Mediatization of tabletop role-playing: The intertwined cases of Critical Role and D&D Beyond

Abstract

Tabletop role-playing has grown from a niche of analog gaming into a mainstay of popular culture. The original face-to-face way of playing has been complemented by online play using dedicated digital tools, and play itself has become spectator entertainment. In this article, I explore the process of mediatization of tabletop role-playing on the example of Critical Role – the most successful ‘actual play’ show, in which performers broadcast tabletop role-playing to audiences. I highlight the importance of commodification as a force in the process of mediatization, involving licensing, merchandising, and advertising. Empirically, the article is grounded in an analysis of Critical Role’s sponsorships and embodied player practices, focusing on the political-economic aspects of the show. While Critical Role presents a profoundly mediated form of tabletop role-playing, it promotes a traditional face-to-face way of playing using physical accessories both by cast members’ preference of such accessories (except for the digital toolset D&D Beyond) and sponsorships from manufacturers of these products. Mediatization of tabletop role-playing thus happens through an economic-driven process of addition – new mediated options for players with new opportunities for commodification exist alongside analog modes of consumption. As shown on the example of Critical Role, the digital and mediated forms of the analog hobby can be harnessed to promote physical consumerism.

Keywords

Actual play analog games commodification Dungeons & Dragons mediatization role-playing games Twitch virtual tabletop

From being referenced in the hit Netflix series Stranger Things (2016–current) to serving as the foundation for video game blockbusters such as Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), tabletop role-playing games are now part of mainstream popular culture. Furthermore, they have transcended the original private and face-to-face way of playing. Critical Role (2015–current), a live-streaming show in which professional voice actors play Dungeon & Dragons for audiences every Thursday, was the top-earning channel on the Twitch video streaming service in the period from August 2019 to October 2021, generating more than 9.6 million USD in revenue from subscriptions, ads and donations (Scullion, 2021). Tabletop role-playing games and specifically Dungeons & Dragons have become profitable transmedia properties with complex networks of licensed and third-party products and services. In this sense, tabletop role-playing has been undergoing a process of mediatization (Hepp, 2013; Hjarvard, 2013; Schulz, 2004).

This concept from the European school of media studies addresses the impacts of media technologies and related user practices on various facets of social and cultural life, including leisure activities such as card games (Hepp, 2013; Švelch, 2020), chess, or toys (for both see Hjarvard, 2013). Beyond the transformation of physical objects and in-person activities into their virtual counterparts, referred to as direct mediatization (Hjarvard, 2013) or substitution (Hepp, 2013; Schulz, 2004), the theoretical framework also deals with subtle changes of indirect mediatization (Hjarvard, 2013) or accommodation (Hepp, 2013; Schulz, 2004), which affect a phenomenon even in its unmediated forms, for example, through advertising. As previous scholarship has shown (e.g. Ekström et al., 2016; Švelch, 2020), mediatization is not a linear process. In practice, social and cultural phenomena can co-exist in their unmediated and mediated ways, creating complex feedback loops with zones of resistance on the one hand and pioneer communities on the other (Hepp, 2016; Petersen, 2022).

In this article, I focus on the political-economic aspects of mediatization, including issues of monetization, ownership, or merchandising. In the context of leisure activities, mediatization is closely connected to advertising, sponsorship, and licensing as ways of harnessing media logics to expand the reach and business models of, for example, toy manufacturers like Lego (Hjarvard, 2013). This approach can thus be applied to tabletop role-playing, which in the 1970s originated in the analog gaming ecosystem (Peterson, 2012; 2020b).

Given the breadth of the role-playing hobby (see Zagal and Deterding, 2018), it is necessary to narrow down the scope of any such exploration. Following previous scholarship on pioneer communities within the process of mediatization (Hepp, 2016; Petersen, 2022; Švelch, 2020), this article centers on Critical Role, including its collaboration with the producers of the digital toolset D&D Beyond. Since 2018, this partnership has promoted mediated ways of playing using the latter’s digital substitution for paper character sheets.¹ At the same time, Critical Role also showcased physical artifacts of tabletop role-playing, such as dice, miniatures or modular terrain. By examining business ventures and partnerships of Critical Role as well as the tools and accessories used by its cast, I show the complexities of mediatization within the area of tabletop role-playing, marked by multiple and to some extent complementary avenues of commodification.

Media history of tabletop role-playing

As Jon Peterson writes in his book Elusive Shift (2020b), modern tabletop role-playing emerged in the 1970s at the intersection of miniature wargaming and science fiction fandom (see also Fine, 2002 [1983]; White et al., 2018). The former influence shows itself in the emphasis on combat and the use of dice to simulate probability in games such as Dungeons & Dragons (further referred to as D&D; Gygax and Arneson, 1974). The latter has broadened the scope of the role of the referee, a common feature of many wargames dating back to the influential Prussian Kriegsspiel (tabletop battle simulations generally involving two teams and a referee) from the 19th century, into a storyteller, who weaves a heroic epic for their players. The involvement of the so-called dungeon master (DM) or game master as well as the mechanics of character progression have become distinguishing features of traditional tabletop role-playing (White et al., 2018). In their basic form, tabletop role-playing games are played by small groups of players (2–6) in a face-to-face setting over multiple sessions under the DM’s guidance, which is informed by official rules (Zagal and Deterding, 2018).

