Worlds will soon collide for fans of tabletop roleplaying games as a major shakeup in the actual play community just hit. Critical Role returns! Albeit with some massive changes.
During a live show in Indiana tonight, the cast of Critical Role announced their newest campaign (and fourth overall) will begin airing live on Oct. 2 and will break away from the existing lore of Exandria to introduce a new world. But more shocking is the news that the company’s founding member and primary Game Master, Matthew Mercer, won’t be leading charge — instead replaced by another beloved player, Dimension 20’s Brennan Lee Mulligan.
In an accompanying release, Critical Role confirmed that Mulligan will be take on the role of Game Master for the full duration of the campaign (rather than a guest stint), and reiterated that the campaign’s new direction with leave the ongoing saga and narrative continuity of Exandria behind for a “bold evolution for the franchise, ushering in a new era with new legends to be forged in a brand new world.” Critical Role’s previous three campaigns (Vox Machina, The Mighty Nein, and Bells Hells) all told independent stories that were connected by a singular universe and shared history.
Travis Willingham, a founding member of the TTRPG troupe and CEO of Critical Role Productions, issued a statement saying, “We’ve been enormous fans of Brennan’s for many years now, and when it came to giving both Matthew Mercer and the world of Exandria a bit of a breather, Brennan felt like the perfect storyteller to take our community somewhere entirely new.”
The announcement comes as a time when many fans — and the cast members themselves — have wondered what the future of the actual play show and company looks like. Celebrating their tenth anniversary this year, Critical Role has become a cultural phenomenon and partially helped revitalize the tabletop community in media.
The cast of Critical Role (back row: Ashley Johnson, Marisha Ray, Travis Willingham, Sam Riegel; front row: Taliesin Jaffe, Laura Bailey, Matthew Mercer, and Liam O’Brien)
The group of voice actors (including Sam Riegel, Travis Willingham, Laura Bailey, Liam O’Brien, Ashley Johnson, Taliesin Jaffe, Marisha Ray, and Matthew Mercer) began livestreaming their Dungeons & Dragons play sessions back in 2015, amassing a huge following on Twitch, that’s subsequently grown into an entertainment juggernaut with multiple animated series, digital spin-off shows, comics, novelizations, and more.
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Teased in conversation with Rolling Stone last year, Critical Role recently confirmed that they’ve begun work on a video game, in addition to launching their own proprietary tabletop game called Daggerheart, which was used as the framework for the group’s latest actual play mini-series, Age of Umbra. At this time, it’s unclear if Campaign 4 will utilize the Daggerheart system or if it’ll stick to Dungeons & Dragons.
The inclusion of Mulligan is huge, but not entirely surprising. A well-established Game Master and comedian, Mulligan created Dimension 20 for streaming service Dropout, which quickly became its own titanic success; Dimension 20 even sold-out Madison Square Garden for a live play one-shot earlier this year.
Although he’s appeared as a guest on Critical Role’s show, Mulligan’s lead role in Campaign 4 is akin to an Avengers-level crossover in the tabletop community. Both Critical Role and Dimension 20 have established huge fan bases with parasocial relationships to the casts, stoking fear of what Critical Role’s show will look like once its founding members ultimately move on.
But the writing has been on the wall for some time, especially for Mercer. Speaking with Rolling Stone previously, the Critical Role CCO suggested that he may eventually movie into a “Professor X” role as a mentor to the next generation of storytellers rather than remaining the face of the brand in perpetuity.
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“It’s been a process of introducing friends and new faces into the community. ‘Look, we love them. If you like us, we know you’ll learn to love them too,’” Mercer said to Rolling Stone. “It’s less about us going away and more about bringing more friends into the fold.”
Critical Role’s third campaign ended earlier this year, with all episodes currently available on the group’s YouTube channel and subscription service Beacon. New episodes of Critical Role can be watched live on Beacon, Twitch, and YouTube when Campaign 4 launches on Oct. 2.
