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SpacePig posted:It's me, Justin! It was me all along, Justin! Even my immediate family bought it! Clint: Aw, son of a BITCH.
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Aug 22, 2017 22:34
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Adventure Zone update (thanks to those of you still using spoilers, i'ma stab you DoctorWhat): I'm over halfway through The Suffering Game and while this arc does have a lot of great and funny moments overall I'm finding it a little too mean for my tastes. Maybe I'm just too invested in these characters and don't want to see them lose so much I dunno, but as of yet I don't really understand why Griffin chose to create an arc that punishes THB to this extent. No chance of me stopping or anything though, I'm so close to Lunar Interlude 5 part 2 and the insane reaction people had to that is what made me finally start the podcast to begin with. Even a friend of mine (who I introduced to TAZ before he got way ahead of me) who doesn't usually say this kind of thing is all "OH MY GOD I'M SO JEALOUS OF YOU GETTING TO HEAR IT FOR THE FIRST TIME".
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Aug 22, 2017 23:46
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The Suffering Game was the slog for me too, the concept of it is the kind of nightmare GM thing you usually see turn up in stories about awful campaigns and they only really get away with it because of how comfortable they all are goofing even when the GM's being a dick.
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Aug 22, 2017 23:51
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I feel like The Suffering Game was a direct response to people's complaints that TAZ was low stakes and it never felt like tres horny boys were in any real danger.
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Aug 22, 2017 23:55
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Escobarbarian posted:Adventure Zone update (thanks to those of you still using spoilers, i'ma stab you DoctorWhat): I'm over halfway through The Suffering Game and while this arc does have a lot of great and funny moments overall I'm finding it a little too mean for my tastes. Maybe I'm just too invested in these characters and don't want to see them lose so much I dunno, but as of yet I don't really understand why Griffin chose to create an arc that punishes THB to this extent. There's a little meta-game you can play while listening to TAZ called "What video game did Griffin just finish?" and for this arc it was absolutely Zero Time Dilemma. If there was a deeper reason why the suffering game happened than he thought it would be cool to integrate this idea into his campaign, I missed it entirely.
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Aug 22, 2017 23:55
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I feel like generally the guys have it pretty easy in the game, so having a section like Wonderland was fine I thought.
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Aug 23, 2017 00:03
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My problem with Wonderland wasn't that it was mean, it was boring. It was mostly a bunch of fight scenes with very little downtime and almost no NPCs to interact with.
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Aug 23, 2017 00:11
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The music was very good though
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Aug 23, 2017 00:16
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Round Three is fire, I put it on sometimes when I'm jogging 
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Aug 23, 2017 00:25
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Waffleman_ posted:My problem with Wonderland wasn't that it was mean, it was boring. It was mostly a bunch of fight scenes with very little downtime and almost no NPCs to interact with. I thought Edmund and Lydia were pretty cool NPCs, though. I kind of see them as a conceptual foil to Lup and Taako.
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Aug 23, 2017 00:44
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Fans posted:The Suffering Game was the slog for me too, the concept of it is the kind of nightmare GM thing you usually see turn up in stories about awful campaigns and they only really get away with it because of how comfortable they all are goofing even when the GM's being a dick. I don't really get this, I think with a good GM and story something like the suffering game would be fun as a player.
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Aug 23, 2017 00:53
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The amount of people who say the Suffering Game was too mean and the worst arc makes me feel like such an rear end in a top hat, because it was probably my favourite!
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Aug 23, 2017 01:07
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Build-a-Boar posted:The amount of people who say the Suffering Game was too mean and the worst arc makes me feel like such an rear end in a top hat, because it was probably my favourite! I thought it was rough, but I was looking at it from a DnD stand point. The THB have too little agency in the arc. Too many times they're forced between awful and worse.
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Aug 23, 2017 01:53
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PetraCore posted:I thought Edmund and Lydia were pretty cool NPCs, though. I kind of see them as a conceptual foil to Lup and Taako. Well, they both have the same personality, and that personality is one that doesn't really lend itself to fun banter. I also like the suffering game, but if there's one complaint I would lodge, it's that there's not enough cool NPCs to bounce off of! It's just the twins and Cam, and he didn't have much of a personality. Of course, the interaction within the THB was on point imo.
