Critical Role's Campaign 4 Opens With a Funeral and Plenty of Intrigue

Critical Role's new campaign features a new world, a new DM, and new players, but the charm and storytelling intrigue of the longrunning Actual Play show remains the same. Campaign 4 of Critical Role officially launched last night with a four-hour episode that featured new DM Brennan Lee Mulligan expertly managing a cast of 13 players while also establishing a layered mystery involving the public execution of a firebrand revolutionary on trumped up charges. Despite the long runtime (which is typical for Critical Role), the episode moves surprisingly fast, in part because players moved in and out due to scene demands.

The debut episode kicks off with the execution of Thjazi Fang, an adventurer turned revolutionary in the city of Dol-Majkar. Fang's execution is witnessed by numerous people from his past, including former adventuring partners, family, and shady associates. Although Fang is charged with being an arcanist (magic appears to be heavily regulated in the new setting of Araman), him and several associates seems to have worked out a means of escape, but the magic ward meant to aid his quick escape fails and he dies in the first fifteen minutes of the episode.

The rest of his episode slowly introduces the large cast of players involved with Thjazi over the years, as well as brief glimpses as to why he was killed on fake charges. Liam O'Brien plays Halandil Fang, brother to Thjazi and the person responsible for organizing his funeral. Various well-wishers from Thajzi's past arrive at the funeral, starting with Halandil's ex-lover Thaisha Lloy (Aabria Iyengar), former subordinate Azune Nayar (Luis Carazo) and timid necromancer Occtis Tachonis (Alex Ward).

The episode mostly focuses on Thjazi Fang's funeral, with various players making sometimes welcome and other time hostile entrances. Old acquaintances attempt to track down why Fang's escape from death failed, including Teor Pridesire (Travis Willingham) and tracker Kattigan Vale (Robbie Daymond) and discover Fang's longtime pixie partner Thimble (Laura Bailey) on the brink of death. Thimble was attacked in a flophouse owned by Fang while crafting the ward meant to help him disappear, meaning that Thjazi was betrayed by someone close to him and who knew of the conspiracy to help him escape execution. Meanwhile, various arcanists seemingly involved with Fang in recent years also arrive, including the masked warlock Bolaire Lathalia (Taliesin Jaffe) and dwarf wizard Murray Mag'Nesson (Marisha Ray). Both were named in Thjazi's final words, although the manner of their shared conspiracy is unclear as of now.

Araman is a place where the gods were driven out or killed 70 years prior, but religion still plays a major part of the intrigue of the show. Sam Riegel plays Wicander Halovar, a noble turned priest who attempted in vain to stop his family from executing Fang. Whitney Moore played Tyranny, a demon turned aspirant who serves Wicander. Both worship "the Light," a sort of guiding force upholding morality but lacks a metaphysical presence like traditional fantasy gods. Meanwhile, Vaelus (Ashley Johnson) arrives at the funeral in a state of perpetual mourning for her lost elven god, searching for a stone stolen by Fang and Thimble. At the mention of Thimble's name at Fang's funeral, a mysterious shattered mask retrieved by Thaisha on Fang's behalf begins to re-form upstairs, a mask that looks suspiciously like the one worn by Bolaire.

The biggest surprise of the episode was Matthew Mercer's character Sir Julien Davinos. Davinos was a rival to Thjazi Fang and bested the rogue during his failed rebellion twelve years prior. While the other PCs are mourning Fang's death, Davinos seems to celebrate his old foe's final defeat and even spits on Fang's body at his funeral. Interestingly, Davinos is also a childhood friend of Fang's estranged wife Aranessa. The other characters all seem to have reasons to stick together in the episodes to come, but Sir Julien seems to be at natural odds with the other characters, although a curse seems to follow him from the funeral that could entangle his path with the other characters.

Although much has changed with Critical Role's new campaign, the dramatics and deep roleplay remained the same. Despite the large cast, table chatter was kept to a minimum and everyone seemed to get a spotlight to showcase their character. To the credit of the everyone on the cast, there was very little stepping on of toes, despite the many moving parts and the deep heapings of intrigue introduced over the first few hours of the campaign.

I also enjoyed that the worldbuilding of Araman, a brand-new campaign world, largely took place without Mulligan's exposition. There are lots of intriguing teases of what this world was like, but it was mostly left for the players themselves to introduce. An elf mourning their fallen god and arguments over a newly formed religion highlighted the tension of a world without gods, while natural rivalries between houses teased out the political intrigue of the world. We know very little of Araman's geography or ways, but the world feels very lived in thanks to how immersed each of the players seemed into their respective characters.

Of course, a four hour commitment for any piece of media is going to be a hard pill to swallow, although those wanting to jump into Critical Role will find no better place than this first episode. Critical Role hasn't lost a step despite its changes and I for one can't wait to see how this new campaign plays out over the coming years.

 

[Clint_L]

I thought it was extremely fun, but I get what you mean. There were some more lighthearted moments, particularly when Sam and Whitney were on camera. But, from Brennan’s pitch of the setting, I would expect the main themes to be heavy stuff.

