dirt

So I’m gonna break it down into categories. DM, Players, Misc, and Total. Each category will have multiple sections, and I hope to keep it consistent for any podcast I review. Obviously this is just my opinion, but since I’m always looking for podcasts I thought this might help people who are picky like me: 

Dungeon Master: Alex Newell

Setting: 9/10 The campaign is set in the real world, kind of. It is a steampunk version of 1800 Europe. Cities are not exactly the same in the campaign as in the real world, but it is familiar. The first season is almost entirely in London and Paris. I like this a lot more than I thought I would. Usually, real world based games turn me off but the familiarity in this story actually makes it better in my opinion.

NPCs: 5/10 The NPCs are just okay. There are a couple interesting ones that are worth remembering but they all have similar personalities. Voices are somewhat limited. I wouldn’t really care if any of them died. 

Gameplay: 7/10 The combat/puzzles are interesting most of the time, but not exceedingly memorable. This is pathfinder 1E so combat is definitely a sludge if you are used to DND 5e or pathfinder 2E. Combat and puzzle creativity is definitely better than an average home game and there have been a couple of memorable scenes, but I’m not jotting down notes for when I DM. 

Pacing: 5/10 It is a sludge for the first 30 episodes. Sometimes the same combat will take 2 or 3 full weeks (again, this is pathfinder which is SLOW). There have been 60 episodes and they are barely level 4. The story doesn’t really pick up much until the last 20 or so episodes of the season and things only really get exciting in the final 10. Luckily, episodes are only 45 mins or so without commercials and you don’t have to wait for any to come out so you can power through them. 

How they treat the players: 6/10 Alex treats his players harshly. Combat is often unforgiving and bad things happen that maybe aren’t best for audience retention. Nat 20′s are not as exciting as they are in other games. That being said, it makes for higher stakes situations and it feels like characters don’t have plot armor. I personally don’t really like this but I definitely understand why some people do. 

Overall: 6.4/10

Players/Party: Sasha Racket (Lydia Nicholas), Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan (Bryn Monroe), Bertrand MacGuffingham (James Ross), Zolf Smith (Ben Meredith)

Sasha: 6/10 Sasha is a rogue, and she reminds me of rogues that I’ve had at my table. Sneaky, awkward, shy, materialistic. I do like her, I think she is one of the characters that holds the party together, but she does feel like a character one of my friends or I could have created. 

Hamid: 7/10 Hamid is a sorcerer who thinks he is a wizard, but is slowly discovering his powers come naturally. It is an interesting concept. He is very polite, grew up very rich, and is well connected. Hamid is the other person who holds the party together. Sometimes his speeches are too melodramatic.

Bertrand: 8/10 Bertrand is a human fighter who is an asshole. James, his player, aims to make him be viewed as a horrible person to the audience because Bertie is loud, classist, and just generally a bad dude. That being said, he’s probably the character least like a PC that I would see at my table and is very entertaining. He is not a very realistic person and doesn’t feel real. I am actively rooting against him in season 2 and I hope he dies. 

Zolf: 6/10 Zolf (who is a dwarven cleric) also reminds me of a character that you’d just see at your table. It takes a hot minute for him to blend into the group. He seems to be constantly on the edge of a breakdown which is kind of fun. The relationship with his God seems to be on the rocks for no real reason.  

Party Cohesion: 7/10 When this podcast started, the charisma between the group was not fantastic. I had a hard time figuring out the group dynamic. Now, I can see why they are all friends and they riff off each other more easily but I don’t feel there are major stakes in their relationships. They don’t seem super bonded together in the same way parties from other podcasts are but their relationships feel more in depth than most tables I’ve been to. 

Combat Ability: 5/10 I blame the combat issues on the system more than the players, but my god low level pathfinder characters truly cannot do shit. On top of that, the characters don’t seem all that optimized. Sasha hits with a -1 and gets -1 damage on a d4. Hamid uses magic missile and consistently does 1 or 2 d4 damage. It hurts me physically. That being said, the players have personality in combat and make decisions based on what their characters would do and not necessarily what is best, which I think is a good thing in a podcast. 

Overall: 6.5/10

Miscellaneous 

System: 3/10 I hate listening to pathfinder 1e podcasts. You might not hate it if you’re into the crunch, but my god. 1e was my first system and honestly I still don’t completely get the rules. It is anticlimatic (for example, you don’t always crit on a nat 20, you have to roll to confirm), slow to level, slow in combat because there is just so much calculating to be done. Combats will take multiple hours in this podcast and to me that is entirely because of the system. Crunchy can be fun to play but it is not fun to listen to. 

Music: 9/10 I enjoy the soundtrack a lot. They add in things like footsteps or cave noises as ambient sound which is not something I see a lot of podcasts do. It makes you feel more involved and gives a completely different vibe from other shows. I also like the theme, it is extremely British sounding in a fun way. 

Sound Quality: 6/10 The sound quality is not great, just on a volume and noise level. I think they just need better microphones and that’s fine. It’s not impossible to listen to but sometimes certain players are much quieter than others especially for the first half of the season and that makes it difficult to listen to out loud. Headphones are usually fine as long as you have decent quality headphones. The editing is good though and you don’t hear background noises. 

Humor: 7/10 It is a funny show but not a hilarious show. I don’t think I’ve laughed out loud ever but the jokes are creative and typically broad enough for me to get and I literally know nothing about pop culture. Everyone is pretty witty and group dynamic gets better as time goes on. 

Story: 8/10 I would give this a lower rating for the first half and a higher rating for the second half of the first season. My least favorite part is that the character backstory involvement seems a bit forced sometimes, and comes out of left field. I think when you are doing a podcast the story should be completely focused around your characters, and this feels like the characters were placed into the story a bit. But, the story itself is super interesting. I love the setting, the plot is maybe the most original out of any podcast I’ve listened to. It’s a good mix of sci-fi and fantasy in a way that I think both groups of fans would enjoy. It does take a hot minute to get interesting but once it does it REALLY does. 

Overall: 6.6 (but should be higher, pathfinder 1e just sucks bad nuts) 

Overall Rating (Averaged) and Final Thots: 

Overall rating: 6.5/10