While my interaction with Critical Role is that of an audience member, and I kind of treat it like one of the shows I'm watching regularly, I figure it's still gaming based and thus works for this blog.
If you're not familiar, Critical Role is probably the most popular streamed D&D "real play" game on the internet. The cast is a bunch of voice actors who are fairly prominent in animation and video games. In fact, if you're a WoW fan, some of the biggest characters' voice actors are there: Rexxar DMs, and Jaina, Illidan, Turalyon, and Darion Mograine are all players (among a couple others.)
The group make it very entertaining to watch, really buying into their characters and giving us some really dramatic moments and arcs along with the usual action and typical TTRPG silliness. So I recommend it if you want a massive amount of content to watch through (it's also in podcast form - great for long walks or drives or if you can listen to podcasts at work.) Also, while the first campaign gets fantastic eventually, the early stretch is a bit rough, as the sound quality was terrible and the pacing was not super conducive to a game with an audience. So I'd say start with the second campaign - there's very little continuity in terms of narrative, so you won't be lost (it's even set on a different continent.)
Anyway, the show is known for its huge twists and turns, and this campaign has had a lot of really crazy moments, but maybe the biggest just hit. Follow me past the spoiler break.
Fairly early in the campaign, Taliesin Jaffe's character, Mollymauk Tealeaf, was the first player character in CR to be killed off permanently (the party didn't have any resurrection magic available) - apart from one character whose player had left the show a lot earlier.
It was a pretty big shock, especially given that the character was sort of executed by a bad guy - killed while unconscious and rolling death saves by a monster. What really stung was that Molly had a tantalizing backstory - he had woken up in a grave with no memories, then went off and joined a circus (where the players met him, along with another PC, Yasha.) But Molly was recognized by a shady character who seemed to be an old friend and called him Lucien. There was some story of fleeing a powerful wizard and hauling relics from up north, but Molly didn't have any idea what it meant, bluffing his way through the conversation.
When he died, that mystery seemed buried forever...
Until.
It's been a long time since Molly died, and Jaffe's new character, Caduceus Clay, has become a really wonderful addition to the group with a very different energy.
But as things have developed, the party has been hired by a powerful archmage of the Cerberus Assembly, a kind of morally dark-grey-to-black agency within the Dwendalian Empire dedicated to magical research and power. The job is to go north and search for one of the lost cities of the Age of Arcanum, a period in which mortal spellcasters rivaled the gods in terms of power. The city, Aeor, is the origin of some of the freakiest, scariest monsters you can find in Explorer's Guide to Wildemount.
Having figured out that there might be a connection between Molly's story and this archmage, Vess Derogna, the party also realized that the magic they currently have access to would allow them to speak with or even bring back Molly. They teleport to Molly's grave and proceed to dig it up - only to find that it's empty.
So they scry on him, and discover that he's currently up and about, marching through snowstorm, bundled up in winter clothing with a determined grin on his face.
Which... holy crap.
There are so many questions. How long has he been alive? How is he alive? Does he have the memories he had as Mollymauk or does he remember other things (player Travis Willingham had speculated, should they resurrect him, if they would be getting "user 1," "user 2," or "Admin," which is a pretty apt metaphor.) What is Molly/Lucian/Whoever doing up there?
And then, logistically, is he just an NPC now? Or does Taliesin Jaffe get to pilot him? And if that's the case, what does Jaffe know? And if not... I mean, I guess a character dying is sort of the ultimate license for a DM to take it over, but it's an interesting transition of agency.
Anyway, maybe the biggest cliffhanger, and I'm so stoked to find out what's going on and if we'll be able to see our Blood Hunter back in action (and if they'll force Jaffe to do his pseudo-Irish accent again.)
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