In the 1970s, some hobbyists who owned wargaming collections used miniatures to enhance the experience of their role-playing adventures. However, the only required components were dice, a pen and paper. The business of early tabletop role-playing companies such as the Wisconsin-based TSR (Tactical Studies Rules), which released the first edition of D&D in 1974, revolved around publishing of rulebooks and other printed supplements, such as reference sheets for characters and monsters. While TSR and its successor Wizards of the Coast engaged in miniature licensing and occasionally also manufacturing (Peterson, 2021), these physical representations of characters and monsters served as accessories rather than core game components. This media-centric business model largely held true for many of TSR’s initial competitors such as Chaosium or Steve Jackson Games. In that sense, tabletop role-playing companies resembled book publishers rather than board game producers or miniature manufacturers (Peterson, 2021).

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, publishers of role-playing games established three basic types of products: (a) systems such as the original D&D rulebook; (b) settings, which provide a fictional world for adventures; and (c) modules – ready-made adventures, which give DMs a pre-designed narrative framework to follow (White et al., 2018; see also Knowles and Castronova, 2018). Despite the wealth of printed materials, role-playing games ranked among the more affordable areas of gaming, especially when compared to miniature wargames like Warhammer, collectible card games such as Magic: The Gathering, or video games. Even before the proliferation of the Internet, rulebooks could be easily shared and photocopied, lowering the financial investment needed to start playing. This ease of access to game materials further expanded with digital publishing and online piracy. The current landscape of tabletop role-playing games, especially those produced and published independently, partially converges with digital distribution of video games. In particular, itch.io has become a popular platform for both indie video games and indie role-playing games, but other role-playing-specific platforms, such as DriveThruRPG, also exist (Knowles and Castronova, 2018). Currently, many tabletop role-playing games are available only digitally.

While digitization of core role-playing materials, such as rulebooks, lowers the costs of both producing (and perhaps more importantly distributing) as well as playing tabletop role-playing games, the board game renaissance of 2010s, which was facilitated by crowdfunding platforms (Trammell, 2019; Tyni, 2020), also opened up opportunities for boutique products aimed at more affluent players (Knowles and Castronova, 2018). Companies, such as Beadle & Grimm’s, offer deluxe editions of official D&D modules with added components, including maps, miniatures, handouts, reference cards, or jewelry. There are now also many companies that specialize in tabletop role-playing accessories, ranging from miniatures – both mass-produced (WizKids, SteamForged) and custom-made (Eldritch Foundry, Hero Forge) –, terrain (Battle Systems, Dwarven Forge, Terrain Crate), to dice (e.g. Chessex, Dice Depot, Die Hard Dice, Norse Foundry, and many others), dice trays and gaming tables (Elderwood Academy, Wyrmwood).

The asymmetrical nature of traditional role-playing games results in a disproportionate investment by players and DMs. While regular players can spend money on their character miniature or dice, the financial burden lies mostly on DMs. In addition to having to buy rulebooks specifically written for DMs, they might want to create elaborate scenes using monster and non-player character miniatures, maps, modular terrain, lighting, or even fog effects. An industry survey from 2000 conducted by Wizards of the Coast suggested that people who are willing to step into the role of a DM spend on average five times as much as regular players (Dancey, 2000). This economic dynamic has been also embraced by D&D Beyond, whose Master Tier subscription plan, which is intended for DMs, allows users to share purchased digital content with other players in a campaign.

Mediating tabletop role-playing

From the perspective of mediatization, it is important to distinguish between two directions in tabletop role-playing: (1) digitization of rulebooks as core products, which I have described in the previous section and (2) mediation of tabletop role-playing as an activity and spectator entertainment. As mentioned, D&D drew inspiration from miniature wargaming, which itself had a history of mediated play. Wargames like Kriegsspiel, in fact, did not allow opponents to directly interact with each other and instead relied on written orders, which were exchanged between players and the referee(s), thus easily allowing for play-by-mail, or any asynchronous message exchange for that matter (Peterson, 2012). Furthermore, players have been systematically documenting in-game events of wargames at least since the 19^th century.² Scottish novelist and wargaming enthusiast Robert Louis Stevenson is considered to be a pioneer in this respect, although his notes written from the perspective of a fictional war correspondent started circulating publicly only after his death (Peterson, 2012). In the 1950s, similar battle reports appeared in wargaming magazines, such as the War Game Digest (Peterson, 2012).

