Critical Analysis – Found & Lost [Episode 26]

I’m always inspired when I watch Critical Role. I thought I might take some time each week to think critically (pun clearly intended) about the last week’s episode and what concrete lessons I could apply to my own D&D campaigns, as a player and a DM.

For now, I plan to keep these posts short. Who knows which parts will be valuable – keeping things short will encourage me to try out lots of different things. So without further ado, here’s a few things I learned from this week’s Critical Role.

Also, before I go any further, beyond this point you run the risk of HUGE SPOILERS for last week’s episode. Proceed at your own risk.

Describe everything

Matt gives a narrative description for damn near everything that the players do in the campaign. And I don’t just mean narrating the big fight scenes. When someone says “I open the door”, Matt takes a moment to embellish: “You reach forward, placing a hand near the top of the frame and pulling slowly towards yourself.”

Matt doesn’t go over the top every time – most descriptions are brief and don’t take much longer than “OK, you open the door.” But he never just lets someone describe a game mechanic and move on. Making sure every action is translated into in-the-world narrative helps create a sense of reality and encourages players to role play.

Prepare for the retreat

One last chance – SPOILERS INCOMING.

In this week’s Critical Role, the party bit off more than they could chew by attacking the Iron Shepherds. They could have avoided conflict, breaking the prisoners out stealthily or observing the Shepherds for a night or two. But, as Matt Colville says, the players are here to be heroes – ALWAYS expect them to fight.

The group came up with a great plan, but it was balanced on a knife’s edge that required everything to go right. When they didn’t, things started heading towards a TPK really quickly.

I think Matt had a bad feeling going into this fight. He looked worried that things could go bad, quickly. So right from the beginning, Matt seemed to be laying the groundwork for a retreat.

Matt starts developing the boss, Lorenzo, on the first turn. Unlike pretty much every other fight, Matt has Lorenzo speak, characterizing him as someone who’s amused more than anything else. His words show that he’s not really angry, he just wants “an eye for an eye” and to “make an example”. He’s not just-another-monster that wants to kill everything in sight.

This development pays off when the party finally realizes there’s no way they’re going to win the fight. It’s easy for Matt to allow their retreat without breaking the reality of the world. It felt totally reasonable that, seeing the party’s spirit broken and having already killed one party member, Lorenzo would let the party go. They were a nuisance, he’d taught them a lesson, and now they could go scare away other nuisances by saying how strong the Iron Shepherds are.

The important thing here is that Matt started laying this groundwork before it was obvious the players needed it. This is what made it believable. If your players are getting into something that might very well be over their heads, think ahead and have the bad guys express a motivation where allowing retreat or surrender would be reasonable, just in case.

Punishment can be the greatest mercy

Giving plausible motivations to the villains isn’t always enough. Even with Lorenzo’s character development, it would have been unbelievable for him to let the Mighty Nein run away without serious consequence. Especially after they killed a member of the Iron Shepherds. So Matt didn’t hesitate to deliver a serious blow to the group.

Molly’s death was such a big deal that it dominated the scene, giving cover for Matt to take it easy and help the rest of the party escape. When Keg offered herself as a sacrifice, but rolled very low on her persuasion check, Matt let it work anyways. Once a serious, irreversible consequence was delivered, there was a brief, reality warping moment where it was OK for things to just go the players’ way.

A less lethal example: in an old episode of the Vox Machina campaign, there’s a scene where the party’s plan goes horribly awry.

Strictly following the rules would probably have resulted in Vax falling to his death. Instead Matt is lenient, but he has the team lose their magic carpet, which was a very powerful tool.

On one level, I think we understand this trick intuitively. A lot of us might think “I just took it easy on them, so I’ll be tough this time around.” But it’s important to understand that this tool works in reverse too: “I need to take it easy on them in a turn or two, so I’ll take a hard swing right now”.

You could do this by having the monsters play in a particularly unforgiving, tactical way. Or by fudging the attack or damage rolls higher on the turn right before the heroes run.

Wrap up

Well, that’s it for this week. As a DM, remember to:

• Give every player action at least a little narrative love
• Give your most deadly bosses a motivation that allows for retreat or surrender
• If you need take it easy on your party, find a way to exact a serious, irreversible price right before or immediately after.

So what do you think of these principles? Were there other insights I missed? Anything else you’d like to see in these posts? Let me know in the comments!