Hello

I have to confess that when campaign 4 was first announced, I was a bit skeptical of the idea of having so many PCs and three disparate tables with set "labels". I worried that the tables would be too divorced from each other, and I (wrongfully) assumed that most of the characters would be unconnected to the others. I also thought the fact that each table had a different 'focus' had the potential to be jarring.

Having now seen two arcs and at least one full episode at each table, I’m happy to say that my misgivings were quite off the mark. It’s clear that when CR decided to do something different for this campaign, they decided to push the medium of actual play to the limit. In doing so, they’ve created something that caters to many different types of storytelling all at once, an epic with a cast of characters more like that of a sprawling fantasy novel than your average ttrpg. It’s the kind of thing that would be SO difficult to pull off with a home game, but because of the fact that it’s filmed, they’re able to use the fact that it’s a theatrical production as a way to leverage the medium.

One of the things that has struck me is how each table has been rooted in a different genre. The Soldiers’ table felt the most like straightforward dnd — they had a revenge quest and a goal to find Teor’s brother, they left and went on an adventure, they met some allies and did some fighting and ultimately concluded with Casimir dead and Cyd acquired. The Seekers, meanwhile, were on the run from the moment they started, and because they kept leaping out of the frying pan into the fire (all the way up until they reached the Barrowguard), their sessions felt like nonstop action and suspense. The ultimate conclusion at Tannesar shifted somewhat back into a more standard dnd format, but the conversation with Pascard Velmonte also hammered home that this is something different (specifically, how it didn’t follow the standard rules for Speak With Dead and instead used the casting of the spell as a way to further the story).

I’ve just finished episode 19 with the Schemers, and they’re in a THIRD story that’s essentially a political thriller. I don’t think I’ve ever watched an actual play where half of the episode was taken up by scenes with single characters and npcs, but this was so important to how their plans are being set up. It sounds like it’s going to switch to being more collaborative in future episodes, but I still was struck by how different it felt.

The point I’m making here is not “dnd can’t be all of these things”, because part of the joy of ttrpgs is that they CAN be all of these things. The point is that actual play shows, until now, have predominantly been structured to showcase a campaign the way that a home game would, and now we have this new format that plays dnd using blocks of improv to form the equivalent of a tv show or movie. We can move from group to group, we can change the tone up, we can switch characters in and out — and it’s extremely cool and dynamic.

Critical Role has stopped trying to be a home game with additional viewers, and it’s a logical next step to push that even further after ten years. It’s revolutionizing the concept of what actual play can be, at least for me (and let me know if anyone else has done this in a similar format before them, because I’d love to check it out!) Campaign 4 spotlights the versatility of using ttrpgs and improv to build coherent, long-form epic stories with larger casts, and I imagine it’s quite a feat to pull it off with such skill. This feels like it might herald a new shift in the genre, and I’m excited to see how this influence carries over into other actual play shows.

And yet! He's arguably THE significant figure in the ritual liberation of ancient orcish souls on KoTher'ai's opening night! As a player, Liam/Halandil rolled "Producer checks" to see how well he'd readied his whole cast and crew for this, but by all reason Lash was also rolling the Performance check of his life. He and all the other troupe-members were rolling, oh, Wisdom saves to not be intimidated by the Creed luxes in the audience. None of them know they're making an enemy of House Tachonis by freeing an afterlife with this, but they DO know they're making an enemy of House Halovar, which is a much more imminent threat - and every one, stage crew and special effects team and actors with Lash leading as the Heretic, the Renegade, of KoTher'ai - is still here rolling their best Performance checks to say, We are the Rungjani and this is our story. Now we are free, and we will continue to free ourselves and each other.

Because a rebellion isn't, can't be, just 13 significant characters. It's 350 soldiers who believe in a cause but still need to feed their families, so you get a donation and set up discreet soup kitchens. It's a theater troupe of renegades, it's the Faerie diaspora living in the shadows, it's maids and merchants and noblewomen all picking up their rocks. It's ancient Elvish enemies talking in the woods together. It's all of us. Everyone is significant.

I would be reluctant to use fridging in this exact context, because this isn't some imaginary scenario to generate manpain for a white hero, this is a much more common experience of Native American and First Nation people, having their wives and daughters and sisters (in particular, but not exclusively) go missing. And never getting answers, never learning what happened, and not being believed that there's a problem in the first place.

