Critical Role campaign 4 is imminent. With the debut episode airing on October 2, our chance to explore the fraught lands of Aramán is closer than ever. If you still can't wait to learn more about the epic West Marches campaign, we can help you out.
Travis Willingham, Ashley Johnson, Liam O'Brien, Whitney Moore, Taliesin Jaffe, Luis Carazo, and Dungeon Master Brennan Lee Mulligan all stopped by for a quick chat with us. The banter was immaculate, and the air was thick with passion for Dungeons and Dragons. In the video below, you can see the crew discussing Aramán's vibe, character details, and the dynamic at the table with a different Dungeon Master. Oh, and Brennan Lee Mulligan made us a promise: "I'm definitely going to kill some of these guys."
Wargamer: What kind of themes will campaign 4 explore?
Brennan Lee Mulligan: It's a great question. There's a great writing teacher that talked about how themes emerge naturally from the work - like, we're playing to find out what the themes are going to be. That's why we do this kind of wild, collaborative storytelling where we surrender control.
In terms of themes that I brought in order to have a set table for people when they got there, there was a big love letter to Exandria. I think a lot of setting the world of Aramán as having a relationship to this within living memory (but still quite a long time ago) war against the gods where the gods were struck down. As campaign three was wrapping up, I was talking to Matt saying 'Let me know what way it looks like campaign three is going to break so that we can do a mirror of those choices and that world somewhere else'.
There are themes of divinity and big questions, themes of how we rise above, how we emerge triumphant from the ashes of these struggles between good and evil - and maybe, sadly, from time to time, how we survive those struggles merely to face them again from a different source than perhaps we had anticipated as we see a new shadow looming over Aramán. So, that. That's a theme!
Travis Willingham: That was the most epic answer you could have possibly given. All of us are now going to hang up and retire for the day.
Ashley Johnson: I think you guys have got this.
Liam O'Brien: That's the interview!
I feel like everybody in the stuff I have been taking part in so far is exploring who we are and who we will be in the face of massive societal change, both in relation to the somewhat distant loss of the gods that this world has known, and then, right in the present, right at the start, the loss of a very important figure in everyone's lives in this campaign. Two massive changes on the macro and the micro level, and then what are we going to be after we pick up the pieces.
Brennan Lee Mulligan: What I also said when I was first doing character creation was 'Swords, Family, Death, Magic, Kissing'. If you want a really straightforward answer, there's also that.
Liam O'Brien: Great, now I have to come up with a new title for my novel.
WG: I want to talk about the fact that this is a West Marches campaign, because that, to me, is super exciting. The scale is immense. You've got so many fantastic people involved. Will you all be separate for the whole campaign, or will there be much crossover?
Liam O'Brien: I'm so done with Sam Riegel. Just keep him at another table to the very end, please.
Taliesin Jaffe: I look forward to missing all of you. I'd like to miss you.
Luis Carazo: I think it's been established that there are going to be separate tables, and then as there's going to be, as it unfolds, a mixing and matching that will continue to happen.
Brennan Lee Mulligan: I can say, as a personal ambition of mine, I would love by the end of the campaign to have had everybody share a smaller and intimate adventure with everybody else at the table, at least one time. I've referred to that as 'kaleidoscoping', where you have all these beautiful gems that you're intermingling and watching them converge and re-scatter. I can't say with certainty that that's going to happen, but that's a fun personal ambition that would be really cool.
Ashley Johnson: When we were talking about the West Marches campaign, everybody was talking about it, and I had no idea what it was. I was like 'What the hell is this? What does this mean?' And then, a little Google search later, I'm like 'Oh, this is awesome.'
Whitney Moore: Same, girl, same.
WG: Tell me a fact about your characters that might not be obvious when we first meet them.
Luis Carazo: Going off of what Brennan just explained with this kaleidoscope thing, having a table like what we have really does give you the opportunity to interact with very different types of people and characters. Something that I'm discovering for Azune along the way is this version of a kaleidoscope - how different he actually is depending on who he's in the presence of.
There's a lot to be said when you have such distinct people available to you and what that brings out in you. That's something that I'm discovering for myself, even with what we've done so far, and I'm now really excited to see how that continues to unfold. Depending on who he's in the presence of, I think it's going to affect a lot how he evolves.
Whitney Moore: I am so excited for Tal's and Ashley's characters. I think they have so much going on. I'm so excited to learn more about them.
For me, something that's been said a lot by my friends during interviews is that Tyranny, my character, is super chaotic, which I absolutely rock with. But what I'm excited for people to learn down the line, after we've had a chance to breathe for a little bit, is that she's quite tender. I'm dumping a lot of my sensitivity into her.
