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So the series based on the first campaign of Critical Role is out with the first three episodes out on Amazon Prime Video.

First thing I'd probably warn is that this series is super seriously extremely not for kids. The original campaign was pretty graphic and loaded with cursing and sex jokes and to be honest it's a bit more visceral with visual aids XD

Honestly though it's kind of just okay? Unsurprisingly, translating a RPG campaign into another medium produces something that is kind of the definition of humdrum. Without the commentary from the actors, the interplay of the game itself, and the fun of watching/listening to people have fun (which I think is a niche thing to begin with), this series is kind of just generic fantasy with a lot more sex jokes. Like Invincible it's not really afraid of being graphic either, almost to the point that it can be a bit over the top. Excellent voice acting kind of fails to carry the characters and plot on its own IMO, and most of the appeal here is nostalgic.

I suspect that unless you were/are really into Critical Role, the appeal of this series might be limited.

Honestly though it's kind of just okay?

Same, with some caveats.

1- I've watched all of the campaigns (or more accurately, had them on in the background while doing something else). The advantage to this format is it clears out a lot of RPG table off-topic shenanigans, and gets down to the meat of the arc.

But... the campaign 1 characters are largely boring, even for D&D characters. Scanlan is an oversexed bard stereotype, Vex is just in it for the money, Vax... never got a visible motivation beyond 'be secretive and sad.' I could go on, but aspiring but naive future leader, door kicking barbarian, dark past guy and so on don't really need explanation. The only one who really grew as a result of the new format is Pike, but that's because her player wasn't physically present for most of the campaign, and never really went for the spotlight anyway.

On the other hand, they probably picked the absolute best arc of the entire first campaign to turn into a show. But also its really dark, so yeah, not for kids warning is very valid.

2- They picked up some tremendous voice talent (in addition to the main cast), including people that are surprising (David Tennant is on for the first two eps, for example)

3- They basically ditch all of the mechanics (and D&D serial numbers) and wrap a far more focused story around it. We're only 3 episodes in, and the first two are basically introduction and pre-campaign filler that mostly sets up a theoretical (?) second season's arc.

And by virtue of the tighter structure of an animated story, doing the Briarwood arc in 9 ~25 minute episodes rather than fething 30+ hours (about ten live play sessions averaging 3 and a half hours each, with really slow combat encounters) is probably a lot more watchable for most people.

Episodes 4-6 will drop tomorrow, then 3 more each week until the 18th.

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Right now, I'd say wait (and ignore reviews, because the fanbase is active and spammy) and see what its like at the end. There is a lot of potential, but the intro is pretty ho hum, and the audience is introduced to the party as 'what a bunch of violent, deadbeat murderhobos.'

Voss wrote:

Honestly though it's kind of just okay?

But... the campaign 1 characters are largely boring, even for D&D characters.

This is true. The cast and stories improve in subsequent campaigns (Wildemount got its own setting book, Tal'Dorei didn't).

3- They basically ditch all of the mechanics (and D&D serial numbers) and wrap a far more focused story around it. We're only 3 episodes in, and the first two are basically introduction and pre-campaign filler that mostly sets up a theoretical (?) second season's arc.

Amazon has already confirmed a season 2. Probably a safe bet. They've got all the talent and such already and it's not like the first three episodes are bad.

Tal'Dorei did get a setting book. It was third party (Green Ronin, I think?) They've just redone it (though its currently only available through them and 'partner LGSs' at the moment) through their own label (Darrington Press).

I'm vaguely curious what their current relationship with WotC is, since both this show and campaign 3 have had a lot of work done in filing serial numbers off. Grog is now a 'giant' rather than a 'goliath,' and most of the gods in both are referred to by title rather than by name (though the Everlight is an extra special exception, since she is a Paizo Pathfinder deity, since that's the system the originally started campaign 1 with off camera). And a lot of the races in campaign three have new names, rather than WotC official ones.

