As I mentioned in my review of "The D&D 5e Player's Handbook"  , I've been getting back into tabletop roleplaying games, and a large part of that has been getting caught up with Critical Role, one of the most successful live play RPG streaming shows of all time. This cast of voice actors plays D&D for roughly four hours every week and streams the sessions on YouTube (among other places). At this point they're so successful that they have an entire recording studio, professionally-made maps and miniatures, and an entire line of ancillary products like novels, comics, animated series, etc. to supplement the storylines of the three campaigns they've played to date. Each of those campaigns is well over 100 episodes (meaning at least 400 hours of content each).

This was a really enjoyable book, though, which gives the reader some insight into the phenomenon. Although it was published four years ago (and thus somewhat outdated since it came out toward the end of Campaign Two (which had more than 30 episodes left at the time) and they are currently 100+ episodes into Campaign Three, it still gives a really good history of the show, explanations of its key characters and elements, and how it grew from a casual home game spun up on a whim for one of the players' birthday parties into literally a multimillion-dollar franchise. I particularly like the fact that this book focused on both the narrative of the campaigns and the real-life backstories and biographies of all the players; it was a well-rounded approach and I would highly recommend it for people looking to familiarize themselves with the franchise.

There are, of course, other resources that are much better if you're looking for in-depth information. The Wikipedia entries are surprisingly well-rounded, and they also have their own Wiki site which is outstanding. Plus they have a number of other shows on their YouTube channel devoted to things like summarizing the events of the campaign and getting caught up. That said, if you are interested in knowing more about Critical Role and your immediate questions are, "What the heck is Critical Role" or "Why is it so popular?" this would be a great book to start with.

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Created Jan 18, 2025 at 4:08pm • Submit your own review...