Both these approaches to mediation have been observed among early D&D players. However, play-by-mail was less prominent in D&D than in wargaming and was eventually eclipsed by in-person play (Fine, 2002; Peterson, 2020a). Written records of role-playing campaigns started appearing as early as in 1974. Gary Gygax, co-designer of D&D, shared stories from the games he played at his home in official advertisements and wargaming magazines to convey the play experience (Peterson, 2012). Campaign notes also regularly appeared in fanzines, such as Alarums and Excursions (1975–current). Later, in-game events of role-playing campaigns inspired novels such as the Dragonlance series (1984–2011), which was also an official setting for D&D, the Wild Cards anthology (1987–current) or The Expanse series (2011–2021).³ The latter two had been based on homebrew⁴ campaigns, which were turned into official role-playing systems after the books’ success. With the advent of the Internet, campaign notes then moved to online fora (Torner, 2021).

Digital tools

Contemporary practices of mediated tabletop role-playing have a long history. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that role-playing games are now frequently played online, complementing the default face-to-face way of playing. While it is possible to play D&D and other titles without any additional digital tools (relying solely on the basic capabilities of teleconferencing software), services such as Roll20 or D&D Beyond offer additional functionality. However, the extent to which these tools substitute physical components differs significantly.

Roll20 was released in 2012 following a successful crowdfunding campaign. It is designed specifically for online play and belongs to the category of the so-called virtual tabletop simulators. Roll20 handles a wide array of tasks, including dice rolling, character sheets, maps and combat (see Lawson and Wigard, 2021) and supports hundreds of role-playing systems, including D&D. With over eight million registered users (The Roll20 Team, 2021), Roll20 constitutes an important platform for role-playing games. It is operated by the Orr Group, LLC, located in North Carolina.

D&D Beyond launched in 2017 and in May 2022 it was acquired by Wizards of the Coast. Compared to Roll20, it offers narrower functionality and only supports D&D 5^th edition rules, which were released in 2014 and represent the current version of the classic game. As of the time of writing, D&D Beyond’s core features include digital character sheets, dice rolling, and combat tracking. One of the symptomatic differences between Roll20 and D&D Beyond is the handling of dice rolls. The former generates a random number based on quantum fluctuations in the power of a beam of light, making the result appear near instantaneously but disconnecting it from the act of dice rolling (Roll20 Wiki, n.d.). The latter uses physics-based simulation, which caters to its broader audience including analog players (D&D Beyond, 2021). The result of such a roll is slower but involves a realistic representation of a die.

Despite the listed differences, the two digital tools share a similar approach to monetization. Their basic versions can be used free of charge.⁵ Additional features, such as bigger storage for custom assets or lighting effects in Roll20 or content sharing and an unlimited number of character sheets in D&D Beyond, can be unlocked with a monthly subscription. Users of both services can also purchase digital versions of licensed role-playing rulebooks for one-time payments. However, books obtained this way can be only accessed using the respective digital platform and cannot be downloaded as a separate file.

Additionally, D&D Beyond sells individual items from D&D’s rulebooks and supplements, such as races, classes and subclasses, feats, magical items, monsters or spells. Each individual item costs 1.99 USD and, upon purchase, can be used in a digital character sheet. This particular monetization strategy resembles video game microtransactions – micropayments for digital content, which are employed extensively in freemium games and which emerged as an alternative to pricier upfront fees of traditional premium titles (Neely, 2021). Beyond cosmetic and customization options, such additional purchases can potentially provide advantage to paying users. This type of monetization has been criticized in the context of video games as pay-to-win (see Neely, 2021) and although it can also create disparity between players of role-playing games based on their disposable income, the cooperative nature of many role-playing games lessens the negative impact (and perception) of such microtransactions. Furthermore, a DM from their position as the game’s referee can decide which character customization options to allow. On D&D Beyond, DMs have the ability to edit player characters (including their statistics, spells, inventories, etc.) enrolled in their campaign, thus giving them the option to directly take away certain options or on the other hand provide them for players who have not purchased premium content themselves. In this sense, DMs have more oversight on the features used by players on D&D Beyond than in a game run using only paper character sheets where these premium monetized options do not require any purchase, only the knowledge about their existence.

As both Roll20 and D&D Beyond (the latter until May 2022) were operated by entities separate from role-playing publishers, purchasing physical books or PDFs did not entitle players to access their contents within these digital tools. In practice, this can lead to repeated purchases of the same content. Such policies are, however, common for digital platforms, including video game consoles. The 2022 acquisition of D&D Beyond by Wizards of the Coast was speculated to bring ways of bundling digital versions of rulebooks with their physical counterparts.

Actual play

The term actual play in its current meaning denotes analog game sessions, primarily in the realm of tabletop role-playing, broadcast to audiences (Torner, 2021; White, 2019). Actual play as a relatively recent development in the mediatization process of tabletop role-playing has clear antecedents in how analog games, such as chess and poker, have been turned into spectator entertainment (Hepp, 2013; Hjarvard, 2013), as well as the earlier attempts at recording tabletop role-playing in written form (Peterson, 2012). Moreover, actual play fits into existing media habits and forms, such as podcasting or video game live-streaming, and can make use of the existing technological infrastructure, including platforms such as Twitch (see Taylor, 2018).