I suspect that when they started work on the show, they got some obvious legal advice- leave nothing that WotC could shut them down over if the relationship sours (or WotC management changes)

Amazon has already confirmed a season 2. Probably a safe bet. They've got all the talent and such already and it's not like the first three episodes are bad.

I wasn't sure if that was official or not yet, I'd vaguely heard it was, but... well. The Critters, as a fanbase, have a tendency to take signs and portents as absolute facts, sometimes.

It definitely isn't bad, but I don't think they did a great introduction for new audience, and there are a few things I'd like to see without knowing what will happen. A certain tree, for example, probably won't blow me away the way it did the first time around (though losing some of the flailing and failing at game mechanics that happens later in the same live-play episode will be a relief). I do hope they revised
I am looking forward to it, but its more 'its neat to see this visually' rather than excited by the promise of the show.

Never followed the original stuff, just watched the first 3 episodes cold.

It was nothing earthshaking, but quite enjoyable. I like that they don’t even pretend to be kid-friendly and drop f-bombs like it’s going out of style. I know every RPG group I’ve been in is rife with cursing and off color humor, so the cleaner fantasy shows we usually get always seem a little off to me. I’m looking forward to new episodes.

Never seen the podcasts or read any of the books, only seen this show. I rather liked it. More adult than I would have expected, but still found it quite enjoyable.

Okay, the series moves past it's mild early installment weirdness pretty quick. I feel like by episode 4, everything is kind of falling into place and the quality of what's happening noticeably picks up.

Largely agree. The plot armor was really thick for episode 4, and I really hate what they opted into for Pike.



I do find myself missing the cast's reactions to stuff. It was a big part of the appeal of some of the major scenes (that obviously doesn't fit in the show), but without it, the characters' reactions seem muted in comparison. Particularly the tree and what, exactly, is going on with Percy (which _no one_ knew about, even Percy's player, which added an extra layer to the whole thing). The show isn't quite making clear that Percy isn't shrugging things off out of privacy or snobbery, but because he legitimately doesn't know what's really going on.

Voss wrote:
I do find myself missing the cast's reactions to stuff.

Yeah, this is a big part of the appeal of live play content I think, and tabletop RPGs in general. What happens around the game is a big part of the fun, maybe even moreso than what happens in the game. For liveplays whether or not they're enjoyable I find depends heavily on how much you enjoy the people who are in it and listening to their banter. The series still noticeably suffers for that I think. Events can feel a bit stilted, kind of like Lit RPGs (I'm not a fan) which certain plot elements feeling like someone made a bad roll in a way that happens in a game but would make little sense in pure narrative.

I feel like Vax's joke about the lock being cursed in episode 6 is almost calling this out in the series.

When you remove the game and just have the events and characters without the mechanics or players, I'd say the entire production comes off feeling muted. Don't get me wrong I think the latest 3 episodes definitely elevated the show. It's got my interest now rather than just my curiosity, but the transition of medium still kind of stands out and leaves some bumps on the whole thing imo.

 LordofHats wrote:
Yeah, this is a big part of the appeal of live play content I think, and tabletop RPGs in general. What happens around the game is a big part of the fun, maybe even moreso than what happens in the game. For liveplays whether or not they're enjoyable I find depends heavily on how much you enjoy the people who are in it and listening to their banter. The series still noticeably suffers for that I think. Events can feel a bit stilted, kind of like Lit RPGs (I'm not a fan) which certain plot elements feeling like someone made a bad roll in a way that happens in a game but would make little sense in pure narrative.

I feel like Vax's joke about the lock being cursed in episode 6 is almost calling this out in the series.

Its pretty much an in-joke for the campaign, locked or stuck doors constantly caused them problems. The upside here is condensing it to a moment that actually mattered worked pretty well.
The live play door they were stuck on was... not particularly relevant and it was a string of failures that took almost an hour (and ultimately multiple spells and stupid attempts) to resolve. So while the 'bad roll' aspect was present, it was a lot more palatable.

