Critical Role EPs promise more freedom in animation

Sam Riegel and Travis Willingham say “The Legend of Vox Machina” can finally push past adaptation into freer, weirder storytelling—built on years of “Critical Role” as a live Dungeons & Dragons phenomenon and a full production ecosystem.

When “Critical Role” started, it was a livestream where LA-based voice actors rolled with the chaos of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign—DM’d by Matthew Mercer—and turned it into a weekly ritual. Now, the same franchise is deep in animated storytelling on Amazon.

Sam Riegel and Travis Willingham, the show’s executive producers and lead nerdy-ass voice actors, are looking back on the work of shepherding two Amazon animated series through production. They’re also talking about the moment they can finally stop “staying on the rails.”

“Critical Role” began as a livestream “actual play” series on Felicia Day’s Geek and Sundry YouTube/Twitch channel. Viewers watched a group of performers play through the silliest. most heartfelt. and most epic parts of a campaign they started as a hobby. In the background, Mercer served as DM—setting the tone for everything that followed.

Willingham and Riegel later joined a core cast that includes Laura Bailey. Taliesin Jaffe. Ashley Johnson. Liam O’Brien. Marisha Ray. and sometimes special guests. playing characters who delved through dungeons and fought at least five (5) dragons. By the end of those campaigns, the performers describe their characters as effectively becoming Gods.

Today, “Critical Role” still runs on Twitch, YouTube, and its own bespoke streaming service, Beacon, on Thursdays. It’s also in a newer phase: a fourth campaign DM’d by Brennan Lee Mulligan, featuring a cast of 13—including the actors from the show’s original party.

For Willingham, that growth isn’t just creative—it’s structural. He’s the CEO of Critical Role Productions. a company that includes a gaming imprint. record label. nonprofit organization. and film and TV production company. Riegel’s voice-direction credentials are similarly built into the franchise: he’s won six Emmys for his voice-direction work.

Their experience spans animation and streaming before the pandemic. which is part of why they believe they’ve been able to translate the “athletics (or acrobatics) check from table to animated series.” They’re now four seasons into “The Legend of Vox Machina. ” based on their first campaign. The first season of “The Mighty Nein,” based on their second campaign, premiered last year.

Riegel and Willingham are deeply involved as executive producers on both animated shows. Riegel has written eight episodes of “The Legend of Vox Machina” and “The Mighty Nein.”

The producers say they’re especially ready to lean harder into the playful edge in “The Legend of Vox Machina.” With multiple seasons of story under their belt—and years of building series content—they’re in a position to push beyond straightforward adaptation.

“Now it’s jazz,” Riegel told IndieWire on an episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast. “We get to just freeform and improv and have fun with these characters and show them in situations they wouldn’t normally be in. or do different stylistic choices. There’s other episodes coming up later in the season that break the format in other ways. that introduce new characters that weren’t part of the original campaign.”.

Willingham frames the early animated seasons differently: for him, they were about testing adaptation itself—how the “CR” team wanted to approach it and what kinds of risks they were willing to take.

“The Mighty Nein” departs in some core ways from the livestream version of Campaign 2, and it comes with the confidence to be more sweeping in how it adapts and stays creative. That approach, he says, now benefits both shows.

“It was the greatest teaching instrument and the most immediate absorption technique ever to get plunged into full production of an animated series. ” Willingham told IndieWire. “We got to see what the design pipeline was like. how concepts worked. how storyboard artists approached scripts. what the script breakdown process was like. all of those things. It was like seeing behind the curtain at ‘The Wizard of Oz’ at every little stage.”.

The production-learning curve mattered, but the “behind the curtain” part is also personal: Willingham points to the idea that a strong animated show depends on the right people with a strong vision.

“We didn’t feel like the moment was too big for us. We instantly had thoughts. preferences. feelings. desires. things that we wanted to inspire the team to attempt or try. ” Willingham said. “I think all of us could rattle off five or six shows that shaped us as we were kids. and that sense of wonder and magic that is so inherent in animation — that was the thing that we were looking forward to the most. So that’s really what we’ve been tasking ourselves with the most: how can we make this animated property really make you feel. whether it’s laugh or cry or feel despondent or grief or tension or stress. That’s what we take the most pride in.”.

Riegel ties that creative loop to his day-to-day work, too—arguing that animation, voice direction, acting, and writing keep feeding each other as a virtuous cycle.

“Producing animation has made me a better voiceover director. Being a voiceover director has made me a better voiceover actor. Being a voiceover actor has made me a better writer. Everything feeds into each other in a creative loop,” Riegel said. “I think that’s one of the great things about ‘Critical Role’ in general. Travis is our CEO; he’s expert-level at business-y stuff. There’s a reason Laura is in charge of our merchandise. She is a tastemaker. Everybody in our group is an expert at something, and we serve to support each other.”.

That team-first approach still comes with a certain Dungeons & Dragons mindset: characters are meant to be tested. Riegel jokes that “Critical Role” doesn’t exactly treat its characters gently.

“We really mistreat our characters,” Riegel joked. “We put them in situations that they cannot get out of in one piece. And that ability and that fun and that opportunity to take these building blocks we’ve built — now we’re throwing out the instruction manual and now we’re just playing with the Legos on their own now.”.

Willingham calls the goal a kind of creative contribution—building a world with all the pieces that might feel intimidating at first.

“We just want to contribute as many misunderstood Legos to that big plastic Tupperware tub that makes an ocean of intimidating pieces with which to build,” Willingham agreed.

For now, the animation is live. “The Legend of Vox Machina” and “The Mighty Nein” are streaming on Prime Video.

Critical Role Sam Riegel Travis Willingham The Legend of Vox Machina The Mighty Nein Amazon animated series Prime Video Dungeons & Dragons Beacon Matthew Mercer Brennan Lee Mulligan