I’m making my way (~making my way~) through campaign 4 months late, and I just finished the first of the Schemers’ episodes. One thing that I can’t stop thinking about is how interesting the structure of this campaign is. (I’m sure someone else has already touched on this, but as I’ve had most campaign 4 posts blocked since the first episode, you’re getting my own thoughts without distillation through the fandom grapevine.)
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.
I still have more of campaign 4 to watch before I catch up to the rest of you, and I’m vaguely spoiled just enough to know that everyone comes back together. I’m curious to see how they plan to mix it up again afterwards - I’ve seen talk of the tables shuffling, and it seems to me that there are a few different ways they could play this, especially given their willingness to be creative. Regardless of what they go with, I can’t wait to see what more they have in store.
