Critical Role / YMMV

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Critical Role in General

And You Thought It Would Fail: Matthew Mercer was convinced that their streaming tenure with Geek & Sundry would last at most six weeks before they would be back to playing at home. He continues to iterate how humbled he feels by the monstrous media empire they have become since.
Awesome Music: "Your Turn to Roll" is a hell of a catchy song.
- The newly-created Scanlan Shorthalt Records has released a soundtrack album full of songs inspired by the Tal'Dorei campaign, and they are gorgeous.
- "Welcome to Wildemount" and "Welcome to Marquet", official themes composed by Colm McGuinness for their respective campaigns, are also incredible orchestrations.
Complete Monster: See here.
Friendly Fandoms:
- Considering how many crossover works have been made involving the two, it's safe to say the critters are one to The Magnus Archives.
- Critters tend to throw their support behind shows or games that the players are involved in, particularly Blindspot and Overwatch.
- There's also a fair bit of overlap with fellow D&D production The Adventure Zone.
- With Dimension 20, especially since both Matt and Marisha have appeared on guest arcs.
  - This increased during the "Summer of Aabria", where Aabria Iyengar was the DM for Critical Role: Exandria Unlimited at the same time that she ran Magic and Misfits on Dimension 20; that time period also saw the launch of the kickstarter for Into the Motherlands, which she is also involved with.
  - Even further solidified with Brennan Lee Mulligan being the Dungeon Master of EXU Calamity, with many blown away by Brennan's ability to take on the Herculean task of tackling the mini campaign's Just Before the End narrative.
  - Continued by Matt Mercer as the GM for The Ravening War on Dimension 20, as a prequel to A Crown of Candy campaign.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- Everything to do with Brian W. Foster's involvement with the show, following the revelations that he was a domestic abuser. Several fans have remarked that even prior to their removal from YouTube, watching Talks Machina or Between the Sheets in particular just feels uncomfortable.
- When Ludinus Da'leth first appears in Campaign 2, he seems like just another Cerberus Assembly member — he's up there with Trent Ikithon as one of the most corrupt, but the Mighty Nein isn't as concerned with him since he isn't as integral to Caleb's Dark and Troubled Past as Trent. Come Campaign 3, when Ludinus becomes an Ascended Extra and turns out to have been planning to destroy the gods for hundreds of years, becoming the Big Bad of not just one campaign but of three... he's a lot harder to overlook when rewatching Campaign 2.
Hype Backlash: While few people take it out on the show itself, many Game Masters are annoyed by the "Matt Mercer Effect", where players expect them to run the game exactly like Matt Mercer would, or expect that streaming their games will mean success and/or profit. Even Mercer himself has spoken out against this attitude, saying that the reason his style works as a DM is because of the group he plays with, and that everyone's table and style of DMing should be different. While Mercer has no problem with people copying disparate elements of his style, trying to be Matt Mercer (or expecting someone to be) is something that even Matt Mercer himself would prefer to see people avoid. As such, Mercer himself has avoided the worst of the backlash, but it still comes up from time to time. (And of course, when it comes up, Mercer is adamant that people should not go into Actual Play streaming with any expectation of success, much less anything even approaching CR's accomplishments. He'll readily note it took years for CR to gain momentum, and even a lot of that still came down to dumb luck and perfect timing to find an audience. Going into a game expecting a payday is an amazing way to end up miserable.)
It's Popular, Now It Sucks!:
- Critical Role has caused a big Newbie Boom amongst tabletop RPGs, especially Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder. Unfortunately, this has caused a lot of people with unrealistic expectations for how the games are played, leading to a slight rise in players who play it only because they want to be like Critical Role.
- On the other hand, there's a significant number of people in the Tabletop RPG community who feel that Critical Role (and other high-profile actual plays) has made Dungeons & Dragons so popular that it is difficult to draw people towards other games.
Misaimed Fandom: One symptom of the "Matt Mercer Effect" is the belief that the players are along for the ride and have no control over the arc their characters go through. This is not the case even in Critical Role; the show is not as scripted as some people believe it to be, and the players all created their characters with some amount of understanding of where they could end up going. Matt has control over what happens around them, but the players are the ones making the choices in the end, as is generally the case with many a D&D campaign. Matt Mercer himself has even informed aspiring players and Dungeon Masters that the players are just as important as the DM when it comes to making a campaign that everyone at the table enjoys.
One-Scene Wonder:
- First and foremost among them is definitely Victor, the crazy black powder merchant, popular enough to be revisited later. Matt even dressed as him for the Halloween episode where everybody dressed as their favorite NPCs.
- The Sun Tree, who sounds inexplicably like an Erudite Stoner after being centuries old.
- In a similar vein,^note Henry Crabgrass from campaign 2, who's even got his own fanart and an Eye Catch.
- From the second season of Narrative Telephone, guest player Aabria Iyengar comes up with a grim narrative done entirely in first person, depicting a muggle crime organization set in CR canon, and somehow sounding Darker and Edgier than the actual campaign. This character would later debut in-game as a Big Bad exclusive to Exandria Unlimited.
  Travis: This is Game of Thrones shit!
- In the third season, Aimee Carrero apparently takes inspiration from Aabria and then goes in a different direction, as an inexplicably Joisey native of Exandria eventually revealed to be someone Dariax walked out on. And like Aabria, this character would later debut in campaign 3.
Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Brian W. Foster has been a longtime "friend of Critical Role", ever since the Geek & Sundry days, as the boyfriend, then fiancé of cast member Ashley Johnson. He game-mastered for the show, hosted (and named) the aftershow Talks Machina, interviewed guests for the spinoffs Between the Sheets, coined catchphrases such as "Don't forget to love each other," and more. On August 16, 2021, it was announced that he would leave the channel to focus on other creative projects. It gradually came out that, in addition to his tendency to mobilize supporters to attack dissenters on Twitter, he had relapsed on drugs, had been harassing, assaulting, threatening with violence/death, and blackmailing people. Johnson and Foster separated, she filed a restraining order against him, then sued him for abuse alongside six other Critical Role current and former women staff members. In July 2023, almost all content featuring Foster to a heavy degree (Talks Machina, Undeadwood, etc.) has been quietly removed from Critical Role's YouTube.

