'Critical Role' Working With Death Differently In Campaign 4

Oct 22

Critical Role Death — Image Source: Polygon

Critical Role Campaign 4 is in full swing, and if you haven’t heard, they’re doing things a little differently this time around. First, the game is being DM’ed by Brennan Lee Mulligan, with Matthew Mercer being a full-time player character instead. The cast has also expanded to a nice 13 people. The first four episodes serve as an overture that sets up the entire story for all of our characters, and then break off into three separate tables, where characters will move back and forth between them. These aren’t the only things that are different, though, because in this campaign, even death is going to be a bit different.

Death has been an important part of campaign 4 already, as the first few episodes have focused on the death of Thjazi Fang and how it brought our characters together. One of the longstanding issues players have had when it comes to D&D is that death means very little. Characters as early as level 5 get access to resurrection spells, which makes earlier encounters a bit easier. The lore of campaign 4, however, tells us that the Gods are dead, and their celestial servants, who would ferry the souls of the dead to the divine realms they were supposed to go to, have since turned mad and monstrous, and gained enough power to devastate entire regions, and had to eventually be put down. Two of the characters, Occtis and Vaelus, have confirmed that the realm of Death is absolutely filled with souls who cannot move to the afterlife because the Gods are dead.

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Obviously, killing the Gods had disastrous consequences, so how will this impact the party? Fans know that death in the previous campaigns could be a part of a character's narrative arc, and a lot of times that character would be brought back. This time, however, it’s different. There are celestials, undead, and demons running around; it's clear that death still isn’t the end. How will this affect our group of characters if one of them goes down? How will they solve the issue when it comes to Death? I, for one, cannot wait to keep watching to find out.

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