Critical Role Upped the Budget, Lost the Plot

“Halindil Fang, someone you love very much is about to die.” 

Thus begins the first episode of Critical Role’s Campaign 4, and what an episode it is. Immediately, you understand that this- the flagship IP of Dungeons and Dragons’ Live-play shows is striving to live up to its reputation. The set is gorgeous, featuring pre-programmed mood lighting, hidden ambient-music speakers, and is custom-built to resemble the standard D&D tavern (what else?). Gone is the low-budget, filmed in the DM’s basement quality of early Critical Role content- replaced by a cast of 13 players, a new campaign format, and their largest roll of the dice of all- a completely new Dungeon Master. It’s impressive, innovative- and it completely locks newcomers to the franchise out of perhaps the most crucial facet of enjoying the show- learning who the characters are. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

Campaign 4 is a labour of love. Newcomer (at least to this table), Dungeon Master Brennan Lee Mulligan first pitched it to outgoing Dungeon Master Matthew “Matt” Mercer back in January of 2025 as a purely theoretical campaign to treat what Mercer himself referred to as a severe episode of burnout. Having DMed three campaigns, voiced over a thousand Non-Player Characters, and hosted hundreds of YouTube episodes, Mercer was done with the franchise and the constant toll it took on his creativity. Mulligan’s proposal: a West Marches-style campaign that would distribute narrative load across three tables while maintaining the thematic coherence he’d become known for in Dimension 20. Thirteen players, divided into three distinct play styles- Soldiers for action-heavy combat, Seekers for magical mystery, Schemers for political intrigue- would all, Mulligan said, be guided through three disparate plotlines that would converge into something larger for the finale. What that “something larger” is exactly, Mulligan has been fanatically close-lipped about. 

What he has not been close-lipped about are the thirteen main characters that drive Campaign Four- all thirteen of whom Mulligan strove to introduce in the space of just four episodes. It is, to put it bluntly, chaos. Bolaire Lathalia (Taliesin Jaffe) is a living mask that befriended Halindil Fang (Liam OBrian) before his half-brother Thjazi’s execution and hates Thimble (Laura Bailey), who was herself Thjazi’s best friend. Halindil has a “baby mama” in the form of orc druid Thaisa Lloy (Aabria Iyengar), whose adoptive son Occtis Tachonis ( Alexander Ward) is killed and then resurrected in a “never-before-seen-in-Aruman feat of magic” by the aforementioned Bolaire and his colleague Murray Magnesson (Marisha Ray) – except Occtis himself has only had like twenty minutes of screen time before this feat happens! If that’s not enough, the duo of Wiccander “Wick” Halovar (Sam Riegel) and Aspirant Tyranny (Whitney Moore) is here too. Also, there’s an alcoholic and a lion man.

Episodes five through eleven let Mulligan (and the audience) breathe again. We follow the soldiers’ table- Wick, Tyranny, Thimble, lion-man paladin Teor Pridesire and alcoholic ranger Kattigan Vale- as they journey north in pursuit of the man who turned Thjazi Fang over to the authorities, and the plot settles. The character beats land- including one all-time classic moment of Wick meeting the most deranged shopkeep ever (courtesy of Mulligan’s acting). There’s room for banter, for soft moments, for character depth, for story– everything Critical Role prided itself on under Mercer’s leadership. There’s even room for random dice caused shenanigans- the heart and soul of DnD tables. 

And then episode twelve rotates to the Seekers’ table, and the five characters above vanish from the scene. We won’t be seeing them again beyond the brief glimpses Mulligan provides in each episode’s cold open until it’s time to pick their narrative thread back up. In their place comes a new set of five characters who last had plot relevance nearly two months ago. Instead of the naive, sheltered scion Wiccander of House Halovar, we now have the neglected undead Occtis- eighth child of the House Tachonis by birth- the first real focus we get on Occtis beyond him being murdered and then dead for an entire four-hour episode. Mulligan, to his credit, attempts to remedy this by slowing the pacing of the Seekers Table right down and giving them character-focused scenes. Thaisha, for example, gets to wrestle with the weight of her druidic faith- she knows Occtis is a freak of nature yet remains thankful for the miracle that revived him. Aabria’s acting in this scene is superb- and yet emotionally the scene remains dull, undercut by the fact that we never get to see just what her relationship with Occtis was actually like in life. 

This is Campaign Four’s fatal flaw: it prioritises narrative ambition over character intimacy. Critical Role built its empire on parasocial investment—audiences spending hundreds of hours with characters until they felt like friends. Campaign Four asks viewers to maintain that same emotional investment across thirteen characters who appear in fragmented bursts, systematically preventing the deep connection it demands. The format works brilliantly for creative load distribution and showcasing talent. But it fundamentally misunderstands what made Critical Role Critical Role—the unbroken narrative thread that let us live in these characters’ pockets for years at a time.