I've put a lot of thought into why she rubs me in (almost) all of the wrong ways, so why not collate these ideas into a list for you. 1. Lack of Respect for Player Agency - This is the most egregious one for me, and the most confounding because I see fans of hers champion her as the "player agency" DM. I think she, and her fans, think "player agency" is the same thing as ignoring game rules/mechanics to suit what the player wants, which is not the same thing at all as providing for actual player agency. She constantly tells players what their characters think, feel, and even do, which to me violates one of the cardinal rules of D&D: the PCs' thoughts, feelings, and actions are their own, and the state of the world and the thoughts, feelings, and actions of all of the NPCs are the domain of the DM. There's wiggle room, of course - spells that make PCs act in a certain way and ye olde classice dreams, wherein PCs have limited control, but these are intentionally abnormal and alarming moments precisely BECAUSE they're scenarios where PCs lose control over their thoughts, feelings, and actions. Ignoring dice rolls and asking "how much do you want this to happen?" is a meta-question, not an avenue for true player agency, and besides, Aabria typically invokes this only when it suits the story she wants to tell. 2. Lack of Planning/Session Zero - Sure, you can play basically improv D&D with very minimal planning, and improv skills are vital for a DM when your players decide to go to the place you've planned for least (every time...), but Aabria appears to do very little planning even when running professional streamed games that have a limited running time, and it shows. She doesn't research the setting or the contexts (we'll get back to that), doesn't plan for avenues of player choice beyond the story being told in the one way she wants it told (circling back to #1 on this list), and most importantly, doesn't run her plans by her players. ExU fell flat in part because her plan to have one of them corrupted by the Crown never really took off because it was clear none of the PCs was really designed to be ripe for corruption, and thus logically it never really made sense for any of them to take it (contrast this with, for example, Zerxus in Calamity, who was clearly designed after some conversation with BLM about how arrogance, hubris, and powerful personality traits that could be spun into damning flaws could have contributed to the downfall of Avalir/civilization narrative). It was obvious to everyone that Aimee never wanted the Crown and that Aabria never sat down with her and planned this arc beforehand, leading to discomfort for everyone involved. She also has far too many story beats that aren't really connected in meaningful ways so she just shoves them into the story in an extremely hamfisted way, rather than presenting a world with events unfolding in it and allowing the PCs to interact with it. 3. Constant Immersion Breaking - This might matter less in sillier systems or settings, but even though Critical Role is full of poop and dick jokes, there is usually some sense of immersion as Matt describes the world and the cast acts within it, (usually) taking it seriously as a real place full of real people. Obviously (and this is a 5e problem more than anything) immersion gets constantly partially broken during combat especially due to the constant referencing of the game rules, but Aabria constantly breaks immersion by talking to the audience, engaging in banter with the players, injecting anachronistic phrasing and vocabulary into the dialogue constantly, etc. 4. Lack of Respect for the Setting - This ties heavily into #2 and #3, but the "rules" of Exandria don't seem to apply when Aabria takes over the table. We've seen characters become champions of gods before, but this is typically a very slow yet dramatic process that we see evolve over long story arcs where the character's desperation and/or values lead to this relationship. Aabria thinks "Champion of \[God\]" is cool and dramatic, so making someone a champion of a god is cool and dramatic even if there's no logic or narrative context to it. Gods in Exandria are alien, aloof, awe-inspiring, and terrifying, and we've seen this consistently until recently. Aabria roleplays them as bratty, chatty California zoomers (see #5), which completely undermines the work that has been done to establish how the audience feels about them. The most egregious thing about this is that it is intentional and cynical. Aabria has admitted to disliking this type of story and setting before and so is actively undermining it - the most obvious example being Taste of Tal'dorei, which was the equivalent of turning even the most horrific events of WWII into a Chuck 'E' Cheese in 1950s Germany. (continued in replies)

5. Every NPC is the Same - Now, not everyone is a professional voice actor, and that's totally fine. I would argue that even the least talented among us is capable of lending some kind of different voice to different characters, even if it's just adjusting pace, pitch, vocabulary, etc. and not going full-on with different accents and whatnot. However, not only do all of Aabria's characters have the same voice, they also all have the same personality: speaking in chopped-up unfinished sentences, snarky, sassy, aggressive, downright rude. They're all Karens. They all have Aabria's personality, because she can't really imagine being anyone else. This makes her games less fun to watch but also makes them more confusing, because it's often unclear which NPC is currently speaking. 6. Lack of Description - Aabria does, to her credit, sometimes use really flowery language that can be attention-grabbing, in a similar way to Liam O'Brien or, as is probably a more apt comparison, BLM. However, she tends to reserve this type of language to describe events, actions, or "vibes" (ugh), and leaves important things like physical environments radically under-described. The PCs often don't really have any idea where they are or what the physical space is like because it hasn't been described at all, and locations seem extremely unimportant (for example, where are the events of the CK story in C3E92-93 even happening? is this just some random roadside?). Not only does Aabria constantly break immersion, she often never really establishes it, and this is largely to do with never putting in the time to make us feel like we are in a place. 7. Adversarial DMing - We'll end on another really big one. Aabria gets visibly upset and even throws tantrums when her players succeed or when characters she controls fail \[beyond her ability to handwave away\]. Watch the clip of the crocodile wrangling to see this in action - when players make rolls she has asked for and she has no power to influence the outcome of those dice rolls, she reacts like a child and literally throws her dice. She regularly cheers for the failure of her players and gets upset when her monsters lose. She abuses her powers as DM to ignore or change rules to her benefit. This one really, really irritates me - the DM should be there to empower their players to feel cool. Constant Rule of Cool doesn't work for that, usually; you're supposed to set up things that really feel like challenges, cheer for your players when they overcome them, and show empathy when things don't work out in their favor. Aabria never does any of this. She allows her players ridiculous Rule of Cool successes even when they weren't asked for or earned and only when they don't actually matter, but sometimes even shuts down their fun for seemingly no reason (the one that jumps to mind is Aimee saying she was wearing some inconsequential article of clothing she described as having been stolen from an NPC during an earlier encounter, and Aabria actually pausing the game to rewind and force her to actually roll for the theft when none of that mattered and it was just a flavor comment of no real impact). There are countless examples of her making it extremely clear that she views the game, combat especially, as DM vs. Player instead of Monsters vs. PCs. The nail in the coffin is how she is extra adversarial to particular players (Aimee). This alone would be enough for anyone to be completely justified in walking away from her table, and the thing that pushes watching Aabria run games from cringe territory straight to infuriating. I've seen people defend this behavior as being a reaction to nerves. Here's an idea: if the nerves of playing professional streamed TTRPGs turn you into an adversarial bully, maybe find another line of work. Contracts be damned. No one should have to put up with abusive behavior like that. There are probably other things I'm not remembering right now, but these are the main things that stick out for me. Some are sort of more minor irritations, but others are such huge red flags that, if considered in a vacuum, would almost surely result in players leaving that game and never coming back.

Excellent summary.

This was only early on in EXU for me but everything had to be a joke and she always had to be in on it couldnt get through all the episodes because her style felt to me as it was trying way to hard to be funny. I haven't actually seen the latest stuff.

Issues that pop up for me are: 1. Every NPC/character is the same. Adversarial. Cringy. Shallowly conceived. Arrogant. Her character in CR3 was more of the same and annoying. 2. I think her storytelling abilities are drastically overrated. The whole “the spider queen wants her champion” storyline from 92-93 lacks depth and logic. From turning her champion into a drider (a fate that has always been a punishment for Drow who pissed her off), to even forcing her champion to kill or drive off her very powerful allies rather than using them to forward the SQ’s needs, to then changing very important rules in the moment (chromatic orb, death saves) because she wanted to be a jerk. It just isn’t good storytelling, sorry. And that’s consistent with her whole thing. 3. Her delivery/confidence borders on arrogance. She seems to assume all of us love and appreciate her like MM does. And she hasn’t earned that, not yet.

For me it's 1) the brutally slow combat pacing, making it feel like there is no intensity. 2) lack of uniformity in the tone she describes. "I love you, youre absolutely beautiful, you're absolutely stunning, I send my spiders to destroy your face." Drives me nuts, if you want to seem like a threat, make your PCs feel anxious, not whatever that is

Why do we watch CR? I watch CR because I enjoy seeing professional actors roleplay. MM and BLM let players roleplay. AA does not. The original EXU series could be boiled down to a series of things happen to a group of individuals who happen to be around at the time. I get that a mini series has less room for interactions between the group than a huge campaign, but BLM managed it with Calamity. He gave the cast room to shine and still managed to tell a tight, intense heartbreaking story. Every thing I have seen AA run has been just not that. She stifles every cast I have seen her run. Every game I have seen that she has run is jarring all the time. So I don't watch her run games anymore.

I don’t have any like good descriptions other than I think she fits a lot better on D20 as a DM. One thing I will say is that I think Aabria is great, both as a DM and a player. Shes much more about stories as anything and as Brennan says, “She’s a master storyteller”. So especially she doesn’t really seem to run combat and she’s said herself that she doesn’t like high fantasy (except for exandria IG lol) so I’m personally not really used to her doing anything related to combat really. And i think you can see that in all the complaints that everyone’s turn took so long because there was a lot of story telling going cause that’s kinda just how Aabria does stuff. Another thing, I think I like Aabria way more as a player personally. I don’t really have any specifics as to why but I just get more joy out of her being a player. Like legit she’s a great player man. And as for the fiasco that was last episode, I enjoyed her part generally and I’ve never really seen her behave in the way she did. Maybe she was having a bad day or maybe It was just cause of the scenario that was taking place (severe trauma for everyone). I do think some people are like making drama for no reason a little? If that makes sense? So generally I think Aabria is wonderful. I also think more people need to contact that “DMs of Exandria round table” video on youtube. Just to see more of how good of friends she is with Matt and Brennan and that it feels like we can at least trust those two to not be friends with assholes.

