|
It's worth listening to the whole thing, it's not as good as the first but it's still head and shoulders above most DND podcasts.
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 01:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 18:43 |
|
|
Hiro Protagonist posted:I finished the first campaign, loved it, and just never went on to the second for reasons I can really articulate. I heard it was pretty good, but not as good as the first, but the hexblood mini campaign is great. Can I just jump into that, or is C2 worth going through the whole thing? The hexblood mini campaign is great, but it’s firmly in the universe of the second campaign and kind of relies on you knowing the mythos and universe of the campaign as established, it just doesn’t really work divorced from context. Also, it ends on a pseudo-cliffhanger that is only paid off in the finale of the actual campaign so you’d have to listen to the whole thing regardless. Campaign 2 is…fine. It’s worth listening to because even at its worst, naddpod is still enjoyable and worth listening to, and doesn’t fall into the trap of other actual play podcasts where it has a strong first season and everything else is unlistenable garbage (coughcoughTAZcoughcough). It has some all-time incredible goofs, the Jean jacket bit is incredible, as aforementioned the Hexbuds are a ton of fun, and basically everything the Endo Friendos do rules, but that’s kind of the inherent structural problem with Eldermourne; it’s a campaign where the main characters just aren’t very interesting or have interesting motivations and to me at least it feels like everyone besides Jake just doesn’t really enjoy playing their characters. And even Jake reads as enjoying his other characters more, he just likes Hank a lot because he’s the saddest and most depressing man in the world. Like, the correct dynamic of NADDPOD, the reason why it works is that Jake plays the often-put upon straight man who balances the insanity that Emily brings with extremely well crafted (and often overpowered but that’s because she’s a master of game mechanics and how to correctly build a character), usually hypersexual individualistic queer women and Caldwell’s insanity of utterly bizarre weird little dudes who do insane things based off his own internal sort of nonsense logic. Emily and Caldwell’s characters need to be fuckin’ out there or the dynamic doesn’t really work, and in Eldermourne Zirk is just super duper bland and Sofia is Emily doing a kind of grating Russian accent and definitionally is playing a character who doesn’t have much agency or impact on her world. Her motivation boils down to wanting to be the Mary Sue’s best friend as opposed to becoming the Mary Sue herself, and as a result she just reads as very dull and without much character. That’s the problem with Eldermourne, really; everyone’s motivations and characters read as kind of lame and the main trio reads as kind of lame, and it feels like everyone besides Jake whiffed (even Murph’s worldbuilding is a bit of a nonstarter because Eldermourne is just the most generic gothic horror setting ever). To compensate everyone just gets a bajillion other characters to play where the energy really does seem to be there; everyone has three PCs they play at least because it often reads as the crew and Murph just not enjoying the main story and having to sort of salvage the campaign by creating new reasons to keep going, and those actually do work - Hexbuds and Endo Friendos are good and dynamic but throw into starker relief how dull the main plot is. If I were you I’d just skip to Trinyvale. It’s sort of rocky to start because it’s super episodic and basically just an anime, but once it becomes the full campaign it gets way more serialized, Caldwell gets way more confident as a DM (and Caldwell is a loving genius at encounter design, like seriously he has some of the best gimmicks to combats I’ve ever seen). It’s also loving hilarious from start to finish, Caldwell has the best robot voice I’ve ever heard, and once Jake, Emily, and Murph internalize who the Triplets are - the biggest loving scumbags on the face of the planet - it just becomes this incredible and hilarious campaign of three doofuses constantly failing upward Always Sunny style. Like, Trinyvale is the only D and D campaign I’ve ever heard where the post-campaign stuff is somehow even better than the original stuff because everyone is so confident in who their characters are and how they should be played. Like both the Trinyvale live shows are incredible and the Sonic two-parter might literally be the best thing NADDPOD has ever done. Either way I would say Eldermourne is super skippable. Every other campaign that NADDPOD has run, from Trinyvale to Mavrus Chronicles to C3, is better, the live shows are better, the Jasper campaign is better, even most of the monthly gimmicks are better - Dungeon Court is arguably the best recurring segment of NADDPOD, Tortle Tank is usually pretty good, their 8BBC segments are excellent. Again, it’s not even that Eldermourne is bad per se, it’s just aggressively fine and something you shouldn’t really listen to unless you’re super hard up for NADDPOD stuff and are current on everything else. It’s distinctly and to me pretty clearly the worst of the campaigns they’ve run and to me there’s just no chance they revisit any part of Eldermourne in any way. I seriously doubt there will ever be an Eldermourne post campaign arc, Eldermourne live shows, or some sort of Eldermourne crossover. It feels like the whole thing has been memory holed.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 01:28
