So you want to start watching Critical Role but you don't really know where to start because... there's a lot of it.
There are three campaigns, one of them currently ongoing, two
of them complete but very long. There's two podcasts and
neither seems totally complete. The YouTube channel has one-shots and a mini-series and a bunch of other shows on it and honestly you're starting to wonder what's the appeal and where do I start and what do I do. Well, let's answer those questions.
Let's go through Critical Role beat-by-beat, figure out what it is, and where you should start.
("Critical Role" theme song plays) First of all, what we now know
as Critical Role started as a home game played by some voice actors.
Matthew Mercer. Liam O'Brien. Laura Bailey. Taliesin Jaffe. Ashley Johnson. Sam
Riegel. Marisha Ray. Travis Willingham. And Orion Acaba... more on him later.
It started as a home game for Liam's birthday but quickly became an ongoing campaign.
For those curious i believe it started in 4th edition D&D, quickly moved
to Pathfinder because that was a more popular edition at the time.
If you don't know what any of that means, don't worry about it, we'll cover it in another video but honestly it doesn't matter that much. They switched to 5th edition
D&D right before they started streaming on Geek & Sundry's Twitch channel.
Which leads us to the first place you can start, which is the first episode of the first
campaign that they started streaming and I think this is the worst answer.
("Critical Role" theme song plays) You can start here, you totally can.
It's where most of us started. I just think it's actually
a pretty bad place to start. First of all, we start in
the middle of the action. They do not create new characters, they did not start a new story or really even a new story arc. The plot hook for the story they're going on clearly happened at home, whoever gave them the mission that happened in a home game.
Now we can write this off as they didn't know it was going to be successful, and that's fine, but I still think that holds a lot of people back from starting at episode one.
Now they obviously realized that this is going to be a bit daunting for new audiences,
especially since there are eight player characters and all of this backstory both from before they started playing together, both their characters' backstories and what they had been through.
So they put together these character backstory videos narrated by each of
the players, in character, describing their perspective on what they'd been through.
These are a ton of fun, although unfortunately, nobody thought, "Hey, we should be
careful about what images we use because we don't have the rights to use some of them."
So, they used not only art of their own characters that they had commissioned, but art from 4th edition, 5th edition, third party, Pathfinder; they used whatever art they felt fit the video.
That would have been fine if this was purely for their own home game, but it wasn't.
And they didn't really think people would be watching or paying attention, so
they didn't think it was a big deal. But it turns out the show took off it became a pretty big deal and people did eventually realize what they had done and come
and say, "Hey, please don't do this." So now when you watch those early
episodes, all of that is blurred. These 15-minute character intros are fuzzy
and, you know, you don't get the same effect. Which is actually one of the only selling points I have for the podcast version, because in podcast form that first episode is just 15 minutes of character introductions and that's fine. Because it doesn't happen at the
beginning of every episode now, it's only for that one episode,
and you don't need to have any visuals because it's a podcast.
This will be the last nice thing I will say about the Geek and Sundry
version of the Critical Role podcast. Now, if you really do want to start with
campaign one, the Vox Machina story, episode one... I actually recommend you find a video they released around episode 30ish, because it's going to be kind of important.
(Kevin MacLeod's "The Pyre") It's called "The Story of Vox Machina." It's no longer available from Geek and Sundry's YouTube channel, but there is a fan sub version, I'll put that in the links below. All these start points will be listed
in the links below, by the way. They put this out right around the time they ended the Briarwood arc around episode 35. This was the end of 2015 and they knew -
at least Matt knew - going into 2016 that the stories coming up would involve things that had happened in their pre-stream home game. Not only characters, but actually
events would become relevant again. These weren't just things we could hand wave
and say, "Oh, you don't need to know any more than what we're telling you."
It would actually be relevant to know some of the backstory.
Additionally people had just been asking for it, for a better way than these
15 minutes of individually narrated character introductions with a blurry image over them.
They wanted something more substantial, and a little bit more dramatic.
I actually think the Story of Vox Machina, it's sort of disappointing that it's not up anymore
because it was really valuable, and I think there is a real brilliance to putting that out.
I wish they'd done it earlier, although I think once they'd realized their success was the perfect time to invest in a little bit of animation. But I also think they should
have done it a little more often. And eventually we got some version
of that with the Critical Role Recap, which animates the Mighty Nein campaign.
