Critical Role Releases New Campaign 4 Trailer

Critical Role has released a new trailer for their upcoming fourth campaign. The trailer, embedded below, lays out the overarching premise of the plot, as well as a look at the full 13-player table that will participate in the early parts of the campaign. The trailer not only explains the background of Araman, a world whose people overthrew the gods 70 years ago, but also hints at more recent conflicts.


A description of the show notes that the show opens with the planned execution of a person named Thjazi Fang. His scheduled execution leads to three groups coming together to seek the truth behind his grim fate, spinning off into its own series.

As announced earlier this year, Campaign 4 will feature three groups of players simultaneously exploring the world of Araman in what's described as a West Marches-style campaign. Early episodes will feature all thirteen players, but the show will eventually break the groups out into smaller tables, although there will still be some crossover between the groups.

Critical Role's fourth campaign starts on October 2nd.

 

[Mercador]

I would actually start with the Legend of Vox Machina cartoon, which boils Campaign 1 down to a more zippy pace.

Critical Role episodes are, on average, four hours long and campaigns are each 100+ episodes. And these episodes take their time. There are whole episodes that are 99% shopping. One in Campaign 2 was about hiring NPCs to work in the group's tower HQ.

The cartoon will give you a sense of the characters, the story, the tone, etc., much more quickly. You won't need to invest multiple four-hour chunks to figure out if Critical Role is for you. (Or you might decide that consuming it as a cartoon is more your speed.)

The new campaign is apparently a fresh start, but it's a new-ish DM for Critical Role (Mulligan has done two important limited series runs, which were excellent, but were not the main campaign), a new format and includes a bunch of folks who have only been supporting players in the past. And Mercer, of course, is going to be a player, rather than a DM.

It may be good, it may be bad, but it will for sure be different.

Yeah I don't have that kind of free time otherwise I would play myself. I'll take a look at the cartoon then.

But I think it's a different way to consume TTRPG. I'm old I guess, I don't understand people watching people play videogames but I can understand for TTRPG as getting a game going is quite complicated nowadays, we don't have the same attention time that we had before Internet...

 

[Mercador]

I would actually start with the Legend of Vox Machina cartoon, which boils Campaign 1 down to a more zippy pace.

Critical Role episodes are, on average, four hours long and campaigns are each 100+ episodes. And these episodes take their time. There are whole episodes that are 99% shopping. One in Campaign 2 was about hiring NPCs to work in the group's tower HQ.

The cartoon will give you a sense of the characters, the story, the tone, etc., much more quickly. You won't need to invest multiple four-hour chunks to figure out if Critical Role is for you. (Or you might decide that consuming it as a cartoon is more your speed.)

The new campaign is apparently a fresh start, but it's a new-ish DM for Critical Role (Mulligan has done two important limited series runs, which were excellent, but were not the main campaign), a new format and includes a bunch of folks who have only been supporting players in the past. And Mercer, of course, is going to be a player, rather than a DM.

It may be good, it may be bad, but it will for sure be different.

Yeah I don't have that kind of free time otherwise I would play myself. I'll take a look at the cartoon then. Thank you for your suggestion.

But I think it's a different way to consume TTRPG. I'm old I guess, I don't understand people watching people play videogames but I can understand for TTRPG as getting a game going is quite complicated nowadays, we don't have the same attention time that we had before Internet...

 

[Mercador]

I would actually start with the Legend of Vox Machina cartoon, which boils Campaign 1 down to a more zippy pace.

Critical Role episodes are, on average, four hours long and campaigns are each 100+ episodes. And these episodes take their time. There are whole episodes that are 99% shopping. One in Campaign 2 was about hiring NPCs to work in the group's tower HQ.

The cartoon will give you a sense of the characters, the story, the tone, etc., much more quickly. You won't need to invest multiple four-hour chunks to figure out if Critical Role is for you. (Or you might decide that consuming it as a cartoon is more your speed.)

The new campaign is apparently a fresh start, but it's a new-ish DM for Critical Role (Mulligan has done two important limited series runs, which were excellent, but were not the main campaign), a new format and includes a bunch of folks who have only been supporting players in the past. And Mercer, of course, is going to be a player, rather than a DM.

It may be good, it may be bad, but it will for sure be different.

Yeah I don't have that kind of free time otherwise I would play myself. I'll take a look at the cartoon then. Thank you for your suggestion.

But I think it's a different way to consume TTRPG. I'm old I guess, I don't understand people watching people play videogames but I can understand for TTRPG as getting a game going is quite complicated nowadays, we don't have the same attention time that we had before Internet...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah I don't have that kind of free time otherwise I would play myself. I'll take a look at the cartoon then. Thank you for your suggestion.

But I think it's a different way to consume TTRPG. I'm old I guess, I don't understand people watching people play videogames but I can understand for TTRPG as getting a game going is quite complicated nowadays, we don't have the same attention time that we had before Internet...

Hardcore Critical Role fans have literally watched thousands of hours of the cast playing, so if their attention span has been diminished by the internet, they must have been supernaturally focused before it.

YouTube has lots of good bite-sized clips from Dimension 20 in their YouTube Shorts section, which I think gives you a good feel of the fun of watching people play. You have great player interactions, hilarious moments, epic RPG mastery (especially from Emily Axford, who hasn't found a scenario she can't destroy), etc.

That said, it doesn't have to be for everyone. But there's a lot of folks of watching and enjoying actual plays. (I mostly prefer them as podcasts, myself, which I listen to while walking or driving.)

 

[humble minion]

Everyone I know who manages to keep up with the actual CR gaming streams listens to them at work, or in extreme cases watches them on a spare screen while working from home.

Four hours a week is a pretty serious time investment unless you manage to multitask (which I can't).

 

[Mercador]

Yeah, listening to them when cycling or rowing perhaps, but not 4 hours a week in front of the TV. But who knows, when I'm retiree, I might have the time to do that

 

[overgeeked]

What I’ve done for most of C3 is watch an hour or two “live” then ignore it. If it’s something important, Matt will recap it at the start of the next episode. If there some big moment, it’ll be talked about or clipped in a dozen places by morning. If it’s one of the dreaded shopping episodes, I just turn it off. Here’s to hoping Brennan keeps things moving and doesn’t waste time like that.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Everyone I know who manages to keep up with the actual CR gaming streams listens to them at work, or in extreme cases watches them on a spare screen while working from home.

Four hours a week is a pretty serious time investment unless you manage to multitask (which I can't).

Yeah, I get in a lot of actual play time on my second monitor while playing videogames.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If it’s one of the dreaded shopping episodes, I just turn it off. Here’s to hoping Brennan keeps things moving and doesn’t waste time like that.

I don't think there's ever been an episode of Dimension 20 or Worlds Beyond Number that he's DMed that turned into something like that. He appears to have a mental checklist for each episode and tries to get in a variety of activities in each.

 

[definiteFreakyFishGuy]

I don't think there's ever been an episode of Dimension 20 or Worlds Beyond Number that he's DMed that turned into something like that. He appears to have a mental checklist for each episode and tries to get in a variety of activities in each.

I'm not too familiar with WBN, but isn't D20 heavily edited? Maybe all the "boring" parts got cut out in the editing room.