While tabletop role-playing games were famously referenced already in the 1982 sci-fi blockbuster E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, first actual play shows started appearing in the late 2000s and early 2010s, including the audio podcast Acquisitions, Inc. launched by Wizards of the Coast in 2008 and the YouTube show TableTop (2012–2017), produced by the YouTube channel Geek & Sundry.

The first season of Acquisitions, Inc. was meant to promote the then released D&D 4th edition rules. The original cast included authors of webcomics Penny Arcade and PvP, and the game designer Chris Perkins from Wizards of the Coast in the role of the DM. Actor Wil Wheaton (Star Trek: Next Generation, Big Bang Theory) joined the podcast as a player in the second season and later went on to co-create and host TableTop. This show focused on board games as well as role-playing games and perhaps more importantly had significantly higher production values. In contrast to the unedited format of Acquisitions, Inc., TableTop only presented highlights from a gaming session, mixed with player interviews.

Scholars such as T. L. Taylor have observed the transformative potential of let’s plays and game live-streaming, which use recorded play as a basis for creating new meanings and interpretations. This transformative nature is arguably foregrounded in actual play, which according to William J. White (2019) emphasizes the role of performers while simultaneously obscuring the game designers. Critical Role as the actual play show with the biggest mainstream success exemplifies these observations. The cast members have built on their voice acting credentials and become celebrities in their own right for the portrayal of characters that they themselves have created. Critical Role’s approach to tabletop role-playing has become so influential and appealing that critics and players alike have started referring to the so-called Mercer effect (named after Critical Role’s DM Matthew Mercer) to address unrealistic expectations newcomers to tabletop role-playing might have after watching the show (Jones, 2021). The show combines combat set pieces and moments of levity with scenes of emotional intimacy, capitalizing on acting and improvisational skills of its cast and Mercer’s longtime experience as a DM. This level and style of role-playing is arguably hard to emulate for players who might lack the necessary production resources, professional acting training, and also familiarity with other players, which in the case of Critical Role had been developed during their home campaign before the show started streaming on Twitch.

Methodology and research design

The empirical part of this article examines the political-economic aspects of mediatization by focusing on business operations of Critical Role. As part of this analysis, I also pay close attention to the tools and accessories used by the cast of Critical Role to see how they tie into Critical Role’s own transmedia franchise as well as into official partnerships and endorsements between the show’s production company and other commercial actors within the space of tabletop role-playing. As I have hinted at in the previous sections, mediatization has the potential to expand new avenues of commodification like digital subscriptions but also harness traditional products, such as physical merchandise. My research agenda thus lies in analyzing how actual play and digital tools fit into this new economic configuration of tabletop role-playing and how prominent shows like Critical Role possibly shape player culture by showcasing a high-budget approach to tabletop role-playing.

Empirical material for this study consists of three main categories: (1) official statements by Critical Role and their representatives; (2) sponsorship information for individual episodes of Critical Role and (3) recordings of embodied tabletop role-playing practices of Critical Role’s cast members.

Regarding the first category, my analysis of official statements has been informed by critical political economy as a lens for exploring issues of ownership and commodification. Findings gathered in this manner provide factual information required to describe Critical Role as a commercial entity.

Regarding the second category, I have conducted a frequency content analysis aimed at identifying sponsorships and partnerships of individual episodes of Critical Role. To this end, I have analyzed all actual play episodes released by 19 May 2022. These add up to 338 total episodes: (a) Campaign 1 – Vox Machina (114 episodes); (b) Campaign 2 – The Mighty Nein (141 episodes); (c) Campaign 3 – Bells Hells (24 episodes) and (d) 59 special episodes. Other types of video content produced by CRP, such as the talk show Talks Machina, have been excluded from this analysis. Sponsorship information is discussed in episodes’ opening segments, which usually run between 2 and 10 min and contain other announcements, such as information about upcoming public appearances. In most cases, sponsor logos appear in the visual overlay of Critical Role’s videos. As such, identification of sponsors can be considered a trivial coding task, which therefore does not require measuring of intercoder reliability (Krippendorff, 2004).

Regarding the third category, I have constructed a sample of Critical Role episodes throughout its existence to chronicle the evolution and the current state of player practices with an emphasis on material culture in the sense of accessories used by the cast, such as dice, miniatures, modular terrain, or tablets running digital tools like D&D Beyond. Based on my knowledge as a regular viewer of Critical Role, the frequency content analysis of sponsorship data, and relevant statistics from CritRoleStats, I have handpicked 10 episodes, which represent milestones such as beginnings of campaigns and major changes to the studio space including, for example, the distanced studio layout during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic (see Appendix 1 for the full list). Drawing on ethnographic approaches to the study of embodied practices (e.g. Taylor, 2016), this qualitative textual analysis focuses on the mediated/non-mediated aspects of tabletop role-playing.

As a secondary resource, I have used episode transcripts and data from CritRoleStats, a fan project tracking various statistics, such as dice roll results or player attendance. CritRoleStats can be considered an example of deep mediatization due to its emphasis on quantifiable statistics (Andersen, 2018; Hepp, 2016). Similar record-keeping is technically possible in non-mediated tabletop role-playing, but it is the concentrated effort of viewers (and financial support through crowdfunding) that makes this project feasible on such a scale. For example, The Mighty Nein campaign (2018–2021) saw 15,364 dice rolls over its 141 episodes.

