#high rollers lightfall

This vote is the unfortunate consequence of the polling framing lightfall as a single arc, maybe one day I will do a poll of just lightfall's arcs. Anyway:

Arc five is a wonderful follow up to the tension after Sentry's death and the return of Starbane, Nova and Lucius on the beach, Aila carrying Sentry's body, Nova's Starbane dreams, the death of Quill to our second Hadar servant, Oriya my beloved, Pyri also I guess, there is just so much packed into the Myrskyr arc. It even has Smeek.

why is cam buckland like a fucking cat. mans would knock shit off of your table and expect you to not get pissed

cursed addition

48 episodes each averaging 3 hours and 28 minutes. 277 hours, 10 minutes in total. The first episode came out Mar 7, 2016, and the final came out on May 31, 2018.

Watch episode one here.

Did I make this whole blog, so I would have an excuse to talk about a criminally overlooked Actual Play Livestream? Could I not wait until past the 2nd post to talk about it? Well, I guess you will just have to wait and see.

High Rollers: The Lightfall campaign(from here on out I will just be calling High Rollers) stars Mark “Sherlock” Hulmes as the DM. Chris Trott playing Cam Buckland, the Lightborn (a homebrew race) Cleric. Katie Morrison as Elora Galanodel, the Moon Elf Druid. Kim Richards as Jiutou Zhiji, a Tiefling Monk. Matthew Toffolo playing Trellimar “Trell” Aleath, a Dark Elf warlock.  Matthew has to leave the game after forty episodes due to scheduling conflicts. His spot in the party is then filled by Tom Hazell playing Reynard Ferehorn, a human Ranger.

The high rollers crew is playing D&D 5e, in a homebrew setting with a lot of homebrew content. Many people compare it to Critical Role, and I there are many reasons why. Much like Critical role, there is a lot of content to get through with High Rollers. The tone and storytelling feels a lot like Critical Role as well, but it is most definitely its own entity. The tone is lighter and while a lot of the villains are compelling, the stakes do not feel as high as they are in other Actual play shows (though they more or less are the same stakes as it is in a lot of other actual play shows)

Ratings

   Gameplay: 3

A wonderful mix of homebrew and following the rules. Mark is excellent at streamlining some of the slower rules but keeping the game engaging for the listeners and players.  Homebrew and updated monsters keep the game fresh. New mechanics for smaller fights and large-scale battles. though the game still follows the rules enough that it doesn’t get too frustrating for rules critics.

   Postproduction: 2.5

This is a live stream with a pretty small team, I believe just one or two people behind the camera. So, they get the technical difficulties that come with that. Sometimes players forget to turn on or off their microphones. The sound and/or video has given out on more than one occasion, and in the early episodes, the microphones were not as good as they could have been. While not great, don’t let it stop you from watching or listening to the VODs.

  Story/Rp: 3.5

   This is a hard one for me because there are excellent moments in this show, but there are also some arcs that drag on for way too long and very unsatisfactory conclusions.  The final arc and the penultimate arch should have been switched. I understand why they had it the way they did, but the 2nd to last to last BBEG (big bad evil guy) is the one the story hyped up through the whole campaign and is not the last fight. There are quite a few episodes after what should have been the conclusion of the story.  Sure, the last bad guy is interesting, and he does not come out of nowhere, but he is not as well fleshed out as the previous villain.  Because of this the ending just falls a little flat for me

   Representation: 4

   So good! A lot of conical LGBT characters, two of them being in the actual party. Though the players do not want to put labels on their characters one of them is cannon WLW, and the other is Cannon MLM, and while not explicitly stated the two other male player characters could be MLM as well.  There are only a few cannon NPC ships, only three that I can think of off of the top of my head, and one of them is a healthy lesbian relationship.

There is a major NPC who is non-verbal. Then there is another one, while not explicitly stated, feels to be coded as autistic. While I am not sure If the DM has personal experience with disabled people, but all of his RP feels respectful.  

   The only thing bringing down this score is that there is some not-so-great fantasy racism. Some races are kept as slaves by other races, and while not too crucial to the main story, (until the last arc)it does feel slightly out of place and clunky at times.

   Overall:

1. Elora has long elf ears so naturally has a heightened sense of hearing but it comes with a downside of occasionally getting overwhelmed when in Noisy situations

2. On bad days Jiutou lets Elora hug her and hide away from the noise for a bit

3.Elora is the only one allowed to cuddle Jiutou (Cam is not so secretly annoyed about this)

4. One time Elora caught a cold and fell asleep on Jiutou’s shoulder Cam and saw and was annoyed “she’s literally draped across your torso and you don’t bat an eyelid but I tr-” her tail curls around Elora protectively “She’s ill Cam cause of your stupidity may I add she literally just fell asleep here and I don’t want to move her and wake her up” “Wow no need to be so protective is she your girlfriend or something” “What no why would you think that you know I look like I’m 16 I don’t think anyone would be attracted to me much less Elora” Elora wakes up “What are you talking about?” Elora says groggily Jiutou blushes furiously *ahem* “Nothing.” “Ok? just talk quieter or make Cam leave please he’s making my headache worse” she notices Jiutou’s tail wrapped around her smiles faintly and puts her head back down onto Jiutou’s shoulder and promptly falls back into a trance