The Legend of Vox Machina brings the wildly popular Dungeons & Dragons actual play Twitch show Critical Role to streaming television. Following the exploits of seven unlikely heroes as they tackle monstrous creatures and political machinations, the stream has garnered more than a million viewers who helped make the television adaptation one of the most funded Film & Video projects in Kickstarter history. With a cast full of some of the most prominent voice actors at work today, The Legend of Vox Machina is sure to delight fans and draw in new viewers.
Critical Role Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer and cast members Marisha Ray and Ashley Johnson spoke with CBR about how the story and characters of The Legend of Vox Machina changed as they shifted formats from the gaming table to streaming television. Mercer, Ray and Johnson also talked about bringing in new voice actors to round out the cast and shared final messages for viewers unfamiliar with their Twitch stream.
CBR: How did the format switch from tabletop game to scripted television show change the rhythm of the story -- the frequency of battles, the amount of talking and interpersonal connection, the tempo of introducing plot points?
Marisha Ray: Great question.
Matthew Mercer: It is. I mean, it changed a little bit -- I won't say it drastically altered things because the story still carries forward, but it allows us to cut a lot of the fat and kind of take the best parts of certain moments and put them together. When you're adapting something that is this big and you have to fit it into a very small space you have to, by nature of that process. But that's allowed us to focus on the good bits and allowed us the opportunity to add a few things that improv doesn't necessarily allow. We get to flesh out certain moments that maybe had to move forward for our game or we had to end there for the night and we forgot about in the week since. It gives us the time to kind of fine tune a little bit and play up a few moments and see perspectives in the story that aren't just player-based. So we get to see antagonist perspectives, we get to see scenes that aren't part of the main narrative and that's been really exciting.
Ashley Johnson: Nailed it.
Ray: To his point, that balance of we're able to trim the fat and make it a concise story but then also trying to be mindful of allowing little moments to breathe and for the characters to just be people and not wanting to get rid of those around-the-campfire moments.
What was it like to transition from these improv, table characters to scripted, fully-visualized ones? Did you find any interesting opportunities or difficulties from bringing these characters to life for the show?
Johnson: I feel like -- and we've talked about this before, where we all sort of have a similar collective visual of how our game looks and feels. I think that when we're all together, regardless of whether sitting around the table or sitting around a group of microphones in a booth, it's really about the energy that we're pulling off of each other. So the jump from sitting at the table to sitting behind a mic didn't necessarily feel like a huge jump. I think the hard part is just trying to truncate the story that we've told over the years. But we can be a little bit more precise with it. What about you, Marisha?
Ray: Yeah, absolutely. I think, especially in traditional ensemble cast television series, it's easy to put characters into trope archetypes. And it's not to say that there's not 100% elements of that with the Legend of Vox Machina -- Keyleth is the naïve, anxiety-driven one, Pike is the holy badass, who's just throwing it all out there. So it's easy to fall into those tropes but also continuing to bring that deep dynamic that all of these characters have that I think we did a pretty good job at capturing as the show goes on.
Matthew, what was it like to hand over the reins of some of your NPCs to other voice actors, and what was it like to bring new voice actors into this very tight-knit group?
Mercer: For me, it was extremely exciting. I love these characters. Each one has a little part of me in it and I've been with them for so long and lived within them that I know them very well, which means that we were very specific and very careful with the casting. But it was very exciting to find the right person to bring it to life and to hear somebody breathe life into these characters in ways that I never could. So for me, in one way, it's like watching your kids go to college and they're gone, they've moved out and in the same way they come back and they're so much cooler than you ever thought they could be. And you're like, "Oh, I'm so glad you grew up and became awesome." That's kind of where I am with it.
Ray: I can't wait for you guys to see some of the guest actors that we have in this. It's too fun. Hard not to fan girl.
Johnson: Oh yeah.
Are there any final messages you want to send to maybe new viewers who are unfamiliar with Critical Role?
Ray: You don't have to be a fan of Critical Role the tabletop show to watch The Legend of Vox Machina, so I hope you jump in.
Mercer: It's a wild story that at times can be crass, at times can be extremely heartfelt. It can be violent, it can be soft. It can be epic. It can be ridiculous. And just, I guess, abandoned expectations.
The first three episodes of The Legend of Vox Machina premiered Jan. 28, with three new episodes airing each week.