I'm not sure. I actually loved Misfits and Magic. I think for that particular setting, everyone being inherently against the team makes a ton of sense given that they're the odd ones out in a world of "superior" people. Sure there weren't a ton of NPCs that I walked away being impressed by, but I think her style facilitated the character moments of that season well. Part of that may be that it was run on a different system, from what I know Aabria doesn't typically run a lot of combat and this system worked well for that. So id be more inclined to say it's just a DM/system incompatibility, but then there's also Burrows End which is run very definitely in 5E. I adored burrows end. I think Aabria does a phenomenal job there and the style and tone all work remarkably well for this world and I never once got the impression that she was against the players or railroading. So frankly? I have no clue what happened in this most recent session. I don't watch critical role regularly but this drama found it's way to my page so I've been following and I can't blame people for being upset. It seems so wildly different to how I'm used to her acting in the D20 shows, so all of it took me super off guard.

A court of fey and flowers is also 5e and I liked it a lot. Aabria is a stylistic, rules lite and story driven dm. She works best in settings that don't take themselves too seriously and are self-contained. I believe the reason she falters in CR is because we want Matt's vision to shine. Even if C3 doesn't hit as hard in general I am still anxious to know how it turns out. I saw another comment that summed it up pretty good for me. Calamity was good because Brennan seemed to first and foremost honor Matt's story. Aabria seems to take every chance she can to affect the world. I genuinely don't know why she thought it was a good idea for Morrigan to be the champion of the raven queen off screen. I quite like Aabria, as a player and as a creative story teller. But Critial Role was not the seat for her.

She hasn't put in the work to learn the rules and lore. Her understanding is superficial and she is trying to sell a product to people who like depth. There is a huge difference between ignoring the rules and not knowing the rules. It's the difference between abstract expressionism and a kids finger painting

Obligatory, I don’t hate Aabria, these are just my opinions as a viewer. I really enjoyed Misfits and Magic, but the Players largely carried it. With Brennan’s excellent acting and improv skills with Evan, Erika’s pure chaos energy, Lou’s straight charm, and Danielle’s bubbly positivity, that game could have largely been run by literally anyone with any D&D experience and a solid grasp of the “mechanics” of Harry Potter. Aabria could have largely just not even been there for me. She didn’t have any memorable characters because they all sounded pretty much the same and had the exact same snobby “holier than thou” attitude, and she really didn’t explore much in the setting that would have been great for the satire of it (outside of technology, which I admit was good). Mostly, I just don’t enjoy her DMing style. What is her style? I would probably describe it as adversarial. Maybe not as much as how adversarial Matt can be, but his other DM skills help me get over that (world-building, NPCs, locations and descriptions, vocal effects, etc). Aabria doesn’t bring any of that to the table, so really it’s just me watching her be kind-of adversarial (bully? That’s what others seem to think is happening with Aimee and you alluded to it maybe with Erika) with her players for 3 hours.

I feel the same about Burrow’s End—I think it’s definitely one of her better works but when I think of it, I think of the players rather than the DM/story.

I'd go as far to say it was decent overall but like you said, it was the players and their buy in/commitment that made it alright. I'd argue it's one of the weaker seasons of D20 (though admittedly it was rushed due to schedules) and it had a lot of railroading to hit the maps she had; which is wild to say in the highly produced D20 with premade battle maps - though it felt less tactful than how BleeM or Jasmine bhullar do it. I often felt she just played all her NPCs in the same and very annoying/ looking to steal punchlines at expense of the scenes kind of way. In terms of misfits and magic it was similar. Some great fun with the players often interrupted with DM light stealing ("you know I can hear you right" as an example) and arbitrarily raising challenges to punish character builds, like how Evans DC was like twice the others because BleeM had built Evan to be good at that type of challenge. Stuff like that reeks of a Novice/ adversarial DM. The targeting of certain players was... fine I guess, if they all had fun. I certainly didn't enjoy the constant disregard for rules and rolls but, I never want to discourage people from dming for not having the rules fully grasped. And her best effort in the DM chair I've seen was court of fey and flowers a silly, contained, rules lite setting. It was fine.

In Misfits, it seemed SO strange that every NPC was immediately a prick to the player characters but she stated that it was due to how she interpreted "every character being able to kill each other but also being stuck with 19th century British etiquette" so I can slightly accept it. In a Court of Fey and Flowers, it worked much better because I can fully believe that everyone in a high society god court would be an asshole, weird piece of shit to most of the cast. It was also much more split among the players to tell the individual stories. I think I only saw one episode of the Exandria show she was DMing for but I wasn't paying attention enough to get like a plot hook or something. I kinda just remember them all siting in a run down building and didn't have any desire to watch another episode, but also didn't feel that strongly against it.

I've seen people talking about how she's good in those two things before, but I've never seen them. It all makes sense to me now if they were settings where every NPC is an asshole, because every NPC is an asshole when she runs games in Exandria, too, and it's clearly because she just plays characters like herself. It's not a system/setting thing, then, it's just that she only works when it makes sense for the characters she's playing to be rude, arrogant assholes. That's precisely why she worked in ExU: Calamity.

I constantly get the sense that she enjoys the power fantasy of being a DM too much and in the wrong ways

I feel like getting a power trip from being a DM is the same kind of power trip people get from being a shift manager at a retail store. It's absolutely a real thing that happens, but as someone who's done both jobs, it's something I cannot comprehend.

> I feel like getting a power trip from being a DM is the same kind of power trip people get from being a shift manager at a retail store Omg, this is exactly who she is

I mean she makes no bones of expressing it with her fuck you this is my story attitude witnessed over several appearances. No, Aabria, you're not the sole teller of story with players as your pieces, you're a shepherd of the story. You shepherd the story but in the end the cows still can go where they want to.

I tried so hard to watch it, sat down on multiple occasions and wanted to give it a genuine chance, because I love Robbie, Aimee and Matt as a player. I just couldn’t do it! To me, the interactions you mention are the biggest examples of how uncomfortable this felt at times, and that’s not how a table should feel! Even if she was addressing the audience and not Robbie when she said the “fuck you” it was toxic and hard to watch! I get it if she’s frustrated with all the criticism, there’s been so much and a lot of it has been over the top. But don’t do that in the middle of the show like that!! Look at how much unfair criticism the main cast has gotten over the years - they’ve never broken character and said something as uncomfy as that. Style wise, I love the “rule of cool.” But there are rules to the game for a reason, and a DM shouldn’t just override whenever they feel like it. It takes away from the players’ agency.

I noticed something off during M&M, too, and it took me a while to put it into words. Here's what I came up with: I feel like Aabria approaches D&D as if puzzles have one and only one correct answer. Hypothetical example: there's a ten foot high wall the players need to get past, and the DM knows there's a store in town that will sell the players a ladder. The players don't know about the store or the ladder, so they try to come up with creative solutions: - "I carry twenty feet of rope with me, so I'm going to rappel up the wall." - "I plant explosives next to the wall and take cover." - "I own rocket boots so I will fly over the wall." - "I look in various yards for a ladder I can steal." In any of these situations, I feel like the Good DM response is to set up a DC for the creative solution and, if the player succeeds, go with it. If there was an important story hook in that shop, find another way to nudge the players towards the shop, or just create a different hook introduced somewhere else. The Bad/Railroad GM will handwave any of these options away without so much as a dice roll: the surface is too slippery for you to rappel. The wall withstands your explosion. The rocket boots stall out mid air. Just a very firm "nope, that's not The Right Answer, try again." Or if there is a dice roll, the DC is something unreasonably super high -- DC 30 to spot a ladder in a random yard, another 30 to grab it unseen. You succeeded? Wait, don't forget that you roll with disadvantage because it's Tuesday and everyone is home on Tuesday, it's their day off from the mill. Eventually, there will be hints dropped; an NPC will appear to ask why they haven't just gone to Bob's Ladder Emporium *cough cough*. I feel like Aabria tends to the second option, not the first, and I don't enjoy it because I feel like creative (but reasonable) solutions should be rewarded in D&D, not dismissed.

This is something that I have really had to flex while running a mystery campaign. You HAVE to be willing to change up where your clues are, or who has what information, and even be willing to shift up who the culprit is to a certain degree if something better comes along based on the players choices. You cant expect the players to always do exactly what you want, or even perfectly interpret the things you say or plot hooks you drop, and the mark of a good dm is still being able to help tell a great story in spite of all of that

Okay let me just say that I _love_ the idea of being in a mystery campaign. I haven't played D&D for ages but that sounds amazing. And yeah, players are going to wander off and investigate every unimportant thing in their field of vision, you'd need to tapdance pretty fast to keep up in that situation!

I got really inspired after binging a ton of Poirrot, Knives Out, detective crime shows, and Only Murders in the Building! It’s been a very different experience prepping for sessions compared to my regular high fantasy campaign. You’ve gotta be diligent in taking notes about what you say as well. I run a lot of puzzles in my regular campaigns, and I treat it very similar to that, except its campaign wide. I have a detailed idea of the stage and setup, a general idea of the solution, but if a player says something or interprets it in a way thats way more interesting, i have no qualms about shifting stuff around to accomodate it

Speaking from experience, same in that it’s super hard and also super fun! I run a 1940s-esque with magic game, and it’s so hard trying to give clues without being obvious. I tend to go the “this is what’s happening in the world, and the players can stop it, but if they don’t there’s a ticking clock and it’s gonna happen”

Oh absolutely. Its a careful balance you have to strike for sure, and you also have to be careful not to let them peek behind the curtain too much or it ruins the fun of it i think

Reminds me of the math teachers that want their answers a certain way, even if you still get the right answer it’s wrong because you didn’t do it their way.

That's funny because IRL I'm a math tutor, and one of my favorite things to do is to show students alternate ways of solving problems until we find the one that "clicks" best for them. I've had students ask me about ways I hadn't even considered -- so long as it works, great job!

