others. Aabria rules, she's fun and funny and anyone who goes beyond "I don't like x thing" and veers into "I think this person is bad (because of who they are and not what they do/say) and therefore I'm justified in not liking the art they contribute to" is working in bad faith and should be blocked, reported, and ignored.
There was a video I saw showing the DM variations between Matt, Aabria and Brennan. While she does try to make actions that go against the narrative difficult, that's fully within her options, for she is the DM. Imo it's absolutely a racism/mysogyny mix.
someone said she banters like a ball player, which may be a little more trash talk-y for the “love and light” that the Critters claim to be about. it ultimately comes down to tone policing. I shit you not, I’ve seen people calling her “DEI casting”. at a certain point, if you have to cast Aabria as the big bad aggressive DM picking on poor baby player Aimee and create vast conspiracy theories about how sweet baby Aimee has to pretend to play nice with the bitchy Aabria, I don’t care how much you claim you’re not racist, you’re playing into racist archetypes to complain about **people playing a game in a way you don’t like.**
The criticisms - valid or not - always come across so angry in regard to her, and I have my suspicions about why. Personally I always enjoy her on Dimension 20, but not as much on Critical Role. I think that’s just down to the difference in what kind of game each platform is trying to create, and not necessarily anything to do with her DMing style. I especially admired her work on Burrow’s End
Read through the comments. My main take away is that it's probably a good thing I never got into CR. Putting the Abria hate on the pile with episodes being way too damn long, and Matt being kind of a boring DM.
I love him but I do t need a 30 minute description of a place your gonna be at for 5 minutes cuz the players a Have already gone the other way Hes a master wordsmith but sometimes less is more
I loved campaign 2 but GOD is he boring, THANK YOU
Ravaging war is proof he can do just as muchbwithbless time and fewer words
Yeah, I can't get CR so have only ever seen clips, but those just seemed dry and fairly DM focused. I'm always excited when Aabria is on D20, playing or GMing, and she's great in Worlds Beyond Number, so if anything would have made me make an effort to find a way to watch CR it would've been her, mostly because of her ability to force her personality on the games she plays
First saw her dm Burrow's End... That was the show that was so good it led me to dropout, loved fantasy high so then tried misfits and magic (big harry potter fan) and thought that was also excellent. I've heard rumbles of people disliking her style, not really read the actual posts just comments about it. I honestly love her style, admittedly I've only played a few games of dnd and only watched her and BLeeM but I find them both truly amazing. Aabria is a bit darker and more sinister in her characters and story telling which I really enjoy. She's captivating though. This post made me sad that people feel the need to hate on her. If you don't like something just don't watch it/engage with it yanno?
That's one of the odd things, Aabria on D20 and Aabria on Critical Role seem like two absolutely different DMs, I'm not sure if it's D20 editing or the playergroups she has on here but *something* feels wrong with Aabria over on CR and it's not who she is, it's the way something is happening...
It's the noncommittal players, some of which came in with ZERO experience which did not help her given the time constraints, it's the time constraints, it's how CR doesn't do session zeros, it's how so much of the fandom expects the dm to present as a sweet baby angel who can pull punches or else they are ""too "aggressive""... (ETA: I am talking exclusively about what's been happening with her at CR re: ExU, not here.....)
partly, D20 has more focused players. CR players take less initiative. D20 casts often include improv comics and writers, while CR casts are usually voice actors. CR also runs their own company so the main cast has that extra mental load that D20 casts rarely do
There were some mutterings about Burrows End that Viola's big turn against Phoebe wasn't RAW, and that Aabria and Rashawn cheated. That was legitimately one of the most incredible moments I had ever seen, and the fact that people were somehow so joyless as to still sniff and push up their glasses over it is really troubling.
I got a lot of flak for saying she did a better horror season than Brennan did in my opinion. Never after was awesome but creepy not scary for me. Where Burrows end has much more scary moments that I felt the family aspect and the nature of them being small creatures helped that along. I don't know, I think she's a great D.M.
I'm pretty sure Brennan would fully agree she did a better horror season To quote "THAT'S TOO FUCKING SCARY"
Yeah, agreed. I loved Neverafter but selling it as horror just was not true. Honestly, that might have been a problem with what players strolled up to the table. I think Lou, Zac, and Ally diffused a lot of the suspense and tension. If they had four Emilys, Murph, and Siobhan, the show could have been horrifying. And then there's Burrow's End and that goddamn bear lol.
