Critical Role is an American web series in which a group of professional voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons. The show started streaming partway through the cast's first campaign in March 2015. Campaign one ended in October 2017 after 115 episodes, and campaign two started in January 2018 and ended in June 2021 after 141 episodes. A number of one-shots were aired in the hiatus between the two campaigns. After campaign two was completed, the spin-off limited series Exandria Unlimited aired from June 2021 to August 2021. The third campaign aired from October 21, 2021 to February 6, 2025 with 121 episodes. The fourth campaign premiered on October 2, 2025. The first three campaigns featured Matthew Mercer as the show's Dungeon Master and were set in the Exandria campaign setting; Brennan Lee Mulligan of Dimension 20 is the Game Master for the fourth campaign which is set in Mulligan's setting of .
The series is broadcast on Thursdays at 19:00 PT on the Critical Role Twitch and YouTube channels and the Beacon streaming service, with the video on demand (VOD) being available to Beacon, YouTube, and Twitch subscribers immediately after the broadcast on their respective platforms. The VODs are made available for the public on Critical Role's website and uploaded to their YouTube channel on the Monday after the live stream. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the show had broadcast live, but has been pre-recorded since its return for episode 100 of campaign two.
The cast own the intellectual property from the show, and the show also lends its name to the studio owned by the cast—Critical Role Productions. The studio has produced Critical Role since 2018. A number of licensed works based on the show have been released, such as several comic books and two official campaign setting guides. The Legend of Vox Machina, the animated series based on the first campaign of Critical Role, premiered January 28, 2022 on Amazon Prime Video. The Mighty Nein, an animated series based on the second campaign, premiered on November 19, 2025.
Background Critical Role is a creator-owned streaming show where the cast play an ongoing Dungeons & Dragons campaign, initially with Matthew Mercer as the show's Dungeon Master for the player cast.
The group's first campaign began two years prior to the start of the series as a one-off, simplified Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition game for Liam O'Brien's birthday.Matthew Mercer statements on first game:
At the time O'Brien was acting as Mercer's voice director on Resident Evil 6. Mercer had been encouraging O'Brien for some time to join a game, but O'Brien had been declining up to that point due to his new child. He eventually agreed to do a game for his birthday, and the bulk of the cast were present at that first session. The players enjoyed the game so much that they continued to play it while switching to the Pathfinder ruleset. O'Brien spoke with Ashley Johnson while the two were working on The Last of Us, and invited her to the campaign's second session. The home-game ran for two years, with the cast meeting approximately once every six weeks and playing for up to 8 hours at a time.
After Felicia Day heard about the private home game from Johnson, she approached the group about playing it in a live-streamed format for Geek & Sundry. The version G&S pitched would have had the players switch over to a video game to resolve combat. Mercer was against this, preferring instead to continue to play at the tabletop as the group had been. The players also vowed to halt the show if it compromised their enjoyment of the game. Geek & Sundry would ultimately host the show until February 2019. In order to streamline gameplay for the show, the game's characters were converted from Pathfinder to Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition before the web series began airing on March 12, 2015. There were initially eight cast member players; Orion Acaba left the show after episode 27 of campaign one. His character, Tiberius, appeared in the first seven issues of the prequel comic series Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins.
Fans of the show are termed "Critters". The name was suggested by O'Brien during the Q&A session at the end of episode 10 of campaign one, which was popular with the chat at the time. Archived from the original on August 23, 2022.
Critical Role company and studio
The Critical Role company, Critical Role Productions LLC, was incorporated in 2015. , Travis Willingham is chief executive officer, Matthew Mercer is chief creative officer, Marisha Ray is creative director, Ed Lopez is chief operating officer, Rachel Romero is senior vice president of marketing, and Ben Van Der Fluit is vice president of business development.
In June 2018, Critical Role launched its own Twitch and YouTube channels, with cast member Marisha Ray announced as the creative director of the franchise. The company also moved to their own studio space in 2018 and started putting out new shows on their Twitch and YouTube channels. The sets for Critical Role and Talks Machina moved from Legendary Digital Network's studios to Critical Role's own studios in July 2018. In February 2019, Critical Role finalized its split from Geek & Sundry and Legendary Digital Networks, with live broadcasts of the company's shows and videos on demand (VODs) airing exclusively on Critical Role's channels. Critical Role also took over production responsibility for Critical Role and Talks Machina after splitting from Legendary Digital Networks. Some "legacy episodes" (currently the entirety of Campaign 1, the first 19 episodes of Campaign 2, as well as the corresponding episodes of official discussion show Talks Machina) remain available in Geek & Sundry's archives on YouTube and Twitch, though some older episodes of Critical Role and Talks Machina are being deleted from the Geek and Sundry channels and re-uploaded to the official Critical Role channels since 2019 as part of an ongoing migration of older content to the creator-owned channels.
