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Poor Miserable Gurgi posted:They bled a lot of listeners during the experimental arcs, because they just went on way too long. I think quite a few came back for Amnesty though, and most seemed to like it. Graduation has been a sharp decline, though. I went into Amnesty expecting it nowhere to be as intense and deep as Balance and it was good fun. I fell out of Graduation and man looking back it was a bad idea for Travis to map it out to take place across 5 years in the game like it was his attempt at Harry Potter (I meant it was from what I saw of it). I'm expecting at some point that Travis either rushes it with time skips or has it end partway with all the plots resolved before they graduate. He made a tall order and doesn't seem to be able to fulfill it.
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Mar 23, 2021 07:35
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George H.W. oval office posted:Its bizarre that Travis is failing so much now on Graduation when it seemed like TAZ: Knights was well received. Why couldn't he duplicate that success? I also liked TAZ: Dust. Travis is good for short stuff because it's easier to push a party through a story when it's about 4 episodes long. For a big campaign like Graduation, that ends up getting really railroaded and easier to burn out. Travis's problem with Graduation is that he's trying to focus on the world and characters he made instead of putting down a few pieces and seeing how the party plays with them. And I wouldn't be surprised if Travis has been following feedback and taking a lot of sharp turns and overcorrects instead of carefully pacing it in a new direction. It could be that he's trying to ride on the coattails of his baby brother's Balance arc but nothing can be the new Balance. In my opinion, having students go through a school for 5 years is asking for trouble because that's when monotony and railroading kicks in. It'd be better if the party was school facility and got a lot more agency. But even then Travis put in so many characters and things so soon that it can lead to confusion and choice paralysis. Also D&D didn't seem a fitting game for Graduation. They probably did that because people are more familiar with D&D than PBtA. Something like Fate could have been better, maybe? DesertIslandHermit fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Mar 23, 2021 |
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Mar 23, 2021 20:41
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I'm not going to listen to the rest of Graduation until it finishes. It's possible that Travis may turn it around but he really needs to take a long vacation from the internet that isn't working on the shows.
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Mar 23, 2021 21:15
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It's kind of amazing that people assume the absolute worst of Travis when he's really at his worst a harmless idiot. It might have to do with people being used to weird male feminist nerds turning out to be creeps or the long grudges that people have on the McElroy Brothers over any matter. He just needs someone to keep him reined him
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Mar 23, 2021 21:24
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The Repo Man posted:Travis bit off far, far, far too much more than he could chew. I still think he's great at one shots, but he needs to limit himself to those. The Hero/Villian things hasn't panned out in any meaningful way, or maybe how it has panned out is...what he wanted?? I don't know, but he's great at one shots and should not run a full campaign again until he's had the chance to DM off microphone for a while. I feel like Travis wanted to build something big but didn't know how to do it. He introduced so many characters and things early into Graduation which felt backwards compared to what Griffin did for Balance which was just introducing a new plot-significant character every couple of episodes with the exception of the start of a new story arc when he'd briefly introduce a small cast. Travis can pace and map out a short adventure just fine but creating a long-term campaign compared to creating a 4-part campaign is oil and water. The worst Travis could do now is rush the story to try to finish it because he'd probably end up introducing even more characters and things too quickly. If that isn't already happening now.
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Mar 24, 2021 05:51
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torn grimoire posted:i just want griffin to run another campaign. or even clint or justin (though i've heard that justin doesn't want to DM?) I want to see Clint do another one. Commitment was my favorite of the short ones. The PCs and gameplay were fine but the plot was the best kind of ridiculous and awesome. It was like a Golden Age comic book and a Dan Brown novel had a baby.
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Mar 24, 2021 09:15
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Stroop There It Is posted:Agreed on pretty much all counts here. Personally I don't think he's rushing it too badly currently though--as one of the few people on this forum who actually keeps up with TAZ:G instead of regurgitating poo poo I've read about it on other websites, apparently?--and he's definitely not adding tons of (unmemorable) NPCs at this point, thank god he got the memo on that. I'm looking forward to finding out what happens with the main plot, and still enjoying listening to the show plenty. Travis can definitely turn it around but he shouldn't buckle to the pressure that it's the least watched of TAZ. He should get feedback from proper channels and work it out from there. A couple of my friends warmed up to Amnesty a little while after it ended. Balance will forever be their magnum opus. Trying to make something like Balance again would be a recipe for disaster. Even a sequel campaign staring Tres Horny Boys would disappoint in one way or another (although part of me wants to see them go back to where they originally came from when they started out in the IPRE at the start of The Stolen Century arc ). It's a lot of pressure when your first project in something is unanimously your greatest so far. Not everyone is like Friends at the Table.
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Mar 24, 2021 19:47
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Just Chamber posted:It's totally right to laugh at Travis over that, it was embarrassing af, but when people start calling him "seriously mentally ill" over it that's when it becomes skeezy and weird. Travis can be obnoxious and cringe but he’s pretty much harmless. People get too used to assuming hipster liberals are really nasty or creepy but he’s just really annoying at times. He does need to read less social media, though.
