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Neon Genesis Phijkchu

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July 17, 2020 – Present
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Through August 30, 2026
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June 19, 2020 – August 30, 2026
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PhrogDor rawb
Replying to Spooky Phijkchu #spooky.131
but yeah, he killed Urealms momentum 3 times I'd say 1) Seasonal break model he established after S1 2) Move from Twitch to his own website embed for S2 4) Not picking S4 back up after his mental breakdown
I'd say the seasonal break wasn't so much a thing as much as it was the jump (dive head first) into the pool of production quality format over the fun format. I get have a break to write up some campaigns. But he went full on into having to have it all staged out hard post season 2. They did need some spacing, but I think doing breaks in the winter to do so was a miss. Mostly because people stuck indoors around the holidays or rolling early into the year will have more time off to enjoy the shows.
PhrogDor rawb
I think doing small recaps would have done a lot. Cannon isn't too huge in so far as just having a better time line of events. Them being fuzzy is workable
Spooky Phijkchu rawb
for the breaks, I get why some sort of break was needed, but 9 months to reload was kinda silly and a lot of the rationales like you said, we're probably counterproductive in the long run anyway
Spooky Phijkchu rawb
so he'd kill himself during the offseason churning away at scripts and software overhauls, and have relatively little to show for it, given 9 months of time
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PhrogDor rawb
It got longer due to production quality and of course his spiralling issues. I can also see him as a passion worker and overhaul stuff in inefficient ways
Spooky Phijkchu rawb
and imo the issue with cannon was not even that it mattered, I just think it was the driving issue of why he felt the need to overly script some stuff, and get all flippant about which campaigns were "real" or not
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PhrogDor rawb
I mean the biggest issue I had was Season 3 turned everything into spectacle. The mechanics made things so low stakes. I think the best balance for show and stakes was when deathroles came in when players went down mid season 2.
PhrogDor rawb
Season 1 was awesome because the way the system worked the stakes were always high. Problem Rob was sorta running into was making stories that could survive a TKO of the party. This was mostly because of C5 or 6 of one where they got tko'ed mid a heist and shit sprinted to the end.
PhrogDor rawb
Shield and deathrolls being a serious issue if you get downed or ways of just totally fucking your shield in where you have a floor of 25% chance to die made sense. When it became the only way to die it kinda sucked
PhrogDor rawb
But he was trying to make it purely for show after awhile which just wasn't a good game system either. He jusg needed to take advantage of the fact that one shots do allow you to be flexible with the plot.
PhrogDor rawb
As for what was 'real' I can totally understand fudging some details. That stuff was fine, but he did get way to into the Meta shit as time went on.
Spooky Phijkchu rawb
Rob swung back and forth a lot on whether Urealms should stand on its own as a game, or just be a way to facilitate the show and I think universally, everyone wanted the former
PhrogDor rawb
I think if he accepted that eventually there may be an unsalvageable campaign in design. Stuck with what season 2 had and maybe nerfed the health stuff a bit to keep it high stakes and balanced around shield utility he could have found a good inbetween for the show to be functional and it be a fun game
PhrogDor rawb
People want to be able to set themselves into the game. Living the show through it makes it feel like you could have been in any of those campaigns along side them. Plus seeing what they do is just fun
PhrogDor rawb
Season 1 did suffer from some god awful.combat speed though too. A lot of became dependent on donations beefing the guys up so first combats were just horrid for awhile
Spooky Phijkchu rawb
Whichever route he picked, it would have been successful, he squandered the chance to be massive, but even as a lot of people were kinda checked out by S3, there was a big enough audience and continued interest
Spooky Phijkchu rawb
The show didn't need higher production value or bigger budgets Rob was obsessed with this idea the show needed professional VAs (and actual women) which is where Spiff came from
PhrogDor rawb
People just like seeing funny guys have fun. That was the draw. Urealms was very unique season 1 wise for being incredibly high stakes with the low health pools, interactivity, and stamina costs for abilities.
PhrogDor rawb
Puppet pals being more basic was funner too because the guys were easy to distinguise, was a fun layer, and seeing janky puppet stuff was more fun than seeing designed stuff
PhrogDor rawb
I honestly wanted more interpretation of the character's looks. I prefered seeing fan art over official art. Plus RadioActiveK's OG art for the side characters being sorta what the community accepted was a sort of nice grass roots thing to see
PhrogDor rawb
But it just being fun. Maybe just adding more depth of generic assets to puppet pals would have been better instead of a bunch of more design. It was always funny hearing the guys in their pre shows season 1 talking about requesting some models occasionally
PhrogDor rawb
Just goes back to it being FUN. I am never into shit feeling super staged. Some times or sections I can get for parts of a finale maybe. The way silver mines was a bit staged felt natural as an example. But just having fun in a ttrpg setting is the best. I still miss doing so a lot in my own time and know it was always the most fun I have had
Dolfin rawb
I do think though that season three cards though were the best, the only problem was the deathroll system being gutted. Deadbones in the above campaign did it right by imposing an increasing deathroll on himself
PhrogDor rawb
Deathrolls were such a good idea in conjunction with the shield system. Shields needed to have more ways of being punched through, but they did make it so squishy characters could be both tankier and still vulnerable. I really liked the fact that a character going down they still had a good chance of dying, but it gave a safeish buffer, but still made them extremely vulnerable if repeated measures were taken at hitting a downed player. Also kinda made it so very dangerous things could be measured in death ranges. Along with the fact that putting them down, but not out allowed for some flexibility in action for killing vs incapacitating the players.