On March 4, 2019, Critical Role launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a 22-minute animation called Critical Role: The Legend of Vox Machina Animated Special. The final total raised by the Kickstarter when it closed on April 19, 2019, was $11.3M turning the intended animated special into a ten-episode animated series. When the campaign closed, it was one of the most quickly funded in Kickstarter history, and was the most funded Kickstarter for TV and film projects. In November 2019, Amazon Prime Video announced that they had acquired the streaming rights to The Legend of Vox Machina, and had commissioned 14 additional episodes (two additional episodes for season 1 and a second season of 12 episodes). The project was originally slated for release in late 2020, however in June 2020, it was announced that the debut would be missed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Legend of Vox Machina premiered on January 28, 2022. Mighty Nein, an animated series based on the second campaign, was announced in January 2023 and later premiered on Amazon Prime Video.
A leak of Twitch data in October 2021 revealed that Critical Role is among the highest earners on Twitch; the company received a total direct payout of $9,626,712 between September 2019 and September 2021 from Twitch in gross income for subscriptions and ad revenue. BBC News commented that this list of payments is unlikely to "account for tax paid on income" and that "many, if not all, of these top streamers are effectively large-scale media operations, with their own employees and business expenses – so the numbers do not represent 'take-home pay' for those listed". Business Insider highlighted that "Critical Role has grown into a full-fledged media company.[...] Its LinkedIn page lists employees in roles including marketing, business development, photography, editing, and even one person responsible for keeping track of the lore, or details in its fantasy world".
Regarding the potential impact of the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike on the show, Critical Role stated:
Critical Role's fourth campaign premiered October 2, 2025. It features Brennan Lee Mulligan as the Dungeon Master and a new world "outside its usual Exandria setting". Rolling Stone stated that "the inclusion of Mulligan is huge, but not entirely surprising" given Mulligan's background as "a well-established Game Master" who created the "titanic success" Dimension 20 along with previous comments made by Mercer on eventually shifting "into a 'Professor X' role as a mentor to the next generation of storytellers rather than remaining the face of the brand in perpetuity". The fourth campaign features an expanded player cast – in addition to the original Critical Role cast returning as players, Luis Carazo, Robbie Daymond, Aabria Iyengar, Whitney Moore and Alexander Ward joined the main cast. After the campaign's initial episodes, the players were split into three groups with different narrative and game style interests in a West Marches-style structure.
Beacon
In May 2024, Critical Role Productions launched their boutique subscription streaming service Beacon with the Critical Role broadcast and VODs available to subscribers of the platform. They announced a new programming slate for Beacon including shows related to the main series – Critical Role Cooldown and Critical Role Abridged. Critical Role Cooldown, exclusively available on Beacon, is an immediate aftershow with the cast still at the table which airs after each episode of Critical Role and Critical Role Abridged, available for early access on the platform, which condenses and streamlines the Critical Role show to 60–90 minute episodes starting with Campaign Three. Cheryl Teh of Business Insider stated that "Beacon essentially gives people what they get with a Twitch subscription — instant access to VODs of their livestreams, but with some additional perks".
Production
Format and broadcast Critical Role is a mixture of a weekly show and a modern gaming Twitch stream. The show originally did a live broadcast but has been pre-recorded since Campaign Two Episode 100; the change occurred as a result of filming conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Each episode usually runs for three to five hours and is streamed on Critical Role's Twitch and YouTube channels on almost every Thursday, with possible breaks from the show being announced ahead of time. The VOD is made available for subscribers of Critical Role's Twitch channel immediately after airing and before being uploaded to Critical Role's YouTube channel the following Monday, where it can be watched for free. In February 2024, the option to access to the VOD immediately after airing on the YouTube channel was added for YouTube subscribers. In May 2024, Critical Role began to also broadcast on the studio's streaming service Beacon with VOD access immediately after airing for Beacon subscribers. These additional platforms did not impact the distribution on Twitch or the free YouTube VOD which is available after a delay.
Starting with the third campaign, the main campaign of Critical Role did not air new episodes on the last Thursday of every month; instead, other content by the studio aired in its time slot. In March 2026, during the fourth campaign, Critical Role announced that this schedule would not continue. Instead of a set monthly break, pauses would occur due to natural story progression or United States holidays.