Something I really appreciate about Sam as a player (that makes a lot of people on the internet really mad) is his absolute refusal to meta game.
To be clear, the goal of DND is not to make The Correct and Strategic Choice all the time. Critical Role isn’t just DND either, it’s Actual Play, which is using the game as a medium for storytelling. Actual Play is a performance, it’s telling a story, and stories are so much more interesting when you make messy choices.
Wick going to find Teor even when he knew Teor was dead made so much sense because
1. We’ve been shown that Wick, as a character, is excellent at denial. His entire religion was revealed as a farce and he’s still a believer. That’s consistent characterization! Being told Teor has died was of course going to be met with a ‘no! It can’t be!’.
2. Wick knew there were other party members with Teor, of course he’d be concerned about them. For Wick to just assume Thimble and Co. would be fine wasn’t realistic!
It takes a really good actor to be able to see a piece of knowledge offered to them that their character could benefit from, and continue to act according to only their character’s beliefs.
Every time Sam does this (Scanlan deciding to leave the party because fuck these guys there’s no cosmic force saying he has to stay, Nott high out of her mind trying to cast a spell she doesn’t have) it makes the story he’s participating in telling better! Funnier! More interesting!
Wick became a killer because of these choices and it spun his entire character arc in a different direction.
Sam Riegel is GOOD AT HIS JOB and that job is to cause problems in the narrative.
I’ll get off my soapbox now.
