Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am eager to return to the adventures of Vox Machina, who just recently found themselves hellbound in search of a plate armor vestige. Determined to avoid letting the relic fall into the Chroma Concord’s hands, J’Mon Sa Ord apparently tucked it away with an accommodating demon, who now holds it within the infernal City of Dis.
This seems about on-pace for their adventure so far, as we enter the third act of their overall journey. DnD’s leveling system naturally accommodates a certain scaling of challenges; characters between levels one and six generally confront local villains, seven through twelve constitute the “wandering age” of traveling do-gooders, and anything beyond that is the realm of seasoned heroes, characters who, like Vox Machina, are coming into their own as history-shaping figures. Among DnD’s many efforts to square mechanical and narrative drama, its leveling system is one of the most concrete and coherent, and smart DMs will scale the scope and threat of their stories accordingly.
Of course, things get a little wonkier even higher in the level scale, once you reach the mid-teens and beyond. At that point, things like physical environmental challenges and most mundane foes are simply no threat to a party of properly equipped heroes; they have scaled beyond the fundamentals of your average adventure, and most campaigns will accordingly retire them well before they hit twenty. This is the challenge I am currently facing, with my players demanding post-game content even after their victory over the forces of hell. I’ve been doing my best to accommodate these requests, and am currently in the process of weaving in an eldritch adversary that expresses itself largely within the most fraught landscapes of the world, be they magically corrupted cities, temples at the bottom of the ocean, or active volcanoes. It’s a tricky thing to balance pacing and tone at this scale, particularly since I’m now one among several writers, basically just handling the big plot-centric beats while my players take turns running side quests. But anyway, I’ve rambled enough about scaling – let’s go to hell!
Episode 3
We open on Thordak assuring his eggs that no one will harm them. Scenes like this embody the differences in pacing and structure between tabletop games and TV miniseries; tabletop adventures have far more latitude for rambling, while a TV series must maintain tension by keeping the threat perpetually in view. It’s actually one of the great strengths of DnD that it facilitates getting lost in wandering side paths; the flexibility of movement and pacing, the promise that you could simply stop in a town and live at that town’s pace for a few days, is a great part of its allure. But as intoxicating as that potential is for players, it’s likely to have an uninvolved audience checking their watches, so concessions must be made for adaptation
Thordak gives Raishan an ultimatum, stating she has two days to find Vox Machina. An easy source of false tension; you can apply any timer to a story you’d like if you have no intention of the story taking longer than that anyway
We reunite with the party in Whitestone, with their council of close allies in attendance. This is one of the privileges of late-campaign quest writing: all the relationships that the party has built coming home to roost, with the personal fruits of all your adventures now collaborating in unruly concert. Anticipation for this sort of character-centric payoff was one reason why I centered my campaign on creating an alliance across the Dalelands – my equivalent of vestiges was governments dedicated to the cause, complete with their own representatives who could develop distinct bonds with the party. That structure is paying off tremendously now that the main campaign is completed, as I’ve got the natural payoff of “what’s this old friend been doing” to furnish basically any new adventure
Of course, that’s a payoff that works particularly well for my DMing style – unsurprisingly, my primary interest in character writing extends to DnD, so the liveliness of the NPCs is generally the strongest part of my campaign writing. Gotta play to your strengths
Kima mentions they have an old friend in Draconia who could get them into hell
Cassandra gives Percy a push towards Vex. Speaking of playing to your strengths – intra-party romance is one of the biggest potential dramatic payoffs in DnD, but absent a party of professional voice actors, I’m guessing the confidence to utilize it will likely be forever beyond our grasp. Fortunately, as DM, I have no shortage of my own characters to smoosh together and make kissy noises. The romance between the princesses of a human and elven empire was actually both the dramatic and political cornerstone of my campaign
Meanwhile, Vax is in the next room, busy breaking it off with Keyleth. The contrast demonstrates how romance in DnD can either be a huge narrative ordeal or the simplest thing in the world
“So joy today isn’t worth pain tomorrow?” I basically fall with Keyleth on this, so much so that I rarely find this conflict dramatically interesting. “One day the people we love will pass on” is not a reason to reject engagement with the beautiful things in life
Yep, you really fucked that one up, Vax. Having seen more of Critical Role’s tabletop adventures, it is beyond clear that Vax’s player Liam enjoys and excels at playing tortured souls bound by their own regrets. You gotta have a hobby, I suppose
Evocative lighting as Scanlan watches the sun rise the next morning. The sense of visual cohesion and rich color design afforded by the improved lighting and shading has been one of Vox Machina’s greatest aesthetic improvements across its seasons
Scanlan also totally blows a conversation with Pike, misreading signals and awkwardly excusing himself
Incredible beat of Vax and Percy crossing paths during Percy’s morning exit from Vex’s room. Aw, the sweet awkwardness of fledgling romance – I genuinely adore this shit, and am thankful I get to indulge in it through my NPC nonsense. I’ve actually got another romantic thread plotted out for the campaign’s supplementary adventures, between the character I generally play while someone else is DMing and an old rival of the party. They’ve got a dynamic I’d liken to Natsuki and Yuuko from Sound! Euphonium
They are then warped to Draconia, on the continent of Wildemount. We’re already seeing how high level adventurers are less and less attached to the physical restraints of their world – low level adventurers ride in caravans and come across packs of wolves, high level adventurers just teleport everywhere and skip terrain entirely. Plan your distribution of conflicts accordingly!
