Thoughts on each member of the Campaign 4 cast, especially things I like about them:
Liam (Halandil): Oh man, what don’t I love? Liam may be my favourite player. His portrayal of Hal’s relationships with his kids, with Thaisha and Elodie, with Thjazi, with Bolaire are all just amazing. So is his portrayal of Hal as a playwright and director (producer?) and his relationships with his cast. Everything he does feels sincere, thought-out, and eloquent. Playing a bard in Hal’s position means you really need to sell that this character is charismatic, and Liam does an amazing job of that. I love how his spells are just saying meaningful things to people, it feels right for the character. I loved him having Hal risk his life against a terrifying monster to save Demodus. The character development for Hal has been fantastic, all the more so because he hasn’t chosen the simpler path of showing an immature character grow up (Occtis, Wick, Tyranny, Julien in their own ways), but of starting with someone who’s a fundamentally good and responsible person with principles (artistic integrity, truth) he will take risks for, and showing his shift into accepting other kids of risks (of life, not just career) and another kind of fight.
As a smaller moment, I loved the subtlety and understanding in how he played the ‘flirting for information’ scene with the noblewoman early in the Schemers arc. In general seduction-for-intel scenes are by a woman or, if by a man, are just being so hot women fall into bed with them (e.g. James Bond). Hal is playing it very subtle and understated, and Liam (and Brennan) are playing the class complexities of the scene. Hal is famous and admired, his interest is flattering to a much higher-class woman, but he’s still essentially ‘the help’ to her, someone she can casually order to play the piano for her and her friends. He’s simultaneously a status symbol and an inferior. I was really impressed by all the nuances in that scene.
And on the most macro level: I love the way that Hal is roughly in the position of the Critical Role cast themselves. He’s an entertainer with clear values, dedicated to speaking truth about power and telling politically meaningful stories, and living in an environment of increasing oppression and concentration of power where he has to decide what he’s willing to do to stop it, over and beyond his artistic endeavours. I don’t know how much Liam intended that reference; but I’ve seen enough of Brennan’s politics to know he must be picking up on it.
Luis (Azune): Luis has been amazing throughout this campaign. We start out seeing Azune as just a strongly dutiful person who tries to advise other likes Julien, and then gradually peel back the layers of how much trouble he’s having with his identity and morality andthe way they conflict woth what he’s doing for the cause. Since seeing Mayali, his fear of loss of innocence has really come to the fore, and at the same time his conscious manipulation has if anything increased (Luis’ emphasis on how Azune mimics Hal to try to gain Demodus’ trust; the way he makes himself look a little more Einfasen). The combinations of how Luis handles both plot and characterization have been stupendous and led to the largest strategic victory so far (turning Einfasen against Tachonis). His combat build in the first fight was also amazing.
Robbie (Kattigan): Kattigan feels like the only character who wasn’t handed a plot thread by Brennan (e.g., Teor got rescuing Cyd, Thimke got vengeance on Casimir, Wick got the Creed’s falseness, Thiasha got Alogar, etc), and I get the impression it’s because Robbie has his own ideas about what he wants to do with this character. While I’m not yet compelled by the lost-wife story (I hope it’s more complex than just her being captured or dying), I really love Kattigan becoming the conscience of the group (more so than the paladin!) in things like deescalating the fight with the faeries, being the angriest with Tyranny over the knife, and recommending the lordship of Sloak be given to a local wgo cares, and the way he later bonds with Tyranny in a parental way. Those scenes offset the ones in Dol-Makjar where he’s so obviously ill at ease (aided by bad rolls) and create an interesting dynamic where the viewer know him but the Seekers and Schemers have no reason yet to take him seriously. On a more minor note, I love the atlatl weapon idea.
Thaisha (Aabria): As with Hal, I love the starting point of an already mature character struggling with new challenges and directions and confronting some of their unexamined assumptions. Her relationship with Hal and the strength of trust there despite their differing directions is golden. The way Aabria presents Thaisha’s druidic spells is wonderfully creative and evocative. Showing a high-wisdom character in this cast that’s packed with high-charisma lower-wis characters (or characters who are low at both) is a refreshing change of pace, and the understanding that Aabria frequently extends to other characters, both the rest of the Seekers and the druids, bear out that high wisdom. She shows a great deal of empathy to Vaelus despite their apparently diametrically-opposed goals. Her struggles with the possibility of losing the place among druids that has defined her life, with her new questions about the druids’ blind plots, and with her frustration that Occtis, the person who she risked this loss to protect, has very different principles and goals from hers, gives the character three-dimensionality. And Aabria works in a lot of hilarious moments around all that (esp the confrontation with Julien about Alogar)
Thaisha can be good in combat (the fog in the bridge scene made a huge difference), but I’m not going to stop dragging her about injuring or shooting at Julien in practically every combat they’ve been in because it’s very funny.
Matt (Julien): I love Matt’s decision to play a character who was so much at odds with the rest of the party; in such a large group, it adds a lot of interest and a greater variety of dynamics. If anything, I was a little disappointed at how cooperative Julien had generally been with the rest of the Seemers during their arc, and enjoyed him freaking out about crazy demons and punching Wick. The other thing that really impresses me about Matt is how he narrates Julien’s combat scenes – he really brings them to life and frankly makes them hot (and this is a character who I like as a character but not so much as a person). Julien’s combats feel very cinematic relative to a lot of other cast members, and that’s down to Matt’s narration. He also seems incredibly combat-effective for the only non-caster of the group. And having bitchslapping people to death as one of his primary combat moves is just plain funny. The gauntlet was a very clever build.