Episodes from the main campaigns are referenced using the format: CXEY, where X stands for the campaign number and Y designates the episode within that campaign.

Mediatization and Critical Role

In the following sections, I present findings from my empirical research. I start by chronicling the evolution of Critical Role from a show on the Geek & Sundry YouTube channel to an independent production company with several licensing deals and transmedia extensions. Afterward, I use episode sponsorship data to situate Critical Role in analog and video game industries. Finally, I discuss how cast members embody the mediatized nature of contemporary tabletop role-playing through their use of physical and digital accessories. Figure 1 synthesizes key milestones in Critical Role’s mediatization.

Figure 1.

Chronological overview of key developments in Critical Role’s mediation of tabletop role-playing.

Critical Role Productions

In 2012, a group of Los Angeles-based voice actors started their home tabletop role-playing campaign using the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game system (Bulmahn, 2009) – a modification of D&D 3.5 rules under the Open Gaming License (see note⁵). Following the success of TableTop, Geek & Sundry’s founder Felicia Day, who is perhaps best known for her web series The Guild (2007–2013) about MMO players, suggested turning the campaign into a live-streamed show. The first episode aired in March 2015 and thrust viewers into a campaign in progress, thus creating an in medias res narrative situation. Since actual play was at that time establishing itself as an emerging type of spectator entertainment with podcasts like Acquisitions, Inc., the group decided to switch to recently released D&D 5e, a role-playing system with a longer tradition and wider recognition than Pathfinder. This deliberate change can be understood from the perspective of mediatization as accommodation to a presumed media logic, which would favor a property with more presence in popular culture and therefore a larger audience. However, Critical Role has modified D&D 5e with several homebrew additions and optional rules, such as new subclasses and a flanking combat mechanic, which was a default part of D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

The early episodes had relatively low production values and suffered from occasional technical issues, which foregrounded the mediated nature of play and the complexity of communicative and diegetic frames (Friedman, 2021). Still, the show quickly became successful, creating opportunities for merchandising and further growth within the infrastructure of Geek & Sundry, which itself had been acquired by Legendary Entertainment in 2014. The cast retained intellectual ownership of Critical Role and founded Critical Role Productions, LLC. (further abbreviated as CRP) in May 2015. The show remained a part of the Geek & Sundry channel until 2018 when CRP initiated a transition toward a fully independent operation. This process was completed in February 2019. As of May 2022, CRP shoots the show in their own studio located in Burbank, California and runs their own Twitch and YouTube channels. CRP has founded a subsidiary named Darrington Press, which publishes board games and role-playing supplements, and an affiliated nonprofit organization Critical Role Foundation. In October 2021, CRP had approximately 40 employees, including the eight founders, who are also the main cast members of Critical Role (Spangler, 2021).

CRP’s merchandising efforts started in 2015 with quick turnaround products, such as T-shirts, and over time grew to encompass multiple licensing deals and transmedia extensions. These include prequel comics published by Dark Horse Comics or miniatures and collectibles manufactured by Funko Pop!, McFarlane Toys, Sideshow, Steamforged Games, or WizKids. CRP also collaborated with the role-playing publisher Green Ronin Publishing as well the official publisher of D&D Wizards of the Coast on settings and modules inspired by Critical Role’s campaigns. An animated series The Legend of Vox Machina, which adapts events of the first campaign and had been funded partly through a record-breaking crowdfunding campaign in 2019 (Trammell, 2019), premiered on Amazon Prime Video in January 2022. Overall, the lineup of Critical Role’s merchandising products resembles other intellectual properties in geek and gaming culture. What is notable given the context of tabletop role-playing is the partnership with Wizards of the Coast, which – as the publisher of D&D – benefits from the show’s popularity (Marsden and Mason, 2021). Official D&D products based on Critical Role’s campaigns and fictional world in turn canonize Critical Role and change its status from a homebrew setting into an official one.

Sponsorships

Since October 2015, episodes of Critical Role have included advertising. Sponsorships are announced at the beginning of each episode and usually also appear in the visual overlay of the show. One episode can in practice have multiple sponsors. Starting with C1E55 (June 2016), Sam Riegel, one of the main cast members, has been tasked with reading promotional copies. Riegel’s comedic approach to sponsorship announcements, which often involves only loosely related skits, has become a running gag of Critical Role. As such, these sponsorship segments have become cherished by viewers as evidenced by various fan-made supercuts and compilations of Riegel’s top ads.

From a quantitative perspective (see Table 1), the most prominent sponsorships include long-term collaborations with D&D Beyond, Wyrmwood (gaming tables and dice trays) and Dwarven Forge (miniature terrain). However, the nature and implementation of these three sponsorships differs.

Table 1.

Overview of Critical Role’s ten most frequent episode sponsorships from March 2015 to 19 May 2022 (C3E24) in a descending order.

