Second Opinion #2: Titansgrave Review

Second Opinion Reviews

Ian R Buck and Ian Decker discuss Titansgrave: the Ashes of Valkana.

Links

• Titansgrave | Geek and Sundry
• Titansgrave – YouTube

Overview

Titansgrave: the Ashes of Valkana is a video series featuring a group of minor celebrities playing through an RPG campaign.

• Setting
• Love the combination of science fiction and fantasy!
• [Buck] Of course I was inclined to root for the technological solutions.
• A world with ancient evils that haven’t been seen in millennia is a fun trope. Makes me think of A Song of Ice and Fire.
• [Decker] I agree with Buck on the melding of Fantasy and Sci-fi themes- it was cool to see! I appreciate that there was still a love of good beer! I do wonder how more of the political systems worked though- although Wil created a vast world and introduced many characters, he didn’t really develop things like the society that they were in as much as I would’ve liked.
• Story
• [Decker] I wish that more things had been explained- there were things, like Lemley’s amulet and why her family was despised, that were never answered. I also felt that it was a bit short, but I’m also used to novel-esque stories.
• Time for a sequel!
• Characters
• Most of the characters had quite a bit of depth. This was intentional, of course, because Wil had each of the players come up with major and minor goals for their characters.
• Most of the characters were well-specced for combat, except for S’Lethkk
• [Decker] I think that it helps for the PCs to have good actors behind them as well- that makes for some fun characters. I wish that Wil had kept up the whole character keeping secrets from others thing later into the story as well- it would’ve made for some interesting interactions.
• Players
• Looks like a fun group to play with!
• Wil Wheaton
• Did a great job coming up with the whole setting
• Went to the effort of incorporating the player characters’ backstories into the missions they were going through in the campaign
• [Buck]Seemed a little heavy-handed in guiding the players through the campaign
• [Decker] I agree a bit, although I also think that he did a pretty good job of improvising and working with what the characters wanted to do along the way (5 gold and a party). The story was definitely a bit railroaded, although he did include a few choices for the characters to make, which is always nice.
• Laura Bailey
• She was great! She got really invested in her character, Lemley.
• [Buck] I’m always impressed with people who have to play a character with low intelligence, because they have to reign in their own ideas.
• Hank Green
• He had a really well developed backstory
• [Buck] He is too snarky for his own good. Wil had to punish him in the game a few times.
• [Decker] No such thing as too snarky… that may have just been part of Ankia.
• Format of show
• 40 minute episodes felt pretty good.
• [Buck] Maybe 30-35 minutes would have been ideal.
• [Decker] I would’ve gone the other way to 1hr episodes. I thought that it felt like the story was getting clipped short in a lot of cases.
• The intro was really long, and we started skipping it
• Production quality
• Love the bottom third they have when someone rolls dice! Especially since they change the numbers when somebody makes a mistake with their math.
• I enjoyed the art style- big brush strokes leaves some “smeared” details, but that fits well with the noir and dirty feel of a lot of the setting.
• RPG system
• Looks really fun!
• Using three dice pushes most rolls towards the middle of the pack. Bell curve, you know.
• The stunt points counter this by making even regular rolls a bit more exciting
• Combat seems mostly balanced- sets up both PCs and NPCs for success
• Spellcasting seemed almost underpowered- many of the spells had not as much damage as the other weapons, both melee and ranged
• Armor damage reduction for all characters was really nice!

Attributions

Free Music Archive: Beat Doctor – Organic (electric edit)

This episode of Second Opinion has a Fringe episode. You should really listen to The Fringe #353: SO #2 — Cold, Dead Fingers!

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