D&D Without Dice: Why "The Mighty Nein" Will Hook You, Even If You Don't Know the Rules

From a Group of Friends to a Media Empire

Let me start with a bit of context. Critical Role is a unique phenomenon born from the simple desire of friends working as voice actors to play Dungeons & Dragons for their own enjoyment. You've almost certainly heard their voices in numerous gaming and animation projects. Matthew Mercer as the dungeon master, Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham, Liam O'Brien, Sam Riegel, and the others gathered around the table without cameras and simply had a good time since 2012.

Three years later, Felicia Day from Geek & Sundry suggested Mercer launch a stream of their game on Twitch — and opened a kind of inverted Pandora's box, from which, instead of disasters, a creative chaos with a plus sign burst out.

Actors accustomed to bringing characters to life in video games and animation transferred their skills to a tabletop role-playing game. They didn't just play — they lived through every dice roll. From session to session, Critical Role turned into a cultural phenomenon, gaining a million-strong audience, fan art, and other content that fans created based on the campaigns.

Over time, a full-fledged media empire formed from this environment, with comics, novels, and animated adaptations — starting with "The Legend of Vox Machina," an adaptation of the show's first campaign, which arose from record-breaking crowdfunding and was subsequently picked up by Amazon.

While the adaptation of the first campaign continues and is preparing for its fourth season, an adaptation of the second, The Mighty Nein, has been launched in parallel. Its events unfold in the same Exandria universe created by Matthew Mercer, but two decades later, on another continent, and with completely new heroes. That's what we'll talk about today.

Session Zero

The series moves the action to Wildemount, one of the continents of Exandria, where two states have long been eyeing each other warily. On one side is the militaristic Dwendalian Empire, and on the other is the Kryn Dynasty, founded by dark elf drow. Their confrontation becomes the backdrop for the story, although at first the series is in no hurry to turn it into the engine of the plot.

After a daring robbery and the abduction of a powerful magical relic of the Kryn Dynasty, around which the central intrigue will eventually be built, "The Mighty Nein" unexpectedly slows down. Instead of immediately diving into a party adventure, the series methodically introduces the viewer to the disparate heroes of the future team.

This choice may initially cause bewilderment. One episode passes, then a second, and the heroes still haven't gathered into one team. At the same time, the show is full of events: there are swords, magic, strong language, and jokes below or at the level of the belt. The characters quickly grab attention with their ambiguity, but the pace of the narrative remains deliberately unhurried.

Gradually, it becomes clear that this rhythm is chosen consciously. The creators stretch the moment of assembling the team so that the viewer has time to get to know each hero separately. Thanks to this, the future union of strangers, who will later call themselves "The Mighty Nein," looks like a logical turn of events.

In classic Dungeons & Dragons terms, the first season is a kind of "session zero," a long introduction before the real campaign. This is a risky move for a commercial show, because the viewer needs to be grabbed by the throat from the first minute, otherwise they will simply leave. However, in the context of a project initially designed for several seasons, this approach pays off.

Especially against the background of "The Legend of Vox Machina," where already in the first episode the whole party is assembled and fighting with a dragon, which ultimately affected the depth of character development. "The Mighty Nein" takes a different path. It involves gradually, allowing its characters to "breathe," and the writers to build all the internal and external conflicts and hang Chekhov's guns, which will later turn into napalm.

From this point of view, the first season works as a tightly written prologue. Yes, as a standalone work, it leaves a feeling of incompleteness, but this is expected. In the original, the story stretched for more than 140 episodes lasting three to four hours, so the authors have more than enough material.

Only in the fourth of the eight episodes does the long-awaited union of disparate heroes into one group take place — and the show noticeably transforms. That very party chaos appears, for which many love tabletop role-playing games, when the unpredictability of characters collides with successful and failed decisions, and events develop not according to plan, but flow from the lively reaction of the characters.

After all, as in any party role-playing story, the key role here is played not so much by the plot itself, but by the dynamics between the heroes. It is she who holds attention and moves the narrative forward, gradually turning a set of separate lines into a complete story.

