The Adventure Zone: Ep. 37. The Crystal Kingdom - Chapter Nine

April 7, 2016 12:52 PM

It's going down. Our heroes have a thrilling showdown with three of their most deadly, most dead foes -- but will they fare as well in Round Two as they did the first time around? Taako defies gravity. Magnus adds to his collection. Merle learns the basics of the Cleric class.
posted by Tevin (9 comments total)

Not a great episode overall but saved with a good ending. I'm ready for the Crystal Kingdom to wrap up I think.
posted by Tevin at 1:26 PM on April 7, 2016

I feel like Griffin was trying to give Taako a chance to advance in the Taco quest with the wedding food discussion, but Justin missed it.
posted by drezdn at 4:06 PM on April 7, 2016 [2 favorites]

This hasn't been my favorite quest, and I feel its race-against-the-clock-before-the-whole-world-Cat's-Cradles hasn't really played out. I haven't actually disliked the quest either. But I feel like something has happened in this show that I used to experience in D&D, which is that characters level up to a point where they're really too powerful for the mission, and despite the fact that the brothers (and father) aren't all that good at playing the game, they've gotten good enough that some of the excitement has drained out and the gameplay seems more based on spells and weapons they have rather than insane tactics they improvise in the moment. Although Travis picking up one of the robots to swat another robot was a return to form.
posted by maxsparber at 12:25 PM on April 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think the two things I'd like to see are shorter campaigns and more situations where the players have to interact with NPCs or solve puzzles instead of straight combat. Looking back at previous stories, in ones like Murder On the Rockport..., There wasn't a ton of combat, it was mainly interactions.
posted by drezdn at 6:42 PM on April 8, 2016

I'm with you all-kinda done with this one. Didn't really love the original crystal storyline to begin with and it feels like it's just going on and on.
posted by purenitrous at 9:49 PM on April 9, 2016

I've been liking this storyline just fine. I think there have been some really interesting characters and concepts that are going to have a lot of long-reaching effects. I love No. 3113 (Noelle) and I'm very excited to see what the deal with Merle is. It's also been great to see Clint progressing as a player - healing! turning undead! - and Merle's new arm is pretty cool. I think the planescape type stuff from a few episodes ago will start to open up some new adventure opportunities that will deal with the problem of overpowered PCs, and I'm very intrigued to see how the link to the "real world" plays out. The folks that did the Nerd Poker podcast talked often about a previous campaign of theirs that involved their characters going through some sort of dimensional rift and ending up in our dimension outside the very building where the players were having their gaming session, and I wonder if something similar isn't in the cards for this campaign.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:51 AM on April 11, 2016

I will say I was a little bummed the "race against time" aspect of this arc was abandoned - I thought that could have led to some pretty great "Fast Chess style" role playing, where the players were racing to complete battles and perform skill checks as fast as possible to beat the clock.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:54 AM on April 11, 2016

I agree that as the arcs get longer and more involved they make the individual episodes less interesting, but since I'm a late starter catching up on all the episodes now I'm having a better time of it. Waiting for two weeks and getting this episode would probably disappoint me too.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 3:17 PM on November 17, 2016

I'm another listener playing catch up, and while my attention does start wandering a little sometimes during battles, I don't mind them in the broader context of the campaign, and I liked the resolution of this particular battle.
posted by yasaman at 8:48 PM on December 5, 2016