Sponsor	Type of business	Number of episodes sponsored	Sponsorship period
D&D Beyond	Digital toolset for D&D 5e	138	1/2018–5/2022
Wyrmwood	Dice trays and gaming tables	117	10/2015–3/2020
Dwarven Forge	Miniature terrain	51	8/2018–6/2021
Loot Crate	Subscription box collectibles	32	5/2016–3/2017
NordVPN	VPN provider	24	9/2019–5/2022
Hit Point Press	RPG rulebooks and reference cards	17	9/2019–3/2022
Backblaze	Cloud backup service	12	6/2016–12/2019
Ghostfire Gaming	RPG settings and modules	12	1/2021–5/2022
Ravensburger	Board games and jigsaw puzzles	12	11/2019–11/2021
Skillshare	Online learning platform	11	1/2020–2/2022

D&D Beyond’s sponsorship started with The Mighty Nein Campaign and was regularly announced in the episodes’ opening segments.⁶ Occasionally, D&D Beyond was referenced during play as the entire cast started using the digital tool as a replacement for paper character sheets. One of Riegel’s skits pitched a musical theme for D&D Beyond (C2E7), which was later turned into an animated promotional video for D&D Beyond, featuring characters and events from The Mighty Nein campaign (C2E21). In this regard, CRP embraced the cross-promotional nature of the partnership, which culminated in a fictional election campaign for the president of D&D Beyond with Riegel and Liam O’Brian, another member of the main cast, as the main candidates. This multiarc comedy bit ran from January to August 2019 (C2E47–C2E73). As part of this partnership, D&D Beyond has added Critical Role’s homebrew classes and subclasses as character options that can be used free of charge in the digital character sheet.

Wyrmwood’s (manufacturer of wooden accessories such as dice trays) first period of sponsorship between October 2015 and May 2016 was announced at the beginning of episodes, thus following the standard model. Upon the sponsor’s return for The Mighty Nein campaign in January 2018, Wyrmwood began providing its products as promotional giveaways. During a break in the live broadcast, which was usually scheduled half-way through an episode, viewers on Twitch could enter a sweepstakes-style competition to win a Wyrmwood product.

Dwarven Forge’s sponsorship in some respects resembles Wyrmwood’s. The manufacturer of miniature terrain was announced only in three opening segments (C2E30, C2E68, C2E106), however starting with C2E56 all remaining battle sequences from The Mighty Nein campaign were sponsored by Dwarven Forge and the environment was built using its products. During these 49 fights, the visual layout displayed the title ‘Dwarven Forge® Battle Cam’ and Riegel occasionally added details about the products on display.

Likely due to the cast’s involvement in video game voice acting, Critical Role has also attracted 55 episode sponsorships from video game companies, including Blizzard Entertainment, Bethesda Softworks, or Square Enix, resulting, in some cases, in commissioned actual play episodes outside of the canonical world of Critical Role’s main campaigns. One-shot adventures like Diablo One-Shot, Doom Eternal One-Shot, Elden Ring One-Shot: O Ye of Little Faith or The Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood three-part miniseries adapted video game worlds into tabletop role-playing, signaling a counter-direction to the process of mediatization in gaming culture. At the same time, characters from The Mighty Nein campaign appeared in the role-playing video game Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire (2018).

The analysis of Critical Role’s sponsorships highlights the complexity of the mediatization process. Producers of both physical and digital gaming commodities arguably regard the show as an effective advertising channel. While analog and video game industries historically operated as two separate ecosystems, Critical Role seems to be situated at their intersection, bringing together tabletop role-playing, video game voice acting, and the platform ecosystem of video game live-streaming (see Taylor, 2018). It is important to note that there have recently been signs of more systemic convergence partly due to successful digital adaptations of analog games (see Švelch, 2020; Trammell, 2019). Aside from gaming-related sponsors, more generalist businesses have also advertised on Critical Role, including NordVPN, the cloud backup service Backblaze, or the online learning platform Skillshare. It can be assumed that these companies are generally interested in popular online video content.

Embodied player practices and related formal aspects of the Critical Role show

Keeping in mind that Critical Role first started as a physical campaign played privately at home, it is not surprising to see that the first episode of the Vox Machina campaign (C1E1) from March 2015 is played using exclusively physical components. Viewers can hear dice rolls and shuffling through binders with character sheets and printed out reference material. Occasionally, it is possible to catch a glimpse of a D&D rulebook in the hands of a player or just lying on the table. A combat scene, which happens near the end of C1E1, is represented using painted miniatures standing on a sheet of white paper with a simple, likely hand-drawn outline of an environment. The visual layout of the episode shows more signs of mediation. Aside from an overview of main player characters, it also includes an embedded Twitch chat. During the break of C1E1, Critical Role aired a series of animated and voiced character introductions, likely trying to compensate for the in medias res narrative situation caused by the fact that the show was a continuation of an ongoing campaign.

