Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we return to Vox Machina in a moment of unqualified triumph, as they have not only retrieved Pike\u2019s spiffy new breastplate from the depths of hell, they\u2019ve also managed to kill the ice dragon Vorugal in the bargain. The Chroma Conclave\u2019s most relentless bulldog, and the destroyer of the party\u2019s own delightful chateau, now lies buried among the frigid wastes of Tal\u2019Dorei. It\u2019s starting to seem like our team might actually pull this off!<\/span><\/p>\n Given that, I imagine Mercer has some terrible reckoning awaiting our heroes. DnD campaigns obviously shouldn\u2019t feel hopeless, but they also shouldn\u2019t feel effortless \u2013 ideally, the party should feel like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders, but that their best efforts might just come to some triumphant end. In practice, this tends to mean DnD drama follows a sort of roller coaster structure, building the party up just to send them plummeting down, often at moments aligned with some sort of narrative act change. My own prior campaign integrated such plummets at the conclusion of its first and second acts, letting each act finale serve several roles: offering a massive action payoff, reaffirming the party\u2019s bonds with the world and characters, and putting the overall forces of good on the backfoot in order to give the party room to rise again.<\/span><\/p>\n So far, Vox Machina\u2019s only such reckoning has been the arrival of the Chroma Conclave. Given their recent successes, I imagine we\u2019re due for some manner of rude awakening, something to assure both party and audience that Thordak still has the upper hand. Mechanical and narrative design are in agreement on this one: challenges must feel challenging, drama must feel heart-pounding, and parties that are doing too well must be properly chastened. Let\u2019s drop that other shoe, Mercer!<\/span><\/p>\n Episode 6<\/b><\/p>\n Ah right, we were last on the verge of exploring Scanlan\u2019s magical bachelor pad, which is presumably his version of the Mordenkainen\u2019s Magnificent Mansion spell. Spells like that leave a ton of wiggle room for defining how they actually resolve, meaning they\u2019re a place where mechanics and creativity entwine, allowing the player to express their character\u2019s personality through the dimensions and decor of their ideal fantasy home. Scanlan\u2019s player seems largely indifferent to high fantasy drama or combat, but this is the sort of place where he shines, going above and beyond in bringing his own magical villa to life<\/span><\/p>\n Beyond broad player-interest archetypes like players who are into mechanics versus those into roleplay, there are lots of smaller pleasures in DnD whose prominence should generally be dictated by a given party\u2019s relative interest. My campaign has trade and a general economy because one of my players likes nothing more than to manage his business holdings; if you\u2019re DMing properly, your world should expand or contract to match the shape of your players\u2019 passions<\/span><\/p>\n Oh no, I hear that hi-hat building. Scanlan\u2019s got a song coming<\/span><\/p>\n Yeah, this place has got everything. No surprise Scanlan demanded a hot tub<\/span><\/p>\n Seeing the party\u2019s allies arrayed in this OP makes me wonder how much this adaptation has condensed their company. I probably went overboard in my first campaign; I wanted to do a grand struggle between nations, so we ended up with around two dozen main players, and a generous scattering of smaller figures. I like writing characters!<\/span><\/p>\n Vax visits Percy for a heart-to-heart in the pool, which given Percy\u2019s reaction presumably means Vex just ducked under the water or something<\/span><\/p>\n Yep, so it goes. Nice to see these two actively addressing their emotional baggage, though. With a sufficiently confident group of players, internal party drama can provide the majority of a campaign\u2019s emotional conflict, and also furnish each external victory with the satisfaction of building off your hard-won mutual trust. New players will likely act more like a collective peanut gallery, their eyes always towards the DM \u2013 after you gain enough confidence to take the spotlight in-character, you generally start to recognize all the opportunities inherent in your characterization being directly contrasted against that of your fellow players. With our current campaign in Strahd, that\u2019s providing practically <\/span>all<\/span><\/i> of the emotional drama, as the on-book stuff isn\u2019t particularly engaging. We\u2019ve got a young son of nobility taking our adventure as a personal affront, a jaded pirate who\u2019s happy to needle said noble, and my kind-hearted cleric in the middle, putting her foot in her mouth even as she just tries to make everyone get along<\/span><\/p>\n Meanwhile, Grog and Pike are busy wrecking the place, eager to test out Pike\u2019s new armor. Some character dynamics are pretty effortless<\/span><\/p>\n Urged on by Percy\u2019s words, Vax tries to patch things up with Keyleth. They\u2019re doing a fine job of condensing what I assume was a lot more will they-won\u2019t they into a pretty concise romantic arc<\/span><\/p>\n Percy and Vax make for a nice parallel \u2013 Percy\u2019s learning to actively seek and build a sustainable future, rather than destroy himself seeking revenge, while Vax\u2019s bargains and visions are leading him to abandon anything but the present moment<\/span><\/p>\n On the other hand, I assume Scanlan\u2019s regrets regarding his daughter have been given a bit more focus via this adaptation. That thread is often carried simply by Scanlan staring at his daughter\u2019s picture from time to time, which I doubt was something Scanlan\u2019s player was persistently announcing to the table. DnD isn\u2019t a great format for exploring character interiority; all of its drama is defined by interaction with other characters and the external world, and having players announce their characters\u2019 secret feelings would be clumsy regardless. This fact actually took some adjustment on my part, given my love of interiority-first stories like Evangelion and Monogatari<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t keep chasing vestiges all over the map. How many are enough \u2013 three, five?