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!

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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!

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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!

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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!

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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!

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