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Aug 23, 2017 02:01
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Not Operator posted:There's a little meta-game you can play while listening to TAZ called "What video game did Griffin just finish?" and for this arc it was absolutely Zero Time Dilemma. If there was a deeper reason why the suffering game happened than he thought it would be cool to integrate this idea into his campaign, I missed it entirely. Eleventh Hour was a better Zero Escape arc than Suffering Game ever was 
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Aug 23, 2017 02:10
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I don't think anyone is arguing that the twins were bad characters. They just weren't enough to carry an entire arc. Also, does anyone have a timestamp for when the rando human appears in the PUBG stream?
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Aug 23, 2017 02:12
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:I thought it was rough, but I was looking at it from a DnD stand point. The THB have too little agency in the arc. Too many times they're forced between awful and worse.
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Aug 23, 2017 02:31
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To relate it even more, suffering game was when Griffin had a baby and stopped sleeping so he was probably just cranky. He didn't want to juggle NPCs and wanted to watch the world suffer for some semblance of amusement.
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Aug 23, 2017 03:15
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Being able to hear Griffin's nasty lil grin when he said "Taako.. somethin'.. somethin' unlucky happens' was great, I grinned too. Especially at Justin's 'aw no, aw beans' reaction.
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Aug 23, 2017 03:48
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Pastrymancy posted:The music was very good though You ain't lyin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHDmJv4iWTo This song still pops into my head on a regular basis. That first :30 just goes so goddamn hard and smooth at the same time. I know everybody seems to love Round 3, but that Round 2 groove is money. I also really like the way it was used in this animatic (which is also, incidentally, my favorite one). It sounds like it's being pumped through a sound system in the other room or something. And this animatic is cool in general because the creator cut out a bunch of Griffin's "stage directions" so the whole thing feels more like a true visualization of what's happening, like if the show got turned into a cartoon or something https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe4YsT96WNk Also some really great Taako expressions in this one which helps a bunch
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Aug 23, 2017 04:28
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Judge Schnoopy posted:To relate it even more, suffering game was when Griffin had a baby and stopped sleeping so he was probably just cranky. was he playing any videogames at the time, because him aping whatever he was into at the time was a pretty common thing.
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Aug 23, 2017 05:03
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Just wanted to say, I've been marathoning TAZ for the past couple weeks (I had two 11-hour Amtrak rides, which helped a lot!), having originally left off just at the end of Pedals to the Metal. I listened to all of The Crystal Kingdom and loved it, but man, I'm on the last ep of The Eleventh Hour now, and this poo poo is amazing. Has Griffin ever released any of his notes or anything? I know there's another episode of The The Adventure Zone Zone that I haven't gotten to yet, but I'd love to know more about how he put this poo poo together, and I'm especially curious about the paths not taken in the town of Refuge. Also can't wait to finish up my listen-through so I can go look at all the fan works and stuff without fears of spoilers (though I did just go all the way back to page 77 of this thread so I could see reactions to the episode I just finished, cuz it was heavy).
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Aug 23, 2017 05:06
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No, he hasn't released any of his notes. That might happen now that this arc is over and they're doing another The The Adventure Zone Zone. Then again, there's 450 pages of them, so maybe not. Also you might want to not follow the thread until you're caught up since people don't tend to tag their spoilers, especially for old episodes.
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Aug 23, 2017 05:12
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Don't they sell adventure books for DMs with whole campaigns in them? They should sell the Balance campaign.
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Aug 23, 2017 05:15
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Hi, I know it's 1 in the morning, but I only just stumbled across this and I don't think I've seen it posted here before. https://youtu.be/EaJdJQ7Ct08
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Aug 23, 2017 06:12
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Ariong posted:Also you might want to not follow the thread until you're caught up since people don't tend to tag their spoilers, especially for old episodes. I'd been reading this thread this whole time, so I already have a lot of ambient spoiler knowledge, so I'm not too worried (though I do appreciate people continuing to spoiler tag the finale!). Quick question: Is it safe to wait to listen to the bonus episodes (live shows, plus whatever's on the MaxFun donations page) until after the rest of the campaign? And is there a guide to the donors-only episodes, since they're just tagged "Bonus 2016" or whatever on the site?
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Aug 23, 2017 06:38
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SpacePig posted:Hi, I know it's 1 in the morning, but I only just stumbled across this and I don't think I've seen it posted here before. Griffin that mustache made my wife recoil in horror.
