If you’re looking for epic fantasy amid a whirlwind of politics and skulduggery, you’ll find little better than George R.R. Martin’s phenomenal Game of Thrones franchise. Whether it’s Game of Thrones, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, or House of the Dragon, the TV adaptations are a fantastic watch, with powerful, star-studded casts and insightful, in-depth worldbuilding woven expertly into the narrative.
Unfortunately, the sheer scale and grandeur of these adaptations mean few shows or movies can match the Game of Thrones franchise’s quality. Some come close, such as The Wheel of Time and The Witcher, but none delve as deeply into each character’s political machinations and motivations as Martin does.
However, don’t despair. While no TV show or movie comes close to Game of Thrones, at least one 100-hour dark-fantasy epic may be exactly what you’re looking for: Critical Role.
What is Critical Role?
Critical Role is a show where well-known voice actors gather each week around a table to play Dungeons & Dragons. These episodes usually run 4 hours or more, and unlike TV and film, they are shaped by the improvisational nature of tabletop role-playing.
Critical Role’s main cast and company co-founders are Matthew Mercer, Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham, Ashley Johnson, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, Liam O’Brien, and Taliesin Jaffe.
So far, Critical Role has consisted of three campaigns in the high-fantasy world of Exandria, created by the group’s Dungeon Master, Mercer.
Critical Role’s current campaign is set in the world of Aramán and led by Dimension 20’s Brennan Lee Mulligan. Luis Carazo, Alexander Ward, Whitney Moore, Robbie Daymond, and Aabria Iyengar have also joined the main cast for Campaign 4.
What is Critical Role Campaign 4 about?
If you had to define Game of Thrones in two words, we’d go with “gritty fantasy.” In typical high fantasy, good usually triumphs over evil, but in Martin’s world, ruthless political maneuvering often makes good people suffer.
The same goes for Critical Role’s current actual-play campaign, Campaign 4. In the world of Aramán, the people are learning to rebuild after The Shapers’ War, an event that led mortals to slay the oppressive Gods that ruled over them. However, this didn’t fix everyone’s problems and, as expected, only made them worse. Magic no longer works as well as it used to, and only a select few, such as the Druids of the Old Path, can still access the afterlife.
Moreover, slaying the Shapers poisoned and transformed certain locations — notably the ancestral lands of the Shapers’ worshippers, such as House Tachonis and Halovar — into wastelands. With so many souls now in purgatory, the undead have risen and started causing problems too, which sounds a lot like the White Walkers from Game of Thrones, doesn’t it?
More importantly, the loss of divine rule and the fundamental shift in how magic works have created a huge power vacuum in Aramán. Although members on the Revolutionary Council in the city of Dol-Makjar have tried to keep the peace, real power undoubtedly rests with the Sundered Houses: five magical noble houses that belonged to the Obridimian Empire before it fell alongside the Shapers.
As the Sundered Houses vie for power over the people of Aramán — seeking to win them through religion, magic, or martial prowess — a group of revolutionaries (the 13-player main cast) plots to bring the Houses down in the name of one vital ideal: freedom.
How is Critical Role Campaign 4 like Game of Thrones?
Although Campaign 4 and Game of Thrones are very different formats — a live-action show and an actual-play D&D campaign, respectively — they share many similarities, both minor and major.
Although magic is less prominent in Westeros than in Campaign 4, Game of Thrones still features plenty of it — from Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons to otherworldly abilities like face-changing, green-sight, and skin-changing. Magic also signals power, and its return is one of the show’s major developments across eight seasons.
If you’re a Game of Thrones fan who enjoys watching characters go to great lengths to claim the Iron Throne, you’ll find plenty to love in Campaign 4. Although its revolutionaries aren’t fighting to rule a kingdom like the warring houses in Game of Thrones, they’re still willing to do whatever it takes to overthrow the oppressive Sundered Houses and let the people of Aramán choose how they want to live — and die. This means that there has been plenty of spying, lying, and good ol’ fashioned murder involved, which is typical Game of Thrones fare.
However, Campaign 4’s biggest similarity to Game of Thrones is this: the constant threat of death around every corner. Everyone remembers how shocked they were when they watched the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones season 3, an episode that killed off several major characters. Because of D&D’s format and the randomness of dice rolls determining some outcomes, the risk of death is practically baked into Campaign 4’s lifeblood from the get-go.
But there’s more: Mulligan’s homebrewed death-and-dying rules (such as no resurrection magic) raise the stakes even higher than in an average D&D campaign, adding tension to every combat and role-play encounter. Campaign 4 has already lost one player character, and we wouldn’t be surprised if that number grows.
Better yet, now is the perfect time to jump into Campaign 4. Critical Role campaigns usually run for 100+ episodes, so the cast aren’t even halfway through yet. Game of Thrones offered fans just under 80 hours of juicy storylines, but by the time Critical Role wraps up this campaign, viewers can expect over a hundred hours of magic, betrayal, and political intrigue — making Campaign 4 the perfect replacement for Game of Thrones.