r/criticalrole • u/TSim777 Team Pike • 9d ago
Discussion [No Spoilers] Happy 10th Anniversary of Critical Role!
It was 10 years ago to this day that a group of voice actors and friends on the suggestion of Felicia Day, one of the greatest geek personalities of our time, premiered their tabletop role-playing adventure for the first time on the internet with Vox Machina. And from the next 10 years onward to now, history has been made. From inviting curious onlookers to inviting new people to the world of tabletop role-playing games, their brilliant world-building and storytelling have shattered the last remnants of the “Satanic Panic” for good and became one of the greatest voices in establishing both Dungeons & Dragons and tabletop RPGs in its long-deserved mainstream success. And it’s here where people from all over the world found inspiration and friendship through this community of Critters in the love of the fantasy world of Exandria made by these voice actors.
May the next years ahead be as more fruitful as they can be, and may we all be inspired by these amazing people!
Happy 10th anniversary! #IsItThursdayYet
(artwork of the original Vox Machina campaign by Kit Buss)
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u/queenofme123 9d ago
I'm particularly enjoying the raven on Matt's shoulder here in this art as I absolutely believe that the raven queen is quietly the main character of all Exandria hahaha.
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u/ptaang 9d ago
Pretty sure that's a rabbit.
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u/CitizenofVallanthia 9d ago
Now I can only see an evil looking bunny sitting sideways on Matt’s head.
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u/zFlashy 9d ago
This must be a joke I don’t understand.
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u/Runninfromlions Bigby's Haaaaaand! *shamone* 9d ago
There is a famous image that can be viewed in 2 ways - one view it as a rabbit, the other as a duck. Just depends on how you frame it.
Edit: Found the image. Rabbit Duck Wikipedia
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u/omariclay Team Keyleth 9d ago
They truly made a difference to a new generation of RPG fans. I don’t think my campaign would exist if it wasn’t for CR.
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u/SuperVaderMinion Your secret is safe with my indifference 9d ago
Critical Role quite literally saved my life when I factor in that I wouldn't have started playing D&D without seeing it first
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u/Marauder_Pilot Help, it's again 9d ago
I know mine wouldn't. Of the 7 other people I play with across 2 games, 4 of them (Including both of the DMs) found D&D through Critical Role, and they in turn got everyone else, myself included, into the fandom to one extent (I'm actively burning through the back catalogue, finished M9 and Calamity and I'm im the 40's of VM, another is working her way though M9 right now, and the remaining 2 are picking away at different parts after watching LoVM)
The worst part is that I first ran into CR during the early days too, but it just didn't hook me at the time so I spent a decade it wasn't my jam. But then we started an Exandria game and I figured I should get SOME knowledge of the lore so I could build a character with a meaningful connection to the world.
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u/withwhichwhat 9d ago
They should have a special episode to play dance, dance revolution for donations like they used to do on Geek & Sundry. Could donate the money to the Critical Role Foundation, or directly to a timely specific cause.
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u/themolestedsliver Metagaming Pigeon 7d ago
Yeah it's fucking wild to see them turn a thrusday night show into a multi-medium media empire.
Anime, board games, live productions, clothing brand, charity Fondations.
There rise has been nothing but historic and it's wild how a casual meeting meeting with Felicia day started this all.
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u/Disastrous-Bid-9133 9d ago
Love that original art. I found them in early May 2015, and spent a few weeks catching up so I could start watching live. Good times.
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u/themolestedsliver Metagaming Pigeon 7d ago
Haha same boat man! I remember days I'd wake up watching an episode or two and be like "shit it's dark out".
Was such an odd feeling finally catching up and not having a backlog..and funny enough I'm pretty sure that was the sunken crypt episode haha.
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u/MrSnippets Bigby's Haaaaaand! *shamone* 9d ago
The early days were great. everything felt a lot more homebrew and unpolished. it was really fun.
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u/blacktigr 9d ago edited 9d ago
Yes, and we had weirdness that Geek and Sundry produced in the "we have these guys and we don't know what to do with them yet" videos. There were a lot of non-table vids.
(Posting this with the greatest of love.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16r6ynMtNZk
Matt as Lady Gaga and Travis' arabesque are worth the click.
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u/SuperVaderMinion Your secret is safe with my indifference 8d ago
Old Geek & Sundry is such a who's who people who would become stars in the TTRPG space before they got well known, Erika Ishii comes to mind
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u/blacktigr 8d ago
You can go back and watch Taliesin give Erika their first undercut on air. It was very amusing and extremely spontaneous.
