Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to return to The Legend of Vox Machina, and see how our heroes are fairing in their quest to regain the important magic doohickeys. From a point of initially, emphatically demonstrating that Vox Machina lack the strength to fight these dragons, Mercer has steadily guided the party from “we need to gather an army” (Whitestone) to “no army is willing to assist you” (Vasselheim) to “only the Vestiges of Divergence can stop these dragons” (Slayer’s Take). By splitting these directives among multiple characters and separating them by travel and trials, he’s effectively masked the inevitability of this quest, arriving at that sweet alchemy of the players collectively “choosing” to do the only thing you had written out for them anyway.

It’s a good thing I’m taking notes, as I’m at roughly the same point in my own players’ campaign. Just a few hours after I write this article, we’ll be conducting our second session since picking back up, wherein I plan to guide my party through a destroyed city and into a riff on Seven Samurai. I’m not sure my party’s feeling quite the same sense of urgency as Vox Machina, so I’m eager to see how Mercer maintains momentum and perspective as the gang wanders off on this new adventure. Let’s get to it!

Episode 3

“The Sunken Tomb.” Yeah, here’s a good old-fashioned dungeon. Given my own party has spent most of the campaign tramping around a city, I could frankly use some practice in dungeon designing. Layouts and combat encounters I’m fine with, but puzzles are trickier; the puzzles I tend to see in official DnD adventures all seem so esoteric and vaguely designed as to only provoke frustration in players

Pike astral projects back to Emon, giving us a perspective character to watch the dragons hatch their plans. I was always a little curious about how the party was supposed to have learned all the stuff we only saw from the villains’ perspective in the first season, so I appreciate this time we’ve actually got a player present, and don’t just briefly shift to an omniscient perspective from time to time

“The dragons are spreading across Tal’Dorei!” “You saw them?” “A vision granted by the Everlight.” Well, I guess that’s one way to maintain momentum and perspective: keep presenting the players with mystical visions of the violence the grand threat is causing while they conduct their sidequests

“Emon was the first place that accepted us. It was like our home.” Solid contribution by Keyleth. It indeed seems like her player is more comfortable contributing to and actively steering the emotional drama in the wake of the first season, which involved a lot more of Mercer’s narrative machinations gently prodding her to contribute

They find the lake, but there’s no tomb. This is precisely the kind of puzzle I do like: not some arbitrary riddle with levers and weights, but a simple problem like “the tomb isn’t where you expect it to be, what do you do next.” Puzzles like that invite creativity and unique utilization of your character abilities, rather than just pushing and pulling at knobs until something happens

Some unusually exaggerated expression work for Scanlan taking a dive. Very appreciated!

“Keyleth, can you, I don’t know, be a bird or something?” Nice to see Percy getting to embrace his silly side after last season

Kash and Zahra from the Slayer’s Take show up to assist the party. I’ll be interested in seeing what role these folks actually play; having an NPC around is indeed useful for guiding the party, but they can also be used for something as simple as establishing a threat via their graphic, untimely death

Apparently their first purpose is exposition, as we learn the tomb was built for the Matron of Ravens, the Goddess of Death, and contains her champion Purvan

Zahra and Vex also have a nice adversarial rapport. Keeping Zahra around seems like a good way to needle at Vex’s past, perhaps in some way facilitating this arc’s focus on the twins

Grog is delighted to learn his belt makes him grow a beard. It’s played as a joke, but I’ve found this sort of stuff is actually crucial: discovering what levers make specific players happy without disrupting overall game balance. A player who just wants to do fun character-reflective stuff is a player who can be pleased by novelty rather than power, and novelty is much easier to offer when you’re attempting to maintain a balanced mechanical system. “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” is actually an entirely valid way to play DnD

And unsurprisingly, this is followed up by our first glimpse of Vex and Vax’s past, as we learn of the domineering father who prompted them to abandon their home. Their father is your classic obsessed-with-tradition elf, referring to Vax as “diluted” due his presumed human blood. A thunderous reaffirmation of the core conflicts Osysa mentioned: Vex desperate to please her father, Vax desperate not to lose his sister

I’m curious how this flashback was handled in-game, or really how Mercer handles any of his flashbacks. It seems a tad awkward to inform your players “and then you reflect on the hard times in your past, and all those things that happened that made you who you are”

Some impressive compositions and water animation as Keyleth parts the lake. They’ve really upped the production’s quality and quantity of art this season!

While Zahra seems to mostly be here to riff off Vex, Kash is provoking drama of his own through Keyleth’s apparent infatuation with him. Keyleth has ascended from a wallflower to the campaign’s resident heartbreaker

Meanwhile, Grog’s player is having fun triggering every single trap in the tomb. It seems like Mercer is at this point designing with this sort of thing in mind, as Grog’s latest “mistake” neatly divides the party (and, most crucially, the twins)

We further learn that Vex actually rejected Vax’s first escape attempt. Becoming clearer by the moment why Vax is so afraid of losing his sister

A bunch of Adaro mer-creatures jump the party as they’re crossing a water-flanked bridge! I appreciate the unique physical dynamics of this battlefield: the party has a central platform of dry ground, but the enemy is concealed within water to either side, and one of the team members has already been yanked into the water. Unique dynamics like this, where the battlefield is more than a simple unblemished grid, facilitate unique challenges and solutions, prompting the party to consider combat and their abilities in new ways. Even something as simple as “there is rubble scattered across the field that can be used as cover” adds both a sense of substance and strategic complexity to a fight, so I’m always challenging myself to find new ways to complicate the battlefield

One of the enemies slices off part of Grog’s beard, sending him into a furious rage. An excellent example of meeting a player where their interest is: it’s been clear from everything so far that Grog’s player absolutely loves this beard, and is in favor of any and all beard-related drama, so obviously the upcoming enemies should specifically target the beard

Grog’s evil sword appreciates the help, and seems on the verge of taking him over altogether

Yep, by now it’s abundantly clear that Zahra’s here just to antagonize Vex. When your players either really love or really hate a non-player character, that’s an emotional investment worth cultivating. In my own campaign, my players have actually started hiring favored non-player characters to work for their own advertising agency

Though this season’s improved visually on the whole, I’d still say the production allows itself to get too damn dark too often. I know ancient tombs would be dark, but I’d take visibility over realism here

Vax’s newfound fear of letting any of his teammates do stuff is a little inorganic, but that’s basically inevitable given the arc-based nature of this narrative. It feels like Mercer is more closely collaborating with specific players each season (like with Percy’s in the first season), meaning a given season’s focus characters are going to suddenly find their emotional conflicts echoing the party’s external conflicts

And then Vex gets herself immediately shot dead by some raven magic! VAX WAS RIGHT!

And Done

Ah, the perils and pitfalls of old fashioned dungeoneering. This episode was a satisfying return to some of DnD’s most fundamental pleasures, from discovering temples that aren’t where they’re supposed to be, to investigating said temples and falling for every single one of their fiendish traps. I’m happy to see that Mercer broadly agrees with my philosophy on dungeon puzzles (either they’re designed to reward player proficiencies or they’re designed to be failed), and am generally enjoying this arc’s increased variability in terms of exploration and combat encounters. And with Vex in her current unfortunate state, I’m guessing we might even be approaching a meeting with this tomb’s proprietor, the Goddess of Death herself. It’s always nice meeting new people!

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