Even watching the campaign, it feels like more than an RPG. "It was pretty easy to choose that as the first season. "The Briarwood Arc is just so rich with drama and backstory and relationships," said Auman. The other focuses on the fan-favorite Briarwood Arc, which sees Vox Machina facing off against the villainous Sylas and Delilah Briarwood (voiced by Matthew Mercer and Grey Griffin). One features campaign events that occurred before Critical Role began live-streaming.
In the end, the team settled on two main plots for the first season. "Sam and Travis and Brandon were so protective of those small moments that they really did come across." "I think all the small interactions can get lost in a lot of adaptations," said Bailey, who voices ranger Vex'ahlia. "We would sit for months and whittle away, figuring out what things would go, which things would stay, and what things we could add to help improve the story," said Travis Willingham, who voices barbarian Grog Strongjaw.Īccording to Mercer, "part of the challenge was finding what parts were important and how best to truncate the story, while still finding room for every character to have small interactions that are personal or funny and carry the heart of what we love about playing this game over to the series."
With more room to tell the story of Vox Machina, the show's producers and writers still faced the daunting task of condensing hundreds of hours of improvised gameplay into 24 half-hour episodes of scripted television. "I can't think of any other medium that really allows you to build a story with everyone else like tabletop RPGs do." Amazon took notice of the outpouring of support and ordered two 12-episode seasons of the show. Fans of Critical Role (aka Critters) funded the entire special in under an hour, then continued to smash Kickstarter records until they'd raised over $11 million throughout the campaign's 45 days. You can break a lot of boundaries that on-camera stuff keeps you at bay on."Ĭritical Role's dreams became reality starting in 2019, when they launched a Kickstarter campaign to create an animated special. The fantasy genre lends itself well to animation. "We joked about - even early on - how this would make for a great cartoon. "As we were playing this game, we couldn't help but have our imagination run wild with the dynamic ideas of epic action and silly character interactions," said Matthew Mercer, who created The Legend of Vox Machina's world of Exandria and serves as Dungeon Master for Critical Role's main campaigns.
Credit: Amazon StudiosĮven in the beginning of the campaign, the cast of Critical Role wondered how their adventures would translate to the screen, especially in a medium they all loved and were familiar with as voice actors. Vox Machina on their way to pay off their bar tab.
Legend of vox machina plus#
In The Legend of Vox Machina's case, that source material is 115 episodes of Critical Role, plus the earlier adventures of Vox Machina that occurred before the cast began streaming their sessions. So naturally, when you're organically building this story based on impulse and choice, and really embodying and knowing these characters, you're gonna get a ton of great source material to pull from." "I can't think of any other medium that really allows you to build a story with everyone else like tabletop RPGs do. "It's the pinnacle of collaborative storytelling," Ray continued. Mashable spoke with each of them via Zoom, as well as with showrunner and executive producer Brandon Auman. All eight of the founders and cast members of Critical Role, including Ray, are executive producers on the show: Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Liam O'Brien, Matthew Mercer, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham. "Tabletop RPGs are basically real-time writers' rooms," Marisha Ray, the voice of druid Keyleth, told Mashable. However, The Legend of Vox Machina is the first show to use an entire campaign as source material.ĭespite heading into uncharted adaptation territory, the team behind The Legend of Vox Machina discovered that drawing from Dungeons and Dragons - and this campaign in particular - had unique advantages.
Legend of vox machina tv#
Other films and TV shows have been inspired by tabletop roleplaying games in the past: Harmonquest combined live Pathfinder gameplay with animated renditions of in-game scenes, and 2015's The Last Witch Hunter was based on Vin Diesel's Dungeons and Dragons character (a character he has played alongside Critical Role cast members). (The name is Latin for "voice machine," a reference to the Critical Role cast's jobs as voice actors.)
Legend of vox machina series#
The adult fantasy cartoon adapts web series Critical Role's first Dungeons and Dragons campaign, which follows a band of dysfunctional mercenaries known as Vox Machina. There's never been a show like The Legend of Vox Machina.
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