![]() ![]() Gilmore was part of that conversation: The group wanted to ensure the actor playing the shopkeeper had an opportunity to bring an authenticity to the character that Mercer never could, he says. Mercer says from the get-go, the team wanted to elevate diversity in “The Legend of Vox Machina.” “For me,” Mercer says of Malhotra, “it was both a combination of being a fantastic performer and bringing a whole new level to this character that I was hoping to find for the series, and I just trust him.”Īlong with dragons, giants and goblins, the core cast of “Critical Role” consists of an all-white friend group. Sunil Malhotra, the actor chosen to play Gilmore, sums it all up. The casting process was intense for Gilmore because the actor had to match the character’s personality and confidence, he says. He points to Shaun Gilmore, the shopkeeper. One of Mercer’s favorite parts of the process was seeing the characters take on a new meaning when played by a different actor. This makes the protagonists relatable and believable, he notes. “In fact, often the failures and embracing the failure can make for a much more interesting story as players,” he says. The consequences of poor dice rolls are reflected in “The Legend of Vox Machina.” Mercer says it’s crucial to remember that heroes don’t always succeed. The “invisible force” of dice rolls lets characters’ stories unfold more organically than the formal writing process, when a writer may corner a character into a choice that doesn’t feel right, Ray says. “So it just makes such a ripe project to pull from when you can just have that much gold to mine.” “The beauty of it being an improved live show with the dice kind of acting as fate or the world enacting or inflicting upon you is that you kind of end up getting this pure writers room type of experience from the original source material out of the gate,” she says. ![]() Since the game revolves around the unpredictable rolls of the dice, mapping it out was no easy feat, Ray says. That means new audiences get the best narrative arc without having to dive into hundreds of hours of “Critical Role” recorded content on Youtube, he says. The team adapted the series to shorten their improvisations without sacrificing the characters’ epic successes and massive failures. Mercer, Ray and the crew watched their characters take on a life of their own in “The Legend of Vox Machina.” And while a scripted animated show embodies a different format than an improvised role-playing game, Mercer says the story remains the same. These friends decided to document their long-running, improvisational roleplaying in a podcast called “Critical Role.” The idea escalated into a full-blown digital media brand with multiple seasons on Youtube and an impressive 1.56 million subscribers. It all started when a group of friends would gather together and play Dungeons & Dragons in an attempt to make each other laugh, cry and “share the breadth of human experience through the facet of fantasy role-playing in the fantasy genre,” Mercer says. “Just abandon expectations and have fun with the ride,” he says. But for new viewers, Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer says don’t expect to witness classic protagonists in action. “The Legend of Vox Machina” spotlights a group of heroes for hire and their misadventures in an adult fantasy world.įans were clamoring for this animated series, set to premiere in late January. What started with nerdy voice actors playing Dungeons & Dragons across a table together has become the latest animated series from Amazon Prime Video. A still from "The Legend of Vox Machina." (Amazon Prime) This article is more than 1 year old.
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