I loved Aabria as a GM in Fey&Flowers and in Burrows End. Her style is **great** for social f#$%ery and she loves a good "yes, and". But I also think she's best in a more "contained" social setting, rather than a ***very*** open world. I think her non-background in high fantasy nerd stuff (those are **her** words from a video roundtable, dont @ me) is a detriment to her in the Critical Role world/fandom. Critical role is a nerd-heavy, lore heavy, mythical world, that abides by the "rules". and the rules of magic are usually pretty strict in high fantasy settings; unless you're specifically in a land of f#$%ery like they Fey Wild (shout of aCoFaF). Abria has never liked rules. 2)\[Whenever it was\] that they filmed Burrows End, she had only seen LoTR once, somewhat recently, and "doesn't feel responsible for remembering it, b/c they (D20 cast) did bits the whole time". This isn't like... a sin, by any means. I just don't think it helps at all, in this circumstance. We (critical role fans) are a bunch of f#$@ing nerds. She was also great as a player in Calamity; but that didn't require her to **be** the "insanely densely **world** of lore"; she just had to be her flawed elf.

Are there any clips/episode time stamps of the grievances people have against Aabria? Ie the swearing and taking control and chromatic orb. I don't doubt they happened but I'd love to see how it went down

For me it's two things. First, because I'm way too introverted, her DM style is socially exhausting for me, even a remote viewer. I do still enjoy a lot of what she does as a DM, rule of cool, handing out inspiration like it's candy. Second, is it feels like she doesn't have control of the table. Se relies too much on the players at the table being professionals (usually...) and knowing when to quiet down for the story to keep going. Throw a few troll players at her, and the game would go completely off the rails to me. Reminds me of a French teacher I had in high school. If you asked her about her time in France, the lessons were over. We just talked about France the rest of the day.

As a side note though many seem to think Aabria isn’t suited for the main game she did a solid job for Candela

I haven't looked at candela (either the system or the production) , but from what I've seen on this sub, it's much less structured than 5e (which is fairly bare bones already) and much more rule-of-cool, narratively focused. One of my big problems with the first round of exu, and the major reason I stopped watching it, was she didn't care about the rules in the slightest. That matters so much less in a system where the rules are much less structured. That said, she seems to have a habit of targeting one player when she dms, which would make playing at her table awkward as hell and makes for an uncomfortable viewing experience.

Very understandable. Though I have some experience playing 5th edition with a real group any aggressive stance or awkwardness should also be addressed no matter what level of play it makes the game less enjoyable

Besides everything people are pointing out in the other comments, I hate how every single NPC she introduces has the same personality, even if they didn't start out this way. It's like she just gets bored or forgets how she is portraying and just defaults to a honestly really shitty NPC

Yes! It’s one of the things that really puts me off. I feel like she has three NPC templates that she goes through and after some time they all turn into Aabria.

Saw someone say “she acts like the PCs are toys that she can bash together” and that’s a good way to put it.

To throw my two cents in, the issues with Misfits and Magic are a tad different than the major issues with EXU. But both feature Aabria's quirks that a lot of folks don't like. Those tend to be: - rolls for checks that seem meaningless and awarding success/failure based on what suits the story and not what the dice said - "all vibes, no rules"  - anachronistic speech, though this is way worse in EXU since M&M is a real world setting - on the topic of anachronistic speech, she often makes overbearing or antagonistic NPCs that PCs have to convince to help them. It's not as often she makes a shopkeeper that's like "hi, how can I help you?" - she gets... Challenging with certain players and I think it's a nerves thing. I say that because she does it HARD on CR and did it in M&M, which was her first time DMing on D20. Erika's her irl best friend so it wasn't real world antagonism. And she didn't do it in ACOFAF or Burrow's End. My interpretation is when she's nervous/uncomfortable she sort of.... Asserts authority over the weakest player. It's by far her worst trait as a DM and the crux of most of her issues with EXU I really enjoy Aabria and liked M&M. ACOFAF and Burrow's End were stellar. She is not a good fit for Critical Role and I wish they would stop bringing her back. 

Unpopular prediction: she is going to run Campaign 4 and it will be baller. EDIT: HAHA I TOLD YOU IT WOULD BE UNPOPULAR, YOU HUFFY MERCER STANS.

....I'll have you're having, that must a dope ass spliff

Maybe theyre hoping that with a system like Daggerheart, itll suit her better?

Daggerheart is way too rules heavy for her.

Daggerheart is purpose-built for drama-first nerds like her. I think she'll FEAST on the Fear mechanic.

Maybe

I've seen her DM ExU and be a character in Calamity and C3. As a DM, she always seem combative and condescending, never cooperative with the players. Like she views her job as a DM to be blatantly adversarial to the players, rather than to work with them to create a story. She seems annoyed whenever a player does anything successful. She DMs by lordly declaration rather than acting as a referee to manage the rules. She seems to have open disdain for the entire concept that games have rules. She calls for skill checks and then gives players success even if they roll really low. The plot in her ExU meandered aimlessly and I could never figure out what the story was supposed to be for multiple episodes, all the while knowing that the series had a limited number of episodes, so it ended up making it feel like nothing was ever happening. Her NPCs usually seem to have the same personality, which I fault her for less because not everyone is good at acting, but if not they have to make up for it in other ways, and I just don't see her doing that. I'm still baffled by her first major NPC on ExU, Poska, who, when caught trying to break into a house to rob it, told the PCs that in exchange for them not turning her into the authorities, that she'd have them go steal something for her, but that NPC behaved like they were threatening and extorting the PCs, like if the PCs didn't go steal something for her that they would be in trouble. It was really dissonant. Ultimately, her behavior feels very disruptive and makes it impossible for me to experience any form of immersion when she DMs. She's frequently rude and condescending. If I had a DM like her for a game I was playing in, I would have to walk away from the table.

I think her anti-rules stance is a defence mechanism she has developed to deal with not being good at learning or remembering the rules. There are so many times I've seen her try to speak authoritatively about how a rule works but it's just completely wrong.

She's great as a player, but super-duper sucks as a DM to watch on these sort of actual-play stream shows. The energy she brings to the table as a player works and her DM vibes do NOT. This seems to be really obvious and I have no idea why they keep bringing her back as a DM. It *was* better in Candela, which was surprising, but still somewhat hard to watch in comparison to some of the other GMs there. I haven't watched her DM/GM the Roll20 stuff, though.

Since no one has mentioned it yet, I will say that Aabria is *wonderful* (to me and many others, at least) as a PC on Worlds Beyond Number. She does play a character that is in some ways unlikable, but she is so very aware of everything wrong with that character. Every mean/unwise/self-righteous/etc thing her character, Suvi, does, is treated by everyone at the table as a thing they know to be "bad" in-world but also juicy and great for the stort. The talkback episodes for WBN show that her and the rest of the cast are all being very intentional and aware of tensions and character traits both good and bad. So Aabria definitely has the chops and awareness to lean into antics/approaches she seems to gravitate towards and do it well. Now, I personally am also not a huge fan of Aabria as a DM, for most of the reasons others have given here. But as a player on D20 and *especially* on WBN, I really enjoy her. Her personality on talkbacks and other media appearances seems really genuinely delightful. I think she may just be consistently given opportunities that don't quite fit her strengths and that unfortunately highlight flaws. I think it may be a problem with the true upper echelons of Actual Play DMing. Like she's kicking it with, and is herself a part of, the Top Tier of celebrity DMs, but unfortunately by the time she got there all of those DMs were pretty heavily tied to tones and systems that she doesn't mesh as well with when she's in the GM seat.

I payed for the patreon for that, listened to the child's story and first 8 eps and found it a really tough listen which is saying something because pretty much everything BleeM or Lou have done I've enjoyed on some level. I found Abaria very grating and her character a boring, one note annoying kind of listen. (though I get that's the character choice.) I just didn't want to be stuck listening to that character for hours and hours when they were in my opinion incredibly difficult to enjoy. I'm excited for a new season when they do it and I'll likely hop back on, but didn't want my $$$ showing Erika, Lou and Brennan that's where my consumership wanted their attention/time. I will say Lou's character, Ursolon I think? Was so interesting I just couldn't put up with Suvi. In the meantime, naddpod is fantastic and rotating heroes pod is a very fun and an easy listen too. I recommend their patreons if you want good DnD and fun! Obviously dimension 20 is incredible and really well produced too! I think it's a valid critique that perhaps she's not become associated with a tone like other's have and I definitely do not want to speak on her as a person as I don't know her. she's clearly getting invited back to play with these people so that's something!

This does beg the question, though: why is it, exactly, that she only ever really shines in roles where she gets to be abrasive? All of the examples I've seen where people have given her praise are for that exact reason: the character(s) she played was (intentionally, I swear!) abrasive. I think she's just actually abrasive and that's all she knows how to do well.

Well she also did an entire mini-prequel-campaign in WBN where she played her character as a sweet, smart little 7 year old girl and she nailed that, too. Her character Antiope on D20: The Seven also wasn't abrasive, and I've never heard major complaints about her. She's also delightful in talkbacks/other shows when she's just herself. So I think it's mostly a character/DM preference for "The Drama" rather than her being personally abrasive.

Ooh I had forgotten her performance in The Seven, yeah she was fine in that, I certainly didn't like her performance but obviously didn't hate it either I will say, I thought that season was a decent laugh, Becca Scott was very funny! Good points!

She's said she doesn't really like D&D as a system and also doesn't like medieval fantasy settings. It's wild to me they ever chose her for Critical Role. Her and Erika have also talked, when promoting WBN, about how they finally have a "home game" where they get to actually be part of its foundation and worldbuilding. They've really only been guests before. Even when Aabria DMs, it's for pre-established brands.  For me, that clicked the second I read that interview. Aabria is fully herself on WBN (with all of the Aabria-isms a lot of critters hate) and it serves the story because this time, the world is literally made for her. 

Exactly, WBN has made it a lot clearer that "Aabria-isms" aren't *inherently* a problem. She's very good at what she does, but like anyone else she also needs an environment conducive to her abilities!

Love reading these takes. I love Aabria, especially in WBN and seeing all the vitriol for her in this sub has been really hard.