PhrogDor rawb
Replying to PhrogDor #froglandus2
I honestly wanted more interpretation of the character's looks. I prefered seeing fan art over official art. Plus RadioActiveK's OG art for the side characters being sorta what the community accepted was a sort of nice grass roots thing to see (edited)
Had to correct. I meant RadioActiveK
Tecado rawb
I think the spectacle issue is the biggest thing thay tanked the quality of the show, at the end of the day it all comes down to Rob's ego
Tecado rawb
Campaigns had to move the plot further because it all had to build up to the scripted climactic animations and set pieces that rob had for (only his) characters
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Tecado rawb
By the end the campaigns were railroaded so hard that sometimes it felt like the characters didn't matter at all and they were just viewers on Rob's campaign he'd play on his own
Tecado rawb
The best thing about Urealms was how every campaign expanded the world and added characters you'd spent several hours getting attached to
Tecado rawb
When random character from buttfuck plot irrelevant campaign #15 appeared I was like "yooo that's bubblefuck the wizard"
Tecado rawb
but by s3 we didn't follow up on any of those character's stories even when 99% of them were more compelling than Rob's OCs, because player characters were 10x more compelling than the super powerfull character played by Rob we'd then spent like 5+ campaigns focusing on
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Tecado rawb
And then when player characters appeared it would be Rob playing them, completely botching their personalities and never doing anything of plot relevance
Tecado rawb
Even as a kid I remember the last campaign of s3 Coe had by FAR the funniest character of the campaign, and then when the climax came noone got to do anything because it ended on an animation of Rob's character fighting a dragon or some shit
PhrogDor rawb
Replying to Tecado #tecado
When random character from buttfuck plot irrelevant campaign #15 appeared I was like "yooo that's bubblefuck the wizard"
This is why imo Den of Devils wound up being the best URealms campaign. It was a season 2 mix. Nisovin was always a Urealms character in the show. It was what these sort of loose campaigns can line up to in terms of game play and feeling more open ended. I think could have been better in ways, but I think that it was spectacle more built up on throwing characters we all had seen before into a new situation. Player mades and not just the plot characters for the most part.
PhrogDor rawb
I think there are times for more story, but railroading it as hard as he did was a bit much. I think doing so for mechanics sake is what boned the show the most. I became so that combat meant nothing unless deathrolls killed you as they were the only way to effectively do so. Season 1 was always high stakes. I already elaborated on survivability for a show's sake finding some balance with season 2 mechancis. But I think the fall of dundinwhatever was another good example of player characters or their set ups being interesting. It was an amazing point of chance that Milbee dies and has a bear to essentially be his character the rest of the campaign. You don't really get odd stuff happening like that if it is hard railroaded. But the context it was set in as the characters being guards made the more restrictive set up make more sense. Rather than being a little more creative with settitng the scene it drew mostly off nostalgia and heavy railroading conclusions
Tecado rawb
Replying to PhrogDor #froglandus2
I think there are times for more story, but railroading it as hard as he did was a bit much. I think doing so for mechanics sake is what boned the show the most. I became so that combat meant nothing unless deathrolls killed you as they were the only way to effectively do so. Season 1 was always high stakes. I already elaborated on survivability for a show's sake finding some balance with season 2 mechancis. But I think the fall of dundinwhatever was another good example of player characters or their set ups being interesting. It was an amazing point of chance that Milbee dies and has a bear to essentially be his character the rest of the campaign. You don't really get odd stuff happening like that if it is hard railroaded. But the context it was set in as the characters being guards made the more restrictive set up make more sense. Rather than being a little more creative with settitng the scene it drew mostly off nostalgia and heavy railroading conclusions
The shittiest thing about combat becoming meaningless was that they already had a great system when deadrolls went form rolling a 1 to rolling 1-5 to throwing a coin
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Tecado rawb
It's so baffling to me that Urealms as a whole had like 5 different mechanical iterations like that's so much fucking work when everyone agreed that s2 was already great
Tecado rawb
I GMed for years a tabletop RPG I created that like Urealms was simplified and we had different characters every campaign.
LavaLord rawb
See, I don't disagree with the assessment that it didn't need more mechanical upgrades to it but... Okay, I'm in a longform game with a rotating character cast, and it updates like every 2 months with new items, rules changes, character options, etc. It keeps things fresh to change things. (and on a personal writing project side, I've revamped my own setting lore like 17 times over 20 years) Sometimes it's just a matter of never being satisfied with something that's good enough, and at times that results in a net negative.
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