Critical Role Mighty Nien heads to Amazon Prime!

[Weiley31]

Not surprising really. Although, I was expecting the announcement to happen AFTER Campaign 1. So, if it is indeed coming so soon, that's a bit of a shocker. But should be good still.

 

[humble minion]

I confess I AM surprised, though I seem to be the only one in this thread who is!

Season 1 of VM must have gone absolutely gangbusters if they're already greenlighting a spinoff before the second season has even really got going. I was aware it had been successful (you don't sign for a third season of a show when season one was only middling...) but wow, it must have given Amazon just stellar numbers if they're going in this hard this early.

The Critical Role Cinematic Universe. Never thought i'd see the day...

 

[Reynard]

The perpetual failure to mention that there was also 700 Thespians,

Ugh. So much drama...

 

[Clint_L]

I was not expecting this, and agree that they must be doing impressive number for Prime to keep throwing money at them. It's great! Even if CR is not your thing, this is a home game that is growing into an entertainment behemoth. They are part of our tribe.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Holy. Balls.

Cannot wait for the chaos that is Jester to hit the screen. Oh...Molly. Long may he reign.

Here's to hoping the episodes are a bit less compact and we get a bit more breathing room to adapt more of the interplay into the cartoon.

No spoilers! I had so much fun watching everyone else watching the first two seasons of Game of Thrones!

 

[Seramus]

MN is probably the best campaign they've done.

I feel that the Nein were better characters, while Vox has a far more iconic story.

 

[CleverNickName]

Agreed. I still watch…most episodes. For me it’s that everyone went with a joke character with a tragic backstory, except Liam. Like they all got together and decided that Jester and Caleb would be great templates and everyone made a kinda-funny, kinda-tragic character. The result just doesn’t come together as a whole.

You're not wrong. Sam is playing a literal heal-bot, and Talesin is playing the personification of a Punk Rock.

Liam and Ashley are playing the same characters that they rolled up for the Exandria Unlimited miniseries, which had a completely different vibe (more serious, I think). Everyone else kinda went off the rails, I think.

 

[Parmandur]

Ok so non-Critical Role follower - do I understand correctly that this is the second Critical Role campaign (Vox Machina being the first), with presumably mostly the same VA, but playing totally different characters in a totally different campaign in the same approximate setting?

Also I want to go on record and say Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein are terrible names for groups, and this one is particularly bad because there appear to 7 of them!

Still, hopefully it's as good as or better than Vox Machina, which I've been mostly enjoying on Prime (I wish they'd use more actual spells and fewer generic energy blasts though).

Liam O'Brian voices the Red Skull and Nightcrawler in modern Marvel cartoons and has a bit of Gwrman, so early on in this campaign he decided to make a Wizard with a thick German accent and throwing in some words for flavor. We started with this campaign, and speaking as someone who has a majority of German speaking ancestors and also studied German in high school. I didn't realize he wasn't just a German actor for a few hours! Early on, he kept rolling and failing Saves by rolling 9's, and would respond to Mercer asking if he passed with "Nein, it is a nine" while laying it on thick. Then 9's become overrepresented in everyone's rolls for several sessions, and things escalated from there.

Ultimately, there are like 10 or more members, but not at the same time.

 

[JEB]

Probably an unpopular opinion, but I'm a much bigger fan of the Nein than Vox Machina (minus Percy and Grog).

TBH, I thought Mighty Nein was a lot more popular than Vox Machina, based on fanart and cosplay and other convention activity pre-Covid. But I'm not at all hooked into CR fandom, so...

 

[BRayne]

TBH, I thought Mighty Nein was a lot more popular than Vox Machina, based on fanart and cosplay and other convention activity pre-Covid. But I'm not at all hooked into CR fandom, so...

