How a D&D livestream became a media company

A decade ago, a group of professional voice actors gathered around a table to live-stream a game of Dungeons & Dragons. Now, they run a media empire.

Critical Role, both the name of the original show and the company, has expanded exponentially since its first episode aired in March 2015. Today it operates a production studio, a publishing arm, a gaming division, a streaming service, a record label and a charity initiative.

The company’s growth comes at a time of disruption in the traditional media landscape. More consumers are turning to niche streamers and alternative content than ever before, with services like Critical Role’s streaming platform Beacon becoming more and more prevalent.

Critical Role is a private company and does not disclose its financials, however, a leaked Twitch report noted that the company generated $9.6 million in direct payouts from the streaming service between September 2019 and September 2021. It’s an impressive total for a company built on a 50-year-old fantasy game.

Critical Role’s business strategy centers on its intellectual property. The company and its founders — Matthew Mercer, Ashley Johnson, Laura Bailey, Liam O’Brien, Taliesin Jaffe, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel and Travis Willingham — have crafted a complex fantasy world, named Exandria. Through partnerships and expanding in-house production, they’ve captured fans across a wide swath of mediums.

The company has created more than 2,500 hours of original content, more than 30 original shows and published nearly 70 books, comics and novels in the last 10 years, many of which are based on the IP of its games.

As the company continues to mature, it has broadened its focus beyond the confines of the Hasbro-owned table top roleplaying game.

“We’ve been doing this for quite a while,” said Mercer, the company’s long-time game master and chief creative officer. “Our core main campaign it’s very much been kind of the tentpole of our community and the growth of this whole endeavor … People throughout the company have kept eyes out in the space to look for really talented, up-and-coming people that might be an opportunity for us to collaborate with and let them grow — kind of more or less give them part of our garden and let them flourish.”

The basis for Critical Role’s content is what’s known in the D&D realm as a “campaign,” a longform game that can take place over the course of several weeks, months and even years. 

Critical Role’s third campaign, the adventures of a group known as Bell’s Hells, wrapped in early February with an 8-hour finale. The campaign, which took place over the course of 121 four- to six-hour episodes, started in October 2021.

Its final session marked the culmination of a decade of storytelling and the beginning of something new. While Critical Role will continue to deliver fan-favorite content, it’s now looking to delve into new domains.

“In the animation world alone, animation takes a long time, and it’s very expensive and feature animation is its own unique challenge, but it’s something we are exploring,” Willingham said. “We love experiential things. We’re always looking for anything that someone might be able to come and engage with in a real world aspect.”

Already, Critical Role has a successful animated series on Amazon Prime Video, “The Legend of Vox Machina.” The project was first fundraised by Critical Role’s ardent fanbase, who shelled out more than $11.3 million on Kickstarter to bring a 10-episode season to life. Amazon quickly funded a second season of the show, which is now headed for its fourth.

Still to come is a second show centered on the characters in the adventuring party known as the Mighty Nein, who featured in Critical Role’s second campaign. Both projects are being completed by independent animation house Titmouse.

The company will continue to explore the world of Exandria in new video content, called actual plays, with the “Wildemount Wildings” announced as its next adventure.

Riegel is set to take on the role of game master for the new limited series, which launches April 3. The three-episode event follows a rag-tag group of teens at a summer camp learning how to be heroes. Their guides are two famed characters from Critical Role’s Mighty Nein, Beau and Yasha, played by founders Ray and Johnson. The cast also includes Eden Riegel, Aleks Le, Brennan Lee Mulligan and Libe Barer.

Additionally, Darrington Press, the company’s publishing arm, is set to release a romance novel called “Tusk Love,” based on an in-game novel of the same name; O’Brien has penned a book of fairy tales from the Zemni Fields, a fictional area within Exandria; and Riegal wrote a self-help book from the perspective of his character, named Fresh Cut Grass.

The company’s main cast is also gearing up for a multi-city live show tour in the U.S. and Australia, with hopes to visit other countries in Europe and South America in the coming years.

Critical Role sold out Wembley Stadium in London last fall.

“That was the largest venue we had ever explored, and watching it sell out that quickly, and then just the energy from that room was massive,” Willingham said.

“It’s all a gradual acceleration, but it’s also exciting for us, because anybody that’s been to a Critical Role live show knows there’s nothing like it,” he added.

Critical Role’s aspirations are even further reaching.

“We’ve built such a robust world, and we have so many other stories to tell and things that we want to add to those stories, but something that we love as gamers is providing the audience a way to get their hand on the stick and have some agency in that story, manipulate it, change it, see what their own personal experience would be,” said Willingham, teasing that a video game announcement is expected within the year.

Metapigeon, Critical Role’s production studio, has also been exploring live-action and feature film development alongside its continued animation aspirations.

“The thing about Beacon was that it’s intended as a starting point,” said Willingham. “It is something we can add to … we just have to measure and explore at our own pace, but that’s fully our intention.”

The Beacon streaming service costs $5.99 a month for ad-free and exclusive content, as well as early access to live event ticket sales and a percentage off Critical Role merchandise.

The company declined to say how many subscribers its Beacon service currently has.

Perhaps the biggest investment Critical Role has made is in its new table top roleplaying game system called Daggerheart. This ruleset, which is due out in May, is set to be the basis of much of the company’s video content in the future.

“The intent of this was to look at all the different systems we had played and comparing that with the style of how we play,” said Mercer. “There’s a history of prominent game systems that facilitate epic, cinematic storytelling, but often are kind of in conflict with the rules as they’re written and presented.”

Mercer and the team at Critical Role wanted to build a system that allowed for more creative gameplay where rules didn’t delay or prevent players from creating unique story moments.

Critical Role will still use other game systems, like Dungeons & Dragons, but having its own proprietary module allows it to not only grow in scope of content, but also in revenue. Those funds can then be reinvested into other projects.

“The perpetual joke is, if you say it out loud, there’s a chance that it will happen,” said Willingham.