But I really do like the Story of Vox Machina video, and I think that it helps, I
think it really helps you get some backstory. Now, if you want this backstory through another fashion, maybe dramatized a little bit more through a modern lens, they're actually publishing comics through Dark Horse that cover a lot of stuff before the stream began, with some tweaks.The first story arc, the first six issues, are a fictionalized version of
how the group came together. I mean, it's all fictionalized, but
you know, invented for the comic book. When their game started, they
didn't really worry about that. They just kind of all knew each other.
But now that they have a lot more investment in the story, they put
together a possible explanation for how the group came together on this first
adventure, and that's the first story arc. Now that includes Tiberius, played by Orion Acaba, who is in the first 27 episodes of the stream. He does not continue with the group so once
they moved on and started doing more parts of the backstory, Tiberius quickly leaves
and we just remove him from the narrative. So technically these aren't 100% canonical with what happened leading up to the stream, but they are the accepted narrative.
Because we are more or less writing Tiberius out. We'll come back to the Tiberius problem.
So if you're going to start with the beginning of Vox Machina, I actually recommend you start with this video, which came out a little later, and then jump in to the first episode.
IF you want to start with episode one, which you might not want to...
for a few reasons.
("Critical Role" theme song) One: The sound is bad, the audio is bad.
It's not only because they don't have the right microphone setup, it's the fact that
there is so much crosstalk, so much going on, everyone is eating, no one is focused.
It feels much more like their home games, I'm sure, and that's fine, but there's
nine people that we're watching, and it is frustrating to watch.
The other reason you may not need to start here is because nothing that really happens in these first 11 or 12 episodes is that relevant. I mean, they will continue to reference it, and
the introduction of Kima is fun, but you don't need it really to understand the story.
The first story arc that they go on is about 13 episodes, and it features them going
into the Underdark - which they do not own, it's a Wizards of the Coast thing -
fighting mind flayers and other monsters, all these things they don't have
the rights to portray in other ways. Now, that's not a problem; we don't
blur out the games, by any means. But it just means we're not
going to see that adapted. This is not a story that's going to show up in the comics and it's certainly not going to show up in the animation, because they just jumped over it. And again, this is where there is the most difficulty, with the most number
of players there at any given time, the most crosstalk, the worst audio.
You can pretty much skip this story arc. Is the show bad when you
start here? No, not at all. It's just not a hundred percent watchable.
The next story involves them going to another continent and fighting monsters, and there's
some really good stuff here, do not get me wrong. The team gets split up, we have guest stars,
there's some really fun monster stuff. But it is not perfect, and Tiberius
continues to be a bit of a sour puss, and more on that later.
So, you can watch this story arc, there is stuff that will come back
later, but it's not required viewing. This is why most Critters recommend -Critters, by the way, are the fans of Critical Role. Most Critters recommend you
start with episode 24, The Feast. ("Critical Role" theme song plays) This is, incidentally, pretty close to
where the new cartoon starts, because it's where the stream got really really good.
Now you can totally start here, but just know that the next three episodes are some of the
worst for Tiberius, he is at his most frustrating, his most difficult... He is a problem player by
this point in the stream. Which is why he leaves after episode 27, and shortly thereafter
it is revealed that Orion Acaba has left the cast, and has left the show.
There are other reasons for this, and we will talk about them, but
for now all you need to know is that... you CAN start with episode 24... but there is some more Tiberius during that period, and it's kind of the worst of the Tiberius run.
Episode 28, "The Sun Tree," mercifully, he is gone.
And to be honest, by this point the show has pretty much
figured out most of its technical issues. There's still some growth that happens
over the course of that first campaign. The goal of that first campaign is really
making it as watchable as possible, and it takes a while for us to get there.
The removal of Tiberius does help, because that reduces the amount of crosstalk quite a bit. The microphones get better as the show becomes more successful.
Now at this point, you can kind of jump in anywhere in
campaign one, although... that's a lot. I will totally acknowledge,
that is a lot of story. So, if you want to skip campaign one, you can.
I personally love campaign one, it's my favorite of the campaigns so far, although I
am greatly enjoying campaign three. But campaign one is a huge time commitment, and additionally,
the beginning is very rocky. Now, you might be tempted to say, "Well,
I can just listen to it as a podcast," and yes, you can... However.
MATT: The Critical Role podcast, brought to you by Geek and Sundry, with
special permission from Vox Machina. If you're going to listen to it as a
podcast, I would say listen to that beginning backstory episode that I mentioned, the character intros narrated
by the cast as their characters, that is a lot of fun.
... And then, just skip ahead, skip way ahead, in fact I would say at this point, just watch
the cartoon, the first season of the cartoon, and then start around episode 37.
