Critical Role’s transformation from a plucky underdog to an established multimedia brand shows the power of TTRPGs. In March 2015, the then fledgling Geek & Sundry network aired the first episode of Critical Role, an Actual Play series featuring a group of voice actors playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Although there have been some minor deviations over the past ten years, Critical Role’s core cast of Matt Mercer, Marisha Ray, Liam O’Brien, Sam Riegel, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Travis Willingham, and Laura Bailey have remained together throughout the show’s entire journey. With that kind of longevity and dedication, Critical Role is more than deserving of our dive into its history and impact in the gaming arena.
How Critical Role Won Its Audience Through an Organic Foundation
Critical Role wasn’t the first high-profile Actual Play show, but it captured lightning in a bottle in a way that few other online could. The show captured thousands of viewers with a deep engaging world and fascinating characters. It has also become a model for success and independence within the content creation space.
Critical Role’s roots are organic and homegrown, with the cast originally coming together to play in a home game of Pathfinder to celebrate Liam O’Brien’s birthday. When Geek & Sundry approached the group about airing their game as a livestream, the group switched over to D&D Fifth Edition. The then-new system was seen as more accessible than the crunchy Pathfinder system. But it also meant that the cast was functionally learning D&D in real time. Instead of launching a brand-new story, the cast picked up their characters and had their viewership jump into the deep end of a fully-fleshed out world.
Critical Role‘s Early Days: Charming Beginnings and Inside Jokes
Critical Role’s earliest episodes were bumpy but have an indescribable charm. The show felt like an idealized game of D&D, with viewers enjoying every in-joke alongside the cast and joining the highs and lows of every session. Not only did these episodes feature high-end combat and deep and complex lore, there were also multi-hour shopping episodes and frequent pit-stops to interact with every NPC (all of whom were given a surprising dearth of personality by DM Matt Mercer.)
The group quickly discovered the balance between engaging with their audience and remaining true to their own storytelling pursuits. Critical Role quickly bought into having a passionate and engaged fanbase, sharing fan art and finding ways to engage with its audience through regular Q&A sessions. However, it never compromised on the types of stories they told. Even to this day, Critical Role’s stories are the stories that its casts want to tell. This is opposed to fishing for fan-favorites or making in-game decisions that would please its fans.
Experimental and Intentional Storytelling Drive Critical Role‘s Success
To this day, Critical Role tells the stories it wants to tell, with the audience just along for the ride. This has led to a bevy of controversial moments within the main campaign. (The average Critical Role chat is filled with real-time discussion on various strategic moves and questions about whether Mercer is pulling punches in major combats.) And, there are also experimental and delightfully weird programs. From a Sam Riegel-led miniseries that catered to kids (and hilariously had a swear jar for the usually bawdy cast) to the strange sci-fi podcast Midst, Critical Role keeps finding places for weird ideas and shows that would get turned down at almost any other outfit.
At its heart, Critical Role succeeded because the show tells compelling stories. The world of Exandria built by Matt Mercer is a fascinatingly complex world filled with competing themes and ambitions. Exandria is built upon the ideas of fallen empires and feuding gods. However, many of the stories told by the principal cast of Critical Role are about found families and overcoming past trauma. The character arcs found in a typical Critical Role campaign may be framed by dragons and demons, but they tackle problems that many of its readers can relate to.
As Critical Role continued to grow, the group strove to maintain its focus on storytelling. The group eventually parted ways with Geek & Sundry to form its own channel, preserving its independence. The fanbase supported them throughout their earliest days, helping to fuel a robust merchandising arm that rivals much larger brands. Over time, Critical Role became the biggest streaming channel on Twitch, with thousands of subscribers joining during the pandemic. Eventually, Critical Role transformed from a streaming show about a group of voice actors playing D&D to a full-fledged brand.
The Dive Into Animation, Resounding Kickstarter Success, and Building a Business
One of Critical Role’s biggest moments was when the group made the push into animation. As a group of voice actors, the group has always had deep connections with various animation teams and partners. They were also vocal about their desire to adapt their various adventures (particularly the tale of Vox Machina, their first group of heroes) into animated form. However, instead of partnering with a streaming platform or studio partner from the outset, Critical Role instead opted to approach its fanbase via a Kickstarter campaign. What initially started as a project to fund a pilot for a Vox Machina animated series became a $11 million monster, enough to fund a full first season of the show.
