Second Opinion #2: Titansgrave Review

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

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.

[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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

Second Opinion