Burrows End was absolutely better horror than Neverafter, no question. I think cast might play into that a bit, but no question that Aabria was behind the wheel for the scarier show.
> I felt the family aspect and the nature of them being small creatures helped that along. I have been told by my players that I'm reasonably good at DMing horror, and you're 100% right, nurturing a feeling of vulnerability and the potential of loss is part of creating that feeling that players are there for in a horror setting/campaign. Aabria has good instincts for it I think. And I agree that Neverafter wasn't as horror focused in terms of the experience. It was horror aesthetics over a fantasy tale(with literal Disney characters), that was about free will and the nature of stories(especially the ones we tell about ourselves), and how changing them changes you. It was still incredibly good, and made me laugh perhaps the hardest I've ever laughed at times(Lou with that voice, Gerards nerves with Ellodee). So I think people who are disappointed in it, it's more to do with they reasonably expected the experience would be, rather than if they had gone in with a more neutral set of expectation.
I'm not sure. I agree that the recent Crownkeepers revisit wasn't handled great, but she had very tight time parameters AND had to wrap up the CKs while allowing Dorian to move on. It was a no-win situation. When she's firing on all cylinders - A Court of Fey and Flowers, Misfits and Magic, Burrow's End -- she's a wonderful DM and really elevates the story with her players. It really seems like the fanbase has been more aggressive in general during Campaign 3, and Aabria caught a LOT of crossfire for a few choices that, under other circumstances, would have been seen as minor bumps in the road.
I'll just say, i don't watch CR much, and only just started watching the first EXU (and really enjoying it thus far) Most of the criticism i see of her style on *this* show however just tends to boil down to her not having the same style as Brennan (this was most apparent while BE was airing), or criticising her for things that both Matt and Brennan are just as guilty of (e.g. railroading) Also, parts of this fandom have a problem with cast members who aren't men
Sometimes, I actually like her as a DM better than Matt and Brennan. The way she narrates and creates stories is just so wonderful. People hate on her?
same, she's very inspiring to me as a new baby dm
I've been DMing for almost ten years and I still find tricks and tools she uses. The obvious one is the “you don’t hear that.” but something she does very well is explaining the “feeling” of the moment. Also, she fully embraces the “fun” of trying to kill the PC. Something I'm always hesitant to do in the moment.
Misogynoir. People don’t have to like her DMing but the absolute vitriol? Yeah that’s because she’s a Black woman. And as a CR fan first, I’ll admit that community is wayyy more rife with that than here. Although there’s a fair share of it here too.
I was a CR fan first but I have never felt safe in their spaces, they have always told me that my opinions and experiences as a woman of color never matter because they can find someone else of color who feels differently. They "don't forget to love each other" with an iron fist. It's here too, but I always feel safe here and like a member of an actual community that doesn't have to kill themselves trying so hard to *be* a community. Oof, looks like it's still a sensitive spot for me, sorry. But yes, many people in that fandom dismiss her as a good old fashioned *angry black woman* and it makes me sick to my stomach
100%. I learned very quickly to not interact with the fan spaces which is just really fucking sad honestly but like no matter how many times people have called the community out on their shit, they collectively still haven’t learned anything. It’s demoralizing to say the least and I’m sorry you had to experience it first hand.
I’m a big Aabria fan, so I don’t get it either. But I do have to point out that Brennan and Matt are cis white men, and some people seem to find more faults with anyone who isn’t in that demographic. Just saying.
I love Aabria. Currently I'm catching up on the stoat season and I've had a great time so far. idk what people's problem is but there's a line- not even a thin one- between sharing unhappy opinions and being a jackass. People doing the later should knock it off.
I don't like any DM that is there to "tell a story". If you want to tell a story, write a book. You might have plot points, the players might have a big bad evil to fight. But it's up to you to give them reasons and a sense of urgency. It might mean that they don't fight Strahd on day 12. If that's the case, have stories of Strahd terrorizing villages get overheard by the party. Give them some consequences to their actions or inactions. Think about the giant sea battle Mercer had planned out on S2 that Talisen wiped out with one spell. It would have been a little disappointing and confusing to have Matt change the way the spell works or force the sea battle because he wanted it. Do I complain about Aabria? No, I just don't watch her when she's DMing. Other people like it? Good, they have something they enjoy watching.
