How Critical Role became a critical hit

Critical Role announced that they’re making their long-awaited Campaign 3 announcement this Thursday at 9 am PST on their Twitch channel. But before we jump into the newest campaign, let’s discuss exactly how Critical Role became such a success.

Earlier this year, I spent the first six months of 2021 watching over 500 hours of Critical Role as I binged their second campaign. You might ask yourself, why would you do that?

Well, I asked myself the exact same thing, and it turned into this: A deep dive into what makes Critical Role so captivating, especially as they’ve carved out their own unique space in popular culture.

Critical Role: Actual play as a new media category

Critical Role is, in and of itself, a really unique piece of media. It’s part of a new form of content called “actual play,” which is a recording of a tabletop roleplay game session that’s uploaded or streamed online. Some argue that Critical Role is partially responsible for the massive boom in popularity of this type of content, with many other shows like The Adventure Zone and Dimension 20 flourishing as well.

What started out as a home game turned into an insanely popular weekly stream, a huge YouTube presence, a comic book series, and even an upcoming animated show on Prime Video. Led by popular voice actor Matthew Mercer, the group, which consists of professional voice actors Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Liam O’Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham, has been streaming since 2015 and has amassed a massive following in these past six years.

Though, despite all this success, no matter which way you slice it, 1,000+ hours of content over both the Vox Machina and Mighty Nein campaigns is overwhelming. For some perspective, Grey’s Anatomy’s 17 seasons combine for a total runtime of only 272 hours and 33 minutes. So, what is it about Critical Role that makes the time investment worth it to so many?

For starters, there are two critical media analysis concepts that I think work well to break down the appeal of Critical Role in a more clinical way, both of which were created by Brian L. Ott and Robert L. Mack.

Critical Role: User participation

Because of the medium Critical Role uses, either the purely audio podcast version or the video recording, the audience isn’t actually looking at the characters or the scene when they’re consuming their content. Rather, the audience, as Critical Role’s game master (GM) Matthew Mercer describes the scene, is forced to imagine everything that’s happening.

I say “forced” because it’s a restriction of the medium, but it’s the opposite of a negative side effect. This type of participation, where the audience sees the action in their mind’s eye, leaves the visual enjoyment of the content up to the viewer.

This experience is something that can’t be found within the mediums of TV or film and, instead, is a shared experience with things like books and audiobooks. In fact, it’s the exact same concept. The pleasure that comes from imagining an entire world from just verbal or written description is what keeps readers reading, and, now, it’s what keeps Critical Role fans watching.

Critical Role: User-created content

As long as fandoms have been around, people in those fandoms have used their own talents to create content related to whatever media they are fans of.

Critical Role’s active fanbase, known as Critters, do the exact same thing, maybe even more so than those that came before them. As stated earlier, Critical Role is unique in that it’s not a visual medium, so some Critters will take it upon themselves to make it a visual medium.

But why? Well, every moment on Critical Role essentially acts as a prompt for the fan to fill in whichever way they can or want to. That might include things like fan songs, cosplays, art, videos, and any other medium they choose.

On YouTube, some Critical Role fan animations, known as animatics, have views in the millions, and there’s no shortage of them. Aside from animated takes on these characters, Critters have created fan art since the very beginning across their two campaigns and many one-shots.

The constant stream of fan art is not only beneficial to the fan, but also for Critical Role as a brand. During their streams, they highlight fan art with a reel at the break, and their merchandise is always either commissioned or licensed art from fans.

This creates an incredible symbiotic relationship between the fans and the company; Critical Role creates content that allows for infinite creative freedom for fans, and in return, they get insanely good works that are then monetized and used to further the brand. It’s a win-win.

Critical Role: Incredible performances

Besides the unique nature of their content and how it fosters fan creativity in really positive ways, Critical Role is also just good. Due to the cast’s clear talent for voice acting, they’re able to bring a level of professionalism to the table that’s hard to come by in the genre.

Laura Bailey, known for her BAFTA-winning performance as Abby in The Last of Us: Part II, is a highlight of the series for me.

One moment in particular, what most Critical Role fans would call the best moment in its six-year history, is during episode 93 of campaign 2, where Jester makes a deal with a hag to reverse her friend Nott’s curse.

She outsmarts both the hag and the GM by using an item called the Dust of Deliciousness to give the hag disadvantage on wisdom checks in order to modify her memory. By some miracle, it actually works, and Jester makes the hag believe that she enjoyed her company so much that she agreed to undo Nott’s curse.

Laura isn’t the only cast member that’s incredible at roleplay and improv. With iconic quotes like, “I have so many flowers to bring to her,” from Ashley Johnson’s Yasha about collecting flowers for her dead wife, and, “Pain doesn’t make people, it’s love that makes people,” from Taliesin Jaffe’s Caduceus to campaign villain Trent Ikithon, it’s impossible to stop this show and these characters from worming their way into your heart and making a home there.