And, I'm not joking, it is so much better that way.
The reason that I say that, the reason that I have so much disdain for the first campaign as a podcast form, is because it is so half-assed. Around the time they reached
episode 100, they finally, finally, FINALLY started putting out the show
as a podcast, which people had been asking for. And they really, really half-assed it.
And I think this is more a Geek and Sundry problem, but I think it is telling
that there was not a lot of investment in making the podcast good.
They just wanted to have a version of it that was a podcast.
Something you need to know about the way the show is formatted is that, at the
beginning, there's anywhere from 5 to 10, to 15 minutes of introduction and lead up before you get to whatever the theme song is for that campaign. You know, there's just a lot to catch
up on, a lot of announcements, and they want to get it all out of the way up front.
That is up to you if that's something that bothers you, it doesn't bother me but I get it
if that's something that people bounce off of. And for the podcast, they omit all of
that, which is - in theory - smart. In fact, in some cases I'd say it's necessary.
This is where they put all their sponsored ads, and they did not make any deal to
have these sponsors also advertised a year or two later on a podcast.
So, yeah, cut that stuff out, makes perfect sense. Except episode 1 of the campaign, they cut
out everything before the introductions, which includes the introduction of what the show is.
There is no intro from Matt saying we've been playing at home for a while, these are established characters who already
know each other, and we already are in the middle of an adventure. There is no going around
the table and introducing people's names and who they're playing.
There is nothing to orient an audience. So when you jump into episode one of the podcast, you are completely lost and completely unmoored. This has been fixed by the time they get to
campaign two, I'm sure whatever deals they made with their sponsors, they have worked out now where they will also appear on the podcast. So they're they're making
their arrangements accordingly, so now, basically everything that airs on their
YouTube channel also appears in their podcast. Minus the mid-roll in the middle where
they go and take a bathroom break,
thankfully that is cut out of the podcast, of course.
But it's... it is such a challenge to start campaign one with the podcast,
because you don't know what's going on. And yes, you have that introductory
story of here's who the characters are, but you don't get any of the players names,
except for the show notes, I suppose. But you also do not get any sense of what
they've been doing, you don't get the Story of Critical Role yet, the Story of Vox Machina,
because they... hadn't made it? No, they had, of course they had, they just didn't use it.
I don't know, it's a baffling choice, and it bothers me so much.
Because that's why people bounce off of the first campaign.
And additionally, if you are only listening
to the audio, it is impossible to ignore the crosstalk,
is impossible to ignore the bad microphones. It's just, it's not a good way
to start the show on episode one. Another reason why the audio is often so
challenging during campaign one is because Ashley Johnson is not present, she is
filming a show called Blindspot for a good chunk of campaign one and two.
But the solution during campaign one was often to Skype her in from New York, which means that's another added wrinkle of
audio issues. With campaign two, they never Skyped her in,
they just had her present when she was present, and not when she wasn't.
Campaign one also has a lot more people missing sessions, especially early on, but even in the 60s or 70s of the episodes, people would still have to miss episodes.
And they'd join by Skype. Because that happens more often, it
does bring the sound quality down a bit. For campaign two, Ashley only joined while she was physically present and did not ever Skype in, so in a way that helps the audio quality for
campaign two in a way that's kind of unfair. If you want to listen to the
podcast, definitely skip the first 20-ish episodes, start around 24 is
fine, start around 28 maybe smarter. But I would honestly say, watch the cartoon
("The Legend of Vox Machina" theme song) There is a cartoon on Amazon Prime
called the Legend of Vox Machina, and it's good. It's genuinely good.
Like, I'm a Critter, I'm a fan of the show, but I am also someone who has been
thinking for a decade about what you might do if you were going to do
an animated version of a D&D story, how would you do that.
And they did a really good job of it. It doesn't cut away to the players, but it
does feel like the energy of a D&D game. It is a very faithful
interpretation of their story. It skips over the first two story arcs, and jumps in with the Briarwood arc around episode 24. Well, it has a little bit of pre-stream
stuff because that'll be relevant as well, but that's like two episodes,
and then we're in the Briarwood arc, which is a beloved story arc, because that's the first
really solid, meaty emotional story on the stream. And I really do recommend
you start with the cartoon. If you're going to get invested in the
Vox Machina story, the cartoon is probably the best way to do it.
But I will acknowledge, it's a different experience.
The story is the same, faithful, incredibly faithful, in fact improved,
not only for the omission of Tiberius, but for the inclusion of proper setup,
and a different pacing, and just making
everything a little bit tighter and a little bit more linear.