Seven Outcasts in Search of Themselves and Each Other

At the beginning of the journey, the company of "The Mighty Nein" is a group of outcasts scattered around the world, real "throwaways," each with their own demons. They meet us if not at the bottom of life, then somewhere very close to it. So who are they? Let's get acquainted.

The first acquaintance is Caleb Widogast (Liam O'Brien) — a wandering wizard with a difficult past who is trying to regain his lost magic and meaning in life, as well as avenge the one who is responsible for the death of his parents.

Caleb becomes a kind of emotional center of the story, and his closest ally is Nott the Brave, performed by Sam Riegel, a goblin rogue with an unhealthy love for alcohol and black humor. On the surface, this is a comic character, but in fact — a deeply tragic figure hiding behind the mask of a jester. Their duet with Caleb is the first that the viewer meets, and it sets the tone for the whole show, balancing on the verge of comedy and tragedy.

Then comes Beauregard Lionett, or just Bo (Marisha Ray) — a human, a monk from the Cobalt Soul order. A fighter for justice and a lady with an explosive character, preferring to hit first and then ask questions, which, to put it mildly, does not play into her hands. Bo desperately tries to prove her own importance without regard to her wealthy parents and to complete her investigation.

Sometimes she even takes on the role of the voice of reason, but straightforwardness and distrust take over, which makes her type easily annoying. However, over time, the development of her interaction with the rest of the party, especially with Caleb, more than pays off for any quirks.

In contrast to her is Jester Lavorre (Laura Bailey), a tiefling priestess who brings chaotic-good energy to the story. She chatters non-stop, loves pranks and antics, and her antics regularly turn into problems for herself and others. Behind the image of a naive child looking at the world with wide open eyes, there is loneliness and a painful need to be needed. It is no coincidence that Jester has a mysterious "imaginary friend" — the Traveler, whose nature becomes one of the most intriguing hooks.

Fjord Stone (Travis Willingham) initially looks like the most familiar archetype in the company. A half-orc with a hazy past and a restrained character is easily read as another "good guy," but this facade turns out to be deceptive. Fjord is running as much from an external threat as from himself, and his line gradually unfolds through doubts, fears, and hidden motives that come to the surface as the plot develops.

Mollymauk "Molly" Tealeaf (Taliesin Jaffe) is an eccentric tiefling artist from a traveling circus and, concurrently, a blood hunter. He lives as if every scene is part of a performance. His theatrical manner hides many secrets and serious internal conflicts, but in the first season, the series only outlines this layer, deliberately leaving further character development for the next.

Finally, Yasha Nydoorin is a barbarian played by Ashley Johnson. She appears fragmentarily, with a huge sword at the ready, leaving behind piles of bodies and even more questions, and is not yet a full member of the party. The reason is simple: Ashley Johnson's participation in the original campaign was irregular, which is why her character spends most of the time wandering somewhere "off-screen." This is perhaps the most noticeable miscalculation of the season, but even without Yasha, the authors managed to saturate the first season with enough events that form the group.

By the end of the season, the party not only comes together, but chemistry arises between the heroes, for which this long prologue was started. A company of diverse characters gradually turns into a semblance of a family, albeit a very dysfunctional one, which only fuels interest in further adventures.

From Heroic Farce to Fantasy Tragicomedy

I am familiar with the original campaign only at the level of general outlines, and therefore I cannot fully judge the scale of changes that the authors made during the adaptation. But even without this knowledge, it is striking how accurately the local stories of the characters work as a system. Each personal drama, each trauma, and each motive initially exist as if separately, but step by step they begin to be reflected in each other, increasing the overall tension.

In this construction, both direct and indirect antagonists appear. Trent Ikithon — a figure closely associated with Caleb's past — is the bearer of an ideology in which war, murder, and repression are justified by the desire for peace, but in reality hide a thirst for power, a fear of losing control, and a willingness to use people as expendable resources. Perhaps this image is not particularly original, but this is exactly the case when you can wave your hand and accept such motivation, since the format of the show makes interesting not so much the antagonists themselves, but the reactions of the heroes to them.

