Critical Role's The Mighty Nein Reveals First Look, Season 1 to Air on November 19th

The Mighty Nein will come to Prime Video in November. Alongside news that The Legend of Vox Machina would be picked up for a fifth season, Prime Video also revealed a first look at The Mighty Nein animated series and announced that the show would start airing on November 19th. You can check out a "sneak peek" of the season down below, which features six of The Mighty Nein's seven characters being interrogated after an incident at a traveling circus.


The Mighty Nein will star Critical Role's founding cast members (Matt Mercer, Marisha Ray, Liam O'Brien, Travis Willingham, Taliesin Jaffe, Laura Bailey, Ashley Johnson, and Sam Riegel) and will feature a group of misfit heroes swept up into the political intrigue of two feuding nations. While The Legend of Vox Machina is a prototypical heroic quest, The Mighty Nein's heroes are much more reluctant and face much more personal threats over the course of their adventures.

 

[Seramus]

The improvisers aren't waiting for Brennan or Murph to tell them the story. In fact, both DMs sometimes have to scramble to keep up with their players' crazy ideas. Brennan has said, because they build sets and minis ahead of time, he tries to have concrete ideas for what's going to happen, but it often spins out of control. (Luckily, the art team is now very good about making miniatures and sets very fast when a player impovs something unexpected, and the appropriate set or mini can show up pretty soon thereafter.)

Yeah. Matt starts narrating one of his big villain moments, and his players sit back and bear witness. Brennan starts narrating one of his big villain moments, and his players start asking if they can do crazy things. I would not hesitate to say the Critical Role players have more raw charisma, and the Dimension 20 players have more raw cunning.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah. Matt starts narrating one of his big villain moments, and his players sit back and bear witness. Brennan starts narrating one of his big villain moments, and his players start asking if they can do crazy things. I would not hesitate to say the Critical Role players have more raw charisma, and the Dimension 20 players have more raw cunning.

I feel like Emily Axford could probably break a Critical Role campaign all by herself, and either be beloved or absolutely hated by Critters as a result.

CR's Dust of Deliciousness moment (no spoilers!) is the kind of thing Emily does almost once an episode.

 

[overgeeked]

Yeah. Matt starts narrating one of his big villain moments, and his players sit back and bear witness. Brennan starts narrating one of his big villain moments, and his players start asking if they can do crazy things. I would not hesitate to say the Critical Role players have more raw charisma, and the Dimension 20 players have more raw cunning.

I feel like Emily Axford could probably break a Critical Role campaign all by herself, and either be beloved or absolutely hated by Critters as a result.

CR's Dust of Deliciousness moment (no spoilers!) is the kind of thing Emily does almost once an episode.

Yep. It’s almost like there really is a difference between roleplayers and gamers.

CR are thoroughly roleplayers first. Fairly often some of the players don’t even know the rules of the game they’ve been playing for a decade but they will 1000% commit to their character, the emotions, the story, etc.

D20, especially Emily, are gamers first. From what I’ve seen the players will commit to a bit and ride it to the grave but they will absolutely get as close to breaking the game, and Brennan, as possible.

Emily did guest star in CR campaign 3 for a short run. She definitely squeezed as much juice out of her build as possible. There’s even a clip of some other players asking her how the hell she does that. “Learn your character. Read your spells,” was the short version.

ETA: For those interested, Emily was on CR campaign 3, episode 59-64.

 

[Seramus]

I feel like Emily Axford could probably break a Critical Role campaign all by herself, and either be beloved or absolutely hated by Critters as a result.

CR's Dust of Deliciousness moment (no spoilers!) is the kind of thing Emily does almost once an episode.

She was in C3 as a guest player, and she was amazing!

 

[Worrgrendel]

It definitely worked out for the best. Warlocks don't get Message or Spirit Guardians, and her reluctant healing gave us Caduceus.

Thank goodness for Caduceus. What is up with all of Talesin’s characters but Caduceus being jerks?
Percy = stuck up rich a-hole
Mollymock = self righteous a-hole
Ashton = just straight up all around a-hole
If his character in campaign 4 is an a-hole I think it’s the player that’s the problem.

 

[overgeeked]

Thank goodness for Caduceus. What is up with all of Talesin’s characters but Caduceus being jerks?
Percy = stuck up rich a-hole
Mollymock = self righteous a-hole
Ashton = just straight up all around a-hole
If his character in campaign 4 is an a-hole I think it’s the player that’s the problem.

Right? Four of them seem to have fairly clear types they’re repeating.

Taliesin is the obnoxious arsehole. Laura is attracted to power. Liam is the emo mope. Sam is the joke character with heart.

Marisha, Ashley, and Travis seem to be more flexible and play with greater variety.

 

[Seramus]

Taliesin is the obnoxious arsehole. Laura is attracted to power.

I would say... As a person, Taliesin loves sitting on the sidelines and making sassy remarks, which is something even Caduceus shares - his remarks were more wise and insightful, but still born of the sideline snarker. He also loves playing characters with strange and unusual mechanics. Part of this is being a veteran player who has already done a lot of traditional tropes, and another part is the urge to avoid playing something mainstream and walk his own path.

