Critical Info Ahead of Critical Role Campaign 4: Matthew Mercer, Brennan Lee Mulligan and More Cast on Rolling Into Araman Jennifer MaasOctober 2, 2025 at 12:30 AM 0 Critical Role One does not simply walk into Aramán — they will be thrown into it.
- - Critical Info Ahead of Critical Role Campaign 4: Matthew Mercer, Brennan Lee Mulligan and More Cast on Rolling Into Araman
Jennifer MaasOctober 2, 2025 at 12:30 AM
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Critical Role
One does not simply walk into Aramán — they will be thrown into it.
When Critical Role debuts the first episode of its Campaign 4 Thursday, viewers will see the cast of the Dungeons & Dragons actual-play series begin their new edition of the tabletop roleplaying game mid-story. The in-medias-res choice comes as Dropout's "Dimension 20" star Brennan Lee Mulligan is taking his first turn as game master for a full mainline Critical Role campaign, and allowing longtime GM Matthew Mercer to sit this one out and become a cast member.
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"Brennan comes out of the gate swinging. This is not your coffee shop D&D game where everyone is meeting in a tavern," Critical Role co-founder, creative director and cast member Marisha Ray told Variety. "And don't get me wrong — there's a reason why a lot of games start by everybody meeting in taverns. It's a good place, everyone can have a few drinks, everyone gets to know each other. This is not that. You are already entering into a pretty detailed woven tapestry of relationships and history between characters, history with the world and the NPCs. So know that you are jumping into a pretty well-cooked stew."
(Variety is told that within that metaphorical stew, there will be fictional cranberry rolls served.)
Mulligan made this unique choice in how to enter the world of Aramán, his newly created setting for Campaign 4, of with the support of Ray, Mercer and the Critical Role team, but it was his initial concept and actually born out of Mulligan's improv comedy history.
"I subscribe to a methodology and a guideline that I learned in improv, which is beginning in the middle is often more clarifying, even though it's more information dense than beginning at the beginning," Mulligan said. "It was a great old lesson I learned doing improv, which was, you are going to listen to a 10-minute phone call, but you only get to pick 15 seconds, and you're only hearing one side of the conversation. So you have 15 seconds to understand what a 10-minute phone call is about. Do you put your 15 seconds at the very beginning, do you put it at the very end, or do you put it in the very middle, in order to increase your chances of understanding what the conversation was about? And most people intuitively know that you go into the middle of a conversation, you are actually more likely to understand what's going on than going to the beginning or the end of it."
Mulligan added: "Immediately starting without context actually gives you the most context. So I think that a lot of this beginning episode, to me, was about showing you characters in the middle of complicated lives as a way of creating the most possible clarity. Even though it's very information rich, the idea is you're going to learn so much about these characters by starting in the middle of events as they are speeding forward."
Per Critical Role, Campaign 4 will see the cast "traverse the new world of Aramán in a West Marches-style approach to gameplay where the story unfolds through the perspectives of three distinct rotating tables: the valiant Soldiers, the vigorous Seekers and the veiled Schemers. As their paths converge, we'll dive deeper into Aramán, a world of wonder with sorcery stemming from the graveyard of the gods and carrying forward the spirit of epic sagas reminiscent of 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'Game of Thrones.'"
Though Critical Role has been choosy with its character art teases and plot hints ahead of Campaign 4's premiere on Beacon.tv — as well as the Critical Role YouTube and Twitch channels Oct. 2 — Mercer said a great deal will be revealed right up top.
"There is a fair amount of deep mystery, very quickly. Very deep mystery with personal stakes across the board," said Mercer, who is chief creative officer at Critical Role Productions. "As far as pilots for a long-running story go, it's pretty solid and pretty dense in a really exciting way, where even as players, we were caught off guard when it was our turn to come to the table, because we were so rapt with the other players' scenes. We're as much of a fan of the story as we are just people playing in it. So you can definitely look forward to that intensity at times. That goes with just how we engage with the world, but also sometimes how we engage with each other. Not everything starts with friendship — intensely so, at times, so look forward to that good stuff."
The Campaign 4 cast includes in a mix of old and new Critical Rolers, including Mercer, Ray, Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Liam O'Brien, Sam Riegel, Travis Willingham, Luis Carazo, Robbie Daymond, Aabria Iyengar, Whitney Moore and Alexander Ward.
Among the newbies is Moore, who has been overwhelmed to see the frenzy Critical Role fans (known as "Critters") are already in before the first episode is out.
"It's been so crazy to see the reception of the characters. I mean, we've seen cosplays already. It's been so wild," Moore said. "And for me, that's been one of the most rewarding parts is just knowing that this is a community of artists, and that our little brains and the things that we're doing and playing a game is inspiring other people to make art. It's the best feeling in the world."
As for the staple players, while it will certainly be an adjustment to go to the rotating-tables format and added in so many more cast members for the campaign, the extra additions are very welcome, original Critical Role cast member Sam Riegel said.
"It's been so exciting for the original eight Critical Role folks, because for the past 10 years, we've had a text thread among the eight of us, where we have been sharing fan art and cosplay and memes and GIFs and all kinds of stuff that Critters have made about the three campaigns," Riegel said. "And we still love sharing it with each other. And now that text thread is 14-people large, and it's so exciting for us to see the new folks geeking out just as hard as we are about every little fan theory and shipping and fan-art piece that we've seen so far."
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