Another week, another Thursday. Let’s take a look at the latest episode of Critical Role to see what lessons we can bring to our own D&D games. Photo credit to @hchanooo for the cover photo!
– Spoilers for the latest episode of Critical Role ahead –
This week, I’m continuing to use Robin Laws’ beat analysis framework. If you want to read more, check out last week’s post or read Robin Law’s awesome book.
This week is a good example of how beat analysis is also useful for assessing a session after the fact. It gives you a framework to spot problems that would have otherwise been abstract and tough to diagnose.
Meeting Orly Skiffback. [Dramatic, down]
The party wants Orly to share more of his backstory. They are unable to earn his trust.
Asking about Marius LePual [Procedural, up]
The party shifts tactics, asking Orly for information about some of their procedural goals instead of his past. He gives them information that brings them closer to their goal: where Marius LePual can be found.
Fjord and Caleb question Adella [Procedural, down]
The party questions Adella (a cameo from Vox Machina!) about several procedural goals: Algar, Sabian, the wizard’s tower. For each, they either receive no information or the woman’s answers raise more questions than they answer.
This provides an opportunity to clarify down beats further. Notice that in this scene Fjord and Caleb aren’t failing to get information. Rather, the information provided adds more uncertainty. We feel further from our goal of understanding what’s going on because there are now more agents and mysteries to unravel.
Yasha enters the Wayfarer’s Cove [Dramatic, down]
The group is trying to reconnect with Yasha and get her to open up to them, sharing her feelings and goals. Yasha refuses to share.
Nott threatens the Wayfarer’s Cove [Procedural, down]
This is an interesting beat. On the surface, Nott is seeking information and isn’t able to find it. At the same time, Sam is really going over the top with his intimidation. Both he and Matt play this like a gratification beat – you’ll notice that Matt doesn’t bring the guard in to punish Nott’s actions.
This is a good example of players and DM being at least subconsciously aware of the beats that have happened so far. We’ve had several down beats, but the party still has no real leads on where to go next. This means there’s probably more downbeats to come. So Sam plays this moment in a ridiculous way, giving a quasi-up beat. This reinvigorates the energy and helps us keep forward momentum.
Fjord gets a boat [Procedural, up]
Similar to Nott’s antics in the last beat, you can see Matt trying to inject a bit of energy here. Fjord’s efforts are even more successful than his sailor background would allow. Matt doesn’t even require any rolls or NPC interactions, probably to avoid an inadvertent down beat.
Beaux (Stacy) interrogates the guards [Procedural, up]
Beaux is able to achieve her goal, learning the location of an entrance into the Sluice Weave.
This scene also takes on a bit of a gratification beat. Beaux looking to Fjord for approval of her human interactions is a recurring bit. And Beaux acting like a valley girl in the middle of a fantasy land while she flirts with an NPC played by her real life husband is all very meta and tongue-in-cheek.
Frumpkin investigates the underwater entrance [Procedural, down]
As Frumpkin explores, we’re confronted with more and more obstacles, each of which seems difficult to overcome. We begin to wonder if the entrance Beaux was able to find isn’t going to work.
Yasha and Jester rip open the grates [Procedural, up]
In a surprise turn of events, Jester and Yasha are able to surmount the obstacles and we can move forward.
Nott has to swim [Dramatic, up]
On one level, this beat feels procedural since the group wants Nott to join them in the underwater tunnel. But the amount of build up and attention that Nott’s fear of water has gotten since coming to Nicodranis makes this play more like a dramatic beat. Nott overcomes her fears (sort of) and we get a payoff for that growth.
Dealing with the animals [Procedural, lateral]
Getting the animals successfully into the tunnel provides a bit of a mini game. None of the animals are hurt, so there’s no down resolution. But getting the animals in doesn’t really contribute to the character’s goals, so there’s no upward resolution either.
The water attacks [Procedural, up]
Combat is almost always procedural and the party makes relatively easy work of the enemies.
Moving forward [Procedural, down]
I think you could split this into 3 procedural goals that fail: looking for loot after the fight, investigating the smaller grate in the room, and trying to stealth into the second chamber. For the sake of brevity I’ll treat them as a single beat.