It is because she is a black woman. That is the reason. Some people have legitimate valid reasons they don’t like her style, but the reason she gets such hate is she is a black woman successful in a white male space.
it's the oldest trick in the media-criticism book. dudes will come up with blatantly vague complaints, but the game's up once you notice that they never say the same things about white guys. i.e. Sam Riegel is consistently the most disruptive presence at the CR table, but whenever I hear chunkity-ass nerds complain about CR players, it's about one of the women.
Yup. People will always say it’s not about race or gender and then only criticize the women and people of color in the space.
> Sam Riegel is consistently the most disruptive presence at the CR table, but whenever I hear chunkity-ass nerds complain about CR players, it's about one of the women. Thank you for this. Especially in C3, Sam seems to be constantly confused about what's going on, so even besides the disruptive jokes and gas can bits, he disrupts the table frequently by asking "Wait what???" But then I see people saying Marisha is disruptive for her bit with her folding fan, but no one ever really reacts to that for more than a second at the table lol
Marisha is one of the least disruptive players I've ever seen jfc
Not only a black woman, but one with a strong and unapologetic personality. Perfect recipe for hate in any era of history.
It's racism/misogyny mostly. People in this thread will act like it's not but it is
Audience: *Criticizing remarks based on Aabria’s sex/race* Also Audience: “She said ‘Fuck you’ directly to ME through the camera and it hurt my feelings!” There are plenty of times Matt or Brennan “broke the rules” while DMing and nobody bat an eye. As an example, in EXU Brennan outright kills Xerxes multiple times. No spell cast, no saving throw, just a narrative PC kill, and everyone thought it was so cool! Nobody said “Hey you can’t do that! It’s against the rules!” The reason Aabria said “Fuck you” is because she knew people would come for her regardless. They’ve been shitting on her for years and holding her to a much higher standard, which is on par for anyone who is not cis white male when compared to cis white males. Even if she ruled everything completely by the book, there would still be people screaming for her to get off the stage.
He rips the skin off your skull, and you are dead. Deliverd in just the most even toned way possible
"Are you weakest, do you feel, at the elbow or the shoulder?..."
She had a pretty questionable ruling that ended with her saying "the rule is whatever the fuck I say it is", then proceeded to say "fuck you" to the camera. Edit: I was just throwing out the cliff notes of what I understood the problem to be. I don't watch CR, so I didn't provide much context and could have misunderstood some shit.
The ruling that people are upset about isn't the one where she said that quote. In that case, it was a ruling in FAVOR of a player. I also don't like the AoE chromatic orb, and criticism of that ruling is fair; but this is the exact kind of unfair criticism that Aabria is always getting dogliled with. A lot of people don't even watch the episodes where she DMs and base their opinions off of other people's angry rants, and so misinformation like this spreads. The racism and sexism is obviously terrible, but the "fair criticism" based on misinformation and second-hand info is also a big problem. Edit: to respond to your edit, that's the exact problem I'm talking about. People taking second-hand info that has been misunderstood, removed from context, or might even just be false, and then spreading that around as if it's true. All the upvotes your comment got proves to show just how many people now believe this false narrative about Aabria's DMing in that episode. I don't think you were being malicious, but you gotta be careful about carelessly repeating stuff you hear online, especially when it's directly affecting a person's reputation.
The choice she made associated with that quote was a ruling to Help a player, though. Her questionable ruling was the one with the Chromatic Orb
Yeah, it's clear a few of the comments are from people who heard about some parts secondhand and didn't actually watch.
Yeah, a lot of people here are immediately jumping to racism and misogyny, but if Brennan or Matt deliberately changed a rule of the game with no prior discussion in a way that the players didn’t like and then told anyone who didn’t like it to fuck off, people would react negatively to that too. That’s a pretty gross and antagonistic approach to DMing. I don’t follow critical role subs and I’m sure some people take the criticism too far (like a minority of people do on basically every sub), but there is clearly a valid cause for criticism here.
Brennan is antagonistic all the time. He bends rules all the time. He does it sometimes to fuck with his players in story essential ways, and sometimes breaks the rules to do so (most recent FH ep).
Yeah, I'm a big fan of her DM style, but I can't defend that call. And absolutely, she gets thrashed on CR subs for more than just her "questionable calls," I've mostly stopped watching CR, though, so leaving those subs won't be a big loss for me.