The success of Critical Role’s Kickstarter led to a lucrative partnership with Amazon Studios, one that has led to multiple seasons of The Legend of Vox Machina. And, there’s also an upcoming animated series based on the Mighty Nein, the subject of the show’s second campaign. These cartoons are not straight adaptations of the campaigns. Instead, they are independent projects that put the characters in new situations and occasionally deviate greatly from the core campaign. It all comes back to telling stories. An animated slate allows for different opportunities and Critical Role doesn’t seem content to rest on their well-earned laurels.
On a technical level, the growth of Critical Role’s business is fascinating. Every move the group makes is deliberate. From its partnerships to its non-D&D campaign programming slate, every move the company makes has a degree of forethought to it. Outside of the game table, Critical Role doesn’t make a lot of daring moves – it instead waits for the right partnerships to emerge that match its ethos.
Many of Critical Role’s partnerships started off on a manageable scale. There were initially smaller deals to make a single comic series or a limited slate of merchandise. However, many of these partnerships have bloomed into much larger slates. Critical Role’s comic line not only features several miniseries published on a yearly basis, but also a slate of graphic novels. Their books with Penguin Random House started with character-focused novels, exploring the space in between stories. That line has now expanded to include an adaptation of Tusk Love, an in-world romance novel that became a running in-joke during their second campaign.
Darrington Press and the Epic Rise of Daggerheart
While these partnerships are key to Critical Role’s growth, much of their ambitions are in-house. Critical Role has its own production company, Metapigeon LLC, which now produces its internal programming slate and helps develop their animated series. They also now have their own tabletop company, Darrington Press. While it would be easy for Darrington Press to stick with making board games that capitalize on the Critical Role IP, the publisher has actually produced several unique and well-reviewed board games like Queen By Midnight.
Darrington Press’ biggest project to date is the tabletop roleplaying game Daggerheart, designed by Spenser Starke. The game is billed as existing in the same space as Dungeons & Dragons but with a careful balance between the improvisational narrative-focused storytelling featured in lighter RPGs and a robust, rules-heavy combat system that promotes synergistic character builds and tag-team combos. Daggerheart is a glorious union of Blades in the Dark and D&D 4th Edition, a game that’s somehow both less and more complex than D&D.
Daggerheart might be Critical Role’s biggest swing since their Kickstarter. Speculation is rampant that the show’s main campaign will switch over to Daggerheart when it resumes at some point later this year. Even if it doesn’t switch over, the sheer size of Critical Role’s fanbase and their brand recognition has turned Daggerheart into a viable alternative to Dungeons & Dragons. Daggerheart is unlikely to unseat D&D from its place as the undisputed titan of tabletop RPGs. But it might be the first viable challenger in a long, long time.
Critical Role‘s Joyful Table of Celebration and Thrilling Stories
Critical Role has always protected its brand. However, it also freely offers seats at the table to other storytellers. Some of Critical Role’s strongest stories have come from outside their core campaign. Two Exandria Unlimited miniseries helmed by Brennan Lee Mulligan (the face of Critical Role’s biggest Actual Play rival Dimension 20) have received high praise and acclaim for their tragic stories and heartbreaking moments. Mulligan used his time on Exandria Unlimited to explore the pantheon of Critical Role in ways rarely explored in fantasy media, showcasing both the unlimited possibilities and the natural limitations that comes with unlimited power.
Critical Role has transformed from a plucky underdog success story to a venerable elder statesman in a constantly changing world of internet content creation. The four-hour streams can be daunting to newcomers. However, the company has built up enough on ramps to draw fans in even if they never watch a single dice roll. From the animated series to comics and books to a very robust fan-driven wiki, Critical Role is probably more accessible now than it was when it only had a few hundred hours of content to run through.
It’s hard to explain exactly why Critical Role is such a success story. The group treats its fanbase as willing passengers on their journey. They never dismissing fans’ role in their success but also does not pander to them. The group maintains its innovative spirit, with new kinds of stories hitting their streaming platforms at least once a year. It moves with deliberate purpose, never going for the easy deal when it comes to licensing. Instead, Critical Role patiently waits for the right project and partner to come along.
But most importantly (at least in my opinion), the group is still fun. Every episode is a joyful celebration of friendship, of success, and remains a group of friends trying to make each other laugh and cry through whatever medium they’re dabbling in that week.
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This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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