This is like how being rescued from a tower by a prince is not particularly empowering or affirming to cis physically able straight thin perisex white women and girls, but can be for basically anybody else. Particularly black girls and women, who do not get a lot of cultural messages that treat them as people who are so valuable and precious, who may not have the strength to save themselves, or may wish that they didn't fucking have to save themselves (and everyone else) all the time.

White men have this story so often happen that we have a trope name specific to one specific and particularly egregious version of this, but you don't often see men who look like Robbie dealing with this type of story in fictional settings, even though it happens for men like Robbie in real life with horrifying frequency.

The first option is to make it something where your player characters have a lot of opportunities to intervene with very clear and immediate results. The play is a little bit like this. There's tons of moving parts, and Brennan is playing Lash, Olgud, all the fairies, Vokjan Murzat, the Candescent Creed, Hannan, and the audience. However, everyone has plenty of opportunities to act and participate and the impact of that is immediate. Murray gets the fairies to bother the Candescent Creed. Hal is constantly able to help out with the play. Thaisha is able to choose to head to the Creed, and uses Call the Corners in a climactic moment, and Vaelus feels the Stone of Nightsong and both she and Azune are able to see more than most people in this moment. It's a largely NPC action scene, but the PCs are constantly influencing it and are rewarded very quickly for those choices, which is important - this is not a situation where you can play the long game.

The second option is for the scene to be a culmination of longterm character work. The Sundered Houses meeting is that. Einfasen's testimony is ultimately the result of extensive work from many characters (most of whom aren't present due to West Marches, but would be in a more traditional campaign and are present as the audience). The Seekers and Schemers both laid the groundwork for House Einfasen to be able to make his accusations, and Wick's work with his grandmother allowed him to be there in her good graces. We gain some information from the scene to be sure, but a lot of it serves as the payoff from those arcs. The characters already did their influencing, and the scene serves to honor that.

Aranessa is a woman who is acutely aware of her responsibilities as the scion of a noble house. Aranessa would have expected- and, probably hoped - for her life to look a certain way, when she married, and that would have included children.

Aranessa was probably picturing a bunch of little half-orc kids with her eyes and Thjazi’s smile, running around the Golden Orchard and growing up under her loving eye and the protection of Faerie. Probably with Thimble as a kind of fairy godmother- Thimble, who was expected to remain forever appearing about 8 years old, but who is a warrior - who would have made the most wonderful playmate and protector.

And then Thjazi goes off to right wrongs and be the hero the common people deserve, and she knows she’s never going to get that with him. But she loves him too much to divorce him, so even though they are estranged indefinitely, she’s never going to have that with anyone else, either.

And her brother-in-law has children and even though he and Thaisha never married, Thaisha still calls Aranessa “sister,” so she was clearly a part of their life, right? She got to be an aunt, at least, to Alogar and Shadia? And then Hal has a daughter with a human woman, and you know Hero must look very much like what Aranessa would have dreamed a daughter of her own might be. And Aranessa has to hold her niece and know this is the closest she will ever get to seeing that, now.

And then there’s Occtis, who is such a good kid, such a sweet boy, who bonds with Thimble and right away becomes a dear friend to her. Whose family doesn’t pay him any attention, but who Thjazi has, for some reason, sort of taken under his wing. Who Aranessa has to look at and know that if things had gone the way she dreamed, would have been right around the age of her own children. If only, if only.

And now Thjazi is gone, and she hears that Occtis, who she must know was hoping to help him, is being sought by his family. And she knows if they found any hint that he was trying to help Thjazi, he will be in danger. So she invites him into her dearest friend’s home to try to offer him safety and protection, because she is confident that this place, here in the middle of the city and filled with the loyal bannermen of her house, will be a safe place for him.

And then not only is the Palazzo Davinos attacked, not only are all of her people slaughtered, and all of Julien’s people slaughtered, but this kid is brutally murdered by his own family, in the same room as her. She is right there, helpless to stop it, forced to watch him die- just as she watched Thjazi die just one day before.