|
|
|
I'm just finishing up a re-listen of Eldermourne and I definitely liked a lot more than NieR Occomata but it's definitely its own thing, and I can see it having a more limited appeal. It does feel like Murph wrote himself into a bit of a corner (and he broadly has said as much in post-campaign interviews) but there are some fantastic moments, and I actually enjoyed the texture of the world. (E. Also the end to the penultimate episode may be my favorite out-of-character reaction from the cast ever.) I also really did not get the feeling that Emily didn't enjoy playing Fia, for all that she was playing a much more serious character than either Moonshine or her campaign 3 character, Callie. And I totally get that 'Emily plays a serious character' may well not be the main attraction to this show! Zirk, I dunno, I suspect Caldwell probably got derailed a bit by the birth of his daughter midway through the campaign, and Zirk definitely had the feel of a character who had some fun mechanics and some fun moments but never quite clicked for him. It's a much shorter campaign than the first one, only 41 episodes, and there's no real connection to anything else so you absolutely CAN skip ahead to Campaign 3. (Though don't sleep on either Trinyvale or Hot Boy Summer either.) E again: It probably helps my positive feelings toward the campaign that I was in the middle of a rather unpleasant hospital stay as the campaign was wrapping up and streaming the finale on their Twitch channel on my phone helped keep me sane one night. (Also prompted some D&D conversations with the nurses, which was cool.) docbeard fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Feb 6, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 01:39
|
|
|
Yeah I’m not saying it’s bad to be clear. I’ve mentioned it before but literally just the jean jacket bit is worth the price of admission. I just think it’s easily and by far the most skippable and I’d rather recommend someone listen to either Trinyvale, any of the mini-campaigns, or especially C3 first over any part of Eldermourne. It’s still decent and I’ll admit I’m more down on it than others, but to me there’s still so much non-Eldermourne non-BoB content to consume that I’d rather someone listen to that stuff first and then swing back around when they finish with that first.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 01:47
|
|
|
docbeard posted:I also really did not get the feeling that Emily didn't enjoy playing Fia, for all that she was playing a much more serious character than either Moonshine or her campaign 3 character, Callie. And I totally get that 'Emily plays a serious character' may well not be the main attraction to this show! yeah rather than serious i'd mostly call fia "comically overserious" and there are a ton of good gags related to this i think eldermourne is like a solid B. my opinion would probably slipped further if they hadn't smartly ended it pretty early, but everyone sounded like they had fun with the characters and i had fun listening
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 01:57
|
|
|
Finally got to listen to the newest episode and god drat what a loving ending, that was incredible and like they said in the Short Rest, the dice played out so that this was the only natural way it could've gone and I can't wait to see what happens next. Caldwell having a joke about it being time for the mid-season disappearance of Jake's character was great. Also there was a small comment about Emily out of game declining Murph's offer of a Zealot's Trance to get some spell slots back because she didn't want anymore controversy is loving depressing. I don't think nerds are uniquely bad about being terrible to women creators but jesus christ, loving nerds.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 04:37
|
|
|
I am always bewildered any time Emily mentions being in controversy. She's basically the gold standard of DnD player, in my book, both in a gameplay way and in an entertaining podcaster capacity. It's wild. Some people can't be happy I guess.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 04:50
|
|
|
Skipping C2 is weirdo behavior
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 09:37
|
|
|
Jeremor posted:I am always bewildered any time Emily mentions being in controversy. She's basically the gold standard of DnD player, in my book, both in a gameplay way and in an entertaining podcaster capacity. It's wild. Some people can't be happy I guess. What controversy has ever really arisen around Emily wrt NADPOD? I don't remember anything really, although I'm sure there's the standard "girl playing DND" nonsense.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 16:36
|
|
|
Crazyeyes posted:although I'm sure there's the standard "girl playing DND" nonsense. I can't remember specifics but it's just this. I think it's just that periodically, people will accuse her of getting special treatment and getting homebrew bonuses the others don't get on account of being a girl/the DM's wife, when in fact she's really just that creative and good at d&d
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 16:41
|
|
|
people on the internet are dipshits about the cool d&d lady and emily is too kind a soul to just tell them to kick rocks
