Critical Role
 

Anyone else ever watched Critical Role?

I know D&D is an instant turn-off or snickering inducer for people, but there have been a lot of streamed sessions gaining popularity and for this one in particular, the players are all in the voice acting/film actors and are very entertaining to watch. They recently did a kickstarter to do an animated serious where the story-lines they have created are animated and they do voiceovers for it, which subsequently was picked up by Amazon for 2 seasons as well.

The DM is Matt Mercer, who is amazing in what he does for their game. He is the voice of tons of characters in various popular games like FortNite, Fallout NV, and gobs of others, and he uses those skills to perfection bringing the various characters that come up in the story that he interacts with the party with.

The players are Laura Bailey, who is the voice of players in as many games as Mercer or more, and her husband Travis Willingham, who also does some games and lots of animated shows.

Sam Reigal is a player who produces/directs animated shows and won an emmy for one of them recently, who started playing the game as a joke to see what it was like and ended up loving it.

Liam O'Brien is another producer/director. Taleson Jaffey is a child actor previously and voice actor still. And Ashley Johnson is the voice of the girl in Last of Us, and is currently on the show Blindspot.

The final current player is Matthew Mercer's wife Marisha Ray, who isn't established as an actor at the rest of the cast, but does well.

There is a player that left the show early on, and they have also had lots of guest players join the show. Chris Perkins has played with them a few times, who works for Wizards of the Coast and is a game designer for D&D itself, Joe Manganiello, Chris Hardwick, Patrick Rothfuss, Felicia Day, and Will Wheaton have also all guest played amongst a lot of other voice actors that I didn't know well, but they have all done awesome.


Long post, but wanted to make mention of the show and see if anyone else has watched it. They are on their 2nd campaign right now, and it is hundreds of hours of content if anyone wanted to pick it up from the beginning of the show, or even just jump into the 2nd season.


Here is a link to their very first episode, and there is a TON of content on their page that all came from it. The production quality if light-years beyond what they had in this first show, and it is hard to catch up since this is already an in-progress game from what they had been playing for close to a year from their home game before this point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-p9...&index=2&t=66s

Never heard of it, but watched every episode of Harmonquest if that counts.

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I've started watching the Undeadwood series they recently started. Haven't watched any of the D&D sessions.

You might try "The Unsleeping City" if you're looking for other offerings. I believe everyone involved with it are improv comedians. It's pretty entertaining.

I've seen the undeadwood on their channel, but haven't watched it. Is Travis running it? Or is he just the face on the thumbnail?

I watched a good bit of season one. It was kinda funny and interesting for a bit, but got kinda out of hand with the angsty drama from Liam and Marisha, along with ridiculous shit like taking 2 hours just to cross a ****ing bridge.


Travis and Sam were funny as hell, but it just wasn't enough for me to stay tuned in.

I found them about six months ago, after seeing Matt Mercer host Stephen Colbert on a short individual campaign for Red Nose Day. Never got started on campaign one, the production quality on the podcast version (I mostly listen rather than watch...) was pretty poor. But I'm about an episode behind on campaign 2, have listened to and loved the whole thing. So much that I occasionally watch them on twitch. They get my Amazon prime sub.

Speaking of Amazon, it was announced yesterday that they ordered two seasons of of the critical role animated series that they Kickstarter'ed last year, so expect to see/hear a lot more about them in the mainstream in the next few months.

He's just the thumbnail. He's playing a preacher and has been pretty good, imo.