"San Diego Comic-Con 2022 - Critical Role Q&A Panel" (Sx71) is a special episode presenting the Critical Role cast's 1-hour Q&A style panel from San Diego Comic-Con on 22 July 2022, moderated by Christian Navarro.
Synopsis[]
- After almost three years, the cast of Critical Role is back at San Diego Comic-Con to answer all your burning questions! In the meantime, Campaign Two wrapped up, The Legend of Vox Machina released, and Campaign Three started.
- Q: Any scenes anyone wanted to have, but never happened?
Yes, lots. Maybe some day down the road. - Q: Are Laudna and Orym's backstory callbacks to Campaign One because they were working on The Legend of Vox Machina during character creation, or just them missing Vox Machina?
Liam created Derrig in the wedding one-shot explicitly to set up Orym. The world of Exandria is dense and thick, and they both like spending time in it. - Q: How fun was playing in the Calamity?
Matt didn't play, but it was a blast watching. - Q: For Taliesin: On Between the Sheets, he mentioned Percy's origin in a script he wrote. How does it feel to see that realized?
It's way better than what Taliesin wrote, which was very sophomoric. The game was way better than he could have hoped. - Q: For Matt: Do you have any NPCs that didn't see the light of day that you really wanted to?
Any NPC he's really excited about gets shoehorned in somewhere, or becomes a PC when he gets to play. Or vice versa. - Q: For Liam: When it comes to Caleb, his past and his trauma, as someone who is diagnosed with CPTSD, what thought processes and ideas went into how Caleb would react to his trauma when faced with it?
Caleb is largely grounded in parts of Liam's life that are private, but very real. He knows from experience that, when things happen to us, on some level, we carry them with us. When he created Caleb, it was to explore the human experience. People are really flawed, but it doesn't mean that they can't achieve great things, regardless of what's happened in the past. It doesn't mean we forget them, or that they go away. We live with them. But the world is still there for every single one of us. - Q: For everyone: If Critical Role ever goes live action, who would you cast as one of your characters?
The absent Sam Riegel is their casting director, and he probably already knows. But some suggestions are:
Grog: Travis
Beau: Stephanie Beatriz
Percy: Hugh Dancy
Scanlan: Christian Navarro (self-nominated)
Caleb: Domhhall Gleeson
Pumat Sol: Seth Rogen
Pike: Amy Sedaris
Chetney: Danny DeVito
Jester: Rachel McAdams - Q: Any NPC from a previous campaign you want your Campaign Three character to meet?
Fearne should meet Victor. Everyone wants to meet Gilmore. - Q: What would Trinket think of Little Mister?
Trinket's kind of old and crotchety by this time, so probably annoyed. Much discussion about exactly HOW old and how long he'll live. Matt caves under pressure to allow Trinket to live as long as Vex'ahlia does... or any of Vox Machina including Keyleth. Mister's a bit of an asshole, anyway. - Q: Is there any time that you felt that there was a DM like Matt ruling over your lives?
Taliesin's entire life feels unreal, like he's going to wake up in a snow globe any minute. - Q: For Liam: What's one of those profound moments from campaign two that still resonates with you today?
Liam didn't have a plan for the end of the campaign. Early on in the campaign, he thought he really was going to make a go for dragging the Mighty Nein back with him in time to try to change things. He didn't know he was embarking on a story about acceptance at the beginning. So he startled himself in the very last episode with Caleb's final moments. He'll never forget how real that felt saying goodbye to Caleb's parents in that way. - Q: Who enjoys custom character class creation more, Taliesin or Matt?
Taliesin's first draft of a chaos barbarian needed a lot of work. Matt enjoys the process when it's not in real time on the internet. - Q: For Travis: Which DM scared you more: Brennan Lee Mulligan or Matt?
They both crossed over the DM screen, which he feels is against the rules. Brennan got a little closer and his eyeballs kind of came out of his head. But Matt's sound effects give him a plus three to horrific-ness. - Q: For Taliesin: What is your favorite design element that you've added to any of your characters?
Surprisingly, the buckles on Ashton's armor. - Q: For Taliesin: What would Molly have thought about Nott's backstory?
Taliesin finally got to write down everything with Molly for the comic book coming out, so that will actually fill in some holes for everyone. "Molly would find the whole notion of Veth going back to being a mom very boring, and probably a bad decision versus actually going out and having fun and not having responsibilities, because that is literally the antithesis of what he wanted," but does concede that Mollymauk would ultimately support Veth's decision. - Q: For Travis: What's your favorite part about Grog?