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 17:08
|
|
|
Yep, it's mostly "hurr bad lady pull move out of rear end" because Murph and Caldwell favor Rule of Cool and she gets creative with her spells. Nerds being chuds about Emily playing D&D is why Murph always says "social media that we may or may not use" too El Padrino fucked around with this message at 17:28 on Feb 6, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 17:20
|
|
|
Ainsley McTree posted:I can't remember specifics but it's just this. I think it's just that periodically, people will accuse her of getting special treatment and getting homebrew bonuses the others don't get on account of being a girl/the DM's wife, when in fact she's really just that creative and good at d&d There was the bit with Murph making her a custom, real life spell book with spells for Fia using old 1st and second edition spells that he had updated, and people being lovely about her using what were really cool spells. I may have gotten some of that wrong, but he did get her a kickass book and she stopped using it because people were giving her poo poo. It was kind of like when (C1 spoilers) Moonshine went through a whole thing just to get access to counterspell. It made sense in the story, her character had to give up something to get it, and overall it wasn't a huge benefit but people still gave her poo poo for it. The whole thing was perfect, and some people were lovely about it. I didn't really click with season 2, the characters just didn't seem as natural to me. But like someone said it was still better than most other podcasts and Emily is just an amazing player. She's never been overpowered, she just has a plan and builds her character to be good at whatever she wants to be good at. She'll drop that for a cool story reason though, which is really cool too. It is mostly just grogs being dipshits though.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 18:21
|
|
|
Different strokes for different folks I guess, but wow I just cannot imagine being in the headspace of counting spell slots and all that. It's an edited broadcast, people.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 20:04
|
|
|
I would get complaints about what Emily does if it wasn't her being a loving master of mechanics and understanding how to build and utilize characters effectively. And no, I disagree, I do think she builds overpowered characters - the number of times she's completely owned a DM between this and Dimension 20, it stops being a weird coincidence that she breaks the curve around her - but to me that's a testament to her as a player. I love it when she builds someone who is broken and OP because it's illustrative at just how good and intelligent and creative of a player she actually is, and it's also literally what I come to actual play podcasts to see. That silence grenade thing was some of the raddest loving poo poo I've ever seen in a D and D podcast and could easily completely break the game if that was Emily's motivation to do so. Hell, you even note how a combat encounter like the most recent one was only tense literally and solely because Callie was unusable during the entirety of the fight, and how she even pointed out how she had one ability that would completely solve the danger if she had the ability to use it. Or that time Murph noted that he had to make sure that Glenn was otherwise completely inaccessible to Callie the first time he was (re-)introduced in the narrative because he knew that if Glenn was anywhere closer than what he was his wife would come up with something to kill Glenn in one turn. It stops being a coincidence when things like this constantly happen around and involving her. But again, this is all more illustrative of just how awesome of a player Emily is. This is what I come to actual play podcasts for, and why actual play podcasts aren't loving fantasy-flavored improv. The rules exist so that way bending or breaking them is impressive in its own right, the same way watching a speedrunner run a video game they've played for thousands of hours or seeing someone trivialize what would otherwise be extremely difficult mechanics in a video game because they understand exactly how to abuse the game's underlying systems to their favor. Watching Emily do what she does is like watching someone playing a jrpg who abuses memory overflow mechanics to do max damage in a single hit. Both people are overpowered, but it's to me a validation of just how good Emily is as a player that she is as overpowered as she is. Like, people treat Emily the way they should treat Travis McElroy, where he's given this free pass to just fuckin' make up some bullshit so he's the star of everything and perfect and incredible and everyone is just so impressed whenever his character walks into a room. But, well, sexism.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2023 23:53
|
|
|
folks, the point is that she is good at the game and very funny. also c2 is good just listen to it and have a nice time
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2023 00:42
|
|
|
NieR Occomata posted:Like, people treat Emily the way they should treat Travis McElroy, where he's given this free pass to just fuckin' make up some bullshit so he's the star of everything and perfect and incredible and everyone is just so impressed whenever his character walks into a room. But, well, sexism. Do people actually treat Travis like this or is it just that he acts that way?