CR got a lot more popular following up on Vox Machina so a ton of people were pushed towards "just watch the new campaign, there's a lot of technical issues at the start of the original one". So there's a ton of CR fans who came in with Mighty Nein and didn't ever really get into Vox Machina. Some people who started with Vox Machina might be inclined to say "M9 had more interesting characters (to start with at least), but VM had a more cohesive story." Which is where a lot of disagreement about the two campaigns lies.

 

[Mad_Jack]

Ugh. So much drama...

I was going to make a joke about the 700 Thespians just being extras standing around in the background...

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I am a fan of the livestreams, and came to accept both names in their original contexts. From the perspective of marketing their "all professional voice actors" gimmick in the early days of the livestream, Vox Machina was a solid name, even if said meta reference in Latin made no in-world sense. Mighty Nein was one of those stupid in-jokes that makes no particular sense but that you have a certain loyalty to if you were there for. But I still agree that as names to brand their cartoon shows with they are sub-optimal (even with a cool logo).


It was 300 Spartans. The perpetual failure to mention that there was also 700 Thespians, and a substantial number of the Spartans' quasi-slave heliots, who died just the same alongside them, does not change the number of Spartans which, to my recollection, the historical sources and other evidence generally agree on.

Vox Machina weren’t even that originally. Try out Super High Intensity Team and see how it feels.

 

[teitan]

This is the superior campaign! The characters were cool, the story was cool, the designs were cool. Wildemount was an interesting setting that Matt provided descriptions for that made everything come alive and the non-standard style D&D campaign actually work with the Kryn Dynasty/Dwendalian Empire war and it was dark, so dark. Very excited to see how they do this one.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Ugh. So much drama...

I think you actually nailed exactly why the equally valiant sacrifice of citizens of Thespiae at Thermopylae is almost never mentioned. Once your name is completely associated with one thing in historical memory, tough luck getting noticed for anything else.

At least the people of Lesbos get painted with a historical brush that has something (very tangentially) to do with them. The poet and actor Thespis wasn't even from Thespiae.

 

[Stattick]

Also I want to go on record and say Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein are terrible names for groups, and this one is particularly bad because there appear to 7 of them!

There's 7 of them... well, that's one way of looking at it. But that misses the 8th member of the group, Frumpkin. And then there was that member that departed the group, and then a new member joining. If you count them both, plus Frumpkin, there are indeed 9 members of The Mighty Nein.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

there was also 700 Thespians

Well, you need understudies, stunt people, and the like to make a movie.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It was 300 Spartans. The perpetual failure to mention that there was also 700 Thespians, and a substantial number of the Spartans' quasi-slave heliots, who died just the same alongside them, does not change the number of Spartans which, to my recollection, the historical sources and other evidence generally agree on.

You have no idea how mad I got in Ancient History class when I found out I'd been lied to about this systematically for my entire life (admittedly I was all of 16/17)! It's one of the greatest "lies of omission" of history. I did hear someone finally put up a monument to the Thespians as well, actually at Thermopylae though, which makes me feel a tiny bit better. So I guess it's just the poor bloody Helots who are continuing to eat it! To be fair sources are less clear on their numbers/presence, but one can't help but feel some ancient Greek bigotry is at play there "Oh they're just slaves/serfs from that ethnicity which was here before our population wave came in!".

Well, you need understudies, stunt people, and the like to make a movie.

This is making me laugh a lot harder than it has any right to. Nearly got coffee up my nose!

 

[Henadic Theologian]

variety.com/2023/tv/news/critical-role-might-nein-series-amazon-prime-video-deal-1235502070/amp/

Really looking forward to this Wildemount series.

 

[Rabulias]

We're already talking about this here:

Critical Role - Mighty Nien heads to Amazon Prime!

https://gizmodo.com/mighty-nein-critical-role-tv-show-amazon-prime-video-1850029855

www.enworld.org

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I own Explorer's Guide to Wildemount and watched Jester themed cosplay music videos by Ginny Di, but never watched the campaign, so I'm going into this with fresh eyes.