When I decided to go to Gen Con this past year, I asked my wife whether I should go to the Critical Role live show as well. I consider myself a somewhat poor Critter. Despite picking up Critical Role relatively early in campaign 1 and following campaign 2 pretty well, I fell off hard on campaign 3.
However, my wife made a good point: why wouldn’t I go? If not then, would I ever make it to a live show?
So I bought my ticket, and in retrospect, I’m glad I went.
They’re really doing it live
I criticize only because Matt consistently does a brilliant job, and it’s interesting to watch how other GMs work through things.
The beginning of the show was very awkward. Matt paints a beautiful scene of the PCs looking up at the sky with some destination up there. He then asks what they want to do, and there are just crickets. No one obviously knows what to do.
And then it becomes a cumbersome exercise of Imogen flying around and some awkward arbitrary rules about what takes a roll and how heavy people are and such.
Eventually, Matt handwaves past it, and the game actually begins, but it was a tough setup. Maybe Matt expected them to do something else. Maybe he never really had a plan.
I also found the ending somewhat jarring. The premise is that Fearne’s soul is up for stakes, and she clearly states she wants to keep it for herself before getting captured. There’s apparently some archaic and cryptic law that enforces ownership, but it’s not well-explained.
Finally at the end, she gets back, and it turns out that it was a majority, first-past-the-post setup. Again, maybe Matt intended that and didn’t explain it well the first time. Maybe he had to pivot when he ran out of time. Either way, it made for a happy ending even if it didn’t make much sense and wasn’t faithful to Ashley’s goal.
You don’t need to watch Critical Role to get it
As I have mentioned, I’m not a diligent Critter. I have only watched 1 season of The Legend of Vox Machina. I’m behind.
That being said, I felt like I didn’t miss much. I did at least know most of the characters (all except Braius), but if I didn’t, I could have picked up on the dynamics.
I wasn’t getting as excited as most of the crowd was. Maybe that’s just my temperament. Maybe I just am not that deep in the fandom. Maybe others are way too deep in the fandom. I enjoyed the show but did feel a bit out of place as the crowd roared.
Matt knows how to write to a crowd
A live show isn’t just a one-shot: it’s a different sort of interaction with a live audience, and that includes some fan service as well.
First, the series of Fearne’s relationships was an opportunity to bust out some random NPCs and dig a little deeper. It’s fun when Matt has an opportunity to play a lot of different people in rapid succession. It lets him show his range and trot out a bunch of references for players.
Second, he also pulled in Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins to play on his side. I haven’t seen group DM play like this before, but it really fit with their introduction into the world of Critical Role. I’m not sure how prepared they were on the details, but Matt used them perfectly.
The cast knows how to play to a crowd
Not only did Matt know how to write to a crowd, the cast played to the crowd as well. Sam is the most ostentatious with his costume and antics, but other joined as well.
Laura had Jester and Imogen talk to each other just to get the laughs for jumping back and forth.
Travis suggested some wild choices and then looked to the crowd for approval, which they were happy to give.
In general, they let a lot of jokes hang out there for awhile for the crowd to laugh and cheer and enjoy. I hope the cast really enjoys playing live and feeling the energy of the crowd.
The emotions are real
Critical Role is typically unedited, so it seems like it should be a very real look at the their game. And when I saw them in-person, I was mostly looking at the Jumbotron to see what was going on.
And yet, I felt more of the emotion from them.
When the fight was going poorly, I could see Talesin shaking and having Ashton get pissed off.
When Laura was close to going down (and did go down), she was glancing about and trying to hold it together as well as she panicked.
Chris said how stressful it was to use all of his abilities, and I know he was making a joke about spending stress, but it also felt real as he felt bad about hitting so hard.
But I think Matt knew what he was doing when he put the fight together. Frankly, it’s just really hard to get a TPK with eight players, so when the tide turned, it was good.
Final thoughts
In retrospect, the whole campaign four announcement at the live show feels worse knowing that it would be D&D. I don’t have anything special to add to the conversation.
I’m a BLeeM fan. I think Exandria Unlimited is some of the best actual play out there. I wouldn’t get rid of any Critical Role cast member, but I also think that smaller tables work better.
All of that being said, I’m also a lapsed Critter, so I actually haven’t watched any campaign 4 yet. I haven’t finished campaign 3 yet. We will see if I come back around for it.
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