I had a funny conversation with Taliesin when we were talking about our characters and what we're working through, because, a lot of the time, we treat acting like therapy. Taliesin was like 'I don't know at the time, until years later, what I was going through and what I was working towards and working through'. So, I'm excited to find out what I was going through in three years from now.
Taliesin Jaffe: Only your therapist knows, in the end. They're on board before you are.
WG: What's it like to have your usual Dungeon Master passing the torch? What's it like to have your former Dungeon Master at the table?
Taliesin Jaffe: I've been playing with Matt for years before Critical Role, and I've never seen him play, because no one is interested in playing at a table with him unless he's in charge. This feels like a Christmas gift to him. I am so excited.
I feel like Brennan is the only person who could have given this gift to him. I don't get to play with a lot of DMs in general, but I've gotten to play with Brennan, and it's such a delight and so captivating. I'm so excited that I get to sit with Matt and we get to talk about what might happen. Finally, we can actually connect about it.
Liam O'Brien: Most of us have known Matt for ever and ever. I've directed him. I've acted with him. I've been in games that he's run. I've run a few games for him, and he's just incredibly talented and creative. And this is just a slight step to the left, doing the same kind of creative work with him. We haven't made a secret of how tickled we all are by his shenanigans at the table so far.
As far as working with Brennan, one of the greatest things for us, I think, over the last decade, is as we've continued to grow and do more things. We get to work with so many different kinds of talent and artists. The best part of what we do is collaborating with incredible people. It's just a joy to be creative and do it with friends that you know and you trust.
Matt's massive, empathetic heart is what leaps to mind when I think of Matt. For Brennan, I just think of Machiavellian intelligence and intensity. It's just a blast to grab onto the side of the rocket ship and go for the trip. Hopefully those compliments buy me at least half a campaign of life.
Luis Carazo: I want to add to this, because Taliesin and I were in a game before any of this was happening where Matt TPK'd us. So the biggest thing that I'm excited about, having played with Brennan before, is seeing how dark you can go. I really, really, really want to see Matt suffer as a player at the hands of Brennan. It would be so satisfying for me, given what he put us through (all in jest, of course). I'm looking forward to a sort of revenge through Brennan on Matt for what he did to us so long ago. Right, Taliesin?
Taliesin Jaffe: I hadn't thought of it in that way. That's delightful - that was really upsetting.
Brennan Lee Mulligan: I love it so much. I can only imagine Luis and Travis and the rest of our crew who played in [Exandria Unlimited:] Calamity watching [Exandria Unlimited:] Divergence as me and Liam are giving this like beautiful love letter to Matt, being like 'It was you, you built the world, we love you', and all the Calamity people being like, 'What the hell man!? You murdered us.'
Luis Carazo: Rip off his face!
Brennan Lee Mulligan: Rip someone's face off, man!
WG: Brennan, you've just heard everyone stroke your ego, beg for mercy, beg for suffering. How are you feeling about this new endeavor?
Brennan Lee Mulligan: It's funny, because I've had multiple people check in on me because of the Herculean epicness of this undertaking. I get more people than I would frankly like being like, 'Are you okay, man?' And I have to keep reporting to people that my mental health is at an all time high, because this is my favorite thing in the world, and I get to play this game with these amazing people. October 2 seems so close and yet so far away. I'm so eager to share this world and these incredible characters with everybody.
To answer your previous question as well, what I owed to Matt and what I think so many people owe to Matt? One of my first bonding moments with Marisha [Ray], when she came as a guest on a video podcast that I do called Adventuring Academy, was we were commiserating because it was just after the first instance that someone had used the term 'The Mercer Effect'.
I read it, and I didn't know Marisha very well, but I saw that term, and I was like, 'Well, The Mercer Effect is that he's the most wonderful, saint-like human being'. I joked to Marisha, 'I'll tell you what The Mercer Effect is: me and all my friends having a fucking job'.
From the moment I met him, Matt has been the kindest, the most supportive and engaging person. The fact that he shared Exandria and getting to do the prequel history series, the trilogy in Exandria, if I can return a fraction of the kindness to Matt that he has shown to me, it will mean the world to me.
And yeah, I'm definitely going to kill some of these guys. That's for sure. Guaranteed, man. I'm looking at some of them right now. They don't even know.
This interview has been edited slightly for clarity and brevity.
Want to share your predictions for campaign 4? Let us know in the Wargamer Discord. For more on Critical Role's latest projects, here's all you need to know about Vox Machina season 4 on Amazon. Or, for more Dungeons and Dragons, here's some guides to DnD classes and DnD races that can help you get started.