When you remove the game and just have the events and characters without the mechanics or players, I'd say the entire production comes off feeling muted. Don't get me wrong I think the latest 3 episodes definitely elevated the show. It's got my interest now rather than just my curiosity, but the transition of medium still kind of stands out and leaves some bumps on the whole thing imo.

It has some of the same problems superhero movies do. If you aren't already a fan, it can be hard to draw the connections or get the point. Some of the gags are handled pretty well (having Tusk Love on a shelf in Gilmore's- just a visual easter egg from campaign 2 that doesn't matter to these characters), others... I don't know.
For example, without prior knowledge, I suspect I'd be very puzzled about the relationship between Pike and Grog (especially given how raunchy the show is, I'd have questions). But knowing she's basically his adopted big sister (because he rescued her grandfather and they later saved his life) and they spent years together before adventuring, their relationship dynamic is completely different. But nothing really cues the audience in on that, beyond that they're closer to each other than the others, and she's more crude than one might expect given her profession, overall look and attitude (she started pushing the 'do good' angle first).

I suspect one of the big bumps in this regard will be

I watched the first three episodes, yeah nothing special but still quite fun. I think it's nice to see the other voice acting talent they have as well.

It's tricky isn't it? I think for most tabletop players with a long term campaign this is the goal right? You want to bring your characters to life and they've definitely done that here. I think it's clear they love their original characters more but I think a lot of people probably enjoyed the second campaign.

Saturday Morning Cartoon for Adults/teens


And I mean that in a good way. I never looked into the whole Critical Role channel or such so the story is totally fresh to me as are the characters. It's got that modern quirky DnD adventuring feel to it with an edge of adult themes that I think just makes it what I said at the top. It's perhaps not going to be an earth-shattering storyline or such; or redefine animation or such for a generation; but everything feels sold enough for a fun adventure.

It's engaging and fun with the right amount of serious content to ground itself without falling too much into just being silly for silly's sake alone.

So, finished this tonight. It was... fine.
A few good moments, probably more talent than was really warranted, some parts dragged a little, and a few points were trying too hard to be cute, or shocking, or just plain over the top.

It was definitely a passion product for the cast, but rushing the storyline meant skipping through a lot of the character moments, which made it feel a little hollow (speaking as someone who's seen the live campaign 1).

Worth watching once, but not groundbreaking or even top 10 shows of the year.
If you're unfamiliar with the whole Critical Role thing, its a far more approachable format, so its ironically probably more worth watching if you're curious about what the big deal is.

I think fine is a good summation. It grew into itself as time went on but I think its flaws ultimately came with being what it was.

I think in a way its a landmark but not for its story. In a sense I feel that its a solid landmark for "adults can have animations too" kind of deal - without it having to go the whole "south park" angle of purely extremist stuff because "its animation" and " its for adults".

First season was solid, there's good story telling and whilst it certainly would have been fantastic to see the formation of the group and more of their individual backstories and more interactions and also some more general questing; I think they covered a good chunk of story and pace.

I do worry that its fallen fast into the "next big evil must be worse than the previous", but they are far far far from alone in that.


In the end I did enjoy it without being a fan of Critical Role beforehand; as a set of fresh eyes I enjoyed it; watched it all, will likely rewatch it in time and really do want to see a continuation. Oddly I'd almost welcome more general adventuring, but that's more of a personal thing for me right now.

I do worry that its fallen fast into the "next big evil must be worse than the previous", but they are far far far from alone in that.

Well, in some ways that isn't much of a worry since the story is already told and just being redone.

Its definitely a bigger, more obvious evil (that's hard to hide). Worse...? Eh. In some ways, but in others its less relentlessly grimdark because it isn't Percy's backstory. And there is... other stuff.

Oddly I'd almost welcome more general adventuring, but that's more of a personal thing for me right now.

Understandable. (I feel that way about crpgs at the moment). Depending on how they handle it, there are more general adventuring sequences that they need to hit up. One is a straight up dungeon crawl that they really need to hit for the emotional set up.
But it is a big sweeping arc

It felt like the summation of a fantasy roleplaying campaign. Given that's what I was expecting, I liked it well enough. The extra gore, sex, swearing and jokes is just par for the course of actual people actually playing.