Their contact is Dohla, a draconian woman who previously traveled with Allura and Kima. The former, now retired party of heroes who preceded the player party can be a useful dramatic device, providing guidance to the players, or even serving as a series of allies to collect. Of course, the existence of former heroes can also lend a campaign an unwanted sense of security, or a feeling that the player party isn’t actually necessary. A device to use responsibly
I love the terrain here – a series of floating, ice-covered “islands” connected by rope bridges. As always, vividly defining environmental features are essential to avoid having all your locations blur into one. The fact that DnD is a process of describing a fantasy adventure with no inherent visual aids is one of its greatest aesthetic limitations, and the consequences of this limitation must be respected
“We’ll reopen the gateway in exactly twelve hours.” Ooh, I really like this concept. Asking the party to sculpt the scale of their own investigation into a precise time frame seems more meaningful than a general clock – with a short enough leash, this introduces friction regarding what exactly the party can accomplish, and what goals they might have to sacrifice to make their deadline. Within an environment with sufficient relevant avenues of exploration, I could easily see this providing productive structure and drama
Percy and Vex elect to stay behind and guard the gateway, which seems pointless enough to make me suspect they were just absent for these sessions
Hell looks suitably hellish, full of damned souls and dragons and the like. The exact mechanics of souls entering DnD hell has always felt a little vague to me, interacting clumsily with the game’s loose take on mortality (it is so easy to bring people back to life!) and unruly stew of deities and afterlives. Hell specifically exists because hell, as defined in Dante’s Inferno, is a deeply evocative fantasy setting – beyond that, it seems up to DMs to decide how exactly infernal punishment is distributed
Some natural tension on the other side, as Vex’s carefree approach to romance clashes against Percy’s straight-laced personality. But then, a dragon attacks!
Vorugal really blowing up Raishan’s spot here, finding Vox Machina in maybe a solid hour of searching
The Chroma Conclave offers a natural solution to that issue of “convincing the party it’s better to run than fight” that I discussed earlier. They are established from the start to be too strong to face directly, and thus instead take the role of cinematic environmental hazards, near-death rollercoaster sequences where the only goal is survival
Oh no, Dohla has betrayed them! A trick that’s dangerous to overuse, as one of the worst state of affairs is the party simply no longer trusting the DM, but this one was consistently seeded enough to feel like a natural turn
I also like how the Chroma Conclave’s machinations have directed the party’s political negotiations more generally. The party has to consistently win over forces who’re weighing the alternative of “if we disobey the dragons, we all die,” forcing them to be particularly gifted negotiators
Welp, Dohla’s dead, Kima’s lost, and the gang are now sealed inside an ice cave. So, about average for a dragon fight
And Done
Isn’t this a fine mess we’ve found ourselves in! Most of the party’s stuck in hell, the rest are being pursued by a dragon, and nobody’s any closer to finding a goddamn vestige. Well, in spite of this episode primarily focusing on the party’s ill-fortuned romantic escapades, there was still plenty to dig into, particularly regarding the team’s ascension into late game adventurers. You know the time for killing rats and skeletons has ended when the party starts discussing journeys into hell, and so far it seems like Vox Machina is weathering this transition gracefully, using their own personal bonds to emphasize the continuity between their humble origins and current abilities. Now c’mon, let’s get to the hell drama!
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