Critical Role Productions

Geek & Sundry era (2015–2019) Critical Role Productions was founded by the members of the creator-owned Dungeons & Dragons streaming show Critical Role in 2015. The group had originally begun playing at home in 2012. Felicia Day approached them about live-streaming their game on Geek & Sundry after learning about their private tabletop role-playing game from Ashley Johnson. To streamline the game's mechanics for the show, its characters were converted from Pathfinder to Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition before the web series began airing on March 12, 2015. The company's first show, Critical Role, was a success. The company's second show, Talks Machina, premiered on Geek & Sundry and Alpha, Legendary Digital Networks' subscription streaming service, in 2016. The sets for Critical Role and Talks Machina moved from Legendary Digital Network's studios to Critical Role's own studios in July 2018. in 2017. The eight founders—the cast members of Critical Role―are the owners of equity stakes in the company. Since 2019, Travis Willingham has served as Chief Executive Officer, Matthew Mercer as Chief Creative Officer, and Marisha Ray as Creative Director. Several senior Legendary Digital staff members joined Critical Role during the split: Ed Lopez, head of digital strategy and operations, became chief operating officer; Rachel Romero, vice president of marketing, took on the role of senior vice president of marketing; and Ben Van Der Fluit was appointed senior vice president of business development. Independent studio (2019–2021) Critical Role's split from Geek & Sundry and Legendary Digital Networks was completed in February 2019. From this point, Critical Role took over production responsibility for the Critical Role and Talks Machina shows, with live broadcasts and video on demand (VOD) now airing exclusively on Critical Role's own channels. The disengagement from Legendary's streaming service Alpha led to the cancellation of Talks Machina: After Dark, which had been exclusive to the service. Some legacy episodes—including the entirety of the first campaign, the first nineteen episodes of the second campaign, and the corresponding episodes of official discussion show Talks Machina—remained available in Geek & Sundry's archives on YouTube and Twitch. On March 4, 2019, Critical Role launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a 22-minute animation called Critical Role: The Legend of Vox Machina Animated Special. The final total raised by the Kickstarter when it closed on April 19, 2019, was $11.3 million, allowing the intended animated special to be expanded into a ten-episode animated series. When the campaign closed, it was one of the fastest-funded projects in Kickstarter history and held the record for the most funded Kickstarter campaign for TV and film projects. In November 2019, Amazon Prime Video announced that it had acquired the streaming rights to The Legend of Vox Machina, and had commissioned fourteen additional episodes—two more for the first season, and a second season consisting of twelve episodes. In September 2019, Critical Role announced that it had negotiated licensing agreements with Funko, McFarlane Toys, Penguin Random House, and Ripple Junction to produce merchandise such as apparel and collectibles. On October 3, it aired a sponsored one-shot using the Feast of Legends RPG system, developed by fast-food chain Wendy's. Following a strong negative response from some fans, the Critical Role team removed the VOD, Shelly Jones, in an essay in the book Watch Us Roll (2021), speculated that the decision may have been made by the show's development team to deflect criticism about the "failed experiment". In the first half of 2020, a claim was made online that Critical Role had retained the services of a sensitivity reader, but had not paid the individual. In August 2021, Brian W. Foster, the host of Talks Machina and other shows, left the company to pursue other creative endeavors. This move effectively ended Talks Machina and Between the Sheets, the latter of which had been on hiatus since the pandemic. Critical Role returned to its pre-pandemic common table format with the launch of the third campaign in October 2021. In 2022, a new aftershow, 4-Sided Dive, was introduced. A Twitch data leak in October 2021 revealed that Critical Role was among the highest earners on Twitch. The company received a total direct payout of $9,626,712 between September 2019 and September 2021 from Twitch in gross income from subscriptions and ad revenue. BBC News commented that this list of payments is unlikely to account for tax paid on income, and observed that many streamers featured in the leak are media operations in and of themselves with associated employees and expenses, meaning that the numbers may not represent actual “take-home pay”. In April 2022, Critical Role signed a multi-year deal granting Sirius XM "worldwide ad sales" for their podcast. The agreement also "calls for SiriusXM's Stitcher podcast subsidiary to distribute the show across all podcast platforms". In July 2023, Critical Role Productions removed almost all content featuring former host Foster from its channels. Regarding the potential impact of the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike on its content, Critical Role stated that it fully supported the strike and stood in solidarity with actors. In December 2023, it was revealed that Critical Role was assisting in the development of the video game Tales of Kenzera: Zau by Surgent Studios. In February 2024, Critical Role announced that the open beta playtest of Daggerheart, the roleplaying game system by Darrington Press, was scheduled to begin on March 12, 2024, Critical Role's ninth anniversary. This playtest was available at select game stores, as a PDF, or on Demiplane via the Daggerheart Nexus. The Critical Role cast also ran a live playtest on their Twitch and YouTube channels on March 12, with a sequel playtest in May. Cheryl Teh of Business Insider said that "the crew appears to be embracing, once again, the funhouse chaos of its early-day Twitch streams". She commented that the "potential rippling consequences of such a move" is worth keeping an eye on. Sarah Parvini of The Washington Post commented that the new platform would allow Critical Role to "maintain creative control". In July 2025, Critical Role announced that a video game set in Exandria was in early development through a partnership with AdHoc Studio, and that they would be helping fund development of AdHoc's first game, Dispatch. Then in August 2025, they announced that Brennan Lee Mulligan would take over as Game Master from Matthew Mercer for Critical Role fourth campaign which premiered on October 2, 2025. Rolling Stone stated that "the inclusion of Mulligan is huge, but not entirely surprising" given Mulligan's background as "a well-established Game Master" who created the "titanic success" Dimension 20 along with previous comments made by Mercer on eventually shifting "into a 'Professor X' role as a mentor to the next generation of storytellers rather than remaining the face of the brand in perpetuity". == Broadcast ==