Vox Machina Origins

Awesome Art: Olivia Samson's work is stunning, especially as the comics began releasing every three months; the art has more time to develop and it shows, with panels showcasing beautiful atmospheric cityscapes and backgrounds and two-page spreads taken to their full potential. The world of Tal'Dorei is really brought to life here, with the splash pages illustrating Emon and the Clasp's underground network being particular highlights.
Broken Base: The absence of Pike and Percy within the first series. Some argue that adding them would make for an unfaithful retelling (Pike and Percy didn't join the party at the beginning of the campaign, which the comic is adapting) while others argue that creative liberties should have been taken to include them and how excluding those two doesn't give the full details of the origins.
- The characterization of Vex in Series I. Some believe it's justified for her to be much colder and more callous because it's pre-stream; others argue that she isn't cold and callous in a way that actually makes sense for her character, and that, among other things, she would never take any pride in being noble-born.
- Matt Colville's writing for Series I in general is contentious. Some enjoy his dialogue and characterization and have no problem with his interpretation of pre-stream Vox Machina, but others dislike that the writer for the first series of comics openly stated that he mostly just watched Critical Role's combat and find his writing far too quippy and one-dimensional, preferring Jody Houser's writing for Series II and III.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Some fans, particularly shippers, are annoyed that Percy and Vex's first meeting is never shown on-panel in any detail, as Vex's half of the party does not go to the Umbra Hills village where Percy is being held prisoner. This is particularly noticeable considering this meeting is referenced a few times on-stream, including during their wedding vows in the Dalen's Closet one-shot.

