Is a Critical Role video game destined to disappoint?

My guest for this week’s issue of Multiplier is David Smith. David was the editor of Kotaku Australia before it was tragically shuttered These days, you can find him over at ABC Gamer. You can follow him and his work on Twitter, TikTok, Bluesky and Threads.

Fergus: It's an odd but optimistic time for Critical Role. The biggest (or second-biggest, depending on who you ask) act in actual play is selling out stadiums, has put a capstone on its third major campaign, and launched its own rival to Dungeons & Dragons. The group even now has its own streaming service in the form of Beacon. Then, if the hundreds of hours of TTRPG goodness isn't enough for you, there are novels, comics, TV shows, art books, cookbooks and countless other Critical Role media you can sink your teeth into.

And yet, despite that deluge (and plenty of teases), a proper Critical Role video game remains elusive. Technically speaking, the group has dabbled in the gaming space via its investment in ZAU: Tales of Kenzera.

Nevertheless, when the words ‘Critical Role video game’ come up online, that’s not really the kind of thing that the folks using the phrase are asking about. More than anything else, it feels like the thing this audience is asking for is something along the lines of an Elder Scrolls or Baldur's Gate game set in Exandria. That’s a tantalising idea but as popular as Critical Role has become, the pathway towards a dream project like the above becoming a reality feels increasingly fraught nowadays.

If you believe the rumor mill, a Critical Role video game isn’t a matter of if but when. At the same time, it’s all too easy given the state of the games industry nowadays to see how reality could fall short. Where do you fall? Are the expectations attached to the idea of a Critical Role video game justified or is it destined to become yet another fantasy heartbreaker?

David: For me, it definitely feels like the When, Not It scenario you’ve described. Between a hungry streaming platform in Beacon, a growing gaming imprint in Darrington Press, numerous publishing deals for novels and comics, and an evolving TV partnership with Amazon, video games are one of the few remaining avenues Critical Role is yet to fully explore.

Herein lies the rub: CR’s community would expect an ethically produced, high-quality product, probably single player (if I know my RPG fans at all) and bereft of any predatory monetisation. I can feel the publishers and investors backing away already.

Because of CR’s involvement with Dungeons & Dragons, the wistful, starry-eyed fan would of course wish for an RPG in the vein of Baldur’s Gate 3 or maybe even The Witcher 3. The most obvious path to this (extraordinarily wild) scenario would be to leverage its relationship with Amazon-owned Twitch and Prime Video to partner with Amazon Games.

That brings us right back to the same publisher or investor problem mentioned above: they’ll want a serious, probably ongoing, return on investment which would mean pushes towards live service and other monetisation. This would obviously sit at odds with the ethical, community-first approach CR historically prefers. It’s fun to dream, but I really do think a lower-order miracle would need to take place for a big CR RPG to actually happen.

Personally, my bet is that a small, probably mobile tie-in for one of CR’s animated shows, made on a modest budget by a small studio, is a more likely outcome. They can use it to gauge the community's appetite for video games in a way that probably won’t rock the boat and build out a bigger strategy from there, should they see a path forward.

On the other hand, CR has also shown an interest in helping friends of the show get their own games made, providing production assistance on Abubakar Salim’s Tales of Kenzera: Zau. Perhaps that’s the more financially attractive prospect for now — helping get games made by those in CR’s orbit over the line. If they have the facilities and pedigree to do it, that’s a useful way to get into the video games business without breaking the bank.

Or maybe they pitch Epic Games on some Legend of Vox Machina Fortnite skins and call it a day. Who could blame them?

Fergus: I feel like if Critical Role hasn’t managed to talk Wizards into doing a Magic: The Gathering set yet, then Fortnite is probably off the table. Then again, Mistborn’s Kelsier is in Fortnite so it’s genuinely hard to say how big a brand needs to be to open the door for that kind of collaboration.

In all seriousness, I think there is another path forward worth considering. If the thing that Critical Role fans want is a Baldur’s Gate 3-style experience then an expansion pack or adventure module for Larian’s RPG is a good way to do that. I've long held the opinion that the smartest move that Wizards of the Coast could make when it comes to following up the success of Larian's landmark RPG is to put that engine in the hands of folks who can use those tools to build new narratives within it. Some of the best RPGs in video game history have come from this kind of approach - from Fallout: New Vegas to The Witcher - and given the precedent for this kind of thing when it comes to Dungeons & Dragons adaptations specifically, I find it much easier to imagine an RPG set in Exandria happening this way than any other.

It’s also worth remembering that while a big-budget RPG might be the most obvious way of answering the appetite of the Critical Role community, it’s far from the only viable one. These days, Exandria is far from the only universe that Critical Role encompasses. A Citizen Sleeper-like adventure or visual novel set in the Fairelands of Candela Obscura or even a digital adaptation of Queen by Midnight are other routes by which Critical Role might be able to start playing in the gaming space.

David: You’ve opened my third eye here. I actually love the idea of a small studio given full access to a toolset like Larian’s for a bespoke RPG project. I can see it so clearly, and it’s beautiful. May this be an eventual outcome. Knowing the CR founders' feelings about the very RPG’s you mentioned, I dare say they’d like the sound of that too.

Larian also strikes me as the kind of studio that would be cool with that sort of thing. We live in an era where rights holders are so protective of their various IP, and so punishingly risk-averse, that it can feel like nothing interesting like that ever happens anymore. Sometimes you've gotta let the inmates run the proverbial asylum and see if you get a New Vegas out of it. Obsidian should teach a course in how to get rights holders to trust you enough to let you do that sort of thing. They also worked with the CR team on Pillars of Eternity 2! You can play as Vox Machina in that game! Get Travis Willingham on the phone, I have a pitch I'd like to make.

Since last we spoke (our emails are like correspondence in the 1800s, weeks between arrivals and entirely on me), it also appears that CR did beat us to the angle of our piece here and announced a video game.

AdHoc Studio, a team of ex-Telltale vets making the upcoming story-driven superhero title Dispatch, is the studio working with CR on its first video game. Indeed, the brief appears to be "Dispatch with the CR license." This feels like it makes sense, and in all the baseless theorising I did in my first email, a Telltale-like, decision-driven roleplayer didn't factor into my thinking once.

Shame on me, I suppose, because in many ways, it's a perfect fit. If the partnership goes well, it's easy to see CR wanting more of it. I can see games with characters from all their other campaigns and, as you rightly pointed out, other settings like Candela Obscura or Queen by Midnight.