So yeah, I had fun with it. I haven't watched Critical Role, though, so I don't know how good of a "translation" of the campaign is. I did read the comics, and are also good fun.

If I were to rate it in comparison with other western animation sereis of this year I'd say well above the new MOTU series (particularly the second half of the season), about on par with the DOTA series (DOTA takes itself much more seriously, though, so I actually had more fun with this one) and much, much below Arcane in basically everything and anything (but that was a 6 years project and it's clear they poured tons of money and talent on it).

I haven't watched Critical Role, though, so I don't know how good of a "translation" of the campaign is.

It was pretty good. Most of the stuff that was left out was left out for a reason.

The journey to Whitestone in game was entirely different. It made sense at the time- they were tried to avoid authorities from Emon and effectively sneak into Whitestone, but it goes off on unrelated tangents- a random encounter in the mountains and a fairly pointless exploration of an empty stone giant fortress (which is where the undead giants in the city come from), but the tighter 'race to Whitestone' works better in this format.

Keyleth's interaction with the Sun Tree (in the tavern, before they go into the castle) is a long and involved thing, where they dig a tunnel under the tavern, they get ambushed by vampire spawn and she conducts an 8 hour ritual and basically botches it by dice roll at the end.... yeah. That didn't need to be filmed. It didn't even work well in game, so a brief foreshadowing moment was very much better.

The acid room sequence also got cleaned up a lot. I don't know if they got lost in the DM's description, but that turned into a total catastrophe at the table, with a couple things that just shouldn't have worked, abandonment of the 'puzzle' and just brute forcing the whole thing.

Some other things changed, but its largely easy to tell why (20+ hours condensed into 10 episodes (not counting the two 'prologue' episodes).

Came into it blind having not seen critical role, really enjoyed it. An RPG based series for adults is refreshing.

As an old school DnD player who had to suffer that horrid live action DnD movie where the director went out of his way to make it not DnD by his own explanation. the only animated series we had that was pure DnD was the original record of lodoss war anime (i watched the hell out of it since 1991)

Vox machina is loads of fun. obviously not a kids show, but neither is DnD so it works.

I've been listening to Critical Role in podcast form for a while now, started with Campaign 2 when that was in its hundredth or so episode and marathon'd it but never bothered with the Vox Machina stuff because there was a certain amount of it that had been done off-stream. I did get some information on the Vox Machina characters through osmosis and references they make back to them in the second campaign though.

At the time I felt like they'd skipped ahead in the story, given the events of the last three quarters of the series dealt with some seriously climactic stuff for certain characters and their personal arcs, but a friend cleared up for me later that the dragon stuff covered in the first two episodes drew from their last off-screen arc and the Whitestone arc actually was very, very early in the run of the show. They felt there was a noticeable improvement when they went from old notes and old memories to events captured and recorded on video.

But yeah, I think it evened out to a good adaptation of the existing material and whether that result works for you is up to whether you can tolerate Critical Role and it's humor. It works for me, I enjoyed it, and I look forward to more.

Overall animation quality is on the same spectrum of Castlevania and Invincible - I'd say on the lower end after it's all said and done, but the same CGI shortcuts and tendency to ramp up quality super hard during action scenes.

If it's not on par with Arcane, it's not gonna be worth my time.

I tried watching a Critical Role episode on Youtube once but flock no, can't stand that ish. Felt like tryhard "cool kids" trying to LARP living the RPG geek lyfe. Sincerity of a lapdance. smh

but a friend cleared up for me later that the dragon stuff covered in the first two episodes drew from their last off-screen arc and the Whitestone arc actually was very, very early in the run of the show. They felt there was a noticeable improvement when they went from old notes and old memories to events captured and recorded on video.

They hand-waved some of the pre-stream stuff. Quite a lot actually and some of it plays into the end transition into Season 2.

