Throughout our time enjoying the many different actual-play Dungeons & Dragons shows over the years, one has always stood out: Critical Role. Whether it’s because of the cast of professional voice actors or their seamless chemistry, D&D fans have adored Critical Role for over a decade.
After more than 10 years of adventure with the cast, Critters have witnessed some truly epic moments of dialogue — remarkable largely because of the improvisational storytelling required in a game of D&D. However, while in-character quotations in Critical Role have been legendary, none quite match the soft-spoken verbal annihilation Matthew Mercer delivered to naysayers during Campaign 3.
Matthew Mercer’s best Critical Role quote sums up the beauty of D&D
During episode 42 of Campaign 3, the cast heads to the city of Yios and quickly finds themselves enchanted by the lake-top metropolis’s gambling parlor, where Mercer reveals many dice-based gambling games. At one point, Laura Bailey apologizes to the table (and audience) for keeping them focused on these games instead of rushing to the table’s original objective.
Mercer, however, makes it clear Bailey doesn’t need to apologize and says something every Critical Role hater out there needs to sit with.
“It’s our game to have fun.” Here, Mercer shrugs at the audience at home. “Glad you guys are here to watch, but we’re going to play our game, like we always have.”
Though perhaps not as memorable as his “How do you want to do this?” line, Mercer’s quote sums up what makes Critical Role special: a group of friends who want to tell their own story, without outside interference that could muddy the message.
While some believe that, as Critical Role has grown over the years, companies have interfered in other ways. Namely, Amazon, which helps produce animated adaptations of its campaigns with The Legend of Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein, Critical Role’s CEO Travis Willingham, however, has clearly stated that isn’t the case.
More importantly, Mercer’s quote speaks to a segment of the fanbase that, for better or worse, has strong opinions about how Mercer and the rest of the cast play Dungeons & Dragons.
No matter who you are, once you’re in the online spotlight, people will have an opinion. Given so many years of D&D shenanigans, that’s especially expected for a cast and company like Critical Role. For the most part, having a loyal fan base is a good thing. There’s the adoration, of course, but even people who aren’t business-savvy know that the more people love something, the more likely they are to talk about it. After all, word of mouth is powerful.
However, it can have a less fun side: entitlement. Having watched Critical Role for several years, I’ve seen some D&D fans become so obsessed with doing everything by the book that they tie themselves in knots when Critical Role does things differently. For example, when Mercer made it harder for a character to be resurrected, a change he made early in Campaign 2, there was an uproar that he wasn’t abiding by the rules as written. Another time, Marisha Ray’s character in Campaign 3, Laudna, didn’t fully follow the traits of her lineage as a Hollowed One, choosing instead to add her own flavoring to her character’s features. The D&D rules lawyers online didn’t take this lightly, either.
To be clear: there’s nothing inherently wrong with criticizing the Critical Role cast’s choices within their games. We’re still not completely sold on Campaign 4’s West Marches format and, at times, feel it’s hurting the narrative potential for some characters.
However, the beauty of actual-play is that it puts narrative choices and a story’s tension directly in the hands of the players and Game Master. That’s not only powerful, but pretty darn personal. Yes, millions of people watch Critical Role’s campaigns, and yes, people beyond their creators, Mercer and Brennan Lee Mulligan, have touched the worlds of Exandria and Aramán.
Ultimately, while the audience may have plenty of opinions about this story — and ways to express them on social media and in Q&A sessions — they have very little ability to affect it overall. In a media landscape increasingly shaped by nostalgia and companies that openly rely on fan opinion, Mercer’s quote serves as a poignant reminder: they’re playing their own game, not the fans’.