Mercer, Ray And Willingham Talk 10 Years Of Critical Role At C2E2
Critical Role is celebrating its 10th anniversay by playing live shows in Chicago, Sydney, ... More Melbourne, Indianapolis and New York City.
Ten years ago, a new form of media was born. Critical Role birthed the modern day actual play by gathering a group of friends at a table to play Dungeons and Dragons. It helped that many of these friends were very talented voice actors and that the public was hungry for a show that demystified D&D.
I caught up with Critical Role Co-Founders Matthew Mercer, Marisha Ray and Travis Willingham at the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo, also known as C2E2. C2E2 was the site of one of the first Critical Role live shows outside of Los Angeles and it was a stop on their tour this year celebrating the show's 10th Anniversary. We talked about their D&D origin stories and the unlikely success of bringing the game to people that have never played it before.
'My grandmother introduced me to fantasy at a young age,' said Matthew Mercer, Chief Creative Officer of Critical Role. 'It was in the mountains of Georgia, in a cabin. You would never know she was obsessed with Tolkien, obsessed with Piers Anthony. She got me reading deep fantasy very young. My parents facilitated that and I am very grateful. My mom was a very involved garage sale purchaser, every weekend, two or three hours which I hated. But she found some very cool books. She got me a Monster Manual because it had all this awesome creature art. It was the only book I had at the time. I loved looking at the art of all these creatures, reading their lore with all these stats which I didn't understand but I thought it was really cool. When I was in high school, I was part of the 'Popular Arts Club' which was the public facing term for a nerdy comic book/video game club. The guys who were the heads of the club were track kids; fit, secret nerds. I helped do some design work for the club and they asked if I wanted to play in their Dungeons and Dragons game. What? I ran home, made a character and joined their game. I came in with this backstory to my character, showed up and they were just these slapstick players. Which is fine, but I had built this idea in my head of a collaborative story and an imaginative world. But no, we're maying dick jokes and talking about barbarians. I ended up leaving that game after a few sessions, asked two of my friends if they wanted to play and then learned to DM on the fly because nobody else would.'
'Growing up in Kentucky, I knew of Dungeons & Dragons,' said Marisha Ray, Creative Director of Critical Role. 'But no one to play with, never even crossed my mind. I was into Magic The Gathering a little bit into high school. That was when I knew what Wizards of the Coast was. I came to Los Angeles, met [Matt]
FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™
Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase
Pinpoint By Linkedin
Guess The Category
Queens By Linkedin
Crown Each Region
Crossclimb By Linkedin
Unlock A Trivia Ladder
'The first time I saw a D&D book was in Dallas, Texas at my local hobby shop,' said Travis Willingham, CEO of Critical Role. 'I was looking at comic books, trying to sneak into the adult section to read some Heavy Metal. I got stuck at a beautiful looking book that had a knight and an axe and there was a dragon, It said Dungeons and Dragons. I thought it looked amazing, I opened it up, saw a bunch of words and I said 'Not for me!''
While Willingham might have bounced off the game in his local bookshop, he came back to play at Matt Mercer's table. Critters, the hardcore fanbase of the show, know that the crew originally used the Pathfinder rules set. It started out, as many massive games do, as a one shot put together to show why these games connect with so many people.
'I actually didn't play that first day,' said Ray. 'because it was supposed to be a one shot they were running for Liam and Laura and what not. I'll just be there to assist. Talesin [Jaffe] and I were supposed to be the ringers, the helpers. I was there to go over people's shoulders to point at the character sheet to show people what number he was talking about. When it became clear it was going to be an ongoing game, I ended up jumping in after that.'
