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I just finished watching episode 27 of campaign 1 of Critical Role. This is the final episode in which Orion Acaba appears as Tiberius Stormwind.
It was... a grind to watch. Literally exhausting. And it wasn't just because of Orion... but it was mostly because of Orion.
It started off great, actually. Sudden, unexpected combat in the keep owned by the players. Then some intrigue and scheming involving the NPC spymaster character.
But then... *weary sigh* ...a week (in-game) of shopping and preparation. Roughly an hour, in real time, give or take. The majority of that time was Tiberius doing shit... or trying to do shit, but getting shut down by the DM (and rightly so). But there was more to it than just that.
Orion, from what I've gleaned from looking at stuff outside of the game, had apparently been fudging dice rolls, enough so that they were watching him like a hawk in his last few episodes. And he was heavily metagaming (i.e. doing things that his character wouldn't have any legit way to know to do in game), which even I picked up on just from watching the show. And also, Orion was kind of a glory-hound and attention-whore, constantly inserting Tiberius into other characters' epic moments and seemingly trying to make it less an ensemble cast and more like "The Adventures of Tiberius Stormwind, From Draconia... ... ...And His Friends."
The story arc that takes place in this episode and for a few episodes previous was heavily based on the backstory of Percy (played by Taliesin Jaffe), involving the arc villains having taken over Percy's old home, in the backstory, and during this episode the group is preparing to go and Do Something About It™. At one point during this week of preparation, Orion, pretty much out of the blue, tells the group that he, Tiberius, is ambassador to Draconia, so he's going to call in Draconia's army to deal with the problem. Fortunately, Matt put the kibosh on that pretty quickly (and even managed to do it in story, as opposed to just DM fiat, which was cool), as otherwise that would have sucked shit and taken the wind out of the sails of Percy's character arc. And then there was Orion/Tiberius's random "half chub" comment directed toward Vex'ahlia/Laura Bailey, which basically everyone but Orion seemed to hate and thought was in poor taste. And, overall, Grog/Travis Willingham (who is Laura Bailey's husband IRL) was just tired of everyone's shit (because, to be fair, besides just Orion, most of the others were also doing a ton of boring shit during this week-long [again, about an hour IRL] thing, while Travis mostly just sat there twiddling his thumbs the whole time, both in character and out). But mostly Orion's. At one point, he said to Orion, out-of-character, "How about you get nothing else, and we move on?" The tension was real.
And that's just the one episode. Marisha Ray (player for Keyleth) had already briefly bowed up at Orion two or three times in previous episodes for the metagaming and for such things as burning all of his sorcerer points in the first round of combat against a relatively minor enemy (a thing he did rather often) and then being pissy when the rest of the group didn't want to take a full eight hour rest (so he could get his spell shit back) given that they were, at that moment, in the middle of a tense chase after the main villain of that particular episode. Also, Sam Riegel had been giving Orion shit (ostensibly in character as Scanlan, but probably not just as Scanlan) for a while, too. Granted, Sam/Scanlan gives everyone shit (most notably Laura, about Vex'ahlia's pet bear, which has basically been very little more than The Load up to this point), but he seemed... especially snarky toward Orion, ever since Orion had Tiberius almost completely wuss out of the final boss fight of the first major arc of Critical Role (in part due to Orion's metagaming). That was due to Orion thinking, wrongly, that Matt was deliberately trying to invoke a TPK on them, which Orion admitted was the case later out-of-game. (But then, given that these guys had been playing together for two to two and a half years prior to the show starting, I'm not sure why Orion would think that Matt would all of a sudden be the kind of DM who would go for a TPK just for the lulz or whatever. His reasoning seemed strange, but that's just me. Also, given that Orion supposedly had that realization at that point, in episode 12, and yet basically continued to play the same way all the way up to episode 27 is... kind of hinky, too, given that he kept on trying to make Tiberius super OP, no matter what.) And just, in general, there was a slowly building tension between Orion and everyone else throughout the entirety of these first 27 episodes that was increasingly unpleasant to witness, and it all seemed to come to a head here in this episode.
However, with all of that said, if it had been just that... well... Orion still might have left/been kicked out eventually, or maybe he could have improved as a player and things could have smoothed out. We'll never know. However, apparently, it was extra bullshit outside of the game, which I will not go into here (though it is very easily Google-able), that was the final straw that broke the camel's back and which lead to Critical Role and Orion Acaba parting ways. And it was apparently the case that Orion had a shit-ton of problems going on in his life at that point as well, such as cancer treatment and drug problems, etc., which fed into all of that, on top of everything else. It was probably for the best that he's no longer there, ultimately, but it's kind of sad too, because there were some legitimately good Orion/Tiberius moments, both in and out of character, and Tiberius was a pretty great character, in and of himself, all else aside... but it seems it just wasn't enough to make up for the scuzzier stuff.
If I had been watching this live, as it originally unfolded and with no forewarning, this almost assuredly would have been the point at which I nope'd the fuck out and just stopped watching Critical Role altogether, especially once I had learned that Orion had left/been booted out (for reasons I've already gone into at great length before). But since I knew all this was going to happen going in and it all happened like half a decade ago, I figured I'd just tough it out and get past it all. It was pretty bad, true enough, but... maybe not quite as bad as I feared it would be.
So yeah, I'm over that particular hump, finally. Supposedly, from everything I've read, things start dramatically improving after this point, with Orion's departure. I guess I'll find out soon enough when I start episode 28, probably tomorrow, as I don't have the stamina for it right now.