\u201d Vax raises a question so sharp it seems tinged with an edge of genuine player frustration. If you\u2019re going to ask your party to go collect dragon balls, you need to at <\/span>least<\/span><\/i> tell them how many dragon balls are out there, lest you risk them assuming you\u2019re just dragging out their trials with more and more busywork. Dragon ball hunts <\/span>are<\/span><\/i> inherently busywork, so everything you can do to give such a hunt a sense of genuine structure is welcome<\/span><\/p>\n Scanlan then explodes at the table, still choked up with guilt regarding his daughter<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re not horrible, you\u2019re just caring for someone else for the first time, and it\u2019s freaking you out.\u201d Ouch, Pike. This is a big part of the conversational dynamic of my current cleric \u2013 apparently \u201ckilling them with blunt kindness\u201d is a pretty natural cleric affectation<\/span><\/p>\n Pike helps Scanlan check on Kaylie, and they learn she is still hoping for his reappearance. Welp, it\u2019s been fun, Scanlan<\/span><\/p>\n I wonder how much of this drama was the player\u2019s intended path, and how much was the player just sorta getting sick of playing Scanlan. There\u2019s no shame in an honorable discharge if you feel your character has outlasted their role in the story, and Scanlan\u2019s always been averse to actually engaging with high fantasy drama<\/span><\/p>\n Thus Scanlan steps back from their teleportation circle, and resolves to reunite with his daughter<\/span><\/p>\n Meanwhile, the rest return home to see Whitestone burning. Yep, here\u2019s that reckoning I was talking about<\/span><\/p>\n The party breaks into a variety of groups to simultaneously defend the tree, castle, and people of Whitestone. I am exceedingly curious as to how this was handled in-session; it would have been easy enough to jump between active groups, but I\u2019ve also done a fair amount of experimenting with larger battlefields containing multiple fronts, where different members of the party are pursuing their own objectives in general combat turn order. I\u2019ve found this works very well for Seven Samurai-style holdout missions, with different portions of the party defending different weak points of a town\u2019s defenses<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll deal with this, Percy. Go find your sister.\u201d As I said in the intro, one of the big potential payoffs of these reckonings is their affirmation of the party\u2019s work so far, and the trusted allies they\u2019ve acquired across their journey. Nothing like the party and their hard-earned friends collaborating in defeating some grand evil to remind the players of how far they\u2019ve come, and how much they\u2019ve accomplished<\/span><\/p>\n They\u2019re also a pretty handy \u201cfalse clock,\u201d offering an implication of urgency in the party\u2019s mission without actually binding them to a timer. You could theoretically bind the party to a <\/span>real<\/span><\/i> clock, but I\u2019m pretty sure the only result of that would be player anxiety and frustration, so why would you? Design space existing isn\u2019t by itself a convincing reason to exploit it; you must first discover whether that design space leads to productive, compelling player experiences<\/span><\/p>\n Cassandra is busy holding off a dragon with a fencing rapier, an inherent nod to the frequent absurdity of DnD\u2019s combat mechanics<\/span><\/p>\n Now that I\u2019m actually playing a cleric, I can more fully appreciate the primacy of the shield in Pike\u2019s fighting style. Having your defining tool for combat interaction be a defensive instrument naturally encourages distinct ways of approaching combat, both in mindset and mechanics<\/span><\/p>\n And here\u2019s our stark visual representation of how badly our heroes have been beaten: the castle of Whitestone, seat of their power and icon of Percy\u2019s hopes for the future, is now collapsing. I actually had my own party\u2019s capital city get nearly destroyed <\/span>twice<\/span><\/i>, with the second attempt accompanying a country-wide infernal invasion that had them teleporting between three different battlefronts<\/span><\/p>\n I suppose Mercer pulled basically the same thing, with Whitestone demanding both a liberation and a defense mission. It\u2019s good to have places the characters care about!<\/span><\/p>\n Keyleth claims this attack was Raishan\u2019s doing, and Raishan promptly shows up to defend herself<\/span><\/p>\n Raishan makes some pretty valid points regarding Ripley\u2019s culpability in this attack, just barely forestalling a big ol\u2019 dragon fight. Unfortunately, that\u2019s not enough to keep them from severing their alliance<\/span><\/p>\n And Done<\/b><\/p>\n See, heroes? You take just one moment to relax and exult in your previous successes, and look what it gets you \u2013 a scorched city, a new nemesis, and a host of baby dragons flying around fucking up everyone\u2019s business. Well, we hit precisely the dramatic swerves I expected this episode, which says less about my prognosticative capabilities than the generally reliable nature of narrative structure. After so many unqualified successes, the party needed to feel like they were on the backfoot again, and scorching Whitestone was absolutely the most reliable way to achieve it. There is a great satisfaction in watching your players develop some genuine anger towards your antagonists, a frustration that can only arise from first having come to invest in and care about the people of your world. With their home in ruins, I\u2019m eager to see Vox Machina make some exceedingly reckless decisions!<\/span><\/p>\n This\u00a0article\u00a0was\u00a0mad<\/a><\/em>e possible by reader support<\/a>. Thank you all for\u00a0all that you do.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wrongeverytime.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/November01111217.jpg?resize=584%2C329&ssl=1\")
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<\/p>\nLike this:<\/h3>\n