'It wasn't until…2012? 2013?...where we got together for our very first game,' said Billingham. 'a Pathfinder at Matt and Marisha's apartment. I showed up a little bit late after shooting something that day. Liam [O'Brien]
was very serious because Laura [Bailey] was very serious, both doing heavy RP with British accents. Sam just looked panicked. I looked over at Marisha and she was like 'here are your dice…' I didn't know what was happening and Matt was in full [performance]. He had disappeared. There was this arch lich wizard, underlit. I think there was wind? There were candles at the table? Maybe it was just my imagination. I knew I was in for a show. The thing that sunk it for me was as we kept playing, everyone was getting more comfortable joining Liam and Laura where they were at. I made a choice and Matt said 'come with me'. We got up from the table and went into a side room. He said 'you see a guy in a red cloak over at the table. You can tell he's keeping something from you. What do you want to do? I was like 'can I do anything?' and he said 'you can certainly try.' I said 'I want to run over, grab him by the neck and pick him up' and Matt started acting scared like I was choking him out. He's responding to what I say? The rest was done. The hook was in.'
The last time Critical Role had a live show in Chicago it was just before the massive shutdown of the pandemic in March of 2019. The Co-Founders took a litte time to reflect on what their expectations were at the beginning. It started as a way to show the joys of tabletop games and is now a new media sensation embarking on a world tour over the summer.
'When we got the opportunity from Felicia Day and Geek & Sundry,' said Ray, 'it was more along the lines of showing a dozen people, just one person, how cool tabletop RPGs can be then we can consider that a success. It was very much the lowest stakes, the lowest bar possible, because we didn't expect anything from it in those initial days.'
'There are a lot of people out there that are dice curious I guess you could say,' said Mercer. 'It's hard to describe in a social space of non-gamers. Having something to send somebody, like a link, and tell them to watch five minutes of this. That was the impetus to provide that sort of content, to be a shorthand of what this experience could be. We never anticipated anything like the impact that it has. It's still, ten years later, perpetually surreal.'
'I had a conversation with my wife at our house,' said Willingham, 'I don't know if I want to do this. I don't want people to think this is what I do. All these misconceptions and everything. Once we got into it and we found the people that it touches, the things that opened up for us as players and, it sounds so cheesy, but the way that Critical Role enriched our lives. We could have never predicted it. That's the beauty.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
5 hours ago
- Forbes
NYT ‘Connections' Hints And Answers For Sunday, June 22nd
Hints, clues and answers for today's Connections are here. Looking for Saturday's NYT Connections hints, clues and answers instead? You can find them here: I'm a little late to this Connections guide. My apologies. It was my birthday this weekend and I guess I was just too distracted by this fact – either that, or I'm just so old now that my memory is leaving me – but I absolutely spaced publishing this when I normally do. But I'm here now to help you with this tricky puzzle, so let's dive right in! How To Play Connections Connections is the second-most popular NYT Games puzzle game outside of the main crossword itself, and an extremely fun, free offering that will get your brain moving every day. Play it right here. The goal is to take a group of 16 words and find links between four pairs of four of them. They could be specific categories of terms, or they could be little world puzzles where words may come before or after them you need to figure out. And they get more complicated from there. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder There is only one set of right answers for this, and you only get a certain number of tries so you can't just spam around until you find something. There are difficulty tiers coded by color, which will usually go from yellow, blue/green to purple as difficulty increases, so know that going in and when you start linking them together. You pick the four words you think are linked and either you will get a solve and a lit up row that shows you how you were connected. If you're close, it will tell you that you're one away. Again, four mistakes you lose, but if you want to know the answers without failing, either come here, or delete your web cookies and try again. If you want to play more puzzles, you can get an NYT Games subscription to access the full archives of all past puzzles. What Are Today's Connections Hints? These are the hints that are laid out on the puzzle board itself, but after that, we will get into spoiler territory with some hints and eventually the answers. Today's Sunday Connections What Are Today's Connections Groups? Alright, the full spoilers follow here as we get into what the groups are today: What Are Today's Connections Answers? The full-on answers are below for each group, finally inserting the four words in each category. Spoilers follow if you do not want to get this far. The Connections answers are: Today's Connections answers The tricky word in this batch was WIRE which I plugged in first with ENTOURAGE, EUPHORIA, INSECURE and SUCCESSION – all HBO shows. Well, I was right about the HBO shows, but wrong about WIRE (despite The Wire being one of the greatest shows ever made). It was actually INSECURE, the one show in this list I'm not as familiar with. I realized WIRE could go with BULLETIN and then put those with FLASH and REPORT and that worked for yellow. When I saw LIFE, LIBERTY and PURSUIT and I realized they all paired nicely with HAPPINESS. Once I'd gotten the last HBO show I plugged in the remaining four, despite not knowing how they connected. But they really all do mean 'left' in one form or another. Tricky one today! How did you do on today's Connections? Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook. Also be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me here on this blog. Sign up for my newsletter for more reviews and commentary on entertainment and culture.