You dare not, until a man looks you in the eyes and tells you yes. Yes, we did it. You pointed us in the direction. You led the way. You did not die for nothing, you died for your children to be free, to have the ability to fight for freedom, and your children got it!!! They got it, and isn't that everything you ever hoped for? The sheer joy of that realization is what allows you to move on, to join the world once more not as a lost soul, who failed in their battle, but as a soul who led the way to freedom. And now you are free, free to pass on and rejoin the world!!!

both families are directly saying "you were a failure and i've finally found a use for you so you are never escaping us there is no choice in the matter", but as ever, tachonis go about things by killing first and just doing what they like now you metaphysically have no choice in the matter, and halovar have a whole creepy-in-how-bright-and-pleasant-it-is sermon about forgiveness, but they are the exact. same. thing.

both of them are dealing with "we're gonna make you our celestial weapon one way or another"!

i kinda believe that hal trusts his children more than that??? he knows that his daughters are not little girls but young brilliant women and he acts accordingly. i mean of course he would never put them directly in danger, of course he protects them, of course he wouldn't want them to be harmed in any way BUT

he very well knows that they are capable and smart. and they have each other, and they have elodie, and they have him and he has them, and they are not alone. he doesn't tell them everything but he's not actively hiding stuff or something. he gives them the opportunity to know things they get to know. he's honest when he says that everything's bad

he lets shadia use the paint and the blades even though he himself does not feel very confident about them

he lets hero be around and organize their little conspiracy teams

and yeah sure, he would potentially kill anybody who put his kids in danger (or is the source of the danger). but he's not as overprotective as people think about him and obviously not as overprotective as thjazi was towards him

it's also interesting in the difference between the elves of the Old Path and the practitioners of other races. if the ability to have children was decided to only be granted to the most faithful then elves like Hannan and his wife were foregoing the possibility of ever passing on their traditions to their biological children as the other races of the Old Path could. of course, biological family isn't the only type of family, but it does mean the elven druids had to put themselves in more danger in order to find others who shared their beliefs. there were no generations of secret worship. they had to intentionally seek each other out just to learn about the Path, let alone find community with each other, and if they were discovered, if they confided in the wrong person, they were persecuted the most harshly by their goddess of life and nature.

Wick's occasional outbursts of anger are such an underrated aspect of his characterization. Beyond just being something refreshingly different from his usual sweet/sad/scared trinity, I think it shows A LOT about the environment he was raised in.

Wick is a patient man, he only actually breaks down into anger when he's already been pushed to his limit with stress. His grandmother refusing his pleas to spare Thjazi and Tyranny continually ignoring him, his first time on death's door, being insulted (and even punched) constantly by his allies, etc. And when he snaps it only directed at the cause of his frustration (Tyranny disobeying him, Thaisha killing one of the luxes in a spur of the moment, Julien punching him). And when he doesn't have someone in particular to snap at, he just simmers in self-resentment.

When he does lose his temper, it reflects on Yanessa in a couple interesting ways. For one, it honestly makes him resemble Yanessa's aggression a lot. It's quick, it's loud, and it's mean.

But moreso it reflects the effect growing up around her anger had on him and his ability to stand up for himself. He may have been his family's favorite child, but his reaction to Yanessa's outburst in episode 3 reads to me as someone who is used to seeing it and being cowed into submission by it, or seeing others be cowed by it.

It explains a lot about Wick, despite sometimes having misplaced confidence, being so hesitant to actually stand up for himself until his stress boils over into rage and he can't stop himself. Then he usually feels the need to apologize immediately afterword. Being in that environment trained him to be obedient and passive, even in the face of anger and insults.

He never learned to stand up for himself normally, so now he just lets his stress build up continuously until it boils over into aggression.

Murray organizes the people of the world into the oppressors and the oppressed, but stumbles when the lines aren’t clear cut. Murray stealing from and smuggling goods through the Penteveral is good, but Dean Kora (who has a similar background as Murray) doing it in an official way that brings funding to the school isn’t. Thjazi is suspect because he seemed to be so aware of and worked around the Sundered Houses’ machinations, but Azune isn’t because he’s talking to her about his spying? Occtis is a nepo baby despite 0 support or contact from his family during his entire stint at the Penteveral (he hadn’t even been to the family manor in the same city for years), but Hero D’vyen isn’t despite being raised in an influential merchant family because she was useful? Because she’s a wizard instead of a sorcerer? Because she’s Hal’s kid (and still also Elodie’s kid)?