Laura loves to win. You can watch her get noticeably agitated, and sometimes even brings the table mood down when things are not going her way. The infamous Cupcake scene was such a standout moment for her not just because it was a clever idea, but because she was taking a serious risk with her character, and Laura does NOT like to take serious risks! The good news is that she's a great roleplayer, incredibly funny, and comes up with very clever plans. When Laura is in a good mood, it's downright infectious!

 

[Ringtail]

Yep. It’s almost like there really is a difference between roleplayers and gamers.

CR are thoroughly roleplayers first. Fairly often some of the players don’t even know the rules of the game they’ve been playing for a decade but they will 1000% commit to their character, the emotions, the story, etc.

D20, especially Emily, are gamers first. From what I’ve seen the players will commit to a bit and ride it to the grave but they will absolutely get as close to breaking the game, and Brennan, as possible.

What's interesting is I feel like CR didn't quite used to be this way.

I mean, they've always been really role-play heavy, but I found in C1 and early parts of C2, the players were pretty attentive and on-point with their characters. C1 in particular feels like they're playing D&D and not having a narrative experience with D&D combat.

But then Covid happens, they take a big hiatus, and after they come back its like everyone forgot how to play their characters (I think some of them even say this.) They eventually get into the swing of things again, but it still feels like they're always fumbling with their abilities, and they start to get combat shy. This carries over into Campaign 3 and hasn't really changed. IMO the only person who seems to consistently know his stuff is Liam, who definitely seems like he loves D&D, not just role-playing.

All that being said, Daggerheart does absolutely seem designed for the way the cast plays. Its not really my thing, but listening to Age of Umbra, Daggerheart seemed to work great for them at the table. I really do hope they use it for their next major campaign, and that by doing so it injects some life back into the group. (I also think rotating the cast and having smaller adventures, Dimension 20 style, would help as well, but that's blasphemous to a lot of critters.)

 

[overgeeked]

I would say... As a person, Taliesin loves sitting on the sidelines and making sassy remarks, which is something even Caduceus shares - his remarks were more wise and insightful, but still born of the sideline snarker. He also loves playing characters with strange and unusual mechanics. Part of this is being a veteran player who has already done a lot of traditional tropes, and another part is the urge to avoid playing something mainstream and walk his own path.

Yeah, Cad always struck me as the long-suffering uncle or granddad. He thinks the others are dim as dirt but won't come out and say it, but he'll subtly make it known. What's wild is that, to me, his best character was Cad...the one character who was simply a stock race and class without any of the bespoke extras. Not having the time to custom make piles of mechanics helped him to just play a character.

Laura loves to win. You can watch her get noticeably agitated, and sometimes even brings the table mood down when things are not going her way. The infamous Cupcake scene was such a standout moment for her not just because it was a clever idea, but because she was taking a serious risk with her character, and Laura does NOT like to take serious risks! The good news is that she's a great roleplayer, incredibly funny, and comes up with very clever plans. When Laura is in a good mood, it's downright infectious!

I can see that. I still remember her being out for some reason and texting Travis to do something crazy with Jester and he refused. Laura was watching and called him on stream. You could almost hear her yelling through the phone to do the thing.

 

[overgeeked]

What's interesting is I feel like CR didn't quite used to be this way.

I mean, they've always been really role-play heavy, but I found in C1 and early parts of C2, the players were pretty attentive and on-point with their characters. C1 in particular feels like they're playing D&D and not having a narrative experience with D&D combat.

But then Covid happens, they take a big hiatus, and after they come back its like everyone forgot how to play their characters (I think some of them even say this.) They eventually get into the swing of things again, but it still feels like they're always fumbling with their abilities, and they start to get combat shy. This carries over into Campaign 3 and hasn't really changed.

I don't really agree, but it's a valid reading.

I'd say you can see that split really early in C1 with Orion. He was the power gamer and cheat CR kicked out in the early days. While they've always been far more story focused than most tables, that seemed to solidify something in them as a group. The story is more important than the game. And they adjusted accordingly. The game was still the thing they were playing, of course. But Matt started loosening up after that.

IMO the only person who seems to consistently know his stuff is Liam, who definitely seems like he loves D&D, not just role-playing.

Liam, Travis, and Sam all seem to have a better grip on the rules than the rest of the table, save Matt.

But yeah, that tracks given CR started because Liam wanted to play D&D again and Matt offered him a birthday game.

All that being said, Daggerheart does absolutely seem designed for the way the cast plays. Its not really my thing, but listening to Age of Umbra, Daggerheart seemed to work great for them at the table. I really do hope they use it for their next major campaign, and that by doing so it injects some life back into the group.

I honestly can't imagine that they wouldn't use Daggerheart for C4. Not sure what that'll look like though. They're probably tired of years-long campaigns with the same characters. I can see them doing smaller arcs with the same characters with more one-shots or callbacks between arcs.

(I also think rotating the cast and having smaller adventures, Dimension 20 style, would help as well, but that's blasphemous to a lot of critters.)

Smaller adventures I'd be down for. I don't think the rotating cast will fly. The draw seems to be these eight people around the table playing games. All the one-shots and mini campaigns without the full regular cast pull dramatically fewer viewers.