Imagine a game of Dungeons & Dragons between Ellie from The Last of Us, Chun-Li from Street Fighter, Phoenix Wright from Ace Attorney, and Knuckles from Sonic the Hedgehog, with Overwatch's McCree serving as dungeon master. While that scenario isn't going to happen, a D&D campaign featuring the actors who lend their voices to those characters has been running for more than a year, attracting millions of viewers.
This article originally appeared in issue 285 of Game Informer.
The idea for Critical Role came from a game of Dungeons & Dragons that was started as a part of actor Liam O'Brien's birthday celebration.
"Liam hadn't played for a while, and I was running games," says dungeon master Matthew Mercer. "I was like, 'Hey man, if you want to play, let's get some friends together,' and so we did a one-off that turned into a campaign because everybody enjoyed themselves so much."
Two years after that original game, TV and movie actress Ashley Johnson was shooting a web series called Spooked with actress Felicia Day, who was serving as executive producer. Day had recently co-founded a multimedia production company and commercial YouTube channel called Geek & Sundry. When Day noticed that Johnson had a copy of the D&D Player's Handbook, she inquired about it, discovering Johnson was in a game with voice actors like Mercer (whom Day already knew). Day immediately asked the group to consider streaming it as a show on the channel.
While the idea was enticing, the group was concerned about taking their fun private game public. "Whenever you put something you love on the internet, there's a very good chance that the internet is just going to tear you apart," Mercer says. "So we had a real fear of it possibly tainting something that was so personal to us."
Actress Marisha Ray echoes Mercer's concern that it would destroy something they loved. "We all kind of took a vow at the table that if it wasn't fun or it started compromising friendships or anything like that, that we would quit because it's not worth it," she says.
The group decided that if they were going to do it, then the format should provide as little disruption to the game flow as possible. Streaming on Geek & Sundry's Twitch channel allowed for more free-form broadcasts before being archived on the YouTube channel, allowing great convenience and flexibility for the actors' busy schedules.
Even though the format was set, the group was concerned that nobody would want to sit and watch people play Dungeons & Dragons for hours on end. "I think we just thought, 'Well, whether or not people watch it, we'll just try this and it'll be an adventure, and if nobody watches it, we'll just go back into the living room and play it," Johnson says. "No big deal.'"
Photo Credit: Pamela Joy Photography
On the next page, we hear from the actors why they think this show has resonated with so many viewers.
from www.GameInformer.com - The Feed http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2016/12/22/how-popular-voice-actors-took-dungeons-and-dragons-game-global-with-critical-role.aspx
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