The initial enemy in Eps 1 & 2 was not their only (or first?) interaction with the Sovereign and council. There was a big encounter with an NPC from the Book of Vile Darkness, and also a demon that was puppeting the Sovereign and/or his family members. (That incident and the Briarwoods provide the motivation for what happens at the end of season, its a little lost here)

From things they've talked about, they messily solved both of those (with collateral damage (which goes a long way to explain why Keyleth is so uncertain) and a temporary death and resurrection ritual for Pike, respectively)

They also interacted a lot more with Allura (the wizard advisor) and then their first on stream arc is Allura sending them to go find Lady Kima (the halfling paladin who's sort of in the background in a couple scenes, and is one of the best NPCs of campaign 1, though she tolerates far too much of their crap early on), so they had a much tighter and interconnected relationship with the Taldorei Council than they do in the cartoon. And also Gilmore, though they do hint at that a bit.

 tauist wrote:
If it's not on par with Arcane, it's not gonna be worth my time.

Honestly, by that metric, your options are very limited. There's very few TV stuff on par with Arcane, at least animation quality-wise. Maybe no TV stuff at all.

 tauist wrote:
If it's not on par with Arcane, it's not gonna be worth my time.

I tried watching a Critical Role episode on Youtube once but flock no, can't stand that ish. Felt like tryhard "cool kids" trying to LARP living the RPG geek lyfe. Sincerity of a lapdance. smh

That's...uh.. Well, its certainly an opinion.
Its a bunch of theatre kids turned professional voice actors for cartoons and video games (if you watch animation or play video games, you've been hearing at least some of their voices for this entire century- Laura got her start as the VA for kid Trunks in Dragonball Z in 1999) and a DM with a lifelong obsession with D&D, who took their home game on stream for basically a lark, and got very, very lucky (and then piled on a crap-ton of work.)

I can certainly understand not liking their playstyle (as someone who watches it, the boss fights are frickin' tedious), but they aren't anything like 'cool kids' faking it (though some will never be 10 out of 10 for game mechanics, but that's true for most D&D groups).

DnD that goes 10 out of 10 for game mechanics will often be bad very try hard DnD in my experience. DnD is at its best when someone tries something creative and it goes sideways.

 LordofHats wrote:
DnD that goes 10 out of 10 for game mechanics will often be bad very try hard DnD in my experience. DnD is at its best when someone tries something creative and it goes sideways.

Well, for the CR group, they were often at their worst when creative moments went sideways, at least during campaign 1 (they've gotten better, both at what they try and the DM trying to handle it well).
Character moments are where they shine (at least for me, its not going to be for everyone), though those also improved over time. Some of the early attempts at romance (including the one in this show) were reallly... ugh (the cartoon's moment was refined a bit, so the live version was even worse of a weird ambush and followed up by passive-aggressive crap). But it was also a revelation for half the group, who've mentioned that several were like 'We can do that?' Playing up personal relationships became a big thing for the show after this point. Where rolling dice, chasing numbers and smashing monsters wasn't the main thing anymore. The deeper dive into 'real roleplaying' was kind of amazing to watch- they're all actors, so they kind of got it already, but over time, it elevated quite a bit.

Yay new season of Vox Machina! Boo more of Scanlan’s constant sex jokes and Grog’s hur dur I’m dumb routine! The whole show is great except for those two characters. Those two would drive me out of a group players and I’m thankful no one I game with is like that.

Grog was actually much more useful in the campaign, as his player would get impatient with the groups tendency to overthink and overplan everything (and then immediately abandon the plan) and just start pushing forward. A kick-in-the-door character is often a blessing.

Without the live play's analysis paralysis, I can see the character coming across a little different.

No excuses for Scanlan, though. (Eventually that got reined in, but he came across as a creeper for a lot of that campaign. Still the most likely person to break a scene with a bad joke, though)

Not enjoying it. Same problem as season 1. It's dull and I still don't care one way or another about the characters. Not planning to watch anymore episodes.