Critical Role Reveals Soldiers' Table and Motivations

The first of Critical Role's three tables has officially been revealed. Near the end of last night's episode, the Soldiers were revealed as Kattigan Vale (Robbie Daymond), Teor Pridesire (Travis Willingham), Thimble (Laura Bailey), Tyranny (Whitney Moore), and Wicander Halovar (Sam Riegel). The group's initial objective will be to track down the smuggler Casimir Gavendale, who betrayed a conspiracy to rescue condemned rogue Thjazi Fang and then left the city in pursuit of Teor's brother Cyd Pridesire.

Casimir's Crow Keepers (a thieves guild) had attacked Thimble immediately prior to the campaign, leading to her not delivering a glyph that would have transported him to safety. Meanwhile, Kattigan and Teor are old associates of Casimir, as they had all served in a mercenary group that rebelled several years prior to the start of the series. Tyranny and Wicander are joining the party as Casimir had dealings with Wicander's family House Halovar, and Wicander is seeking to rectify the wrongs of his family. Tyranny is seemingly loyal to Wicander, having made a pact with him to enter the Material Plane.

Two more tables will be revealed in Critical Role, presumably by the end of the next episode. One group, the Schemers, will likely look to take on the Sundered Houses and their growing influence on Dol Majkar, while the Seekers will likely be tasked with protecting Occtis Tachonis (Alex Ward) from his family and also exploring the state of the afterlife in the aftermath of the gods' death.

 

[Charlaquin]

I have the feeling these 4 overture episodes are like a narrative session zero for the viewers and the players did know from the start what their teams and goals will be starting from episode 5. At least thats my guess, they know they somehow should end up there and thus can do actions in this direction.

I’m pretty sure they at least knew what groups they should end up in. Less convinced they knew what those groups’ goals would be.

 

[wicked cool]

Character sheet on YouTube had an interesting interview and the question came up on th table assignment. I gleamed a lot from their answer. The character wanted to be an adventurer and I’m making the assumption that that the soldier table fit their goals but they didn’t know it was called the soldier table. Another interview I just saw that was filmed before episode 1 aired some of the cast talked about once they got to their table they didn’t know events on other tables and I won’t spoil what they said after but it appears multiple episodes have already been made based on that answer

Regarding player vs dm npc. I think some of you might not have had a character in Marisa’s position or your dm played it 2 nicely
Back in my day the dm would sometimes have the big bad roll into town to take out a big good and your 1st level pc wasn’t going to be strong enough and you used you wisdom intuition maybe not 2 attack that villian right away but to get stronger (strahd does this but just plays with you). I thought it was masterclass. I’m curious if you asked your dm how they would have handled you as a level 3 talking to a king /powerful house ruler like she did.

 

[TiQuinn]

And it's the players choice to not listen to explicit warnings from the DM that their course of action could lead to severe consequences.

For my personal DM style, had I been running that situation and Marisha had pushed again after the explicit warning, I would have broken from the scene and said something to the effect of "Just to be clear, an NPC that is far above your power level and who your character knows to be one to make good on his threats will attack you and there is a very high chance that it will not be possible to survive the encounter should it go that way. Is the intent for your character that they continue to ignore the warning signs and as a player that you are good with your character experiencing the consequences of their choice?" Just to make sure that the player had properly read my intent as a DM. Communication errors can and do happen between DM and Players.

However, my take on the players and DM of CR is that they don't need that explicit warning. They are all skilled enough players, know each other and have enough empathy that the above was all implied in the moment. In other words

'Professional Role Players. Do not attempt at home.'

As I said, there’s home games and then there’s an AP that is setting up a story, arcs (of which the first four episodes are one arc - an overture to the main campaign), and killing a character without that communication seems unlikely. But I feel this is turning into another projection of what people would do in their home game than anything else rather than what’s actually happening in the show. Marisha made the save, nothing else really matters. If you would’ve killed her character, then I guess you would’ve.

 

[OB1]

As I said, there’s home games and then there’s an AP that is setting up a story, arcs (of which the first four episodes are one arc - an overture to the main campaign), and killing a character without that communication seems unlikely. But I feel this is turning into another projection of what people would do in their home game than anything else rather than what’s actually happening in the show. Marisha made the save, nothing else really matters. If you would’ve killed her character, then I guess you would’ve.

No, I'm saying if she had pushed one more time after the warning, that Brennan would have been justified in having Primus unleash on her. As it was, she took the warning to heart so we never got to that point.

Failing the save earlier wasn't supposed to kill her, it was meant to warn her. Part of the escalating, 'don't mess with me' POV of Primus.