Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am ridiculously impatient to get back to Vox Machina, and see what our ramshackle adventuring party is up to. I doubt it’s been all that long on your end since our last Vox installment, but for me, I’ve been waiting three damn months to check in with this crew. Vox Machina is just too interesting of a concept, and so I got a little over-enthusiastic with my initial rampage of writeups, meaning it’s taken me months to justify throwing more Vox pieces on my buffer pile.

As it turns out though, this interminable wait has led to my return lining up with a particularly auspicious real-world counterpoint. Today is the day I’ll be starting my own D&D campaign, and finally taking over the DM reigns for something longer than a one-off adventure. At last, I’ll be able to shift from the theoretical criticism of “I’m pretty sure this is something our DM messed up” to the clarity of “this is something I definitely messed up,” and I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve spent the last few weeks pounding out thousands of words of backstory and worldbuilding, have developed roughly half a dozen quest lines for my players to enjoy, and have no doubt they will disregard all this work in favor of hanging out with a drunk gnoll named Sparky who I made up on the spot. That’s the fun of DMing, I am told, and I wouldn’t have it any other way – crafting a campaign for a group of unruly players is like trying to plot a novel while people throw dodgeballs at your head, and what activity isn’t improved by the threat of physical violence?

Anyway, my own collaborative adventures aside, I’m eager to see how Vox Machina are faring as well. I can’t imagine Percy is taking the apparent death of his sister gracefully, and presume we’re in for a fit of rage that even Grog might consider a little much. Let’s get to it!

Continue reading →

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am positively incensed, owing to my recent illness having stolen this week’s D&D session. We’d basically gone into hibernation mode over the winter, and had just started getting some momentum going, and then my body had the temerity to go and get sick on me! We’d just reached the ancient city! We were about to run through a miniboss rush! Who even knows when we’ll get the group together again to… aaARRGH!

Anyway. With my D&D opportunities in the outer world unjustly stolen from me, I’m planning to console myself with the continuing adventures of Vox Machina. When last we left off, the show had just announced a shocking yet inevitable reveal: Percy’s sister Cassandra is still alive, and actually working with the Blackbriars. Wha!? I know, I know, but don’t get too scandalized, since I’m pretty sure the reveal of the resistance’s mole will set her right back on the side of justice. As the tension continues to build, let’s see what awaits in a fresh episode of The Legend of Vox Machina!

Continue reading →

Grab your character sheets and pull up a chair, everyone! Today we’re returning to The Legend of Vox Machina, where the party most recently arrived at Percy’s ancestral home. There they were greeted with a ghoulish welcoming party: a line of corpses dressed up to resemble their own costumes. It’s clear that Vox Machina are not welcome in Whitestone, but as it turns out, party crashing is actually one of their specialties.

In terms of narrative/mechanical design, my most recent object of curiosity is the negotiation of the blank space that defines this party’s recent pre-history. Frequently, D&D parties assemble right at the beginning of a campaign, often bumping into each other at an inn and deciding to team up. That’s clearly not true of Vox Machina, who had apparently been traveling together for some time, but that “some time” feels oddly nebulous at this point. Dynamics like the growing affection between Vax and Keyleth, or Scanlan and Pike, feel divorced from any sense of communal pre-history, awkwardly highlighting the reality that this group was summoned into existence as a fully assembled unit. I’ll be interested to see if the show mitigates that by actually revealing how the party met, but there’s plenty of time for that; for now, we’ve clearly got more pressing concerns. Let’s face off with those nefarious Briarwoods, and get some goddamn loot!

Continue reading →

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I thought we’d sidle back into The Legend of Vox Machina, wherein the party most recently set off for Percy’s ancestral home. Well, most of the party – Pike apparently broke her magical doohickey, and thus has to set off on a personal journey to “apologize to the Everlight.” This narrative development seems messy, but it’s precisely the kind of messy that embodies Vox Machina’s difficult negotiation between narrative and game, which in turn makes it of tremendous interest to me!

As I reflected in the last episode, the “primacy of the party” is one of the central tenets that defines D&D-format fiction, as it is the interplay of the party members that forms the backbone of any campaign. As such, any separation in the party must be undertaken for the most crucial of reasons, when the narrative absolutely demands it – and “my Everlight phone broke” certainly doesn’t qualify. Forcing a character to leave because an object that had been assigned no prior significance now needs attention is, quite frankly, hack storytelling – it’s the equivalent of a character exiting the narrative because they think they left the oven on, not because anything in their existing character or narrative demands it.

