Critical Role’s next campaign is almost here—and it’s a huge shake-up for the long-standing D&D actual-play titan. Brennan Lee Mulligan will be taking over the DM seat from Matthew Mercer, while also continuing to run Dimension 20 campaigns and recording sessions of Worlds Beyond Number.
But that’s not all. Campaign 4 will also be a “West Marches” style game with 13 entire players split over three groups. It’s an incredible undertaking I have absolute faith he can pull off, but also, is he okay? I get bent out of shape trying to run a bi-weekly Pathfinder 2e game while maintaining a full-time job, and that’s just for my friends, not the entire internet.
Turns out: Yes, yes he is. In a recent interview with Wargamer, Mulligan was quick to dismiss the idea that this workload was anything other than his personal heaven: “It’s funny, because I’ve had multiple people check in on me because of the Herculean epicness of this undertaking. I get more people than I would frankly like being like, ‘Are you okay, man?'” Oops.
He continues: “I have to keep reporting to people that my mental health is at an all time high, because this is my favorite thing in the world, and I get to play this game with these amazing people. October 2 seems so close and yet so far away. I’m so eager to share this world and these incredible characters with everybody.”
As far as taking over Mercer’s role, allowing the internet’s all-time forever DM to play at his own dang table for an extended campaign, Brennan refers to an older episode of Adventuring Academy with Marisha Ray: “She came as a guest on a video podcast that I do called Adventuring Academy, was we were commiserating because it was just after the first instance that someone had used the term ‘The Mercer Effect’.”
For those not in the know, the “Mercer Effect” is a pretty silly term for Critical Role’s rise in the actual-play space, which supposedly caused a swarm of DMs attempting to awkwardly recreate that experience at home. Or, in some cases, expectant players who wanted professional-grade worldbuilding from their mate Jeff.
Maybe this happens sometimes (tabletop interpersonal drama can get weird) I generally think it’s silly to lay blame at the feet of Mercer instead of, y’know, your jerk friends for being jerks. Brennan pretty much agrees: “I saw that term, and I was like, ‘Well, The Mercer Effect is that he’s the most wonderful, saint-like human being’. I joked to Marisha, ‘I’ll tell you what The Mercer Effect is: me and all my friends having a fucking job’.”
He continues to tell Wargamer that “the fact that he shared Exandria and getting to do the prequel history series, the trilogy in Exandria, if I can return a fraction of the kindness to Matt that he has shown to me, it will mean the world to me.
“And yeah, I’m definitely going to kill some of these guys. That’s for sure. Guaranteed, man. I’m looking at some of them right now. They don’t even know.” Campaign 4 will air October 2 at 7 pm PT / 3 am BST on Twitch and YouTube, where you’ll get to watch Brennan Lee Mulligan begin the process of killing (in fiction, right? right?) his new subjects.