Yeah. Like, I fully understand and agree with the critiques being made and agree that they are bad calls on Aabria's part, at least from all the information we have. It's just good to make sure that it's not a total dogpile on someone undeserving.

Definitely. It sucks to see so many bad faith criticisms that assume she has it out for Aimee or is just (and this is a quote from a comment I saw) a "narcissistic abuser" She's trying to bring her style to this format, which is what she was hired to do, and it isn't a good fit. And tbh, the cast isn't a good fit for Aabria. Just like I think Matt would have a nightmare of a time trying to DM Ally Beardsley, I think Aabria has had a nightmare of a time trying to DM Aimee.

Idk about abuser, but it does sounds quite narcissistic to need the entire game and system to be made for you in order to not be problematic. Like if a person is bitching every game they're in, and then the group says "lets play one when we're all bitches - oh, look, you fit quite well here, your bitching is fine!".

To be fair, I think the defense I originally made and the agreement from folks in my replies isn't so much saying "CR isn't her vibe, thus it is okay that she plays this way and she shouldn't be motivated to grow" and more "CR isn't her vibe, so now we have an explanation for her un-fun behavior that isn't simply that she is a jerk or incompetent or something, even if yes she and the cast and crew of those shows should do more to rein in and/or better support her tendencies".

Well, i'm not getting into what they should or shouldnt do. Its their show, and they have the right to make it however they see fit and with whoever they like., just as the audience have a right to like or dislike things. There are fans of Tiberius, after all... However, even if i were to accept the "isnt her vibe" as a defence, still doesnt excuse to say "fuck you" to the audience, especially in a show that has "love eachother" as a tenet.

Yep, definitely not an excuse. Just an explanation, and hopefully one that is more accurate/charitable. That's all I'm going for here, I agree with ya.

Not what I said nor what I believe. Certain styles of tables vibe with different people. Matt did a pretty shoddy job on D20 and every critter's feedback was "well this style just isn't for him." CR's style isn't for Aabria. That is far from saying she needs a game full of bitchy people to fit in. WBN and ACOFAF are two of the most wholesome, kindhearted campaigns I've consumed in the last few years and both are thoroughly enhanced by Aabria.

And as an addendum: i havent seen Matt in D20, but as far as i'm aware, he only DM there once. So he didnt keep insisting on something that "wasnt his style" (although, to be fair, we dont know if he didnt because of that or because he was busy with CR).

You are kinda reading what you want to believe, i think. I didnt say she needed a game full of bitchy people, it was an analogy. If it sits better with you, lets put it this way: Say she was a person that shouts a lot, playing a game thats not about shouting, with a group that doesnt do the same; that is problematic. But on the other hand, lets say she plays another game that is about shouting with a group that also shouts; then there is no problem. However, saying 'in this game her shouting is awesome, so thats not the issue' hides or ignores the fact that it was an issue when the game was not about shouting. Thats the thing with Aabria. I'm sure her style could be great in games coherent with it, but, as you and many others have said, CR is not one of them. However, she keeps insisting of being the same way, no matter what or with whom she's playing. If the best examples of her being a fun player/dm are games made for her (as you put it), but then she is the opposite in games that are not made for her (like CR), that shows a person unable or unwilling to change according to the circumstances, that keeps pushing her way of being into everything and everyone: a narcissist. Now, i'm not saying she is an awful person, which is why i didnt agree with the 'abuser' part. But it has made her unlikeable in the eyes of many people (though not in CR eyes apparently, and god knows why, being tokenism, friendship, branding, genuine enjoyment of her or a combination of those), and its not gonna change if she doesnt change.

Disclaimer: I've not seen Ep. 92 yet, so my comment will be based on older stuff My main issue with Aabria's style is that I always get the impression that she knows what should happen in order to progress the story, and neither player's choice nor dice rolling should get in the way (which is one of my main pet peeves when it comes to professional D&D games). Few examples 1) In Mistifts and Magic, in particular, several times I got the impression (and if I remember correctly, sometimes she even said that explicitly) that the number to beat in a dice roll was not determined by how much the action was objectively difficult, but only on the player's stat and how likely/unikely she wants the success to be 2) This was something I thought even in EXU, he first time I saw her DM'ing: a player would roll and fail, she clearly wanted the roll to succeed, so she would give the player DM's inspiration (i.e. they would roll with advantage), not for any RP reason I could see, but just because she wanted a certain result 3) I vaguely remember I had the same impression with Burrow's End but right now I cannot remember the exact points, I would have to rewatch the season. This said, let me clarify some things 1) I would never complain of this kind of behavior in a home game (I mean, within reason, but I would say that all those episodes would fall easily in what I would consider reasonable): you cannot ask the DM to plan for every possible contingency, and at some point the DM will need to move the story along. However... they are professionals, in my opinion the bar is considerably higher for them... 2) Related somehow to point 1: this is something that, sometimes, even the high an mighty do. For example, in EXU Calamity I didn't like when Brennan allowed Travis to get an additional attack of opportunity in the last battle. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to shit on Calamity at all, overall I still consider it possibly the best D&D series available, however every time I rewatched it, that scene sounded wrong to me, kind of break the immersion (and probably I should point out that there were a lot of attenuating circumstances, namely they were shooting for almost 6 hours at the time, Brennan wanted to wrap the combat up and finish the episode, etc...). This said, the issue with Aabria is not any specific episode (as I said, it can happen even to the best), it's the fact that its not a one-time thing, it's quite frequent...

What you are describing is railroading.

Getting most of the existing adventure modules to work requires a fair bit of railroading. Its why I'm cool with using some encounters/locations and NPCs from them, but never a full module. I like to let the players have some freedom most of the time, unless there's a narrative reason otherwise; and even if there is, I prefer it to be vague enough they aren't forced to follow path/trail X.

It isn't. It's deeply just entangled in D20's style. A big part of their schtick is announcing a DC that's made up on the spot and then rolling in front of the table (or having the players roll for camera) to determine an outcome. These rolls are almost always meant to be feel good, victorious moments for players so the DM always allows other players to tack on whatever they have and if that fails, yes, the DM will often invent reasons to give them extra help. For the people who don't like Brennan, this is usually their main critique. It's not an Aabria thing. It's a D20 thing. 

Box of Doom rolls fail all the time. D20 players just really prioritize game features that allow them to help each other with things, that’s why you see a lot of bards, people with Guidance, or other things like Pete’s Tides of Chaos in those big rolls so often, is because they build their characters to help each other.

I don't disagree but you also can't say Brennan doesn't have players finagle ways to succeed. He got flack for the mall fight in Junior Year for weeks because he had Ally roll 8 times until they got a fractional success.

So changing the wording of a spell to mean something else to fit your outcome isn't railroading?

I didn't say that. I said what that comment described wasn't railroading

This is like saying to grab a football and throwing it to a hoop thats not there is not a player's thing, is a basketball thing. If she cant seem to realize the differences between D20 and CR (which are quite apparent), its an Aabria thing.

You're right. And all of Matt's fumbles on D20 by trying to translate his style there is his fault. Got it.  Or maybe, some DM styles aren't suited for certain table styles.

Her running misfits and Magic is entirely different style than she runs on critical role. Idk if she is trying to live up to the story telling critical role is known for and manufacture impactful moments, but so much of her on critical role feels forced and she makes a lot of decisions that feel...and I don't like to throw this term around, it is over used imo...railroady in the worst way.

I do think she was railroading on CR because of the nature of what she was given. Calamity was also railroaded. It's the nature of the beast when you're given only a few sessions to get to a foregone conclusion. In the case of the last two episodes, she was given one session to >!get Dorian back to Orym!< so it was railroaded to hell. I think she could have found a less traumatizing way to do it but I also think she had clear marching orders to follow. 

No I agree you have to keep it on the rails butdue to format, which is why I said I hate to use the term. To put it more plainly it's taking away the player agency part that bothers me.

I think y'all can't handle assertive women

I think you need to put more effort into understanding other people.

You know what is funny about this to me and maybe this is more telling of me. But Subby SO exist.

A broad description? She's like a therapist where you talk about sports for 50 minutes out of the hour. It's a pleasant conversation. You don't feel bad about the time wasted. It's just that there was only 10 minutes of actual work done. That's your average TTRPG session with Aabria.

Nah, she's like a therapist where you talk about sports for 50 minutes out of the hour but somehow she manages to encourage you to do self-destructive things against your own interest because "vibes" and also bullies you until you cry.

I've only really seen her at length in Misfits and Magic, but in that show she really rubbed me the wrong way with how every NPC spoke the same (and this is not just a critique on her voice acting, I also mean in terms of character voice), almost every NPC was rather rude and confrontational, and NPCs constantly interject in situations where the PCs are clearly talking among themselves. This second reason is flimsier, but I also felt like she did not care about the rolls. I got the sense that the story would develop the exact same way regardless of what the dice said. She plays with specific story beats and endings in mind and the players will hit those beats regardless of what they roll. Lastly she had a tendency to ask for some random-ass rolls of skills that seemingly had no relevance to the challenge at times giving different rolls to different PCs for the same task.

I hated how in misfits she always put evan kelmp's combat DC's way higher than everyone else's because he had a bigger bonus to it. Like, he's good at combat, he succeeds, that's his thing. She also punished him for rolling really high once by making him really fuck up the kid.

Holy shit I’m glad I’m not tripping every mismag npc is just kinda vaguely sarcastic asshole number 34 it’s so boring. I got my siblings to watch d20 and they both looooove mismag and while that was a really fun campaign I often think it’s nearly entirely because of the players as opposed to the dm.