Narratively, it's a really well done adaptation, it's one of the best adaptations
of anything, I will say. Unless you are enjoying Critical
Role not for the story, but for the players and the dynamic around the table.There are Critters who feel
dissatisfied with the Legend of Vox Machina, some, not a lot but some. And the reason they cite is
because it doesn't feel the same, it's not a good
substitute for watching the show. Now, I would argue, yes, it is, in fact it's
a vast improvement over watching the show because of all the issues I mentioned before.
Especially because season one of the cartoon covers the period of the stream game where
there's the most challenges, changing players and changing microphones and changing the set. All of that is happening at the same time, and they're making it better
they're making it more watchable. But you can strip all of that away
and the story in its refined form is interpreted for us via the cartoon.
But not everyone is watching Critical Role for the story.
I do, and a lot of Critters do, and I think that's what separates Critical Role from other
popular live streams, but there are some people who are really only enjoying Critical Role with
that parasocial relationship with the cast, of having them at the table playing their characters. That's the dynamic they enjoy. In the words of one of the theme
songs from the second campaign, they are "your nerdy best friends."
So yes, I understand why for those Critters, the cartoon is not the substitute,
because I suspect they enjoy more the dynamic of the players and the fun at the
table, and having Matt be a part of that, than the way the story plays out necessarily.
I don't happen to agree, but if that is how you feel, then yes, you may want to muscle through some of those tougher episodes and start around episode 24, and enjoy that story arc.
That is ultimately up to you, I cannot make that decision for you.
("Your Turn to Roll" theme song plays) Then the Vox Machina storyline
ends after episode 115. It's a really good story arc, it made me cry.
But you may feel, very understandably, that that is too much content.
Even if you start around episode 24,
that is still hundreds of hours of content, multiple hundreds. Yes. Yeah. That's true. That's fair. Vox Machina as a whole runs 373 hours
long, and yeah, if you listen to it through a podcast or double-speed on
YouTube, it can go a little faster. But you may want to start with a
story that begins at the beginning, with these characters all getting to know
each other, seeing these dynamics develop. That's where you get campaign two.
Campaign two, aka the Mighty Nein campaign, ran for 141 episodes.
Which, yes, is 530 hours of content. It's good, though, it is actually really good.
I personally have my own quibbles, but we'll deal with those in another video, all you
need to know is it's really well done. If the mission statement while they were
making campaign one was, "is this watchable"... Which yes, people were watching, but they
wanted to make it as watchable as possible, and really reduce the barrier to entry...
I think campaign two's big question became "Are we responsible?"
Part of that includes better representation, both in the NPCs that Matt creates, in the
player characters that the players create, and in the guest stars they have.
You don't have as many white guy guest stars in campaign two, not none but barely any.
There are some caveats in this issue of responsibility, especially with the fact that
Marisha plays a character who is essentially of a different race than her, something that
eventually became something that became a little bit more discussed in the D&D community. But, you know, that that is
a choice that was made that I don't think they would recreate.
Additionally, that issue of responsibility also goes to being responsible for their own content and being responsible for their own company. So, part way through campaign two, they
left Geek and Sundry. They started their own channel. They started their own business.
They started making their own content, and now they are responsible... for good and for ill... for whatever happens under their banner. No longer are they at the whims of when Geek and Sundry wants to hide content behind a paywall on Alpha, which is a whole thing that happened.
They could make deals to publish books with Wizards of the Coast, which they did during
campaign two, they published the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, a very popular RPG book for your Dungeons & Dragons games,
put out by the folks who make Dungeons & Dragons.
And you can totally just jump into [campaign two] and enjoy it as its own.
There will be references to campaign one, including some spoilers, so if you ever
have an intention of enjoying campaign one, I recommend holding off on campaign two.
But this is a really good starting point, and this is also where the podcast gets
good and listenable and enjoyable... What a novel concept that was.
It is still split over two feeds, I believe but there's a link in the doobly-doo below to where you can find all those early episodes, everything is still available just isn't all
in the Critical Role feed until episode 19. Again for campaign 2, Ashley Johnson does
miss a lot of games, it's deliberately designed as a part of her character though.
And finally, finally by the end of the series, she is done with the Blindspot show
and she can just join full-time... Just in time for a lockdown of COVID and
missing a bunch of games, because they all missed a bunch of games, because they
didn't play games for a couple months. But she's back full time, and that is a vast
improvement in the future of Critical Role. Now, if campaign two was all about the question,
"Is this responsible," which I guess is open for debate, but that's what I believe...