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2023 01:00
|
|
|
Xand_Man posted:Do people actually treat Travis like this or is it just that he acts that way? He steamrolls over suggestions otherwise and has extreme Main Character Syndrome while simultaneously being the most normie douche on the planet. And there’s the toxic positivity of his fanbase that reinforces all of his worst traits.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2023 02:38
|
|
|
Travis can go gently caress himself
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2023 02:41
|
|
|
god can we please not relitigate this poo poo in an unrelated thread it was exhausting enough two years ago
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2023 02:51
|
|
|
Thank Emily for Emily.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2023 03:06
|
|
|
Farg posted:folks, the point is that she is good at the game and very funny. also c2 is good just listen to it and have a nice time it's this, in all the side content, she's says she loves crunchy systems, character building, etc. She's mentioned a few times how crunchy TTPRG systems with a lot of moving parts just light her brain up. The first episode of their new side series reporting on non-5E RPGs, Behind the Screens, is Emily presenting on Pathfinder 2E to the others. She doesn't have time to research or cover everything, but still does a good job going over as much as you can in an hour. It's great, there's never been a couple hours of audio more laser targeted at me, specifically.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2023 03:09
|
|
|
NieR Occomata posted:Eldermourne is just the most generic gothic horror setting ever I loved the living spell book aspect of Eldermourne that Murph introduced as a way to get around Emily needing to constantly find/buy spells, and I feel like that alone introduced enough silliness that the setting can't be the most generic of gothic horror. I think the cosmology Murph created of 3 "Gods", where only one of them was even paying attention anymore and the Trickster is as important as any other is also not all that generic, but I'd also wonder why it mattered even if it was the most generic thing ever because...well, so is Bahumia. The Band of Boobs have made it feel less generic in how they interact with the setting by introducing silly poo poo over time, but on a large scale view of the setting it's really loving generic even now. NieR Occomata posted:the Jasper campaign is better The Jasper campaign? Am I missing something? I thought Jasper just did one game over two episodes or something? It was really fun, that I'll definitely agree with, and I'd love to see the crew run more of his stuff because of that, so if there's more, I wants it. NieR Occomata posted:I would get complaints about what Emily does if it wasn't her being a loving master of mechanics and understanding how to build and utilize characters effectively. And no, I disagree, I do think she builds overpowered characters - the number of times she's completely owned a DM between this and Dimension 20, it stops being a weird coincidence that she breaks the curve around her - but to me that's a testament to her as a player. I love it when she builds someone who is broken and OP because it's illustrative at just how good and intelligent and creative of a player she actually is, and it's also literally what I come to actual play podcasts to see. That silence grenade thing was some of the raddest loving poo poo I've ever seen in a D and D podcast and could easily completely break the game if that was Emily's motivation to do so. That reads less to me like she builds over powered characters and more like she's just an over powered player given her mix of improvisational skill, knowledge of gameplay mechanics, love for playing around with them and general creativity. I'm pretty sure she's even mentioned taking sub optimal choices when building classes or leveling up because those choices are just more fun or fit more in line with what she's wants the character to be in terms of role playing. The silence spell on a grenade example just emphasizes that to me, because that has nothing to do with build beyond "has silence", which a lot of builds do. It wasn't something she built her character around, it was just a thing she thought of in the moment using the game's mechanics that there was no reason wouldn't work regardless of build.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2023 11:07