The simple answer is that Murray picks favorites according to her strongest impressions, and doesn’t really think deeply about the why. It’s an instinctive thing, not a well reasoned perspective based in logic or moral judgment. That’s a fascinating flaw to have for someone so dedicated to the idea that magic is a science and belief systems like religion are just superstitions.

Of all the PCs, Azune is the one in the best position to prod at this flaw. None of the others really have reason to put heavy weight on Murray’s opinion of them. Azune was her pupil and both of them worked with Thjazi. They have personal and professional connections to each other.

So it’s Azune who brings up the ugly line of thought:

I like-- Sometimes you look at me and I think that you put on me a little bit of the disdain that you have for the institution that I work for and it makes me feel like I might be losing you because of the position I'm in, but moments like this remind me that that's probably just in my head, and I really--

Murray’s response is of course that’s all in his head, she doesn’t think of him like that because he’s a good egg.

He’s one of the good ones, and we’re not going to ignore all the biases that invokes for a character made by a white woman.

But the story didn’t end there in episode 22, and the conversation didn’t either. Azune keeps brushing against these biases, and Murray cares enough about him that she can’t ignore the discomfort.

Azune tells the group that he needs to present the case to Einfasen at the family manor. He is potentially walking to his execution, and they all know it because he asked for Demodus to go testify, and Murray objected that her student could die there. But so could Azune.

Is it fine because Azune was a child soldier and never really stopped being a soldier? Because he chose to join the Arcane Marshals to spy for Thjazi instead of pursuing a formal education for himself? Because he chose to lie to the Sundered Houses to further the Schemers’ plans and that means he solely bears the risks?

Of course it’s not fine, and Murray doesn’t pretend it is, but she clearly wants to escape that situation without having to face those questions, and Azune won’t let her. She objected, and now that all of that is laid at her feet, she has to choose to stand by that objection or not.

How can she criticize Thjazi for treating good people as expendable when that is exactly the dilemma before her? Doesn’t that suggest that Thjazi experienced similar turmoil when faced with these choices? We can’t even answer that because Thjazi chose to die for his cause rather than escape. He bore the same risks he asked of others and didn’t run.

So Murray goes with the group too, all jointly risking their lives, and Azune’s presentation works! She even has a discussion with Demodus where he points out that his lightheartedness isn’t from naïveté or ignorance, but because he chooses that in the face of despair. Azune got promoted, Demodus has a job set up for him with an escort to safety, and Murray faces no fallout.

But it doesn’t feel good.

Sure, the world would be better without the Sundered Houses using their monopoly on magic to reinforce class divides—but the divides will continue. Gus is only king because he had a valid claim of royal blood, with support from other nobles, and his heir will follow a monarchist convention for title and inheritance. The backup soldiers for the theater will only show up because Elodie D’vyen charitably paid for their meals. Students were available to help Bolaire obstruct the houses at the Archanade because of corruption at the Penteveral. We don’t get to pretend that the only reason these circumstances are in the story is some message about making unfair systems work for the heroes; the unfairness will continue even if they win.

The uncomfortable reality is that the world isn’t simple enough to determine who the good people are and then get rid of the bad guys. There’s no such thing as the good people, a class of good people, a set of pre-determined traits that identifies good people. Even if we pretended there was, they aren’t a unified faction whose interests and stakes will always align. The idea of always being able to make choices to benefit only the good people is no more rational than superstition. That’s an uncomfortable thought to bear for an intelligent woman who values scientific study of magic enough to dedicate her career to it.

Azune has accepted that already, and he clocked Murray right from the start: her support and friendship is contingent on him being one of the good ones, however it is that she defines that in her own head.

It’s so satisfying to see a Latino actor look a white actor in the eyes and perform his character begging to know how he can be one of the good ones. Azune wants to be and doesn’t know how, but he’s willing to do as he’s told. No one gets to be comfortable about this. Everyone gets to bask in how fucked up that mentality is and that there is no definitive answer except “the people I approve of.” Hypocrisy and tribalism on full display with a lovely little plaque added by Luis.