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Aug 23, 2017 06:43
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abraham linksys posted:I'd been reading this thread this whole time, so I already have a lot of ambient spoiler knowledge, so I'm not too worried (though I do appreciate people continuing to spoiler tag the finale!). Some bonus episodes are TAZ: Nights, a donors-only campaign with Travis as the DM. You'll know them by their theme song. Those should be listened to in order. The others are live shows, which are little side adventures within the main campaign (the Balance Arc). Those you can listen to in any order. The Balance Arc ones all take place before The Suffering Game, but they certainly would still be enjoyable no matter when you listen. They're also spoiler-free, so you don't have to wait.
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Aug 23, 2017 06:48
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QuoProQuid posted:I don't think anyone is arguing that the twins were bad characters. They just weren't enough to carry an entire arc. Mmmmhm. I mean, as a point to that, the Suffering Game is an arc that massively improves (no matter how much you already like it) listening to it as a marathon rather then spread out over months. It's a very anxiety-inducing arc when you don't know what's going to happen if you get anxiety over those sorts of things, and the way it was spread out (due to The Littlest McElroys) emphasized, I think, how barebones the arc was in terms of NPCs and the like. That said, I think that sort of minimalism has an appeal in and of itself, I like the arc as a way to take the THB down a powerlevel notch right before the finale where they hilariously ended up stomping the Hunger super hard anyway to the point that they had to go easy on it for the second half of the boss battle to keep things interesting, the music is great, and the last two episodes are loving fantastic. I still kinda wonder if so many people would say the Suffering Game is one of the weakest arcs if Magnus had really died and ended up pulling the spotlight to him and Kravitz for a bit, because while what we got was great the untapped potential in that that Griffin was writing up to made some other stuff feel unfinished, especially if Kravitz really was intended to be Keetz. That would have fleshed out the sadism twins nicely, I feel. PetraCore fucked around with this message at 07:09 on Aug 23, 2017 |
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Aug 23, 2017 07:06
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QuoProQuid posted:Also, does anyone have a timestamp for when the rando human appears in the PUBG stream?
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Aug 23, 2017 14:03
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The Suffering Game definitely could have used another draft (i.e. not needing to rely on rando mysterious NPCs to advance the plot), but watching your heroes suffer is actually good and exciting
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Aug 23, 2017 14:37
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It's been a while since I heard it but iirc my biggest issue with the Suffering Game was how little justification there was for it. I think Magnus pointed it out a few times, that obvs they were eventually going to fight these nasty liches, so why play along with their stupid game at all? Why not just attack immediately & skip to the end? Griffin's response (again, as I recall) was for Barry to appear and use hand signals to tell the PCs to play along, but again, not real clear on the why of it. They didn't have a particular reason to trust Barry at the time, even, there was just nobody else in the arc who could take that role.
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Aug 23, 2017 15:56
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IIRC, Barry was working on a way to harness the liches' own magic and use it against them. He saves the boys' bacon a few times in the fight by destroying their super attacks with his own.
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Aug 23, 2017 15:59
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drunkencarp posted:It's been a while since I heard it but iirc my biggest issue with the Suffering Game was how little justification there was for it. I think Magnus pointed it out a few times, that obvs they were eventually going to fight these nasty liches, so why play along with their stupid game at all? Why not just attack immediately & skip to the end? Well, the impression that I got was that the liches were all-powerful and could hurt THB whenever they wanted, so the goal was to play along and try to find a crack in their armor without the liches noticing and punishing/obliterating them for breaking the rules. I'm sure it wouldn't have played out that way, but it's not like it was narratively unsound to go the path they chose.
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Aug 23, 2017 16:20
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I don't think they had anything to attack. The liches were outside their cylinder, which I assume was blast-proof in some way.
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Aug 23, 2017 16:31
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Yeah the boys were stuck in their section. Barry was finding out how to harness the necrotic energy to build a door that let them escape. The liches weren't in the same room so the boys couldn't attack, and if they didn't give up any energy the liches would ramp up their poo poo until they died. They had to play along with as little suffering as possible until Barry opened the door so the boys could face off against the real liches.
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Aug 23, 2017 16:38
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This is rad. https://twitter.com/bookowl18/status/900192711420063745
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Aug 23, 2017 16:44
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I, too, am a fan of Adventure Place.
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Aug 23, 2017 20:39
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i would ruin my culottes if this ever happened to me.
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Aug 23, 2017 21:15
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Travis is teaching a class on Podcasting in Cincinnati now apparently.
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