Critical Role Announces Campaign 3

 Critical Role is the gold standard of actual-play TTRPG streams. A group of self-described "nerdy-ass voice actors" has spent the last six years entertaining us through extremely character-focused D&D play, weaving genuinely moving stories amidst all the joy of a chaotic group of dorks messing around in D&D.

After finishing their second campaign earlier this year, the past few months have seen a bit of a break in the CR world, with a couple one-shots and a mini-campaign called Exandria Unlimited, which had a different DM (and allowed usual DM Matt Mercer to actually play for a change!)

Anyway, the new campaign starts on October 21st, and will be set on the continent of Marquet. Each campaign has primarily taken place on a different continent, with the first primarily taking place on Tal'dorei, though they made trips to the other major continents of Issylra, Marquet, and Wildemount. The second campaign was almost exclusively set on Wildemount and the surrounding islands.

Marquet is a largely arid continent that has a bit of a Middle Eastern vibe, though I'm sure we'll see more nuance and complexity introduced in the new campaign. In Campaign one, the party, Vox Machina, befriended J'mon Sa Ord, the secretly draconic ruler of Ank'harel, which I believe is the largest city on the continent.

Marquet is actually also the setting of the last (at least so far, but likely the true finale) Vox Machina one-shot. Following the campaign proper, CR did three epilogue-like one-shots (or four if you count the Adventures of the Darrington Brigade,) the last of which took place during a destination wedding at Dalen's Closet, a region of the city of Shamal.

Beyond that, I don't believe the games have explored the region all that much, and as someone who adores desert settings for fantasy, I'm really excited to see what form the campaign will take.

I'm eager to see what people will play - one thing I've noticed is that both campaigns have had someone multiclass into paladin, but never start from the get-go (I happen to love paladins). Naturally, the more important thing is the sort of character the players pick, but... well, just like any campaign I actually play in, I'm eager to see everyone's new characters.

I suspect someone will play a monk after everyone saw how awesome Beau was in combat. Anyway, Critical Role is such a comfort food kind of thing to me, so I'm very excited to see what is coming next.