When I put together “breaking the party is a D&D cardinal sin” and “Pike’s reason for leaving is entirely disconnected from the ongoing narrative,” I arrive at just one reasonable conclusion: Pike’s actress was busy for a while, and had to step back from the game. This, too, is a natural quirk of D&D narrative design: sometimes the whole cast just can’t be there, and so your rogue or your druid will exist in a weird liminal space behind you, until the whole party can regather. It’s a very strange thing to see such a pragmatic design limitation translated into earnest narrative drama, but that’s precisely the sort of weird negotiation I like about this series. Let’s see what’s in store at Whitestone Manor!

Continue reading →

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be returning to the Legend of Vox Machina, for a very simple reason: I’m having a great fucking time. My own apartment’s progress through our D&D campaign has slowed to a crawl, leaving me profoundly malnourished and desperate for some gamified high fantasy drama. I have quibbles about Vox Machina here and there, but the show’s enduring strength is that it damn well captures the feeling of a tabletop adventure, striking a difficult balance of earnest fantasy and gamified mechanical design.

So far, it’s actually been better at capturing the feeling of D&D than illustrating a narrative of its own, but I expect that to change as we move beyond the tutorial phase. The introduction of the Briarwoods has given our team a personal stake in the drama, so I’ll be interested to see how the show manages its earnest drama versus its verging-on-out-of-character quipping going forward. Either way, I’m sure there’ll be plenty to talk about, so let’s get right to the action!

Continue reading →

Hello everyone, and welcome the fuck back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be returning to The Legend of Vox Machina, where I’m fairly certain the team just finished off their tutorial quest. I mean, I’ve only participated in one long-term D&D campaign myself, but given that my campaign also opened on killing a local dragon and receiving a nice estate in return, I have to assume that we’re still working off the standard D&D template here.

That makes this episode all the more exciting, as we’re presumably finally stepping out from the shadow of Wizards of the Coast, and can start to see what our own dungeon master has planned. Along with that, I’ll be keeping an eye on how our secondary cast members “grow into” their characters, presumably becoming more confident in expressing their personalities as the campaign continues. The twins and Scanlan have gotten the lion’s share of the dialogue so far, so I’ll be interested in seeing if our druid, cleric, or even berserker get more loquacious as the journey continues. Either way, Vox Machina continues to be a fascinating exercise in translating narrative into gameplay (the fundamental promise of D&D) and then back into narrative, so I’m sure I’ll find something to mutter about. Let’s get back to the adventure!

Continue reading →

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I figured we’d continue the story of Vox Machina, and see if this story has found its footing. The show’s first episode was handicapped by an insecurity that I see in a lot of these “American fantasy for adults” properties, an insecurity that tends to express itself as a reliance on vulgarity and ultraviolence as shorthand for seriousness. Along with showing off their “mature bona fides,” these displays demonstrate irreverence or contempt for the generally self-serious tone of such properties, assuring audiences that it’s okay to like this one.

If you can’t tell, I have nothing but disdain for this instinct. It is far less shameful to earnestly invest in your story than continuously apologize for it, and the instinct to associate maturity with ultraviolence seems deeply juvenile in its own right – the plaintive cry of “it’s not cartoons, it’s anime.” Fortunately, the second half of this show’s premiere saw the story finally stepping off its own cloak, and demonstrating some earnest drama across the main crew. We’re still in pretty by-the-books fantasy territory, but that’s how all D&D campaigns start; the nuance is found in how your story blooms, and I’m eager to see it happen. Let’s get back to the trail!

Continue reading →

Hey folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be exploring a property that’s a little different from our usual fare, as we check out the first episode of the recently released Legend of Vox Machina. Apparently, this show is actually an animated adaptation of the web series Critical Role, which follows a group of friends through a variety of Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. I’m presuming that Vox Machina will in turn be abstracting the gamified elements into fiction, presenting this campaign as a fantasy narrative in its own right.

That sounds pretty interesting to me! As for my own experience in this field, I’ve never watched Critical Role, but I did check out a few episodes of Adventure Zone some months back. I like the concept of following along with a D&D campaign, but didn’t really find Zone’s banter gripping enough to stick with, so I eventually fell off it. My greater chunk of relevant experience is simply playing D&D; I never got the chance to play consistently as a teenager, so it’s been delightful to participate in a campaign with my housemates over the past year. I’m quite fond of my surly warlock Taliandrel, and more broadly find D&D’s mixture of game design, narrative design, and improv theater absolutely fascinating. Of course, like with all tabletop activities, the most important thing is the company you’re sharing it with – so let’s see what to make of our present company, as we tackle the first episode of Vox Machina!

Continue reading →