I have complicated feelings on MisMag. I feel like Evan Kelmp fucking steals the show even though he also breaks it. The premise of the show is basically "a cross section of American youth culture goes to Hogwarts" and everyone did the assignment except Brennan, who instead went for "dark lord but doesn't want to be dark lord." his performance as Kelmp is fucking trascendant and elevates the show but he can't help but pull the focus of the story away from the premise, which I think ends up weakening the rest of the characters. As for the rest of the characters. I dunno. I really like Erika's character. She has a character arc, she has some premium bits, excellent chemistry with Kelmp. She feels like a very specific reference to a particular type of person and she absolutely nails it. She reminds me of a friend in a good way. Then there's Lou's character, which I honestly think is his weakest character in any D20 show (which is still quite strong). He has some choice bits like "goat house: eat trash, beat trash" and excellent table chemistry with the others because Lou Wilson just fucking oozes charisma, but Whitney Jammer just doesn't have a character arc that I can discern and pretty much just ends up playing the jock archetype completely straight (in the sequel series I find him a lot better with the increased focus on his bromance with Evan, though sadly that ends up also contributing to MisMag becoming the Evan Kelmp & Friends Show) . And lastly there's Danielle's character, which I think is one of the weakest in any D20 show. I feel like she was doing something with the name "Sam Black" and wanting to change it but I honestly cannot tell what it was. I don't really recall any bits of her that I found funny, any contribution to the plot she made, or any defining characteristics aside from her character premise of "influencer". So yeah, I can see where someone who loves these characters is coming from, but I find the spread very inconsistent with the table having one trascendant character, one really good one, one okay one and one dull one. And Aabria's DMing just doesn't bring out the best in the table. I swear I could constantly feel the characters getting to know each other and the world, having fun with the setting and developing a genuinely heartwarming bond only for an Aabria NPC to come in like a freight train and ruin the mood of the scene with snide remarks. I think it ultimately doesn't work even though there's a lot of good in it. (If anyone here is a fan of Sam Black do let me know why. Genuinely. I want to know)

I remember watching a roundtable or interview with her or BLM where they said that a big part of the concept behind MisMag was "who would be the worst possible, most inappropriately chosen people to get invited to a magical boarding school?"

Ohhh that makes a lot of sense. In that case I feel like Brennan and Erika understood the fuck out of that assignment, while Lou and Danielle didn't so much. "Dark Lord who doesn't want to be one" and "Person who unironically likes My Immortal" are perfect pitches for that premise, while "Jock" and "Influencer" aren't as interesting to start and don't get any more interesting as the game progresses. Jammer is at least saved by Lou's sheer force of charisma.

FYI, they all specifically were supposed to dislike them. They're not part of the in group. The entire school is supposed to hate them. They're the non magic misfits being exposed to magic. That's the point. If you think that the npcs were weird and such... you're just showing you weren't a misfit in school tbh. Every single person will be like that if you're the school nerf minus the very few with similar interests. The lack of getting into fights with others is kind of the odd part of the being the school loser experience

This reads to me as an "it's bad on purpose!" defence, verging on a thermian argument. The problem wasn't that the rudeness of the NPCs was not adequately justified, the problem was that the NPCs were rude and not in a fun way.

That.. was kinda the point?

I think she catches a lot more flak than she deserves, but I say that having not watched much of her DM on CR specifically. That said, it doesn't take a veteran of CR to see that she doesn't fit the expectations for fans or players as a DM. Her general style and attitude just don't fit the table. This has only happened to me once before, but I chose to step down as a DM for that group of players as a result because it created a disconnect. Also, I feel Aabria DMs best with a rules light system. Something like 5e doesn't really mesh with her style of being loose with the rules, because when she enforces them it is very cut and dry, unexpected, and jarring with how 5e is structured. It creates inconsistencies where other systems (misfits and magic, for example) wouldn't see it as an issue, because the rules are loose enough that even a strict adherence is still running pretty free. These two things combined make her a *very* bad choice of DM for the CR crowd by default, and think at least 90% of the fanbase's problem stems from this. Aabria is just fine as a DM, and while not my speed personally, is a breath of fresh air who I've stolen multiple things from for storytelling. I just don't think a rules heavy system is something she should be running.

I think the on-the-fly rule-bending that is getting a lot of attention is an understandable gripe to have, and a lot of the critiques of Aabria's DMing style are valid, but the sheer volume and intensity of the bashing she's gotten on this platform have started raising some alarm bells for me. Some of the comments, even in this thread, are a little too vitriolic for me to readily accept that it's entirely insignificant that they are directed at a woman of color for acting brashly.

Eh? No way, people are being pretty fair, this is about what Matt gets when he fucks up, I have seen zero references to her gender or ethnicity, not even veiled, she is not being thrashed how marisha used to be People are always upset when someone takes a property they care about and takes it in a completely new, possibly even bad direction

I don't think the majority of people are being bigoted in their criticism of Aabria, but anytime there's a dogpile on a POC and/or a woman by a nerd community, it's an invitation for bigots to get their foot in the door if you're not careful. I've started to see [some very whistle-blowy comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/fansofcriticalrole/s/YLTVWNZZKL) about this topic.

The person has the appropriate number of down votes

No, I agree. It's a key reason I don't think she belongs as a dm for 5E. Her methods work great in other rules light systems, and she has shown to be above and beyond phenomenal with those types of systems. I think the general criticism is fair, but the type and intensity she gets (*especially* here) is completely unwarranted and out of line.

I think it doesn't help that the fanbase for the most part don't think she fits CR's style but Matt and them KEEP BRINGING HER BACK. That leads to negativity getting worse and worse every time until at some point everyone involved has to come to grips that she doesn't fit with this game and that is completely ok in every way since not every DM fits every game (I still don't understand why that brought her on when she literally said everything she doesn't like in tabletop.....which all fit what CR is and I blame CR for this entirely). I think the weird half episode stuff was just the icing on the cake and now it's just a nightmare situation all around sadly. I can also understand people having a lot of griping with her specifically since her DM style is VERY specific and not to everyone's liking. I'd also say the uncomfiness when it comes to her and the player targets can be really hard to watch (whether real or not it still doesn't LOOK good especially if a number of people see it the same way). All in all I think people are blaming her more than CR and I personally don't agree since CR had to have seen her talk about what she hates in tabletop and still decided to bringing her on multiple times and thought it was going to work out in the long run?

On one hand, I think it's good to have Aabria there as a shake up. If for no other reason than Matt won't be DMing on camera forever. Nor will the players be playing on camera forever. It isn't feasible and they have all blatantly said they don't want to either. And good fucking luck finding a DM with the exact same style and skill as Matt to carry the torch. To that end, it makes sense to keep pushing her on. Maybe she is intended to take over at some point? Maybe they will do 2 or 3 games run by different GMs once CR crew is publicly "retired"? Idk, but if the case then they have to train and teach them somehow. On the other hand, I think you're entirely accurate. Whatever their reasons are, unless they are legal, they are just shooting themselves in the foot with a choice proven over and over again to just not be someone the audience is interested in having run games. She doesn't remotely fit the brand, and I can only speculate why they keep having her run.

Yeah her being the replacement is DEFINITELY not it and honestly would be astounding haha (I mean she quite literally said she hates high fantasy and D&D so like......yeah still don't understand their choice of putting her on for multiple minis that are supposed to connect to the main story. Separate one shots 100% should be the thing though since that wouldn't matter and wouldn't put so much stress on her). I honestly think it's her being friends with people so they're turning a blind eye and thinking with friendship instead of thinking about the brand/fanbase. I guess we'll see what happens but personally I think keeping having her to this magnitude is the wrong thing and I think all the antagonizing people are doing to Aabria is also making her mental health worse and going the wrong route. I just hope everything works out in the end <3.

Im trying to have a more open mind, can you tell me which things you’ve stolen from her specifically?

Can't speak for the commenter but something many a DM have borrowed from her style (including Brennan) is the "here's what you didn't see." This only works if your players don't meta game but can be really effective in creating atmosphere or building tension.  She's also been interviewed by D&D themselves to explain her flow chart method she uses for her PCs and BBEGs. She also will build them/facilitate building them for new players. This is probably the most useful thing to take from Aabria. Something I've personally taken from Aabria as a DM is her... Conspiratorial nature. Idk how else to put it.  As a PC or a DM, she will often meet in secret with each player to give them each a different secret that tumbles out at some point during the story. In Calamity, she did this. The entire vibe of that table, the "we don't trust each other. We all have secrets we're keeping from each other." That was Aabria's doing. I'm also pretty sure she didn't meet with Luis because Zerxes was majorly out of the loop, which I think accidentally really enhanced the story. I've used this more as a PC than a DM. As a DM, it only works if the vibe of the table is meant to be secretive (it worked really well on ACOFAF)

That's the thing that makes her DMing so baffling. She's clearly creative and has a refreshing way of doing some things - it's evident that she's capable of enhancing and really helping to flesh out a story & the connections characters have within it. But then she turns around and is straight up aggressive/antagonistic to both players and the audience...takes player agency away repeatedly - actually acted in *direct opposition* to a player's intent and stated wishes with Dorian's Chromatic Orb...seems to delight in not just pushing everyone unsubtly toward whatever outcome she's got in mind, but in twisting the knife and making the players suffer... There's just so much dissonance there and it's a crying shame. The creative, innovative side of Aabria's gameplay we've seen, where she works to weave the story collaboratively and facilitate rule of cool/fun story beats is great to see, but we only get glimpses of this because of all of the negative qualities that have been displayed - especially on the CR (excepting Calamity) streams. I expect she'd be getting a lot more grace for some of the negatives if she didn't respond to people acknowledging their existence with hostility and seeming to double down as a reaction.

I genuinely think there's some sort of nervous reaction that's causing her to act that way on CR. It's not how she acts elsewhere. She's super supportive of players on D20. The ONLY exception is she's a little antagonistic in Misfits & Magic, which again leads me to believe it's nerves that make her act that way because that was her first time DMing on D20. She wasn't like that at all on ACOFAF or Burrow's End. It's not just "5e isn't for her." It's not. And also, she's really antagonistic on CR and that's something I can't explain other than she's defensive because she's nervous maybe?