Across both the Vox Machina and the Mighty Nein campaigns, Critical Role has told heartbreaking and heartwarming stories, ones that feel impossible to achieve in any other medium.

Critical Role: It’s almost TV, but not quite

Television and film are held down by budget and time restraints, but Critical Role works outside of those limits with their 3-5 hour weekly episodes and limitless possibilities. Additionally, the improvised nature of the show allows for moments that feel earned in a way that’s hard to achieve in film and TV, and make for some moments that you simply couldn’t make up.

For example, at the end of the second campaign, the Mighty Nein fought long and hard to defeat their BBEG (big bad evil guy) Lucien, a reanimated version of their dead friend Mollymauk, who the audience watched die in episode 26. Over 100 episodes and three years later, Jaffe’s Caduceus cast Divine Intervention and actually succeeded, beating the 16% chance he had of doing so. With this success, he was able to ask the Wild Mother to bring Mollymauk back, and with a much better roll from Mercer than the natural 1 he rolled previously, Mollymauk was resurrected.

The audience being able to watch as major emotional beats are left up to chance allows the tension to feel palpable because it truly is uncertain what direction the dice may allow a scene to go. This is something nearly impossible to achieve, especially on television, since the audience knows, most of the time, that things will always work out for the main character.

While Critical Role is incredibly different from film and TV, it’s not much different from other content on Twitch, where they stream all their shows before posting them on YouTube.

Critical Role: New age of live content on Twitch

Over the course of 2020, Twitch itself saw a live viewership increase of 50% from the first to the second quarter of the year, with a 60% increase in comparison to those same months in 2019. In April of 2020, Twitch nearly hit 2 billion total watch hours for that month alone. This pandemic side effect, which saw more people at home and with more time on their hands than ever before, allowed Twitch streamers to thrive, and Critical Role was no exception.

Many people saw the world basically stopping in March of 2020 as the inspiration to finally pull the trigger and start the daunting task of watching Critical Role campaign 2 from the beginning, as evident by the many “pandemic catch-up crew” comments on their YouTube videos. In a way, the pandemic helped Critical Role reach new audiences and eventually, new heights. Between March of 2020 and March of 2021, Critical Role gained over 300,000 subscribers on YouTube, and saw an increase of 135 million video views in that same time period.

Critical Role: Community camaraderie

Though Critical Role may have benefited from the pandemic, they also helped their audience survive it. In a time where we were all suddenly ripped away from our family and friends, isolated from those we love, the hours of real-time gameplay between eight friends could help fill the void.

It allowed their audience to feel like they were a part of their game, and maybe even be inspired to start their own. It opened up endless online communities for new fans, all discussing and dissecting Critical Role and bonding over the story and characters. Catching up with the series genuinely feels like accomplishing something, and this uniquely Critical Role experience allowed fans to bond with those that have done the same.

In addition, Critical Role has fostered not only just a welcoming community, but an inclusive one, and they’ve made a visible effort to do so.

Within the Mighty Nein campaign alone, five of the eight player characters fall on the LGBTQ spectrum, and the show does not shy away from including others as well. Mercer uses a variety of sexualities, gender expressions, and pronouns for the various non-player characters (NPCs) the Mighty Nein meet throughout the campaign, and their pointed inclusion feels natural.

Also in the second campaign, Mercer’s NPC Dagen Underthorn used a combat wheelchair as he led them through the icy landscape of Aeor and its surrounding tundra. By creating a game-world where everyone is welcome, Critical Role has created an out-of-game community that does the exact same thing, and it’s a really cool thing to see.

What’s next for Critical Role?

Though they took a short break during the beginning of the pandemic last year, it didn’t do much to slow them down.

It was just announced that Critical Role will be virtually attending New York Comic Con to give fans a sneak peek at their upcoming The Legend of Vox Machina animated series. It’s speculated that they will also finally drop a release date for the highly anticipated series, which was picked up for two seasons by Amazon Prime Video in 2019 after their Kickstarter broke records by raising over $11 million.

They also have a novel releasing in October of this year titled Critical Role: Vox Machina — Kith & Kin, which follows twins Vex and Vax of Vox Machina. Additionally, be on the lookout for their upcoming Mighty Nein Origins graphic novels and Vox Machina Origins series 3 issues.

And, of course, their third campaign announcement is just days away.

With all this content coming and no matter the reason, it’s undeniable that Critical Role has become a monster hit. What started out as eight nerdy friends playing together around a table has become a community and an empire, and it’s clear that in terms of success, they’ve rolled a natural 20.