One-Shot Adventures

Adorkable:
- Aff in Cinderhearts is eager, excitable, and somewhat naïve. This is only exacerbated when they get high at the party.
- Dr. Nomen L. Frenno in The Nautilus Ark is an eager astrobiologist frog person with a perky voice and a love for science, helped by being played by Marisha in fun buns.
- "Glasses Matt" in Liam's Quest: Full Circle is a preteen version of Matt Mercer with huge glasses, hair nearing a mullet, and a Hawaiian/bowling shirt with dragons on it, who remembers feeling awkward at this age. He is also a bard with encyclopedic knowledge of D&D who channels his pure heart and love for his friends into magic. The combination is incredibly endearing.
Alternative Character Interpretation: Mac and Buddy from "Adventures of the Darrington Brigade" - while their wildly contrasting specialties mean they really do rely on each other in combat, their respective personalities gives the impression that Mac's been using Buddy to get mercenary gigs for quite a while.
Awesome Music:
- The theme tune for UnDeadwood is chillingly beautiful.
- The theme for Cinderbrush, which sounds especially legit for the young adult horror genre (considering the whole thing mutates into a Stealth Parody eventually).
Bizarro Episode: "Once Upon a Fairytale Cruise" is weird even by non-canon oneshot standards, the premise being a reality dating show featuring (mostly) public domain fairytale characters, and having a final combat map made out of Lego and real confectionary. None of its guests have made further appearances on the show to date, either.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Buddy from "Adventures of the Darrington Brigade", intended as generic Dumb Muscle but turned out to be brutishly endearing. He gets one more appearance in Narrative Telephone season 2, as opposed to his life bro Mac getting just a cameo.
- Hanako Hayashi from "Shadow of the Crystal Palace", an exotic far Eastern take on the Final Girl trope who's even become the subject of a Pub Draw.
- From Doom Eternal it would be a tossup between Phyllis the Pain Elemental and Mancubus, a more kill-happy Expy of Buddy.
Genius Bonus: From The Night Before Critmas - the fighting starts and Chutney (Travis), the oldest of the Christmas Elves, claims he "hasn't thrown down like this since 1756", heavily implying that he's old enough to have participated in the Seven Years' War.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- In the Pathfinder Goblins adventure, Special Guest Phil LaMarr rolls a good enough stealth check that Matt declares him as "vanished from time and space". Fast forward to the Call of Cthulhu adventure, and Phil's character is lost to an alternate dimension.
- This meeting of Stephen Colbert and Joe Manganiello took place between the end of Campaign 1 and the Red Nose Day one-shot. Capo found Arkhan before the Mighty Nein ever did!
- In Cinderbrush, Taliesin's character is not only able to cast hallucinatory spells but deal in more mundane hallucinogens - fast forward to episode 97 of the Mighty Nein campaign, and Caduceus puts Beau on a True Sight-induced Mushroom Samba.
- In Honey Heist 3, a parody of Charlie's Angels, The Mole turned out to be Bearsly. The 2019 Charlie's Angels film ended up using a similar twist.
- In the main campaign, Jester (Laura Bailey) is pressured with the decision to sacrifice both her hands just to restore Nott to her original halfling form. Fast forward to the Doom Eternal one-shot, and Laura plays as the Mancubus, who has no hands.
  - Before Darin de Paul was revealed as the voice of Dr Samuel Hayden, Matt Mercer was already the voice of another metallic villain with blue lights and an evil growl.
- In the Call of Cthulhu adventure, all the player characters are attending a cat convention, and Travis was somehow the least prepared in this part. Fast forward to 2021 in the main campaign and we finally learn that Travis has a genuine allergy to cats, preventing him from learning much of anything about them. It also explains why he went and named his cat "Ahchoo".
- Robbie Daymond flexed a bit of Spider-Man pride in Exandria Unlimited episode 2 by showing up in a spider-themed sweater - the same week that we find out that our heroes' biggest problem at the time was a Vestige of the Spider Queen.
- In Liam's Quest: Full Circle, Sam comments to Travis on how annoying it would be to talk in high-pitched voices for three hours while playing their younger selves. Flash forward to Campaign 2, where Sam uses a high-pitched, raspy voice for Nott the Brave and to the Darrington Brigade one-shot, where Travis uses a high-pitched voice for Macaroni Samsonite.
- In "The Night Before Critmas", Chutney (Travis) rebukes Klaus (Matt): "You're a fool, Klaus! We can't compete with Amazon!" Smash cut to Amazon being the 88888th backer on The Legend of Vox Machina, a decision which Travis and Matt had input in as chief executive and creative officers of Critical Role Productions, respectively. The show itself became a worldwide Prime Video exclusive. "If you can't beat'em, join'em" indeed.
- Also in "The Night Before Critmas", the elves first tasks are to make Vox Machina and Mighty Nein action figures. As of 2022, both Vox Machina and Mighty Nein (re)action figures have been Defictionalized.
- In 2016's "Critical Role EXTRA — Liam's Quest", Liam, as Ashley, says, "Season five of Blindspot's almost done, and once it's done I'm coming home, and then I'm going to stay, okay?" Blindspot would air its fifth and final season in 2020, and Ashley Johnson did indeed return to Los Angeles permanently afterward.
- In EXU Calamity, Aabria Iyengar plays Sam's ex. Less than a year later, she guest-starred in the main campaign, this time as Travis's ex.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- In 2017's Liam's Quest: Full Circle, Future Liam reveals that he was taken in the year 2020 and caused some vague, world-ending apocalypse. While the end of the one shot implies that the apocalyptic timeline could be altered since the others now have foreknowledge, the year 2020 did end up having world-altering significance in real life (though not for the same reasons).
- UnDeadwood had, unusually for a Critical Role production, made the setting of the series a place that was misogynistic and "unkind to women" with most of the female NPCs being sex workers; though partly because it was ostensibly set in a semi-real world wild west setting and was generally Darker and Edgier, Brian W. Foster was the gamemaster and ostensibly the one who designed and came up with the story and worldbuilding for the game. Given the accusations against him regarding his abusive treatment of women (including his former partner Ashley Johnson), him including this element into the story becomes far more uncomfortable.
Signature Scene:
- From Adventures of the Darrington Brigade, Taliesin going full '90s Anti-Hero when he debuts as the Owlbear.
- From The Night Before Critmas, Chutney stabbing Santa Claus like a pagan sacrifice.

YMMV / Critical Role

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