It was... a grind to watch. Literally exhausting. And it wasn't just because of Orion... but it was mostly because of Orion.
It started off great, actually. Sudden, unexpected combat in the keep owned by the players. Then some intrigue and scheming involving the NPC spymaster character.
But then... *weary sigh* ...a week (in-game) of shopping and preparation. Roughly an hour, in real time, give or take. The majority of that time was Tiberius doing shit... or trying to do shit, but getting shut down by the DM (and rightly so). But there was more to it than just that.
Orion, from what I've gleaned from looking at stuff outside of the game, had apparently been fudging dice rolls, enough so that they were watching him like a hawk in his last few episodes. And he was heavily metagaming (i.e. doing things that his character wouldn't have any legit way to know to do in game), which even I picked up on just from watching the show. And also, Orion was kind of a glory-hound and attention-whore, constantly inserting Tiberius into other characters' epic moments and seemingly trying to make it less an ensemble cast and more like "The Adventures of Tiberius Stormwind, From Draconia... ... ...And His Friends."
The story arc that takes place in this episode and for a few episodes previous was heavily based on the backstory of Percy (played by Taliesin Jaffe), involving the arc villains having taken over Percy's old home, in the backstory, and during this episode the group is preparing to go and Do Something About It™. At one point during this week of preparation, Orion, pretty much out of the blue, tells the group that he, Tiberius, is ambassador to Draconia, so he's going to call in Draconia's army to deal with the problem. Fortunately, Matt put the kibosh on that pretty quickly (and even managed to do it in story, as opposed to just DM fiat, which was cool), as otherwise that would have sucked shit and taken the wind out of the sails of Percy's character arc. And then there was Orion/Tiberius's random "half chub" comment directed toward Vex'ahlia/Laura Bailey, which basically everyone but Orion seemed to hate and thought was in poor taste. And, overall, Grog/Travis Willingham (who is Laura Bailey's husband IRL) was just tired of everyone's shit (because, to be fair, besides just Orion, most of the others were also doing a ton of boring shit during this week-long [again, about an hour IRL] thing, while Travis mostly just sat there twiddling his thumbs the whole time, both in character and out). But mostly Orion's. At one point, he said to Orion, out-of-character, "How about you get nothing else, and we move on?" The tension was real.
And that's just the one episode. Marisha Ray (player for Keyleth) had already briefly bowed up at Orion two or three times in previous episodes for the metagaming and for such things as burning all of his sorcerer points in the first round of combat against a relatively minor enemy (a thing he did rather often) and then being pissy when the rest of the group didn't want to take a full eight hour rest (so he could get his spell shit back) given that they were, at that moment, in the middle of a tense chase after the main villain of that particular episode. Also, Sam Riegel had been giving Orion shit (ostensibly in character as Scanlan, but probably not just as Scanlan) for a while, too. Granted, Sam/Scanlan gives everyone shit (most notably Laura, about Vex'ahlia's pet bear, which has basically been very little more than The Load up to this point), but he seemed... especially snarky toward Orion, ever since Orion had Tiberius almost completely wuss out of the final boss fight of the first major arc of Critical Role (in part due to Orion's metagaming). That was due to Orion thinking, wrongly, that Matt was deliberately trying to invoke a TPK on them, which Orion admitted was the case later out-of-game. (But then, given that these guys had been playing together for two to two and a half years prior to the show starting, I'm not sure why Orion would think that Matt would all of a sudden be the kind of DM who would go for a TPK just for the lulz or whatever. His reasoning seemed strange, but that's just me. Also, given that Orion supposedly had that realization at that point, in episode 12, and yet basically continued to play the same way all the way up to episode 27 is... kind of hinky, too, given that he kept on trying to make Tiberius super OP, no matter what.) And just, in general, there was a slowly building tension between Orion and everyone else throughout the entirety of these first 27 episodes that was increasingly unpleasant to witness, and it all seemed to come to a head here in this episode.
However, with all of that said, if it had been just that... well... Orion still might have left/been kicked out eventually, or maybe he could have improved as a player and things could have smoothed out. We'll never know. However, apparently, it was extra bullshit outside of the game, which I will not go into here (though it is very easily Google-able), that was the final straw that broke the camel's back and which lead to Critical Role and Orion Acaba parting ways. And it was apparently the case that Orion had a shit-ton of problems going on in his life at that point as well, such as cancer treatment and drug problems, etc., which fed into all of that, on top of everything else. It was probably for the best that he's no longer there, ultimately, but it's kind of sad too, because there were some legitimately good Orion/Tiberius moments, both in and out of character, and Tiberius was a pretty great character, in and of himself, all else aside... but it seems it just wasn't enough to make up for the scuzzier stuff.
If I had been watching this live, as it originally unfolded and with no forewarning, this almost assuredly would have been the point at which I nope'd the fuck out and just stopped watching Critical Role altogether, especially once I had learned that Orion had left/been booted out (for reasons I've already gone into at great length before). But since I knew all this was going to happen going in and it all happened like half a decade ago, I figured I'd just tough it out and get past it all. It was pretty bad, true enough, but... maybe not quite as bad as I feared it would be.
So yeah, I'm over that particular hump, finally. Supposedly, from everything I've read, things start dramatically improving after this point, with Orion's departure. I guess I'll find out soon enough when I start episode 28, probably tomorrow, as I don't have the stamina for it right now.