Then after campaign two, the big question I think became, "Is this scalable?"
Or, if you prefer, "Is this franchisable?" Aka, what is the future of Critical Role?
Will Critical Role continue to be able to function without Matt as the dungeon master? This is a common problem for actual play shows to deal with. I think the Adventure Zone suffers from it pretty strongly, because there was a real push back
against anything except for that first campaign, especially anything not run by Griffin. For
lots of reasons, some valid and some not. But we're not really talking
about the Adventure Zone today. This brings us to Exandria Unlimited, an
eight-part mini-series that ran during the summer of 2021 run by Aabria
Iyengar and not Matthew Mercer. The cast brings in four people of color because Critical Role didn't really have any on-screen, which is a valuable choice, I think.
There are three cast members of Exandria Unlimited who are main series cast, that's
Matthew Mercer, because of course we want to see him as a player, since we only ever
get to see him as a DM, except in one shots. Ashley Johnson, because she had missed so
many games, it really only seems fair to have her in this mini-series.
And Liam O'Brien, because as someone put it on twitter... he'll be damned
if someone gets to play D&D without him present. Now Exandria Unlimited was not incredibly popular, and I don't have a really good compelling reason to tell you why that is the case.
I think Exandria Unlimited is good... it is different.
The tone of it is different, the style is different.
That could potentially be what some people are bouncing off of, it could be the parasocial
dynamic from before, it could be that mid-2021 was a pretty turbulent time for a lot of people. I myself was getting ready to get married, and there was a lot of wedding prep happening, so I did not get a chance to watch Exandria Unlimited, most of it, until after the wedding.
Do I think it deserves the inattention it got? No, I don't.
But I think that that was a troubling moment to see that there was this resistance to what the potential future of Critical Role could be outside of one main campaign run by Matt Mercer
with the same seven people at the table. ("It's Thursday Night" theme song plays)
Thankfully, campaign three does address this a little bit they bring in Robbie Daymond
as his character from Exandria Unlimited, and he's there as a guest star, and he's great,
he's wonderful, he should be a main cast member. But they are trying to figure out,
I believe, what they're going to do about the future of Critical Role.
So, you could totally start with Exandria Unlimited, and while I don't think that would
be an accurate representation of what the show is like, it would still be a fun adventure.
Or you can just start with campaign three, but I will acknowledge that campaign three
relies a lot on knowledge of campaign one. It's not dependent on it, you can totally
understand what's going on without that, but there are some things that are very
deliberate references to campaign one. I suspect this is because they are making a
cartoon about campaign one that was coming out at the same time, and either this was on their mind because they were recording lines from that campaign, or they wanted some business synergy. Honestly, either answer is totally fine, it is totally valid for campaign three
to reference lore from campaign one. While that may make it a bit more
impenetrable to new viewers, it also enriches the experience and the world.
There's some value there, I think. So, is there a right answer on how
to catch up with Critical Role? That's up to you.
It's up to what you're looking for from the experience.
If you just want the story, then you can just enjoy the cartoon or the comic books and
then jump in around episode 37 of campaign one, or even skip all of that and
just jump into campaign two. You could even just skip
to campaign three, because it's a great place to start, it totally is.
Now, here's the other question:
can you catch up with all of Critical Role?
I don't know. I mean yes, you can. Should you?
I don't know, that's up to you. You can totally watch everything they've produced, I've watched just about
everything they've made except, for a couple of one-shots based
on video games I don't care about. And the Wendy's one-shot that doesn't exist.
But my goal here is not to say what you should or shouldn't do, simply to give you
the options to avail yourself of it. Also, it depends on why you
want to watch Critical Role. Do you just want to be part of the conversation? You can probably get away
with watching the show, reading recaps of it, or watching the
Critical Role Recaps they do for
campaign two. Or there are channels that just post clips
of the shows, and there are animatics, there are wonderful animatics put together by fans.
In fact, that is how I think Critical Role started their journey to eventually having animated
content of their own, leading to an Amazon Prime show, it was just through fan animations.
But these are just my suggestions on some places you can start watching Critical Role.
I hope you've enjoyed this, I'm going to have a lot more Critical
Role-related content coming out shortly, I have a lot of thoughts and a lot to say.
If you liked this video, please subscribe and hit the Like button and leave a comment, and let me know how you started with Critical Role, or where you plan to start, or if you have
questions. I'm happy to answer them there. Thank you so much for watching...
play fair, and have fun.