While early episodes allowed for limited mediated interaction between the cast and the audience as foregrounded by the visible chat, this part of the visual overlay was removed in C1E33 (November 2015). Afterward, audience interaction with players during broadcast was reduced to participation in Wyrmwood giveaways during The Mighty Nein campaign (see also Marsden and Mason, 2021). Episodes performed publicly in front of a live audience at conventions or as special events (9 in total, C2E97 from February 2020 currently being the last one) would have technically allowed for interaction, but it was explicitly discouraged for the sake of an uninterrupted viewing experience but also as a way of ensuring that the cast had a full creative control of the game.

Over the course of the Vox Machina campaign, the technical quality of the live broadcast gradually improved, and the visual overlay underwent both esthetic and functional changes. C1E9, for example, for the first time displayed character statistics (e.g. main attributes, max hit points, armor class) in the lower left part of the screen. This element has remained a staple of Critical Role’s visual presentation and mediation of game-related information for the following campaigns. The show experimented with real-time tracking of current hit points for all player characters during fights but eventually discontinued it (C2E20–C2E51), likely due to the more demanding implementation compared to static information of basic character attributes, which usually change only when leveling up or due to special equipment.

When The Mighty Nein campaign in January 2018 introduced D&D Beyond as the show’s sponsor, its impact was immediately seen in the physical space of the gaming table. All main cast members now had tablet computers in front of them, allowing them to access their digital character sheets. Instead of shuffling through papers, players hunched over tablets trying to read an ability modifier or a spell description from a small screen. Other analog components such as dice, dice trays provided by Wyrmwood, or player diaries, however, remained on the table. Over time, certain players became known among the viewers for their fondness of physical accessories. For example, Laura Bailey, one of the main cast members and founders of Critical Role, owns a sizeable dice collection, which was regularly noted by her fellow players and shown on screen. Bailey’s interest in dice was later turned into the merchandising product Bailey’s Dice Bag of Hoarding, its name a reference to a well-known magical item Bag of Holding from D&D. CRP also sells themed dice sets for characters from the Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein campaigns made in partnership with Die Hard Dice.

Although all main cast members are based in the Los Angeles area, they were not always able to physically attend the show. Individual absences were relatively common until C2E86 (November 2019). According to CritRoleStats, players participated remotely in 27 episodes (the last time in C3E22) using teleconferencing software, resulting in a hybrid situation with the majority of players being physically present around the table and one or two calling in. Aside from potential connection and communication issues, remote participation also presented a problem for the visual representation of the cast. In practice, this often meant placing a screen next to the table facing one of the cameras. Only the last three instances of remote participation in C2E70–71 and C3E22 used visual compositing to hide the screen’s physical edges and instead zoomed in on the image.

The discontinuation of remote participation and the near perfect attendance has likely two main reasons.⁷ The first is the overall professionalization of CRP, which has for the eight founders turned from a gig into a career. Three of them also hold executive positions in CRP: Travis Willingham as CEO, Matthew Mercer as CCO, and Marisha Ray as creative director. The second reason is the switch from live broadcast to a pre-recorded format. This change has been motivated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused an approximately 3-month hiatus in the production of The Mighty Nein Campaign between C2E99 (March 2020) and C2E100 (July 2020). Due to California’s social distancing guidelines, players were seated separately for the remainder of The Mighty Nein campaign as well as the Exandria Unlimited miniseries (June–August 2021). This special studio setup, for example, required players to use laser pointers when issuing directions to the DM during combat (e.g. C2E102).⁸ The cast returned to a shared table for C3E1 in October 2021; however, the show was still pre-recorded and will remain so according to an official statement by CRP (Critical Role, 2021). Pre-recording reportedly offers more flexibility to the cast members and likely contributes to the near perfect attendance. New episodes are still broadcast on Twitch and YouTube every Thursday.

In terms of mediatization, Critical Role as an actual play show mediates the experience of tabletop role-playing and turns it into spectator entertainment. While the focus is on the cast as they are sitting around a table, some information, including characters statistics, but also sponsorships, is visualized on the screen. The play itself is, however, relatively unmediated. Except for the digital tool D&D Beyond, cast members primarily use physical components, such as dice, and the combat is represented with miniatures and modular terrain. As such, Critical Role, especially in the Bells Hells campaign (2021–present), represents a high-end, in-person version of tabletop role-playing underlined by almost no player absences or remote participation, see Figure 2. These high production values, which require a dedicated studio space and access to expensive accessories such as Dwarven Forge terrain, custom miniatures, or Wyrmwood dice trays, signal a high degree of professionalization enabled by the popular and commercial success of the show, including partnerships with the aforementioned manufacturers of role-playing accessories.

Figure 2.

Screenshot of Critical Role’s Bells Hells (Campaign 3) Episode 16 (March 2022). The DM (Matthew Mercer) is shown in the upper left part of the screen, players occupy two rows on the right side of the screen. The lower left corner in this case displays a camera view of a battle scene but on other occasions also additional sponsorship information or character statistics. Sponsor logos also appear in the lower right corner of the frame. The gaming table holds both computer tablets and physical accessories such as dice or paper player journals. Screenshot by the author. Fair dealing for the sake of criticism.