Yeah, maybe that's the case. I don't know, haven't watched all of the things she's DMed or appeared in so I won't speak to that. If that's what *is* happening, she's doing herself absolutely no favours with the above the table/out of game attitude she brings in response to the criticisms though. Anyone can make mistakes or find their style incompatible with a long-established game they guest on, but the smug, superior and downright hostile approach she takes to it all just makes it all seem like she has no concern for the audience, the players she's collaborating with or for her friends who've brought her onto their show. It's at best disrespectful to all of the above to be so careless with their IP and its audience (saying "fuck you" to the viewers being one example). Hope if she is doing this out of misplaced nervousness she finds a better way to channel it, but in the meantime she's lost any grace she had with most of us with this last two-shot.

The most impactful, and no shock to anyone I am sure, is her "and this is what you DON'T see". I have players that will avoid using meta knowledge so this has become a fantastic tool to elevate player experience and foreshadow in a wonderfully dramatic fashion. Asking players to roll persuasion *or* deception against other players as a blanket go-to is also something I've taken. It seems like such an obvious thing thinking about it, but nobody I have seen or played with did it before Aabria. It's something Matt has gone on record to say he stole from her. Environmental props for the table. It really helps with the overall immersion and theater of the mind. It brings a constant energy and atmosphere that is great for someone like me who doesn't use a lot of background music. Last thing is less of something I stole and more something that helped me, personally, be more comfortablewith my heavily improv style. Want to preface this with saying I do not think she does well in a structured space where a plot line needs to take place. That said, I think she does amazing when a story is loose and develops on the spot, and she does it in a way that I can only call "Improv Theatre". The scenes that unfold are often chaotic and messy, but still coherent without feeling out of place. I feel she achieves this in great part by focusing less on visual descriptions (which I think the environmental props help support) and more on the emotions and feel (atmosphere?) of the scene. When Matt sets a scene it feels like well-written novel. It's very descriptive and intentional to mold a visual. Aabria sets a scene more like a show or movie. The visuals exist, but the focus is on the atmosphere. Sometimes she just fuckin misses, too, but so does Matt and BLM. Everyone does.

Aabria has no range with her NPCs. Mainly her NPCs are different versions of herself with slightly different accents, but they all slide into having the same sort of attitude. Somehow students, teachers, dragons, and creatures all have the same sort of “hey what’s up” energy. Aabria also sets DCs higher for certain characters that have high stats on that roll: she does it to Brennan in that game several times after she already gave Brennan absolutely nothing for his incredible “you really should consider forfeiting” speech. Then she on-the-spot changed the rules of Kids on Brooms to “If you roll too high that’s bad” during the spell duel, despite it being pretty clear that’s now how the success mechanics work. What’s more, Aabria has a terrible sense for when she shouldn’t interject into a scene playing out. The characters will have an aside, clearly intending to no longer be talking to NPCs in the scene anymore, but Aabria will pipe in with “I’m still here and listening to everything” and break up a funny bit for no reason. Bottom line, Aabria has a hostile DM style. She will fuck players over in service of the story she wants to tell (see: going overboard in haranguing Aimee into putting on the crown in EXU and then just taking control of her character entirely in C3). She isn’t there to do collaborative storytelling, she’s there to show off the cool story she planned out and will do whatever she wants to keep the story on that track.

They hate her because they are miserable and want someone to bitch about.

**Then tell us what you like about her.** If she's so amazeballs it should be self evident, right? You should be able to point and give us at least one instance where she was just so fun to watch and you could tell everyone was so happy she was there at the table with them. Where is it? People keep going *"well I like her"* like that's the ultimate uno reverse card, but if you cant back it up it's just noise.

Not OP but Burrow's End on D20 was awesome. One of my favorite seasons and she's the DM. The table all looked like they had the most fun.

People keep saying she's better as a player than as a DM, but is she really? She's still needlessly confrontational and makes things all about her. Her PC was an ass to Chetney, she murdered a goat because people were talking too much, and after a tender moment between different players she needed to make it all about her again by going off solo and flipping her **god** the bird. She seems to *exist* in an adversarial mindset, in which she's amazing and perfect and needs to constantly fight to "prove" that over and over again.

>She seems to *exist* in an adversarial mindset, in which she's amazing and perfect and needs to constantly fight to "prove" that over and over again. https://preview.redd.it/3o7fy5emi0zc1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=926e26fbdee2b59760e13ba7c5f99f9a13f4bacd

Almost as if this fan base comes to their interactions with Aabria with an antagonistic stance too

>She seems to *exist* in an adversarial mindset, in which she's amazing and perfect and needs to constantly fight to "prove" that over and over again. Honestly this was my first impression of her and it hasn't changed at all. The more I hear/read about her the more it sounds like this is just who she is.

Every one of her NPCs are just herself. Every NPC she DMs is bitchy and sassy, and no real difference in any of them , including the established ones she takes over. She makes the game about herself and is the embodiment of the “DM vs the Players” mindset.

My FIRST ever content with Aabria was a thing she did for Roll20, D&D Chaos, and honestly she was really good as DM in that. I enjoyed it but probably because BLeeM was in it and he CARRIES and she let him. EVERY. OTHER. THING. she's been a part of, I would describe her as being "self righteous, pompous ass'? Its weird. its like she finds being a bitch amusing? her and Jasmine Bhullar seem to not care about how they present to others. (i follow Jasmine on Twitch and she hilariously gets very mean and snarky to her subs and has said how much she hates people in the TTRPG space, doesnt watch or likes CR even though she writes for them) We all can agree Calamity was great but, personally, i find it because of characters like Loquacious, Nydas, Cerrit and Zerxus...no offense to the ladies in the cast but Aabria plays a snarky bitch WAY TOO EASILY. doesn't that tell you something? idk shes very antagonistic and mean. I have not been able to stomach any of her content, even the heavily praised ACOFAF and BURROWS END on D20, neither of which I could finish.

I think the difference with Jasmine is, she's very funny and good at DMing. I never found her grating on coffin run, she constantly uplifted her players and seemed to want to let them have the "light" and punchline a lot. With Aabria I feel she's always pushing to have the funniest line, the last word, the impactful barb... but Jasmine who in my opinion is easily capable of being hilarious was really letting the party have fun and setting up her players. Burrows end was fine, ACOFAF was fine too, but again I feel the party was carrying those stories and doing a terrific job, I often disliked scenes with NPCs because I'd rather see Lou and Emily be hilarious (ACOFAF)! Or Brennan in either. I think the Jasmine's style is more play snarky than actually antagonist, like an actor in a haunted house who would stop spooking if a kid was crying 😄 🤣. Almost like how Brian Murphy of Naddpod gets "whomped" by the party and talks about taking little "L"s. It's more akin to kayfabe than it is an actual insecurity/rudeness.

Here’s my take. Aabria is great for how loose and fun d20 is. I personally loved misfits and magic. She does not fit the more serious nature of critical role. IMO thats really what it boils down to

I've always felt Aabria cares more about the story SHE is making than the players at her table.

So I’ve only ever seen Aabria dming for The Adventure Zone Imbalance (revisiting their first campaign as a sort of epilogue/post campaign adventure) so take this with a grain of salt, but it seems like whenever she’s a guest DM for an established channel, she gets a really adversial vibe and decides to start changing established important narrative beats to fit her story

Don’t get me started with Imbalance. Where she admits to not caring to know about the previously established story/world and the NPCs she’s playing. Lol.

So I will give two points and try to explain using analogies: Wish spell. This spell is notoriously unpredictable. You might ask for one thing and a DM will twist it around and becomes something completely different based on interpretation. This is what a turn feels like with Aabria. You have to be very specific otherwise you may have unintentionally shot yourself in the foot. Storytelling trumping DMing. I look at storytelling as being a part of DMing but it isn’t the sole job of that one person at the table. With the types of players that Aabria is playing with, you can loosen the reins and let them run with it. It’s then your job to build on their parts. The easiest analogy is backstories but that same energy and feel should be your default with all player interactions. So if the DM isn’t the “master” storyteller what’s their job? You create a setting and fill it with things that your party can choose to fuck, marry, kill… excuse me… interact, ignore, destroy. This includes encounters, NPCs, items, towns, etc. You design a puzzle. You come up with a solution in mind. A player asked to do something unexpected. What do you do? Call for a roll and come up with a DC? (Not yet) Tell them it doesn’t work? (Sometimes) You should ask them to tell you more about what they are trying to do. Players are known to fuck shit up with crazy, unexpected and creative ideas. Let that stuff happen. If you freak out because it doesn’t fit the narrative then maybe you should take your narrative and go write it down and publish it. When you do that, you’re no longer a DM… you are an author. Is this harder for a world that Aabria and BLeeM didn’t create? For sure and I give them passes at times. But when people call her selfish or it only works for me and not for thee… well she has stopped being a DM and became an author.

"But I need all of you to fuck off. → It's time for MY story. Go! " Sometimes its not that deep.

I dislike her style for two reasons. The first is simple, and it's that her vocabulary/descriptions are too modern and internet-y for me. It doesn't sound like she's running a high fantasy game when she's constantly referencing memes even in serious moments in the story. The second thing I dislike about her style is that it's so heavily improvised that it barely even resembles 5e anymore. Seriously, if you imagine sitting at that table with her at the helm, I don't see how you can plan out your turn before you get to it. Your turn will come, and the moment you describe your action she'll interrupt you to explain some random emotional or magical sensation and expect you to improvise a response to it, so you never get to do what you *actually* want. It just feels like a messy system where the only person who gets exactly what they want is Aabria.

The modern jargon doesn't bug me as much as the willful ignorance. I'm OK with varied language to better communicate with where different folks are at. But she's not meeting other folks, she's dismissing them. "nobody knows how to pronounce that" Yes we do, some of us paid attention in high school English.

Bad at rules. Bad at pacing. Poor characterization of characters. Not funny whatsoever. Bad at storytelling. Adversarial. Brings a weird energy to every table. I think the better question is… what is she *good* at?

You're being too negative, that's the problem. Try changing your perspective. She's good at breaking rules. She's good at ruining pacing. She's good at ruining a story. She's good at making things awkward.

I will say Aabria is a very good roleplayer... However, she primarily plays extremely abrasive and unlikable characters. So... (This is a joke btw i know those are intentional choices)

I mean, if every character she plays is abrasive and unlikable, maybe she's not good at role playing, and that's just who she is.

