Critical Role Productions


Critical Role Productions, LLC is a multimedia production company incorporated in 2015 by the members of the creator-owned streaming show Critical Role. The company's original shows premiered on Geek & Sundry. The company moved to their own studio space in 2018, and started putting out new shows on their own Twitch and YouTube channels. A split from Legendary Digital Networks was completed in early 2019, at which point Critical Role Productions took over production responsibility of the Critical Role and Talks Machina shows.

History

Critical Role Productions was founded by the members of the creator-owned streaming show Critical Role in 2015. After Felicia Day heard about the private Dungeons & Dragons home game from Ashley Johnson, she approached the group about playing it in a live-streamed format for Geek & Sundry. In order to streamline gameplay for the show, the game's characters were converted from Pathfinder to Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition before the web series began airing on March 12, 2015. The company's first show, Critical Role, was a huge success. The company's second show, Talks Machina, then premiered on Geek & Sundry and Alpha, Legendary Digital Networks' subscription streaming service, in 2016.
In June 2018, Critical Role launched its own Twitch and YouTube channels, with cast member Marisha Ray being announced as the creative director of the franchise. Critical Role then started to self-produce new shows and content which did not air on Geek & Sundry's channels. The sets for Critical Role and Talks Machina moved from Legendary Digital Network's studios to Critical Role's own studios in July 2018.
In February 2019, Critical Role's split from Geek & Sundry and Legendary Digital Networks was completed. Critical Role took over production responsibility of the Critical Role and Talks Machina shows, with live broadcasts of their shows and VODs airing exclusively on Critical Role's channels. Some "legacy episodes" remain available in Geek & Sundry's archives on YouTube and Twitch. Since December 2019, some older episodes of Critical Role and Talks Machina have been deleted from the Geek and Sundry channels and re-uploaded to the official Critical Role channels, beginning an ongoing migration of older content to the creator-owned channels.
, Travis Willingham serves as chief executive officer, Matthew Mercer as chief creative officer, Marisha Ray as creative director, Ed Lopez as chief operating officer, Rachel Romero as senior vice president of marketing, and Ben Van Der Fluit as vice president of business development.

Productions

The company produces and broadcasts the following shows:

Current programming

The following shows are on un-planned hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic:

Animated series

On March 4, 2019, the cast launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a 22-minute animation called Critical Role: The Legend of Vox Machina Animated Special. The animated story will be set just before the streaming portion of the campaign started—when the players were around level seven—during a time when, canonically, there is an in-game period of roughly six months when the members of Vox Machina were not all together at the same time. For a single 22-minute animated short, fulfilling the other campaign rewards, and the fees associated with a crowdfunding campaign; the cast projected a cost of US$750,000. Not knowing how long this would take to raise, the campaign length was set at 45 days.
Within an hour of launch, however, the Kickstarter had reached more than $1,000,000. At the end of the first full day, all of the announced stretch goals had been unlocked, and the total had reached more than $4.3 million. With four 22-minute episodes funded in the first 24 hours, additional stretch goals were added, expanding the project into an animated series. The first two episodes would cover the pre-stream story arc. The subsequent episodes would adapt the Briarwoods' arc, also from the Vox Machina campaign. By March 18, 2019, eight 22-minute episodes had been funded. Finally, on April 4, 2019, the last published stretch goal of $8.8 million was reached during the airing of episode 57 of Campaign 2, pushing the total length of the animated series to ten episodes. A "secret" $10M stretch goal of Travis Willingham being filmed going around a haunted house was reached April 16. The final total raised by the Kickstarter when it closed on April 19, 2019, was $11.3M. When the campaign closed, it was one of the most quickly funded in Kickstarter history, and was the most funded Kickstarter for TV and film projects. In June 2020, it was announced that the Fall 2020 debut would be missed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and a new release date has yet to be made available.
The cast will reprise their respective Vox Machina roles, with the exception of Orion Acaba. The animated series will be written by Jennifer Muro, and animated by Titmouse, Inc. The project is slated for release in late 2020. In November 2019, Amazon Prime Video announced that they had acquired the streaming rights to The Legend of Vox Machina, and had commissioned 14 additional episodes. An update posted to the Kickstarter campaign assured backers they would have access to the first season.

Licensed miniature figures

In July 2018, Steamforged Games raised approx $1.2M in a Kickstarter campaign for a collection of licensed miniature figures based on player characters and non-player characters from both Critical Role campaigns. The Kickstarter campaign included miniatures of both Vox Machina and the Mighty Nein, and exclusive miniatures of Taryon Darrington, Doty, Pumat Prime, and three Pumat Sols. Because Caduceus was not part of the Mighty Nein until after the SFG Kickstarter campaign finished he is not included in the Mighty Nein set of figures.
In a February 2019 update, backers were informed that the expected March 2019 fulfilment date would be missed, as quality control samples had failed to meet both SFG's and the Critical Role cast's standards. The miniatures began shipping to backers June 2019, and have since been added to the Critical Role online stores.
A Caduceus miniature was announced as part of SFG's continuing "Vault" line of Critical Role miniature figures in July 2019. The Vault line are limited edition figures, which are produced in resin at lower volumes than the PVC figures in the Kickstarter campaign.

Podcasts

On the 100th episode of Critical Role, the launch of the Critical Role podcast was announced: an audio version of the game sessions. It is available on iTunes, Google Play Music, and at the Geek & Sundry website.
The first campaign's podcast episodes were released in batches of 10–15, between June 8, 2017 and January 8, 2018. Since the start of the second campaign, the podcast episodes have been released on the following Thursday.
Talks Machina has been available in a podcast format since episode 101. Like the podcast version of Critical Role; there is a week's delay between the broadcast of Talks Machina on Twitch, and the corresponding podcast episode's release.

Video games

's RPG received a free DLC entitled Critical Role Pack on launch day, adding additional character voices and portraits. The set corresponds with eight characters from the first campaign, making up the bulk of Vox Machina. Additionally, the characters Arkhan the Cruel and Spurt the Kobold appear as playable characters in Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms. Arkhan's inclusion was announced on Talks Machina as part of a sponsorship deal.

Charity involvement

Critical Role Productions and Stephen Colbert teamed up for Red Nose Day for a special one-on-one adventure with Matthew Mercer as Dungeon Master that aired on May 23, 2019. Fans were able to donate to the cause and vote for elements of the adventure such as Colbert's companion, his class, his legendary weapon, and the villain. In the one-shot campaign, Colbert played a half-elf bard named Capo, and had a bee named Eric as a companion. The event raised $117,176.20 for the charity.