Conclusion

Since the beginnings of tabletop role-playing in the 1970s, publishers have embraced a media-centric business model with rulebooks as the core product. This has made play relatively inexpensive. Nonetheless, players have borrowed physical accessories and components from related areas of analog gaming, such as wargames. While digitization has further decreased the cost of entry into this hobby, the growing success of tabletop role-playing and the board game renaissance of 2010s have been accompanied by extensive commodification through merchandising and licensing. For affluent players, it has arguably never been easier to create elaborate physical representations of their role-playing adventures with a wide range of available products from dice to miniatures and modular terrain. At the same time, others make use of digital tools like D&D Beyond or Roll20, which have introduced a parallel approach to commodification, selling virtual goods and platform-specific features.

These developments are not dissimilar to other areas of leisure activities that have undergone the process of mediatization. Toys, card games, or chess have all become co-dependent on media industries to reach their audience and expand commodification possibilities (Hepp, 2013; Hjarvard, 2013; Švelch, 2020). Tabletop role-playing publishers have from the start relied on print-based media technology as a means of distribution and hobby magazines and fanzines as advertising tools. Later, they used licensing and merchandising to grow their business model. While mediatization has its opponents among analog gaming enthusiasts (Švelch, 2020; Thorén, 2021), it can function as an additive process driven by an ever expanding demand for commodification. In this sense, new mediated forms exist alongside the legacy ways of engaging in the hobby as complementary sources of revenue and to mitigate consumer resistance that could be caused by a complete transition to the digital.

The phenomenon of actual play has replicated the success of video game let’s plays and live-streaming and turned tabletop role-playing into spectator entertainment (Taylor, 2018). Critical Role as the actual play show with the biggest commercial success encapsulates the complexity of the mediatization process. Although it had not been the first of its kind when it started in 2015, Critical Role popularized this media form and brought it to more mainstream audiences. In 2022, it is an established production company, which has partnered with several analog gaming businesses and engaged in licensing deals typical for entertainment industries, resulting in various action figures, miniatures, collectibles, or tie-in comics, novels and an animated series. In this regard, Critical Role is an outlier in the space of actual play where merchandising and product licensing are otherwise considered a negligible source of revenue (Chalk, 2022).

As video game voice actors, the cast members and founders of Critical Role inhabit two converging cultural industries. This has perhaps allowed them to also attract sponsorship from video game companies. While this could potentially put Critical Role at the forefront of the mediatization process, the show’s approach to tabletop role-playing is notably traditional in terms of a clear preference of in-person play with physical accessories except for the use of D&D Beyond as a digital replacement for paper character sheets.⁹ In other words, Critical Role promotes and celebrates analog play despite its mediated form. Furthermore, Critical Role’s aspirational status among role-playing communities, exemplified by the so-called Mercer effect, is not limited to the cast’s acting and storytelling skills, but arguably extends to the lavish presentation of its gaming table with artisan-made accessories and detailed battle dioramas. While tabletop role-playing now offers an abundance of less expensive digital options, the appeal of the analog remains strong for those who can afford it. Critical Role makes full use of this new mediatized reality of tabletop role-playing and its underlying economic logics, providing both spectator entertainment and extensive physical merchandising. From the perspective of political economy, mediatization allows tabletop role-playing to function as both a product and its own promotion, using digital and mediated forms like actual play to grow its reach and encourage physical consumerism.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Jaroslav Švelch and the two anonymous reviewers and for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research for this article was supported by the Charles University program PRIMUS/21/HUM/005: Developing Theories and Methods for Game Industry Research, Applied to the Czech Case.

ORCID iD

Jan Švelch

Notes

A sample of Critical Role episodes representing the evolution of embodied player practices and the show’s visual presentation.

Episode	Original airdate	URL	Rationale for selection
C1E1	12 March 2015	https://youtu.be/i-p9lWIhcLQ	First episode of Critical Role
C1E9	7 May 2015	https://youtu.be/IsLIiKFSJLQ	First visualization of character statistics
C1E60	14 July 2016	https://youtu.be/Ok4ZW9cNupc	First episode in front of a live audience
C2E1	11 January 2018	https://youtu.be/byva0hOj8CU	First episode featuring D&D Beyond
C2E26	12 July 2018	https://youtu.be/NZVqPja6Alg	Move to CRP’s own studio; real-time tracking of character hit points
C2E56	21 March 2019	https://youtu.be/ZtcAs7jCDvw	First episode featuring the Dwarven Forge Battle Cam
C2E71	18 July 2019	https://youtu.be/XpLgITRGA30	Last episode with remote participation until C3E22 (May 2022)
C2E97	27 February 2020	https://youtu.be/SV8eKqbZZNQ	Last episode in front of a live audience
C2E102	16 July 2020	https://youtu.be/hKlo5FWlxnA	First combat scene in the pandemic studio layout
C3E1	21 October 2021	https://youtu.be/P8pLvV3FjPc	First episode of Campaign 3 – Bells Hells; return to a shared table; studio upgrade

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