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Mar 24, 2021 21:41
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Shinjobi posted:At the end of the day Travis should have known that his streams were going to attract the occasional...non-fan? Calling them trolls, to me anyway, implies they knew/cared who Travis McElroy is. There was always going to come a day when someone decided to dink around in a way he didn't like, and the whole thing feels to me like he was blindsided by the fact that yes, he too could be trolled. Melting down about it just made things worse, as it tends to do. 
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Mar 25, 2021 01:49
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taco show posted:I somehow have been living under a rock and have never listened to any MBMBAM ever but my roommate turned me on to Adventure Zone via the first arc (six eps?) of Amnesty. If you're starting from Balance, it starts out a bit loose but gets much better than it goes on. Justin evolves Takko to something much better. It's amazing improv that turns into an amazing story. My only criticism is that the Petal to the Metal arc is a bit too long for its own good and the graphic novel adaption does it way better. Amnesty is good and a different game style (Monster of the Week) but don't go in expecting it to be big and crazy like Balance was. People went in on the high of Balance's finale and got disappointed. I enjoyed it but do not expect a Balance 2. Graduation I wouldn't recommend. Travis drops the ball big time as GM. I'm hopeful for him to adapt and fix it but it's already 30 episodes in so it's harder to chew through. I'm waiting on it to finish before I go back to it.
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Mar 25, 2021 05:57
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Crazyeyes posted:I'm still following TAZ. Justin is the light shining in the darkness. The railroad is still very much in effect, however. Honestly unsure how much farther this arc is intended to go as pacing and plot is so oddly both out the window and in your face, but Travis has declared this is their last level-up so probably not much longer in the grand scheme. I'm surprised it's ending already but I can't blame Travis. I can imagine the anguish of making a big idea for a campaign and it falters early in. But it's better to fold than to hold. Hope he sticks the landing with the finale.
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Mar 26, 2021 19:18
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Crazyeyes posted:Lol Travis opening the episode by telling everyone to "just triple" their HP maxes and +2 their AC. This sudden progress feels just so earned, don't it? Welp that was what I was fearing he'd do. Just boost and rush the finale instead of tying the plot thread on a 'Good enough' closing. It's over, though. I guess.
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Apr 15, 2021 18:47
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grittyreboot posted:So I could never get past the first 3 or 4 episodes of Graduation. I feel bad for Travis a bit. I think like there's this feeling that you need to make your campaign world so lived in and unique that the whole thing inadvertently becomes too conceptual and unwieldy. I ran into the same problem when I ran my first homebrew campaign. Really D&D is at its best when it starts out a bit generic and you work with your players to turn the world into something special. What hurts the most of Graduation is that it's all in all a very common problem with new DMs and wouldn't have been so bad when you got to compare to your brother's campaign that was absolutely viral. It's like doing an act right after David Copperfield leaves the stage.
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Apr 15, 2021 18:57
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Pollyanna posted:The thing you have to keep in mind is that TTRPGs are collaborative storytelling. What made Balance so interesting is how the details and “truth” of the story and world is directly derived from the bits and pieces that each player brings to the table and the natural organic growth outwards from that. Travis just kinda told everyone else at the table to gently caress off and did his own thing. No wonder it sucked. Balance is pretty much going to be the magnum opus for whatever TAZ does. And it hurts when your first project is the best. You got to balance not trying to copy it again but at the same time deal with disappointed feedback when your next thing isn't Magnum Opus II. Travis's shorter campaigns and one-shots are good. He was under a lot of pressure and handled it badly.
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Apr 15, 2021 19:32
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I ran Waterdeep: Dragon Heist for a group of friends and we were out the gates playing stupid characters trying to get a job. It ended with the party pulling off a heist to kill the villain and they cried when they saved the city from a big crime network then spent their days running a tavern enterprise. I ran Curse of Strahd with the plan to be really scary and the party members did whatever they could to piss off Strahd and the other villains including screaming 'HEY BABA LYSAGA EAT MY rear end!' again and again in the woods. This post holds true.
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Apr 15, 2021 19:49
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I have not followed Graduation since I fell out early in but I was hoping he wasn't going for some big superpowered battle as a finale. Are they up against a single antagonist? Or is it a whole army? It's the habit of things (especially a game that was specifically made to fight big monsters) but seeing it nowadays just gives me that Avengers: Endgame/Rise of Skywalker vibe of throwing everything and the kitchen sink at each other to show the high stakes of everything. Balance did the same thing in the end but paced it a lot better and treated it as a final step in character development and evolution for Tres Horny Boys (and I still think the 'two food trucks explode' scene is absolutely awesome). Since then, it's been kind of exhausting. DesertIslandHermit fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Apr 15, 2021 |
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Apr 15, 2021 20:15
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 23:00 |
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Ainsley McTree posted:I thought Dust was cool Travis's DMing works when he does really short stuff because there's less to build and it's easier to push players towards the direction you want them to be in when the story ends in 4 episodes or less.
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Apr 15, 2021 20:57
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