The tone of this first episode reminds me a lot of Calamity. There’s a massive lore dump, a lot of talking in slow, hushed voices, and a sense of imminent doom. Hopefully once they get out in the world we can get more emergent storytelling. But it feels like they want to go for a predetermined story with pre-established themes, which was what doomed S3.

I watched/listened to all of S3 and even AoU basically out of a sense of loyalty to CR. I’m glad for those who love the new professional, serious approach, but for me the magic is gone. I’ll give the first four episodes no matter what. After that, if it’s not for me, I’ll wish them every success.

Edit: it’s hard to express what CR has meant to me, and I’m really wrestling with how to say goodbye, which is where it feels like this is going

 

[nyvinter]

I really don't get the "predetermined story" vibes at all. Had this been decided in advance, they wouldn't have spend 4 hours on a wake and clearly the players didn't know what the others were bringing — the ones who did were probably at the same session zero and made some hooks.

And pre-established themes, is that a bad thing now? It's always been a thing. C3's flaw was that it was run like an adventure path for players who wanted a fishtank. This felt a lot more like a starting situation that'll force the players into action. So rather the opposite.

Everything we've found out about the setting and the implications and trying to figure out what is in-game fact and fiction? It's 100% my jam and was what I was missing in the latest Dragon Age game. So I'm here for this game.

I get that the tone might not be what you like, I would've been out had they done a dungeon crawl for twenty sessions that had minimal impact on anything afterwards like in C1.

 

[Charlaquin]

The tone of this first episode reminds me a lot of Calamity. There’s a massive lore dump, a lot of talking in slow, hushed voices, and a sense of imminent doom. Hopefully once they get out in the world we can get more emergent storytelling. But it feels like they want to go for a predetermined story with pre-established themes, which was what doomed S3.

I watched/listened to all of S3 and even AoU basically out of a sense of loyalty to CR. I’m glad for those who love the new professional, serious approach, but for me the magic is gone. I’ll give the first four episodes no matter what. After that, if it’s not for me, I’ll wish them every success.

I would expect the four-episode overture to be much more carefully crafted, because that’s the point - it’s supposed to be an introduction to the new setting, its central themes, and the large cast of new characters, and of course to hook people in. If you’re more interested in the emergent storytelling (which is understandable, that’s the most appealing part of D&D in my opinion!) I would expect that to really kick off from episode 5 onward. I mean, don’t feel obligated to watch more than what interests you, but it seems like you’ve committed to watching the four episodes that are likely to be least suited to your tastes, and then decide if you want to continue watching the stuff that’s more likely to be more interesting to you based on your impression of those first four episodes. Which kinda feels like setting yourself up for a bad time. Maybe it would be better to do the opposite - give the rest of the overture a pass, maybe read a summary of it once it’s over so you don’t miss too much context, but start really watching and deciding if it’s for once they’ve switched gears into the more open “west marches style” content.

Edit: it’s hard to express what CR has meant to me, and I’m really wrestling with how to say goodbye, which is where it feels like this is going

That must be tough, you have my sympathies. I genuinely hope that this is just a misaligned impression based on the overture and that the rest of the campaign will be more appealing to you.

 

[Charlaquin]

I really don't get the "predetermined story" vibes at all. Had this been decided in advance, they wouldn't have spend 4 hours on a wake and clearly the players didn't know what the others were bringing — the ones who did were probably at the same session zero and made some hooks.

And pre-established themes, is that a bad thing now? It's always been a thing. C3's flaw was that it was run like an adventure path for players who wanted a fishtank. This felt a lot more like a starting situation that'll force the players into action. So rather the opposite.

Everything we've found out about the setting and the implications and trying to figure out what is in-game fact and fiction? It's 100% my jam and was what I was missing in the latest Dragon Age game. So I'm here for this game.

I get that the tone might not be what you like, I would've been out had they done a dungeon crawl for twenty sessions that had minimal impact on anything afterwards like in C1.

I mean, I don’t think “predetermined story” is quite the right way to describe it, but I would expect the overture to be much more carefully curated and event-driven than a campaign that is allegedly in the style of Westmarches, which tends to be extremely nonlinear and location-based. And from that first episode, it looks like that expectation is so far being met.

 

[OB1]

The tone of this first episode reminds me a lot of Calamity. There’s a massive lore dump, a lot of talking in slow, hushed voices, and a sense of imminent doom. Hopefully once they get out in the world we can get more emergent storytelling. But it feels like they want to go for a predetermined story with pre-established themes, which was what doomed S3.

I watched/listened to all of S3 and even AoU basically out of a sense of loyalty to CR. I’m glad for those who love the new professional, serious approach, but for me the magic is gone. I’ll give the first four episodes no matter what. After that, if it’s not for me, I’ll wish them every success.

Edit: it’s hard to express what CR has meant to me, and I’m really wrestling with how to say goodbye, which is where it feels like this is going

From what I've seen 20 episodes into Worlds Beyond Number, BLeeM has an excellent ability to allow for emergent storytelling even while pacing sessions to be exciting and rich in conflict. There are always 'big things' happening in the background of WBN, but each episode is a treasure unto itself. I'd imagine that we'll be getting something much closer to that style in C4 than what we saw in the limited series he did for C3, where he only had a few episodes to tell very specific stories.