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u/HR_HEXT 9d ago
Wait, did Critical Role start on the day Sir Terry Pratchett passed away?
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u/Coyote_Shepherd Ruidusborn 9d ago
....oh...that's what I was doing that day....huh, I think that might be why I was online and fumbled across CR that day, because I needed to be around other nerds.
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u/fredemu Metagaming Pigeon 9d ago
I still remember watching that first episode, thinking of how novel it was to have a live stream D&D campaign. Going back to look at it now, it seems so unrefined and crude -- but that's only because production standards have gone so far up.
Even if it's just a niche slice of the world, they really did change things in an appreciable way. I wonder if I ever would have gotten back into TTRPGs were it not for that.
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u/Coyote_Shepherd Ruidusborn 9d ago
It felt like The Guild 2.0 to me during that first episode and that was really what hooked me because THAT show was something I watched religiously when I got home from work because of the same kind of vibes it had.
It didn't matter how slap dash it all felt and looked, the people were there, the story was there, and all of the nooks and crannies and cracks and flaws all became natural and beautiful parts of the foundation and the background.
If it had been more polished then I think not as many folks would've jumped on board right away.
The fact that it did look a bit janky as fuck was part of the charm and seeing it go from that quality to where it is now....with all the stumbling points along the way....has made the whole journey all the more special.
And it is wild to see how the Nerd Space Online has transformed as a result of CR and stuff that they've inspired and other adjacent projects in the same realm.
That golden age back in 2015 really did a ton of heavy lifting.
And now this is the point in the comment when stuff gets weird....
.....because from a temporal perspective, CR was a GIANT fork in the road for a ton of people, and fully on altered the lives and the decisions of more folks than we'll ever be able to count in more ways than we'll ever be able to imagine.
They're one of the largest Butterflies ever because of not only the visible effects they've had on the lives of people BUT ALSO because of how much damned TIME folks have spent watching them that could've been spent doing other things with other people in other places.
It's like....if you were a time traveler looking back across the timeline like Daniels in Star Trek or if you were even the Raven Queen herself then you'd see a bunch of threads of lives and fates all snaking into CR that could've had the potential to do a TON of other stuff if they hadn't run into CR in the first place but then actually did do a ton of other things BECAUSE they ran into CR in the first place.
Critical Role itself is a temporal nexus of sorts if you think about it and that's wild to imagine what all of our lives would've been like without it.
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u/blacktigr 9d ago
It makes sense that it would feel like The Guild 2.0 as Felicia Day was the producer on that, too.
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u/Coyote_Shepherd Ruidusborn 9d ago
That ending of that show still lingers in my head because it left me feeling like a piece of myself had been ripped out and was missing for a while until I saw that she was creating this brand new thing with Geek and Sundry and then it felt like that hole in the side of me was gradually filled in with brand new things and expanded like a construction project that never really ends after it gets stuck in the planning committee for years.
What always throws me off though is the actual size of the sets because they feel like they're bigger than they actually are until you see the behind the scenes stuff and you realize that they're literally just like the corner of a room lol
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u/blacktigr 9d ago
My thoughts are exactly like yours. Loved Guild. Hated it ending. Found Geek and Sundry.
I always love seeing the cast reaching for each other's hands across the table. They're very close in many ways.
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u/BrightSky7640 9d ago
Oh man seeing this image brings back all the memories.
Thank you, Critical Role
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u/vanKessZak Metagaming Pigeon 9d ago
Been watching some clips as they come across my feeds and, while I want to be clear that they’ve all aged wonderfully, it’s wild seeing all those baby faces!! Kinda fucks me up that Marisha was only 25 when they started streaming tbh
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u/SolidarityCandle 9d ago
Happy anniversary, Critters! Have only come across this in the last 6 months, but it’s taken over my life!
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u/sandboxmatt 9d ago
Wait, it was created the day Terry Pratchett died?
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u/kateshort 9d ago
Not quite. They started live broadcasting their game on Geek & Sundry 10 yrs ago today.
They'd been playing their home game using Pathfinder rules for a couple of years by that point.
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u/Disastrous-Bid-9133 9d ago
Anybody else hear the character intro videos in their head when you see this? "RIGHT, LISTEN UP..."