|
|
|
Rip_Van_Winkle posted:it's this, in all the side content, she's says she loves crunchy systems, character building, etc. She's mentioned a few times how crunchy TTPRG systems with a lot of moving parts just light her brain up. The first episode of their new side series reporting on non-5E RPGs, Behind the Screens, is Emily presenting on Pathfinder 2E to the others. She doesn't have time to research or cover everything, but still does a good job going over as much as you can in an hour. It's great, there's never been a couple hours of audio more laser targeted at me, specifically. If people think her characters are too overpowered in DnD I can't wait for them to see what bs you can get up to in pathfinder (though I've only played the games which are 1E so maybe it's toned down in 2E) I like that NADDPOD pretty much follows the rules of the game, while allowing for rule of cool and some smoothing over the edges for an audio medium. I love a few other actual plays that are very fast and loose with the rules, but those are more driven by the characters and there's no real tension in the gameplay. NADDPOD is a happy medium that I think works really well. Whereas critical roll is mega crunchy which also seems like it wouldn't really work if you couldn't see the board and the miniatures and stuff, plus while I love the NADDPOD crew I think listening to them shop for like 50 minutes would be pretty hard to follow
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2023 15:17
|
|
|
Naddpod is so good in part because it isn't a bunch of dnd nerds trying to make entertaining radio, and it's not a bunch of improv people playing a game they've never played before. Emily and Murph have played a ton of dnd, and they happen to be great entertainers. They know what is fun about it, and they know what kind of drags about it. It's very smartly trimmed for podcast format. They're also perfect guides for somebody like Jake that never played before and just wanted to make a cool big hot guy.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2023 19:21
|
|
|
Jeremor posted:It's very smartly trimmed for podcast format. i think this is lowkey the stylistic thing about naddpod that is best of all, they'll trim every little bit of fat from combat to remove ummmms and mental math and digressions about rules and you just get "I attack" [dice roll sound effect] "28" "28 hits!" "18 damage" and it takes like 5 seconds total. Murph's a really good editor and has a great eye for what to leave in and what to ruthlessly cut
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2023 22:22
|
|
|
I’m kind of slogging through fantasy high season 2 (which they did live) for this reason; it’s still very good, but I miss the editing if I’m being honest, the combat-centric episodes tend to drag a little for me.
|
|
#
?
Feb 7, 2023 22:27
|
|
|
This Trinyvale-Bahumia side-campaign is extremely good. Between Caldwell and Emily, their the respective dm styles and mini-campaigns are so refreshing as little breaks to the main story.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2023 17:15
|
|
|
episode two of the trinyvale x bahumia mini-series has one of the funniest off-the-cuff character details i've ever heard onyx declaring that she's never met a child before is killing me
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 19:48
|
|
|
kidcoelacanth posted:episode two of the trinyvale x bahumia mini-series has one of the funniest off-the-cuff character details i've ever heard onyx declaring that she's never met a child before is killing me Emily as Onyx is such a hilarious brand of unhinged, I don't think I've ever seen or heard it in any other media, ever. Another moment that made me snort at my desk was Onyx screaming at the serpent jumping up, and everyone else rightly being like "What are you doing? Are you trying to be dramatic or something?" These over-leveled demi-gods are cleaving through everything in their path, and Onyx screams in terror at this monster that both Emily AND Onyx probably know is puny in comparison. God that was funny, I don't think I've ever heard a PC in any campaign scream at a monster before
|
|
#
?
