Critical Role is one of those subjects you either know nothing about or everything about, but it’s one of the biggest hidden gems of epic fantasy storytelling. What started as a Dungeons and Dragons game played by some of the most prolific voice actors in the industry has morphed into a weekly live stream of vast, sprawling quests throughout the fantastic world of Exandria.
Over the course of almost a decade, Critical Role now includes comic books, DnD sourcebooks, a charity, and multiple Amazon Prime series in conjunction with Titmouse animation, including The Legend of Vox Machina, which is now streaming.
At San Diego Comic-Con, Inverse caught up with three of Critical Role’s founding cast members — Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham, and Marisha Ray — about the state of their burgeoning DnD empire. But though Critical Role is rapidly expanding its three ongoing campaigns (Vox Machina, The Mighty Nein, and Bells Hells) into animated shows or ambitious enterprises, the group members consider themselves voice actors first and foremost. So they could not resist voicing their support for the ongoing SAG-AFTRA voice actor strike over the use of AI to replicate voices.
“Generative AI is a super slippery slope,” Willingham, CEO of Critical Role Productions, told Inverse.
With Critical Role, the cast members find themselves in front of the camera more than ever before. But perhaps because they’ve been on both sides of the issue, they are adamant that the rights of voice actors matter just as much.
“If we come in for a session, if we’re recording voiceover, if we’re doing motion capture, it’s just a basic understanding that you shouldn’t be able to take our likeness, our voice, things that you capture, and use it as much as you want in perpetuity going forward,” Willingham adds.
Much like in Dungeons and Dragons, solidarity is about cooperation and standing up for one another. “We’ve all been so lucky with the games that we’ve worked on, that the developers that we’ve been a part of have been respectful and ethical. But obviously we can’t speak for everyone, and a lot of new actors coming in don’t have those same protections that we have at our place in our career,” Bailey tells Inverse. “It’s about protecting everyone.”
The Future of Critical Role
Critical Role currently consists of three campaigns, DnD games that exist in the same world but are relatively standalone from each other. The first campaign, Vox Machina, was adapted into The Legend of Vox Machina, with the players themselves providing the voices for their characters. The second campaign, The Mighty Nein, will be adapted into a future series, and the third campaign, Bells Hells, has just recently reached its hundredth episode and is more ambitious than ever. Despite all those irons in the fire, fans have so much to look forward to.
“Season 3 of Legend of Vox Machina comes out Oct. 3,” Willingham reveals. “And then on socials, we also were able to show a sneak peek of our first animatic from The Mighty Nein, which is amazing. A little scene between Fjord and Jester as they meet for the first time.” Fjord and Jester — the characters played in The Mighty Nein by Willingham and his real-life wife, Laura Bailey — share a romance over the course of the campaign, and we never got to see their meeting in the initial livestream.
Bells Hells, the current campaign, is celebrating reaching a hundred episodes with “Downfall,” a special three-part prequel set centuries before the regular story. In “Downfall,” Bailey plays Emhira, a mortal avatar of the primordial god the Matron of Ravens. Dungeon Master Matt Mercer had portrayed the character previously, but making her a player was a daunting task.
“Matt had so much lore with the Matron of Ravens that I wanted to embody and honor,” Bailey said. “She was such a big player in all of the campaigns so far that to bring her into existence as a player was stressful. I have so much information about her; I had so much during the game, and every moment was like I had to hold my words during the game.”
But with all those irons in the fire, everyone involved with Critical Role is aware of how daunting the franchise may seem. A single episode of the live stream can range from three to five hours, and the runtime of the show as a whole can be measured in weeks. Now, at this point in Exandria’s evolution, accessibility is a major concern.
“We want to find something in each of these stories that let them know ‘Hey, it’s not too late for you to join in.’ There’s more story to watch that has ripples and echoes into the thing that you love,” Willingham says.
“You get rewarded if you watch all of it, but you don’t have to,” Ray adds.
