Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am thrilled to announce we are returning to the adapted tabletop adventures of Vox Machina, that unruly band of heroes tasked with saving Tal’Dorei from the draconic Chroma Concave. Their escapades have proven both entertaining stories in their own right, and also persistent vehicles for discussion of tabletop gaming more generally. As someone who came late to tabletop gaming from a background in traditional fiction, I have a voracious appetite for any sort of lessons worth gleaning from the ramblings of Matt Mercer and his players, and have been impatiently awaiting this return to the field.

As for my own DnD adventures, it’s apparently been most of a goddamn year since we last checked in, so yes, I have news to report. The campaign I had at that point been running for around fourteen months came to an end in late winter, with my players battling an avatar of Asmodeus atop the high tower of the ninth circle of hell. It seemed an appropriately bombastic conclusion for my adventure, which followed the classic “the enemy you have been fighting was actually a pawn of the real threat” formula to swerve (with plentiful foreshadowing, mind you) from a pan-Dale civil war to a struggle to prevent hell’s emergence into the mortal realm. Old allies were recalled, grand foes were slain, and our sorcerer used grease to make the princess of hell fall on her ass at least three separate times.

Since then, we’ve begun a new campaign, with one of my campaign’s players DMing us through the on-book Curse of Strahd adventure. This has resulted in a chilling discovery: on-book DnD kinda sucks! It’s basically a sandbox designed for randomized NPC conversations and combat encounters, possessing none of the guided narrative focus and subsequent dramatic payoffs that is DnD as interpreted by groups like Critical Role. Fortunately, my group came prepared for just such a possibility, as this time we’re essentially creating our own wholly player-side character arcs, and doing our best to remain in-character all through our active sessions. I’ve been leading the charge with this, with my experience running a whole pile of NPCs making it easy to slip into the guise of Tilly the Goblin Cleric, who is a little intimidated by the gloomy world of Barovia, but doing her best to keep spirits high and limbs properly attached.

I’ve been further solidifying our player-side development through the creation of Tilly’s Reports, essentially formalized, in-character session notes that help to keep the party on the same general page dramatically. I’d be happy to share those and more news of our ongoing DnD trials later, but for now, it’s past time to get on with the adventures of Vox Machina. Onward!

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