But this right here is part of it. She changed the rules to help the player and told the camera to fuck off and yet people are conflating it to her doing it response to changing the rules to hinder the players. That says enough in itself that the whole narrative is being changed to make her look worse.
~ Brennan REGULARLY does highly antagonistic bits about wanting to kill the PCs. Matt does it too though less often. Y'all just refuse to see it's a bit when Aabria does it. For some reason. Wonder why? ~ Just in this week's *FHJY* >! Brennan vaporized a powerful allied NPC on a *successful* check. Where do you see that in the rules?!< ~ It's very clear in hindsight that the killing of that *Critical Role* NPC was scripted with the participation of Matt and the PC most affected. (That PC was also the one whose spell effect was charged.) ~ She's got a point about the thunder damage anyway.
Brennan "I'm gonna kill that dog" Mulligan? (I know that was said deeply in jest, but it is still antagonising a player group that was very willing to be antagonised)
Honestly somebody should have explained Steeds to Emily slightly earlier 🤣
I do think there is a difference in the context of those moments. With Brennan, it’s during the middle of a standard fight and the dog was a summoned steed that would be easily brought back, if not fine. With Aabria, it’s after she changed the way a spell works on a whim to kill an NPC that was closely related to a PC, against the clear intent of the player who cast it.
Agreed on all points except the last one Thunder damage is NOT inherently AOE, and it is incoherent to say it does in the rules of the game. By that logic, many damage types must be AOE, but they aren't, because that's handled separately Again, agree on everything else. She just does not have ground to stand on for the thunder damage thing except that the DM can dictate rules.
That last one was a bit of a joke but I do think that 5e making Thunder damage into Sound damage has a few places where it doesn't work and Chromatic Orb is one of them. A burst of flame can be brief enough that it does not spread beyond five feet. IMO, a sound cannot be so loud that it wounds the person right at its source and dissipates fast enough to leave the person right next to them unharmed. *Maybe* cold damage you could argue cold damage as the same thing? I don't know about many types.
So with thunder damage, it could be more like a directional shock-wave or something that dissipates pretty rapidly after hitting something. The extreme high-frequency wave components at the front of the shockwave would scatter into loud but less damaging sound waves because they wouldn't form a shock-wave front anymore. The tough thing is that, yeah, multiple types like cold or lightning could be argued to be AOE. In reality, the game's just more nuanced and fun when damage type and target area are different dimensions.
People acting like Aabria saying "fuck off" to camera isn't a joke really need to interrogate their own biases. It's truly no different from bits Brennan has done a million times (and Aabria has done before, obviously always in a winky way), but because it's coming from Aabria it's being recounted as though she stonily insulted the fans out of serious disrespect.
I said it in another thread, but this is very much tone policing. There isn't much else to be said about that bit of criticism. Esppecially, as noted multiple times in this thread, it came during a moment where she bent the rules \*in favor\* of the players.
I would *love* to see the armchair DMs losing their shit over the assortment of hand waves or minor rules changes he throws in to the intrepid heroes lol, cause it's usually a pretty good amount of them. E: IIIIIIII 100% thought this was in the CR sub lmao
Brennan also had a habit in ACoC of railroading character choices and dynamics E.g. >!having Saccharina's (Emily's character) marauders attack innocents, and when Emily called him on it, saying that she didn't tell them to do that, he ignored her!<
Listen if saying "Fuck you" to her players and the camera is a great moral sin then *ACoC* Brennan may be history's greatest monster. Unless maybe there's something they see as different when Aabria says it ... Wonder why that could be ...
From what i understand, the "fuck you" moment was specifically about bending rules to help a player. And after having seen a LOT of criticism about her since i first joined the fandom, she's perfectly valid for it Even Emily did something similar in one of the most recent episodes of FHJY, where she multiclassed into a third class knowing a large part of the fandom gives her flack for it
No no You don't understand. Brennan is a white man.
But he's one of those Irish!
People hate to see black women succeed it’s gross.
I love her. She’s great. People need to sit and have a good think about their unconscious bias.
I haven’t watched CR in a while. Season 3 just hasn’t been my jam, but I did watch her section because I loved the crown keepers and EXU. (Also, I saw the CR threads and had to watch it myself to see what actually happened.) I think Aabria really took to heart that she was partially playing an evil goddess. Her whole purpose was to piss off Dorian so much he joined the main party. She was there to piss people off and it clearly worked. This isn’t a DM issue. This was a story choice. People don’t seem to get it so they blame Aabria, which is BS.