Feb 17, 2023 20:04
|
|
|
kidcoelacanth posted:episode two of the trinyvale x bahumia mini-series has one of the funniest off-the-cuff character details i've ever heard onyx declaring that she's never met a child before is killing me i was gonna post about this fantastic couple episodes. it feels like when the always sunny characters go on a field trip somewhere, except much of the tension is "will Jens murder this NPC too?" (i liked the part where murph felt like he had to clarify than even Jens probably doesn't think child sacrifice is great eke out fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Feb 18, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2023 02:53
|
|
|
they really just sorta figured out a perfect formula with the triplets. just bust those characters out for a few sessions or a live show every year forever. the roleplay equivalent of booting up sim city and clicking all the disasters for a while until you get bored
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2023 19:27
|
|
|
The triplets are great because you can drop them in literally any situation and they’re never on the back foot in the sense of being unsure of what to do or full of wonder or whatever. They’re always the same selfish, self-absorbed, rude and oblivious pricks no matter what, so you can have them going around doing anything and it both fits their characters and doesn’t affect their personalities within the narrative as written. They’re the perfect live show/one-shot campaign to run because their identities and motivations are so cleanly defined.
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2023 21:36
|
|
|
Nyack constantly bringing up clauses and fine print is my favorite semi-recent trait
|
|
#
?
Feb 18, 2023 22:47
|
|
|
New Triplet campaign is just Xavier Renegade Angel basically
|
|
#
?
Feb 20, 2023 23:41
|
|
|
After listening to the new Triplets adventure I went back and listened to the Merry Metal Mayhem 2-shot I thought the triplets mentally breaking Sonic the Hedgehog was the funniest thing But I was wrong, it was spending a third of the short rest writing a psychological horror movie about being sucked off by a rat
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2023 16:41
|
|
|
Xand_Man posted:After listening to the new Triplets adventure I went back and listened to the Merry Metal Mayhem 2-shot i need to go back and find that short rest, it was legendary
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2023 17:00
|
|
|
The best short rests are the ones where we learn very little about the episode
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2023 17:03
|
|
|
Xand_Man posted:After listening to the new Triplets adventure I went back and listened to the Merry Metal Mayhem 2-shot I haven't actually listened to trinivale yet, but it sounds like it needs to go up next if/when I catch back up since everyone seems to be really into the new live one. I understand it starts a little bit rough, but is it bad enough that I should jump forward a bit?
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2023 16:36
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 18:43 |
|
|
I've been re-listening to old Dungeon Court episodes and Emily's insistence that being polymorphed into a goat would get you out of an infernal contract (on the basis that 'the goat never signed a contract') deserves to be immortalized, particularly her later confession that she wouldn't expect to get away with that argument but she would absolutely try it. Weird Pumpkin posted:I haven't actually listened to trinivale yet, but it sounds like it needs to go up next if/when I catch back up since everyone seems to be really into the new live one. Trinivale is a much shorter campaign (I think about 20 episodes in all?) as it was running as a monthly thing for a while and then went weekly between Campaigns 1 and 2. So even if you don't like the first few episodes much it doesn't take long at all to get better. "A little bit rough" is probably the best way to describe its start, but It's always pretty fun (and funny). Don't expect (much) high drama the way the main campaigns sometimes deliver, but expect a lot of them goofing around and taking (light-hearted) advantage of Caldwell's very generous nature as a (new) DM. I'd say about 3/4ths of the way in is when the Triplets find their true calling as shithead grifter villains (while trying to get out from under the thumb of an even worse villain) Caldwell's unsurprisingly creative as hell (even if he has absolutely no head for balancing stuff) and some of his big set piece battles later in the campaign are fun as hell to listen to and would probably be amazing to play. e. Also Caldwell's robot voice has to be heard to be believed. He should be required to play a Warforged in Campaign 4 just so he has to do the voice all the time. docbeard fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Feb 23, 2023 |
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2023 17:00
|
|