CALAMITY EP 1 PT 2 - 2ND CHARACTER INTRO
Added 2026-01-22 17:00:11 +0000 UTCComments
So I'm here for you watching Calamity, and will watch every post, but I feel like splitting 4-6 hour episodes into 20 minute chunks might not be the best option. I've seen other reactors split it in 2, before break and after break, but even splitting into 4 might be better. I just feel like it'll be six months from now and you'll be starting episode 3, lol
Pistols O'Brien
2026-01-24 07:09:20 +0000 UTCSam Riegel. Does. Not. Miss. I mean homeboy made an ad-read for glue delightful. GLUE! To add on to what others have said, Brennan and Matt worked on the overall setting and theme, which was then given to the players to create characters within the city. Each player (some individually, some in groups, some…in secret) would meet with Brennan and has out how their character might fit into the story. Somewhat uniquely, the players are all level 14 on paper, and narratively occupy positions of power in Avalir. Sam, we see, is a famous news caster who flexes his newspaper’s reach to influence politics; Zerxes is First Knight and has a tower and magically griffin (Tempest). The others similarly have positions of influence in society From there, Brennan and the players fleshed out their characters respective domains. Sam runs a newspaper and broadcasts to the city so Loquatious has basically an entire press company. Brennan and Sam made up some staff members that would it would make sense for him to interact with and would show up
OptionZero
2026-01-23 03:37:35 +0000 UTCGlad you're being exposed to Brennan's lore brain. The improv is incredible and he keeps it all straight which seems impossible
Tacitus Kilgore
2026-01-22 21:48:42 +0000 UTCTo give you a bit of background, Brennan and Matt came up with lore for this time period of the world, and Brennan and the cast met up (sometimes individually, sometimes in groups) to go over backstories, expectations, and to pre-establish any existing relationships. Since these characters are all well-established and well-known individuals in the city of Avalir and they're already friends (not like strangers meeting in a tavern at the beginning of a typical D&D story), they had to pre-establish the nature of those relationships, and that stuff will come out later throughout the game.
Exvaris
2026-01-22 20:37:20 +0000 UTCI did almost have an aneurism when I first started to split up this first episode because I was torn between making the sections a pretty even length or do it scene by scene, so I'm happy you found a way that worked. I'm pretty sure they all had a lore doc as Brennan referred to, to keep track of their places in the city and all the npc's that character would know.
ItMeForReal
2026-01-22 18:05:13 +0000 UTCExactly right. A lot of the NPCs are probably created in connection with character back stories, which were probably pretty extensive for reasons we kind of haven't touched on yet, so I'll bite my tongue. But to add a little clarification, this is just slightly more than one millennium before TLoVM. Vox Machina campaign was 810 PD (Post Divergence), and the Calamity lasted "a couple hundred years" based on descriptions in the different campaigns, according to the Critical Role Wiki.
Steven B.
2026-01-22 17:50:18 +0000 UTCI just love the contrast between the The Age Of Arcanum and the age from Vox and Nein just being magically different I just love it
Zachary Anderson
2026-01-22 17:32:50 +0000 UTCSam literally never misses with his characters. Nott the Brave, Loquatius, Scanlan, etc. Never change, king.
Jace
2026-01-22 17:27:51 +0000 UTCCan't wait for you to meet Aabria's character, the divorced couple dynamic is so so good here. As to your question on the improv nature of things, many of those NPCs were likely prepared ahead of time, maybe even in coordination with the players. Like obviously Brennan and Sam would have worked together to create the character of Aria, for example. This story is taking place centuries (possibly millennia) before LoVM. That means lot of it is explaining things that were already established history before they started the campaign. Matt and Brennan would have worked together extensively to flesh out the details of those things, and worked with the CR folks to make sure it lined up with the established lore. So going into this campaign we already know the broad strokes of how it ends, and the players are basically finding out in real-time how it actually happened and what parts their characters played in it.
Beagle
2026-01-22 17:23:55 +0000 UTC