Forbes
6 hours ago
- Forbes
‘Quordle' Hints And Answers For Monday, June 23
Here's some help with today's Quordle, including hints and the answers. Before today's Quordle hints and answers, here's where you can find the ones for Sunday's game: Hey, folks! Hints and the answers for today's Quordle words are just ahead. How To Play Quordle For any newcomers joining us, here's how to play Quordle: Just start typing in words. You have four five-letter words to guess and nine attempts to find them all. The catch is that you play all four words simultaneously. If you get a letter in the right place for any of the four words, it will light up in green. If a word contains a letter from one of your guesses but it's in the wrong place, it will appear in yellow. You could always check out the practice games before taking on the daily puzzle. Here are some hints for today's Quordle game, followed by the answers: What Are Today's Quordle Hints? FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder What Are Today's Quordle Answers? Spoiler alert! Don't scroll any further down the page until you're ready to find out today's Quordle answers. This is your final warning! Today's words are... That's all there is to it for today's Quordle clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog for hints and the solution for Tuesday's game if you need them. See you then! If you'd like to chat about Quordle and New York Times word games such as Wordle, Connections and Strands (and to hang out with a bunch of lovely people), join us over at Discord! Also, subscribe to my newsletter, Pastimes!
Elle
a day ago
- Elle
All About David Corenswet's Wife, Julia Warner
Superman actor David Corenswet plays a man leading an epic double-life. The star has some experience there, because he keeps his off-screen world extremely private. Corenswet is married to his wife, Julia Best Warner, with whom he shares one child. But his Instagram is almost entirely promotion for the upcoming DC flick and he has shared very little info about his family. Here's everything that is known about Warner and her relationship with the superhero. Like Corenswet, Warner is an actor. Per her LinkedIn profile, she studied Fine Arts in Theater Arts Acting at Point Park University in Pittsburgh. According to her IMDb page, she has also tried her hand at producing and directing, and has credits with The Baby Sitters Pub, Ratched, and Pretty Little Things. In 2018, she wrote a tribute to her work at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. She seems to be close to her family, and posted about cutting down the family Christmas tree with other Warners in 2020. And she and Corenswet share a Cavalier King Charles spaniel named Ira: 'He's less of a doggy, more of a toddler,' Corenswet told People, adding that the seven-year-old dog 'has a wonderful mohawk, a natural tuft of hair right between his eyes, which is the reason he's disqualified from being shown [making him] adoptable.' According to an interview with People in June 2025, the pair met as teenagers at a Pennsylvania summer theater program and had a 'slow-burn' romance. They were married in March 2023. In 2022, Warner shared a carousel of pics that included Corenswet. Corenswet and Warner welcomed a daughter in 2024, though they have kept her name private. In his interview with People, Corenswet said, 'I feel like I've been a dad for a long time, and just waiting for a kid to prove it. My dad was an enthusiastic father and stayed home with my sister for a period when she was very little, and was very good with kids. And so I think I just inherited that. I liked being a camp counselor, and I have terrible jokes that nobody laughs at.' The baby arrived in close conjunction with the beginning of his Superman journey, prompting him to add, 'Two big unknown things at the same time. And they were both great things.'