Fighting the water genie [Procedural, down]
While the party technically wins this fight, the tone feels largely downwards. There are questions of whether the party’s response is too strong given Algar’s transgressions. Caleb and Deuces both go unconscious multiple times. And the fight ends on a cliffhanger, unclear whether the water genie is now an ally.
Negative emotions don’t necessarily mean a beat is downwards. But in this instance, the frustration and ambiguity of events makes us feel like maybe we had the wrong goal or the goal wasn’t worth it. These are similar in feeling to us moving further away from success.
The beat structure this week looks much more chaotic than last week. What’s interesting is that I think I could feel this coming through in the episode. Or maybe I’m just fooling myself…
At the beginning of the episode, the players don’t have a clear sense of what to do or where to go next. This lack of direction means they try a lot of different things and most of them don’t work. This manifests itself in a large number of down beats all in a row.
To course correct, Matt tries to give the players something to work with. But to do this without railroading them, he ends up having to give them many successes in a row as he nudges them onto a viable path. You can see this in the burst of procedural up beats.
The first thing that stands out to me is how well everyone handles this situation. Despite a bit of aimlessness, the players are able to keep things light and rely on some recurring character bits to brighten an otherwise frustrating investigation. The huge number of beats in this episode is a testament to the players’ ability to recognize dead ends and move off of them quickly. I think a game with less experienced players would have been seriously quagmired here.
The second thing I notice is that Matt ignores any idea of alternating beat resolutions in order to get the players moving forwards. I think this is right – once the party gets into the tunnel the energy improves dramatically. This gives us a useful rule of thumb: forward momentum and clear goals trump up/down beat rhythm.
The irregular pattern of beats helps us realize there was an issue. Analyzing the structure (lots of small beats, many beats with the same resolution in a row) also helps us get a sense that the players were aimless. But stepping back from the beat structure, why were the players aimless at the beginning of the episode?
The most basic answer, I think, is that mysteries and investigations in D&D are really hard. Usually, we tell our players what they need to go do and then put challenges in their way to provide tension. But with mysteries and investigations, figuring out what to do next often is the challenge that builds tension.
This leaves the DM walking a delicate line. You need to hide information. But not too much! Doing this ahead of time is quite error prone. Sometimes, you end up with a session like today where the players just went down a different path and didn’t pick up the careful trail of clues you left.
I think there are a few solutions that can make these kinds of adventures more reliable. Your goal is for the players to always know where to go or who to talk to next, even if they don’t understand the significance or the larger plot.
The most common way to do this is to have a reliable confidant that players can always return to. This confidant should have a plausible justification for giving the party a clue in any situation. An ally NPC who’s investigating in parallel could be good for this.
Another option is to clearly outline the problem space ahead of time. Tell your players all of the potential suspects or points of interest at the beginning. They may not know exactly what to do, but they’ve got a list to choose from and it will shrink over time.
Finally, you can make sure that the clues your players find aren’t “who should you talk to” or “where should you go”. Instead, focus on mysteries around questions of how or why. Maybe you know who the murderer was, you just don’t know how they did it. Or maybe you know all the suspects, but you need to find someone with motive.
Another way of looking at this episode is that it’s hard for players to get set up in a new location. When they first arrive they don’t have any connections. They don’t know points of interest. They don’t know what questions might land them in jail. In these situations, the players are naturally going to be more hesitant and won’t have many options available to solve problems.
When you bring your players to a new location, err on the side of more straightforward adventures. And make sure you’re filling those adventures with lots of new allies and locations, so that you can build to more complicated narrative arcs as the players’ resources grow.
As a DM, when you’re running your sessions don’t just use beats in the moment. Write them down so that you can analyze your sessions later and improve. If your story has an irregular structure, ask yourself what you can change in the future.
If you want to build a mystery or investigation adventure for you players, don’t just think about the clues that will unravel the mystery. Make sure you understand how the players will know what actions to take next when you’re actively hiding information from them.
A few good techniques to help your players move forward:
Finally, be aware that when you introduce your players to a new location, you need to make the plot lines more straightforward as the players build up a network of information and contacts.