Essek Thelyss, voiced by Matthew Mercer himself, looks much more expressive. This is a much more ambiguous character, forced to pay a high price time after time for decisions made with good intentions — which fits organically into the gray morality of the series.

Morality here really becomes gray. "The Mighty Nein" is perceived much more seriously than Vox Machina. There is less crude farce and demonstrative revelry here, and humor is more often born as a reaction to fear, tension, or awkwardness of the situation. The series allows itself to slow down and carefully explores the themes of trauma, guilt, and the search for oneself, without falling into dreary moralizing and without forgetting that before us is primarily an "Adventure" — with a capital letter.

This is largely due to the fact that by the second campaign, the participants of Critical Role became noticeably more experienced as storytellers and players. The characters here are more complex, the images are more verified, and the interactions are richer — which gave the animated adaptation a more solid dramatic basis.

The global plot, meanwhile, smolders slowly in the background. The confrontation between the Dwendalian Empire and the Kryn Dynasty, the war for the Beacon, and political intrigues are outlined sketchily. The series says exactly as much as a newcomer needs: one kingdom does not like another, everyone needs a magical artifact, and a big war looms on the horizon. For those who are familiar with the original source, a scattering of details remains behind the scenes, but even without them, the story works confidently.

Without Critical Failures

Visually, "The Mighty Nein" continues the traditions of Vox Machina. The drawing style and character design are easily recognizable, without sharp experiments and attempts to invent something fundamentally new. Titmouse studio produces a confident, neat picture with clear lines, expressive color, and good readability of action.

There are enough action scenes for the season: from street clashes and duels in back alleys to enchanting circus performances and magical chaos that engulfs everything around. Even the unhurried gathering of the party and acquaintance with the characters are accompanied by a string of combat clashes of varying degrees of ingenuity, and their scale naturally grows as the team expands.

Of course, there is no question of truly high-budget animation. In some places, savings are noticeable — in more static backgrounds or restrained plasticity of individual scenes — but in general, the visual bar is maintained confidently. The series feels especially good in dialogues and close-ups: the facial expressions and emotions of the characters are read clearly even with minimalism, allowing dramatic scenes to work without unnecessary tricks.

The use of 3D elements is neat and almost imperceptible — much less protruding than in the later seasons of Vox Machina, where large-scale models of conditional dragons sometimes frankly stick out against the background of 2D. However, there were simply no truly large battles in the first season of "The Mighty Nein," so it is too early to draw final conclusions.

It is worth noting the voice acting separately. There were no doubts here: the entire main team returned to their roles, and famous guests such as Lucy Liu and Alan Cumming were involved in the supporting characters. This is exactly the case when the series is really better to watch in the original with subtitles — the actors not only voice, but also complement the images of the characters they invented with their voices.

Diagnosis

"The Mighty Nein" is a heady fantasy adventure about people and non-people who are not going to save the world and become heroes. They were just unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The series actively uses fantasy clichés, but due to the chaotic party dynamics, they work vividly and unpredictably. There is a lot of action here — from street clashes to large-scale magical battles on several fronts.

The humor is sometimes rude and not always appropriate, but more often it works on the characters and interaction within the party. The dialogues sound natural, the characters regularly make mistakes, and the plot willingly turns not where you expect it to.

"The Mighty Nein" can be recommended to those who are tired of sterile and predictable fantasy. At the same time, it is important to take into account that the first season ends with a comma. The story breaks off exactly at the moment when the party acquires internal integrity, and the conflict finally gains weight. This leaves a feeling of incompleteness — and works against the season as a standalone work.

This approach is easy to explain. A significant part of the season is spent getting to know the characters, and in this case it is justified. However, for viewers who are not familiar with Critical Role and are not planning to immerse themselves in the original campaign, it may be wiser to wait for the second season. One first will not be enough — you will definitely want "more!", and not everyone will find 500-600 hours to watch the original source.

I approached this season as a casual viewer, but "The Mighty Nein" confidently passed the test for charisma and persuasiveness, recruiting another fan into the ranks of Critical Role. This is definitely a critical success!