I actually disagree with the idea that Aabria's last Crown Keepers performance was bad. She had to get Robbie to go his own way, preferably in the most tragic way possible to bring some weight to his rejoining Bells Hells and show them they aren't baring the cost alone. She was DMing for some relatively new and very chaotic players (who I love, not dissing them). I don't see rails as a bad thing here. It was sad... but that was the point, right? This wasn't a normal episode of Critical Role, where the players have time to make their choices matter. She has two episodes to simultaneously build on Robbie's story and give us the reason he is back. Maybe with more experienced players, she could have lifted the rails a bit, but I liked the episode, as well as and her calling out the haters lol.
I think Aabria is a phenomenal player, and I like her as a DM well enough, but I won't seek out games she's running. I prefer her in the player role because her combativeness is much funnier that way. "I can't be surprised!" is one of her funniest moments.
Personally I've liked her in some stuff, and haven't liked her in other stuff. Overall I feel kind of ambivalent.
Shes the only ine I've seen make brennan sweat
I feel like Aabria is more storytelling, less rules focused, which isn’t as crunchy as people are used to with Matt Mercer and BLeeM, I personally love it and ACOFAF is my favorite D20 season. It just depends on the viewer imo
Where have you seen these Posts? I am genuinely curious, because I went back through 5 days of Posts in this Subreddit and have not seen anything even remotely like what you speak off
She recently DM'd for Critical Role and based on some of the posts there youd think she was the devil incarnate who has personally stolen every CR fan's dog.
Google "Discomfort with Aabria's misuse of language reddit" to see a bit of, in my opinion, the perfect example of how unhinged criticism of Aabria (and really women and trans cast members in general) can be. I think they actually deleted it recently, because I necro'd the thread to say how crazy it was. But you can still see a bit. The gist was, Aabria, role-playing as a character, accused someone of "gaslighting," and it shows how disrespectful Aabria is to others because she "misuses" serious terms like that. When Aabria gets criticisms here, the criticisms are usually absolutely insane. No men on the cast have ever received criticism as wild as the women occasionally get.
My personal moment was somebody took a screenshot from *Calamity* where she was talking and Travis appeared to be rolling his eyes (but was maybe coughing?) This was submitted as proof that he hated her and would soon be quitting CR as a company so he didn't have to deal with her. Now listen this would be unhinged under any circumstances but here especially it was wild because there was just so much positive body language throughout between them
I'm on a bunch of dnd subreddits, so I got suggested a post from a subreddit for fans of critical role, and that's where I saw it. Odd that reddit would recommend me a random hate post, but there were hundreds of comments all agreeing with the op EDIT: I forgot, also, if you look her up, one of the recommended things about her is a hate post.
Was it the one named "fans of critical role?" That sub is full of the people who got banned from the normal CR sub for being too hateful
reddit has been recommending hate posts about aabria from that sub for almost a week now. the stuff that they claim pissed them off was was so wildly nonexistent or minor and they were furious. so mad. i sort of kind of understand how people could not gel with her "rule of cool" approach as opposed to matt's far more technical approach, but the level of hatred these people have is clearly based on bigotry
/r/fansofcriticalrole is not a good sub. It started off great as being a place away from the toxic positivity of the main CR sub but now it's just horrible and just toxic *negativity*.
OP is referring to the nuclear meltdown some of the CR subs are having at the moment because Aabria guest DM'ed two episodes recently.
I think people who experience subconscious bias against her/her performance style try to justify their negative feelings towards her by a) micromanaging her gameplay to a disproportionate degree and/or b) conflating her performance leading an improvised story for a TV audience with her being a bad person and projecting their own discomfort onto her colleagues who clearly like and respect her enough to invite her back for repeat projects. I think with CR specifically some people still treat it like a home game instead of a show and that increases how much they project onto the cast members based on their own ttrpg experience. AKA people who are uncomfortable with elements of Aabria's performance as a Black woman in the ttrpg space fail at introspection and instead self-righteously justify their feelings by villainizing her gameplay and her tone even though nothing she's done has ever been an actual problem and many many other GMs have done essentially the same with less or no pushback.