That there was no filter, partially similar to Chetney, and anything he said or did wrong was instantly forgivable because he was an idiot. As long as Travis could hide behind that 6 intelligence, he could do whatever he wanted. It was the safest way to enter D&D, "because Laura and Liam were doing their thing, Marisha had a druid that had all of these options and they were all leading the charge, and I was just back there talking about butts, and beer, and chopping heads." Marisha agrees that she loves it with Laudna. - Q: For Matt and Marisha: Patia personally knew The Raven Queen as a mortal. What's it like seeing her evolution as a god?
Actually playing in the Calamity after hearing about it and the Age of Arcanum for years was cool. It was fun to explore characters whose perspective was that becoming a god was possible because it had happened. Matt wants to continue exploring the relationship between mortality and immortality. The Raven Queen opened the possibility of crossover between gods and men, which impacted faith at that time in history. He looks forward to exploring that more down the road. - Q: Favorite Sam ad bits?
The one where he ate a lot of things. The one where he put whipped cream in wine. The current lounge singer bits. The one where Sam's chest burst and he bled out on a Cowboys football jersey, making the NFL mad at them. Sam is a mad genius, but he won't tell them ahead of time what they're doing, so often they're reading it for the first time on camera. - Q: For Matt: How do you balance item creation, and how do you take an item away from a player when it's unbalanced?
That's something he's still learning. If you give something to a player that's way too powerful, that means the fights have to be harder which is rough on the rest of the party, unless they get cool items as well. You can have the item taken by an antagonist and used against them. Instead of taking a cool item away, find other ways to narratively balance it. - Q: For Laura: Imogen seems to be the butt of a lot of in-character teasing this Campaign. What's that like?
Imogen is challenging to play because she overthinks everything she says. A lot of times Laura's scared to talk, which kind of makes sense for Imogen too. - Q: What are some of the things the cast yells at Matt just before the game begins?
They're not allowed to say them here. Matt says, "They're trying to break me. And they've been doing this for eight years. So they get real creative." Liam: "Usually Matt gets hit with just a wall of sound from all of us. But there are some weeks where everyone kind of clocks out, and one person will be like, "Piss whistle!" And they'll be the only one." - Q: For Travis: If you were to replace the offense of the Dallas Cowboys with members of Vox Machina and the Mighty Nein, who would make the starting lineup?
Yasha: tight end
Vax'ildan: quarterback
Grog: starting middle linebacker or outside defensive end
Vex'ahlia: free safety
Keyleth: offensive coordinator
Chetney: kicker.
Ashton: fullback
Beau: slot receiver
He's thought about this! Chetney may or may not be wearing Cowboys colors. - Q: For Taliesin: When Molly was resurrected, did you decide to go with Kingsley as a way to help the rest of the group mourn or accept Molly's death?
Honestly, he wasn't thinking about them at all. The whole character celebrated the ephemeral, the concept of "live in the now". Having that character come back was always going to be a fresh start, as a fundamental aspect of the character. "It would have been wrong to bring him back." - Q: For Matt: Do you have any examples or tips for letting the players figure out a situation for themselves instead of just telling them?
Since the GM has all the information and the players have little to none, it can be easy to think you're giving them enough information when you're not. The GM shouldn't be afraid to be overt with clues until players start picking up on the thread. - Q: For Matt: If you had a loaded 20-sided die that always rolled a 20, and you gave it to Wil Wheaton, what would happen?
"If we are eventually racing towards the eventual entropic heat death of the universe, this might be the only way to reverse the process." - Q: Out of the previous characters you've played, which one is your favorite or the one you've resonated the most with?
Travis thinks Fjord, because he's only medium murderous. Marisha thinks Keyleth, because you always remember your first love. - Q: Are there other parts of Exandria's history that you would be interested in exploring?
Yes. The Calamity itself went on for a long time, and all over the world. There's the Founding before that as well. After Campaign Three, they could time jump to an industrial revolution era of Exandria. There are also unexplored parts of the world and things off the map that have been lost to time. Every time something new gets introduced, it affects all of the other productions in development with real-time changes. They have many stories they want to tell that take place in the past, the present, and the future of what we've already seen.
Quotations[]
- Liam: Every one of us is able to achieve great things, regardless of what's happened to us in the past. Doesn't mean we forget them. It doesn't mean that they go away. We live with them. But the world is still there for every single one of us.
- Liam: We think about these characters and our friends' characters and Matt's invisible characters. They're all our friends, and we spend time getting to know them and exploring our own new personalities. Playing games like this is a practice in empathy and learning what other people are like and the difficulties between us and how little difference there is between us.
- Taliesin: (about homebrewed subclasses) Anybody can do it. Well, anybody can make Matt do it.
- Taliesin: It's always important to support your friends, especially when they're making unbelievably bad decisions, and help them along so that they learn their lesson.
References[]
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