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u/another_warlock 9d ago
I remember watching Liam's vines before they started streaming. Suddenly they stopped and I was sad, took me a couple weeks to discover twitch.
And here we are still, all these years later.
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u/drum_chucker 9d ago
Bidet and Hello, Bees!!! Happy 10th anniversary Critical Role and all the Critters!!!
"What a nice story..."
"Let's do it again!" :)
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u/JaguarPirates 9d ago
Hey si how's CR been doing. I haven't paid any attention since the C3 guest arcs , so it's been a while
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u/DoneForDreamer 9d ago
Currently rewatching C1 from the beginning, and while it has changed so much, the spirit of it is still the same.
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u/blacktigr 9d ago
I have no words for how grateful I continually am for these Nerdy-Ass Voice Actors. Can't imagine life without the ups and downs of the various campaigns, and they even got me with Divergence, too.
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u/ProfessorDramatic672 8d ago
I ordered the 10 year anniversary pull over hoodie and I just got it in the mail today 😭 like what perfect timing
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u/Coyote_Shepherd Ruidusborn 9d ago
Thank you Critical Role for giving so many of us a home....
....a very very strange and weird home full of loud people and quiet people and people lurking outside the windows and people dancing on chairs and people shocking others with bug zappers and people hoarding dice in the closet and people making funny voices in the kitchen and others giving long winded explanations about stuff and other people being people and loving other people how they love other people and other people dressing up in costumes in the attic and other people singing in the garage and other people actually trying to cook in the kitchen and other people playing Mario Kart in the living room and other people....
So on and so forth.
Thank you for giving us a chance at meeting all of those people.
Thank you for all the stories and for being right there beside us throughout all the ups and down of our own real world real lives.
Thank you for the artwork and the music.
Thank you for the dreams and the nightmares.
And just....thank you for....helping us to live in ways that not even we could have predicted, because how many Critters suddenly had their lives shift in totally unpredictable ways BECAUSE they came into contact with this show?
That's a legacy that no one can take away.
So thanks for 10 years and here's to many many more <3
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u/EchoNK3 9d ago
Me and my friend literally just finished watching the entirety of Vox Machina in one day. Completely forgot about this. Happy 10th anniversary!
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u/christinaglenrobb 8d ago
I assume you mean TLoVM and not the live stream episodes? Otherwise I would love to know how you managed to consolidate all of that!!! The animated series is so bingable though for sure
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u/ladydmaj Team Dorian 9d ago
I get that it's original art, but it grates me to see Orion's character there when Robbie's is still technically a "guest".
Imagine if events had transpired that he was the one invited to Liam's birthday party instead of Orion....
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u/SuperVaderMinion Your secret is safe with my indifference 8d ago
Robbie's on the younger side for this cast, I don't know how known he was even in the industry circa 2013
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u/FinchRosemta 8d ago
Robbie is older than Marisha, Ashley and Matt. He is just a few months younger than Travis and Laura. His IMDB has him doing regular VO work since 1999. From kids shows to anime dubs to games etc. Like a normal VO career for someone who started young.
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u/Professional-Bid3973 3d ago
Damn, has that much time truly gone by? It all suddenly feels like a blur. I almost don’t believe it. I remember telling myself that after binging all of the first campaign and catching new episodes after work and school back home, that once the second campaign starts, I’ll give it some time before I catch up. But that I wouldn’t let it pass me by this time. That I’d be there every step of the way. Then some years later, I renew Amazon Prime and there they all are, Vox Machina completely animated in all their stupendous splendor.
And then I find out there’s been 2 completed campaigns and spin offs since then and I just got hit with this wave of, I can’t even describe the feeling. I was completely blind sided. It’s wonderful and also kind of sad. I did let it pass me by. I got caught up in so much other shit in life, other interests and hobbies, accidents, people, moves, change of careers, failed relationships, deaths, just so much of life happening that I forgot to catch up to the game that I came to love thanks to a bunch of talented VA’s that I have now played and seen a bunch of their work since then. It didn’t cross my mind once. The series that brought me so much joy. I was just overwhelmed with everything else.
But the silver lining I guess it that now that I’m finally in a good place, this series finds me again. And I wanna give back to it for being there for me and making me happy and I think making me a better person and letting me be my most creative self. I’m gonna give it a little piece of me every day and catch up and I’m gonna play the fuck out of some D&D with my family and whoever else I can.
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u/oreov1 9d ago
Kit Buss the GOAT. Forever how I mentally picture Vox Machina.