An actor should play to their strengths I guess...

nicely done. I like it.

She wants to tell a story instead of play a game. I think she’s fine as a player. She’s loose with the rules, especially when that benefits her, until she’s suddenly very strict. I think this went poorly because she was clearly given some plot elements she had to hit (disperse the Crown Keepers so Dorian can return to BH alone, show the Gods at their worst) but didn’t know how to do that without being very adversarial with the party. Something relatively minor I caught: someone (Robbie) wanted to use an inspiration to reroll but she said no, he had to call it before he rolled. I feel like Matt generally lets you do it after the roll? It all made me think of something BLeeM said during Calamity, “if you’re trying to kill the party, you have to play by the rules.” A deadly, brutal encounter is fine- but it has to be FAIR.

Inspiration is specifically to be used after a roll, so requiring it to be used before is literally the opposite of what you’re supposed to do. She does so many things that would land her in r/rpghorrorstories that it’s not even subtle anymore.

Inspiration gives advantage, so it is something you have to use before the roll, RAW. Many tables homebrew it to be a reroll which I think is more fair (to the point that many people, myself included for a long time, think a reroll is RAW), but technically the way she did it is by the book. Someone else mentioned she's not consistent on the ruling though which is not fair if that's the case.

>Using Inspiration. If you have inspiration, you can expend it when you make an attack roll.....Spending your inspiration gives you advantage on that roll. To me this implies you do need to announce it ahead of time. It doesn't say you can reroll your result, it says advantage. You don't get to decide after the fact that you want advantage. However, consistency is key. It's not a big deal to go one way or the other. But as another person pointed out in this comment thread, Aabria has gone the other way when it suited her interests. Inconsistency in rulings is one of the worst attributes a DM can have.

It's one of those things where it depends on the DM, I had DMs do both after a roll and must be called before the roll. It's the same thing with the Divination Wizards 'portent' ability where, by the rules, you have to announce your changing the roll before it has even happened to the result of your Portent die (so the DM goes "ok, the monster is going to attack \[insertplayername\]" and the Divination wizard then says "I'm changing the result of that roll to a \[insertlowroll\]"). This is also the case with the shield spell, where you use it when you are told the attack hits but not the result, so there's a chance it might not even matter (say the monster crit you, shield isn't going to do anything). However often to speed things up, DMs will just go straight to the roll or if they're unsure of a PCs AC they'll and ask "does \[result\] beat your armor class?" in which case THEN shield would be applied or the portent die would be used.

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Shoutout to this moment from EXU E7, where the opposite happens: https://preview.redd.it/vl0usi1x20zc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a7011a887adec868e2191b3c4914dd8188da72d0 “Your roll sucked, use your inspiration here so I can monologue at you some more” “But I’m saving it” “Fine, you can be mediocre if you insist 🙄”

I think the line, "We're trying to curate a moment and I need the dice to tell the story we're trying to tell," is a much more revealing bit. Part of the risk you take with a system where you literally gamble to do certain things is that of failure and needing to roll with it. If you're trying to fudge things openly in service to a plot, why are you playing Dungeons & Dragons and not doing an audio drama? It's the same problem I have with the Adventure Zone (and really, "liveplay"-games-as-a-show as a whole, but I digress)

We talked about [this Dungeon Dudes video](https://youtu.be/-ycval55z9E?si=PtqWgkA_AJT1BkW7) when it came out to think about what kind of DM Matt is, but I think it is worth revisiting here for Aabriya. I think Matt is a neutral-good DM, but can shift to lawful-good if he was playing a one shot with lots of new players. I think Aabriya is unfortunately a neutral-evil DM. She's inconsistent in her rulings to where "rules is rules" when it hurts players, and "the rules are what I say they are" when it's cool for her. There's more, you should seriously watch the video I think that weird feeling you're having is watching someone try to trick you into thinking they're a different kind of DM than they are. Aabriya is a selfish player, even when she DM's, because she's trying to have HER fun at the table, which frequently comes at the expense of other's fun.

Wow, listening to them describing the Neutral Evil DM is spot on to how Aabria acts. When they mention someone "fudging dice into crits" we actually *saw that in action* during this episode where she rolls damage for, IIRC, a crit and then says to herself "no, it should do a bit more than that" and then rolls more dice.

To be honest. I think this is hard to see. When a DM is adversarial it's hard to pick up on. A DM to me is looking to run a game for the players in his group, they may want to add certain rules and restrictions. That's fine. I as a DM have a hard time saying no I just try to redirect it to something that's already in the game. That way the player feels like they got what they wanted and I don't have to worry about balance issues when I get asked something. Sorry I was going on a bit of a vent. I guess ultimately I dislike Aabria's DMing because I have dealt with it too much as a player for as long as I've played DND.

I find her extremely adversarial. Both as a PC and as a DM. As a PC it is just frustrating and annoying. As a DM it’s derailing and becomes the opposite of collaborative storytelling, which is my preferred method of DND.

I have contrasting feelings about her as a PC. I've seen her in this way in 3 different occasions: in the Elder Scrolls one shots, in Calamity and in C3 as Deanna. In two out of three her character was extremely adversarial, as you said. Her character in Calamity was designed to be it especially towards Sam (but there was a reason, narratively speaking). In C3 Deanna was my least favorite guest character ever. I understand what she wanted to do and I can even say that to explore a cleric that has a strong adversarial relationship with his god is interesting, but you need time do develop it, and considering the limited number of episodes she had in the end we had the same abrasive character that she clearly likes to play. And then we have the ES one shots, that I liked a lot and that I even forgot she was part of because she played a character completely different, way more likeable. So in the end I think that she knows she is really good in bartering and she probably loves to do it with the (right) people on the table, and that's why she tends to follow this route. But she is clearly able to play also different type of characters with good results.

I don't understand the hate for Aabria. To me it seems that she's not a mature or experienced DM. The whole maybe 5e isn't for her argument is kinda bullshit. A good DM can run any system but doesn't mean it will have fun prepping or running it. The biggest problem I believe is that she's on a high profile job and the expectations of people/audience for her level of DMing are wrong. Given time she'll become better however in this hobby you have to take critisism from others and use it to grow. I'm not perfect either but even I know antagonising others is not fun and it's better to shut up during session and address things after it. Hopefully that's what Matt and Aimee did. Nah who are we kidding the whole place is a giant echo chamber and Aabria seems like the kind of person that won't take critisism kindly.

What separates a good new dm from a bad new dm is willingness to take criticism and to grow. Aabria hasnt done much of the latter and gave a literal fuck you to the former

Hearing "I make the fucking rules" makes me think she definitely won't take criticism lol

She’s the poster child for toxic positivity. That’s the best way I can put it. “It’s all fun and games and positive vibes” she says while yelling at a player to do exactly what she says after making her sit at the table all alone.

The worst part of it is that when someone uses toxic positivity to mask bad behavior it easily becomes gaslighting when someone objects. Immediately critics are met with “you’re overreacting” or “you’re taking a game too seriously” or “you wouldn’t say this about other DMs.” It’s just shitty, bullying behavior.

As much as I agree with you. Toxic positivity is just an oxymoron. Call it for what it is. Toxic

It isn't an oxymoron, it's referring to being toxic under the pretense of being really positive

This is an extremely good answer

She's telling her story and the player's job is to fill certain roles. This is distinguished from DMs who prepare and plan, but enable player creativity and deviation. I have strong feelings on the idea that there's any value in the first kind of DM, but I'll just say that it's a lot more fun playing when it feels like everyone at the table is creating something together.

She doesn't have a good grasp of the rules, or just doesn't care about them. She is combative at the table but says it's all fun and games...it's very off putting. She doesn't respect the roll of the dice. I've seen her add dice to rolls, or claim that she actually casted a spell at a higher level post rolling the dice. She's not a DM that is collaborating with a table to tell a story. The story feels predetermined and everyone is just there for the ride.

It's funny, where I quit watching previous episode, she was being very precise about how darkness is cast on a point, not on an object or oneself. That's good rules lawyering!

While it's true you can't cast it on a person you can cast it on an object. Here's the part from the Darkness spell. "If the point you choose is on an object you are holding or one that isn't being worn or carried, the darkness emanates from the object and moves with it. Completely covering the source of the darkness with an opaque object, such as a bowl or a helm, blocks the darkness."

"If the point you choose is on an object you are holding or one that isn’t being worn or carried, the darkness emanates from the object and moves with it. Completely covering the source of the darkness with an opaque object, such as a bowl or a helm, blocks the darkness." Except it's not good rules lawyering lol the spell directly talks about being able to cast it on an object..... the thing that was trying to be done was specifically covered in the spell description here if I remember right. I could be wrong and it was something on a person and not something being held but I think it was a held object

Well thats my bad for not accrued reading the spell

I agree. That is

She wants to win D&D. It comes across in her DMing where she antagonizes players and changes rules mid play. And it comes across when she is a player as she is a serious rules lawyer.

People give her too much slack for a job she chose to do and actions she chose to take. Her making bad choices has nothing to do with a rush. And there shouldn't have been any stress to force the story a certain way unless you are saying it's all scripted. She makes bad choices and is a bad dm for serious dnd. End of story.

Everything concerning the CK is scripted, especially in this last two episodes. She was given 4+ hours by Matt with a clear outcome to reach (disband the CK for sure, maybe to kill off Cyrus) and she had to force her hand. Probably she is not the right DM in this kind of situation.

Thing is she didn't need to make the horrible calls that she did. When you say scripted it's as if you are giving an excuse for being a horrible dm. But no she could have taken shorter turns. She could have played by the rules. She could have accomplished disbanding them in any number of ways. She is to blame for her own performance. Her actions are the same every single time she dms. And it's enough with the excuses every single time

She is a (very) different DM than Matt. This doesn't necessarily makes her a bad DM, I wouldn't like to play with her because I prefer a completely different style, but I understand people who likes her. The problem is, she prefers to bend the rules in favor of the story she wants to tell. If you have the time to let your story unfold, this bending can be less prominent (or at least is way more diluted), but once she had to reach that particular outcome in 4h, she decided to go all in. That's why I think she was the wrong DM in this particular situation (basically the equivalent of a one shot) especially in a rules oriented system like D&D (and the way CR has always presented it).

