Feeling unfulfilled after ‘Exandria Unlimited’
Fans of Critical Role, the Twitch and YouTube live stream and actual play channel who have taken the Dungeons & Dragons and streaming world by storm over the past six years always dread the end of a campaign because it means Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer’s weekly question: “Is it Thursday yet?” won’t be answered for some time.
When D&D actual play juggernauts Critical Role announced “Exandria Unlimited,” an eight-episode mini series, would debut shortly after the conclusion of campaign two, aka The Might Nein, I was thrilled! They announced the new Game Master (another moniker for a Dungeon Master) and live stream superstar Aabria Iyengar, new cast members Robbie Daymond and Aimee Carrero, returning cast Liam O’Brian, Ashley Johnson, and Mercer in a rare player character role, and the setting within Mercer’s now official setting of Wildmount. Everything was set up to be a fun, mini-adventure through a familiar world with new and familiar faces.
And it was ... ok.
Let’s do pros and cons:
Pros: Iyengar is a great GM. She creates incredibly immersive stories and nonplayable characters. She admitted right away how nervous she was to be playing a campaign within Mercer’s world, joking, “But even if it’s wrong, it’s right now because I said so!” And her combat maps were insane.
O’Brian and Johnson are CR veterans from the beginning of their stream and never fail to entertain. Adding in Mercer, who typically runs the games at the DM and constantly rolled terribly with his dice, created a delightful new dynamic as well.
New cast members Daymond and Carrero brought their own flair for performance, role-playing and storytelling to an already stacked cast of role-players. The choice to play in Wildmount, specifically Taldorai, 30 years after the events of campaign one and six years after campaign two, harkened back to the adventures of Vox Machina. This allowed both new and old fans to connect with the elaborate story Iyengar and the cast presented each week. Combat was nuanced and unpredictable, characters grew and developed quickly and effortlessly, and the eight weeks flew by in a heartbeat.
O’Brien, Johnson and Mercer played character classes they hadn’t before, and it was clear they were having a blast. Daymond and Carrero added their own unique personalities and styles that brought something new and interesting to the stream.
Cons: Even as a viewer of the entirety of Critical Role’s episodes (which is 251 episodes, ranging from three hours to over five hours in length each), I felt lost in the world. I started watching The Might Nein in the summer of 2018, only a few months behind the weekly stream. I caught up relatively quickly once the show was also released as a podcast and I could listen while filing at my temp job.
After catching up, I went back to the beginning of Vox Machina and watched that as well in between the current episodes. While I never felt as invested in Vox Machina as The Mighty Nein, everyone was phenomenal and it was very clear why this show was/is so popular. It’s great. And while I mentioned above that the setting was ideal for fans to feel at home, as a casual-at-best viewer of Vox Machina, I didn’t get all the references.
There would be moments when Iyengar would say something, and O’Brien and Johnson would gasp! I’d scrub back 15 seconds and watch again, they’d gasp, and I’d still be lost. It was like if someone who had never seen any of the Marvel movies watched “Loki.” They’re just not gonna get it.
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