While most stories start at the beginning, episode 1 of Critical Role depicts Vox Machina’s tale long after they’d begun their adventures. This is partially due to how the game developed prior to the series and how deeply expansive Critical Role was before it ever began streaming. Even among TTRPG actual plays, this is a bit unusual when many recent streams begin their campaigns knowing they’ll be performed. In contrast, Critical Role‘s episodes came from much more humble origins. Its growth into the media company it is today is much more organic, and why Vox Machina’s story starts where it does is very rooted in how many normal Dungeons & Dragons games begin.
Critical Role is a Dungeons & Dragons tabletop roleplaying game turned actual play series. In it, the dungeon master, Matthew Mercer, creates a long-running fantasy epic with a cast of characters portrayed by his friends, who also happen to be prominent voice actors that began Critical Role for fun. In the show’s first campaign, the adventuring party composed of siblings Vax (Liam O’Brien) and Vex (Laura Bailey), the gunslinger Percy (Taliesin Jaffe), the druid Keyleth (Marisha Ray), the cleric Pike (Ashley Johnson), and the barbarian Grog (Travis Willingham). Together, they venture across the continent of Tal’dorei, fighting monsters and rooting out great evils in the world in a sweeping, years-long story.
Critical Role’s Vox Machina Campaign Began Before The Stream Started
However, Critical Role’s first campaign, at least in terms of gameplay, began long before it was initially streamed online. The first streamed episode of Vox Machina’s adventures was released in March 2015. Geek & Sundry hosted the episode and would continue until Critical Role created their own company in 2019. But the campaign, and not just the publicly available episodes, began as a one-shot game for O’Brien’s birthday in 2013. But the cast enjoyed playing together so much that they agreed to do so again while keeping their characters, leading to further adventures and a long-running story.
Once Vox Machina’s adventures became an actual campaign instead of a single game, the group played together for some years before they brought it into the public view. This occurred when Felicia Day heard about the game from Johnson, after which she approached the group about hosting it as an actual play. This led to the cast of Critical Role transitioning from the Pathfinder system to Dungeons & Dragons 5e, but they continued the same story they’d been working on for years. This meant that Critical Role had essentially been playing for two years before it began in 2015 and ran for a total of four years by the time it ended in October 2017.
Where Critical Role Episode 1 Actually Begins In Vox Machina’s Timeline
With so much gameplay having occurred before the cameras started rolling on Critical Role, it can be a bit difficult to gauge where episode 1 takes place in Critical Role’s timeline. In the narrative, Vox Machina’s adventures took place over two years, including a year-long time skip. As such, episode 1 begins at something of a midpoint in Vox Machina’s career and perhaps a third of the way through their story in totality. By the time Geek & Sundry released the first episode, the party had already faced off against many powerful enemies, and story threads had been established that come to fruition in the streamed campaign.
For example, by the time Critical Role episode 1 was released, Vox Machina had already fought a dragon at a Winter’s Crest festival, which was a very early plot point building toward the Chroma Conclave arc. Additionally, they freed Percy from prison while he was attempting to hunt down Anna Ripley, a pivotal character during the Briarwood arc. As well as this, the nymph that the group interacts with in the Feywild is the same one that Grog meets during the unstreamed campaign. Important character development occurs before Critical Role begins streaming, such as the party first meeting Vex and Vax’s father and Pike’s death at the hands of a demon.
Where To Find Out What Happened Before Critical Role Episode 1
While it might seem as though the campaign before Critical Role began streaming is unavailable for current viewers of the series, there are a couple of methods to see all the details of Vox Machina’s early adventures. Firstly, Geek & Sundry created a video recap of the party’s pre-campaign adventures, briefly covering their adventures and animatic drawings. This video is unlisted but can still be watched on YouTube. Additionally, the site CritRoleStats also posted a transcript of this story, which is just as comprehensive, and a longer version can be found in the comics series Critical Role: Vox Machina Origins.