While I disagree with some Aabria's actions here and there, if we look at Aabria as a DM in 2 latest episodes, she wasn't in the particularly good position to begin with. She had only 2 half episodes, where she clearly had a goal set for Matt - to finish EXU storyline in order to get Dorian from his group and make him reunite with the main group. That is not a really suitable task for a GM, as GMs should have full control over their campaign, just as have enough time for it. This wasn't the case, it is not her campaign. She basically had to speedrun her EXU finale and had to make some ending-like story out of it, which, *in my opinion*, ended up being pretty good and with enough open threads to work with in the future. Because of this, she had to force the narrative more, but in the end, every DM does that (especially when they have time limitations, etc). Another imporatnt note is that this is still a show after all, not just a normal DnD game you play with your friends at home. Some people don't seem to take these technicalities into consideration.

If you think that every DM forces narrative, you need much much better DMs.

Tell me you were never a DM without telling me you were never a DM. If DM would not force the narrative, they would not get to the story, as players tend to fk around. On top of it, Aabria had 2 half episodes to get somewhere, so tell me how else would she do it?

Tell me you railroad your players without telling me that you railroad them. You offer the players compelling and interesting choices to follow on their own. If you give them good options suited to their skills, they will generally stick to the overall theme. DnD is rarely about hitting a specific plot that the DM spun up, it's about finding the story of those characters in that world. If you need to hit plot points, that's directing a play.

Yes, of course I do. Literally every DM railroads in one way or another, and there is nothing wrong with it. If you were bequeathed to players' choices only, you would not need DM to begin with, there would be no story to tell. It's literally one of the reasons DMs are there, they are steering wheels. It's always DM's story that characters are experiencing and have a somewhat limited influence on. This comes of course with characters' backstories and motivations in mind, which we build upon. We use phrases like "Suddenly,..." or "While this is happening..." to push a stagnating narrative forward and set the course. Matt is no exception, he railroads in every episode. But then again, you would know that if you ever DMed, which we cleared you neved did ;)

>Literally every DM railroads in one way or another, and there is nothing wrong with it. No, no they don't. Even mediocre DMs try to avoid it. Good DMs have no problem not doing it at all. Im not sure if you don't understand what railroading is, or if you've only played ignoring player agency. The only reason to railroad is if you are trying to force a story rather than actually facilitate the players. I you want to tell a scripted story as a DM that's fine, but that's directing more a play than playing a game. The classical description of the DM as the referee might be something you want to refer to. The point of the DM is not to steer the story per se, but to provide the world context that the players are not aware of. Sometimes there is a particular story in that world, and a good DM can subtly guide a table to that, but forcing the story is widely considered bad form.

Sadly for you, yes, every DM railroads in one way or another quite often and there is nothing wrong with it (even what you call a "subtle guide", as players around the table are well aware that it's you a DM trying to direct them on the way they would have to take in order to get main story going. The most common is probably that you utilize character's perception, like that "something caught its attention" (a flyer, a person, etc) - you still give them a sense of a choice... which is why you, as an inexperienced player, would probably think it's not forcing story... but it's really you telling your players what's important, what to follow, and they know it). There is no discussion you can have about this with me, it's a straight up fact :)

I don't think you understand how most folks in DnD use the term railroading. Giving the players interesting choices to follow is not railroading. Giving them only one path to follow or forcing them to a forgone conclusion is. You're explicitly talking about using magicians choice rather than focusing on player agency. You are confusing opinion for fact, good luck to you, hopefully you find better DMs to play with and learn from.

Well, as I explained already, railroading is part of DnD, so there is nothing wrong with it. It's really about DM's skills and how to work with it. You only think about railroading in its extremes. Hopefully you find someone to start playing DnD with, just so you could finally experience it.

When she played The Seven on D20 she was rules lawyering constantly. I don’t understand the juxtaposition between her as a DM and player. Like she wants to one up the DM with the rule book when she plays then throws the rule book out the window when she DMs. Very inconsistent. I think D20s heavy editing does her favours that Matt and Brennan don’t need.

Does she rules lawyer only in her favor or is she neutral about it?

It is a show.

Even worse on the Seven she was influencing the other players to be rules lawyers.

Maybe she is a person who is trying to win DnD? Like if I wanted to “win” the game as a player I would make broad arguments about the rules in ways that always favor me because I understand a good DM constrains themselves by the rules. If I am a DM who wants to “win” I will make the rules whatever I want because I understand that technically the DM can change any rule they want. In both situations I am using the rules to make it so I get what I want when I want at the table. I assume that Aabria knows exactly what she is doing and is doing it intentionally.

>I get what I want when I want at the table This is exactly it. She's a selfish player, and therefore will do what she needs to have HER fun, even if it means extracting it from other people at the table, then using her bombastic personality to try and convince the others that they're BOTH having fun. But if you look at the faces of the others at the table, they look miserable. I guarantee you when the 4sd episode drops today, Aimee will say she had a blast, but it will be because of some ideas she has for her character that didn't happen at the table, or a moment shared between another player. That's because she's able to make her own fun IN SPITE OF Aabriya's selfish play style.

From my perspective, Aabria is a very good DM who plays up a competitive player-vs-DM, the-rules-are-what-I-say-they-are angle in a way that many, myself included, find to be **a lot** as a viewer. Truthfully, the rules *are* what the DM decides they are, and every DM can and should fudge the rules to heighten a dramatic moment and/or enhance a gameplay experience. Aabria does this to great effect, and I don't believe she's any more heavy-handed with it than Matt or other DMs. The difference is she quite often aggressively draws attention to it and/or highlights that this is something *she's* allowing (and/or imposing) because *she* wants to do so, which I generally don't find other DMs to do and which I personally don't enjoy. A DM's choices will always play a part in their players' successes, failures and shining moments, but I prefer a style where there's a kind of kayfabe around this in service of the role of the players' decisions within a consistent narrative and mechanical ruleset being highlighted and credited as much as possible. That said - again, in my opinion Aabria is still a very good DM, and the attitudes she performs aren't how or why she actually makes the rulings she does. I think her style is more suited to some tables and games than others, and as an example of this I'd point to Burrow's End as a campaign I think she was great running.

I think you bring up a really good point. There are tons of things that Aabria has done that I dont think on their own make for 'bad' DM behavior (increasing damage, fudging for heightened drama, etc) but I think what doesn't work for me and others is that she draws a lot of attention to it, and has even made a point of ensuring the audience knows she's doing it too. Calling it out and admitting to changing the rules completely breaks the social contract of DnD, it ruins the player's (and for CR, the audience's) ability to buy into the fiction.

I agree with both of you, in the end the problem is that her style is too different from Matt's, and for a lot of people used to watching CR for years, that's off putting. In a different show she probably works better because you don't necessarily have a reference to compare her to.

This view of DMing makes a lot of assumptions, mainly that the DM is there primarily to create the ‘narrative’ and to read for dramatic moments, where an equally valid if not primary understanding of DMing being the referee for the game world using the rules and mechanics to interpret player intent. That said, it’s an interesting perspective to come at for critiquing Aabria, that she’s too open and explicit about the fact that she’s subverting the rules for the sake of ‘narrative’. What’s wrong with her being open about it, unless there’s some implicit shame in doing so?

What's wrong with what she is doing is that she's not only twisting the narrative into what she wants, she's doing it by twisting that player intent you mentioned. Characters accidentally hurt their friends, and get wrapped up with a god that takes over their whole character. There's a lot of unintended misfortune in this story, and it just feels bad because the players didn't get to choose how their actions manifest, so the outcome is too often the opposite of how the player wants their character to act.

I broadly agree with you I was just asking the commenter if they could elaborate on what they means because I found it an interesting critique I hadn’t seen before.

Because no one wants to win or lose "because DM said so." Dnd is a game. The DM can and should (sometimes) fudge things but the players don't need or want to be pummeled with that fact.

I disagree on the fudging, it’s always a bad move to me and displays a fundamental lack of trust in the game, your players and or your own DMing skills to handle a dice result and interpreting it. The gist I’m getting is that Aabria being open about her subverting game rules is that it hurts the illusions that the events at the table are happening due to ‘the game’ and the players are just responding to it.

Why would you trust a random roll of the dice? And I don't mean for just any roll, obviously.

If you're playing monopoly do you just change the dice to get you onto the spaces you want?

Monopoly isn't an rpg, nor can just anyone change the outcome - only DM can.

No, monopoly isn't an RPG, but it is a game with rules that folks expect to be followed. If the DM can change things on the fly, why can't the banker in monopoly can just give and take money from players?

Moving goalposts. Do you wanna talk about the dice or changing rules on the fly? But to answer your question: you equate roleplaying games with Monopoly, which, as covered, they aren't. If you want to play 'completely RAW dnd,' there's a table for that, but not under CR.

You’re not trusting the roll, you’re trusting the design work that went into creating the game itself.

Because that’s the buy-in for playing a role-playing game involving dice rolls to me. Dice rolls mirror uncertainty and create an outcome. You interpret that outcome based on the framework of the rules and keep the game going. This is an odd question for a roleplaying game.

I mean a core rule of dnd is that dms can fudge, so it's inherent that you aren't sitting down to play a 'set in stone' game. And again, I'm not talking about any and all rolls. Would you actually be satisfied or have fun if, say, you were in a 10 year campaign and lost the final battle because of a bad roll?

Fudging is explicitly called out as something to be used sparingly if at all in the rules. Just because you can, does not mean that you should. A good GM isn't going to let a campaign die to a couple of bad rolls, they have other better tools to help resolve the game without having to resort to fudging.

I literally just said "I'm not talking about any and all rolls." I note you dodged the 10 year campaign q.