CRITICAL ROLE

Whilst roleplaying game podcasts have been around for quite some time, none of them have ever reached the same meteoric level of fame quite like these bunch of nerdy-ass voice actors.

What started out as a regular meetup amongst friends in the voice acting industry, Critical Role has become a multimedia juggernaut spanning three campaigns, several books and a highly popular animated streaming series. Helmed by Matthew Mercer with a dedicated cast and many guest appearances by fellow actors, the show is quite literally an actual play of the group’s roleplaying game sessions, which started off as a private game done for player/actor Liam O’Brien’s birthday and now sees literally tens of thousands of fans from across the globe tuning in each week to watch their live streams, with many more catching up on streaming services.

The show premiered on Geek and Sundry

when website owner Felicia Day heard about the game and approached the players with the idea of live-streaming their games, moving from their first home to Twitch in 2019 and now featured as one of the platform’s biggest earners.

Celebrated for its diversity, dedication to long-running storylines and sheer brilliance of both players and DM, the show has continued to wow fans and led to the founding of Critical Role Productions,

a creator-led and managed company and studio. For everyone who’s watched or started their own live play series of roleplaying games in the last five years, it’s likely that some influence can be attributed to this roleplaying games cultural touchstone.