Alex (Occtis): Occtis was not initially a character I had much interest in – he felt like classic tumblr-bait (woobie goth boy rejected by his family), but over the course of the Seekers arc Alex has made me much more interested in him by highlighting (in the Fireside Chat as well as in-game) Occtis’ moral ambiguity and unquestioned assumptions about his family. Ironically, Wick, who has been sheltered and cherished, is much more clear-eyed about his family now than Occtis, who was rejected, neglected, and killed by his family. Occtis’ arc had the opportunity to go in a variety of different directions, some darker than others, given how his enjoyment of having power and his desire for validation compete with his better instincts. I enjoyed the conflict between him and Thaisha and felt it improved the story – when Alex is deliberately highlighting the more disturbing aspects of his character, it’s a stronger story for Aabria-as-Thaisha to react to that than shrug at it (just like Robbie said that Kattigan telling off Tyanny about the knife made the choice real and realistic).
Taliesin (Bolaire): Playing a sentient object is fantasic creative character design, Bolaire’s relationship with Hal is great, and I’ve lloving how he specifically draws out the contradictions within Bolaire: he claims to love freedom yet controls people, he’s drawn to the truth expressed within fiction, all his spells are mind-control, mind influencing, or messing with people’s perception of reality in disturbing ways. He can be gratuitously kind and astonishingly cruel. I think things will get more interesting if he Bolaire gets more pushback from the rest of the cast; a parasite that tortures and kills its hosts feels like a purposely provocative character design that loses something if no one is provoked.
Laura (Thimble): Laura’s exceptional at emoting and brings Thimble’s grief and rage to life; seeing her react to learning that Thjazi was responsible for the doors to Faerie closing and lied to her about it is going to be amazing and devastating. I love the contrast with the Peter-Pan-esque way she plays Thimble before the closing of the doors to Faerie; Thimble hasn’t just been physically aging, she’s been growing up, as a member of a species that isn’t supposed to grow up. Laura’s combat role-playing has been excellent, especially in the fight with Casimir (though aided by Brennan giving her incredibly overpowered weapons).
Marissa (Murray): I love her playing a classic wizard (in the sense of being high-intelligence, lower wisdom and charisma) while subverting all the standard social signifiers of that role (working-class-ish, casual diction, southern accent, dresses and acts sexually). In the same way that Thaisha playing the polar opposite of Larerynn is fun to me, Marissa being a wizard who is socially and physically the opposite of Patia is a lot of fun. Murray’s passion for the Penteveral and fury at how Kora is distorting it come through powerfully; her complicated relationship with Azune is excellent; and the descriptions of how she percieves magic are incredibly thought-through. I’m curious to learn more about the shady stuff Murray was more involved in during the earlier days of the Penteveral. Both of her combats have been dynamite and super smart, with Mage Hand winning an impossible-lookimg fight in the first one and all the ways she found to protect Gus without revealing herself in the second.
Sam (Wick): Up until the latest episode Sam was not my cup of tea, because I have very strong embarassment squick and Sam loves having his characters misplay social situations in embarassing ways – he feels like he’s loving achieving the challenge of “how do i make a 19 CHA character who everyone hates”. He played Wick very well; this isn’t a situation of ‘this apple is bad’ but of ‘I personally don’t like avocados’. But Wick’s last scene with Yanessa was fantastic and exactly what I wanted in terms of seeing him gain confidence and move past his early fear and naivite to become a valuable member of the party.
Whitney (Tyranny): Like Sam, Whitney loves offbeat and embarassing situations for her character – think that’s why the two of them play off each other so well. She’s done great at Tyranny’s multifaceted character, sometimes childish, sometimes alien and offputting, trying to figure ou who she is and who she can be, and paradoxically sometimes acting as a moral counsellor for Wick.
Ashley (Vaelus): Like Wick, Vaelus is a character whose arc became clearer to me in the last episode. I loved the concept of Vaelus upon her introduction, as someone whose goals were almost diametrically at odds with the rest of the party. She’s gone through a lot of phases, being introduced as a badass warrior but becoming much softer after that (from the attack at Palazzo Davinos onwards), especially in her interactions with Occtis. Ashley’s seemed unsure of her character more than most other players; when Brennan prompts her about “What is Vaelus thinking/feeling about this? For example, X? Y?”, she’ll often go a “A bit of X and a bit of Y”. Sometimes other players will hand her conversational threads (as Aabria did in one of the scenes upon their return to Castle Torch) and she won’t do much with them. She’s also struggled in using her combat build creatively, mostly repeating the same move, where most other players have felt more versatile; but in fairness, her bad rolls are not her fault and she’s taken them with far better grace than I could.
Vaelus and Occtis seem on parallel paths now, both of them deconstructing the life they grew up in and the assumptions that were part of it, which has interest.
Travis (Teor): I love the Russian accent and the physical character design. Othr than that, Teor is the character I’ve got the least sense of so far, which is ironic because Cerrit was my favourite character in Calamity. With characters like Azune, Hal, Thimble, Bolaire and Murray having such fantastic, three-dimensional flashback sequences, Teor’s flashbacks and childhood memories relying heavily on Lion King references fall a little flat. Half of the Soldiers plot was about him – finding Cyd – but the emotional elements of that weren’t heavily emphasized, which made it feel more like a fetch quest than the rescue of a family member. All the other player characters have at least one three-dimensional, complex, nuanced relationship with another PC; Teor is old war buddies with Kattigan and Thimble but hadn’t seen them for a while before the game started; he owes his life to Wick but is frequently annoyed by him; and that’s about all we’ve got. Travis is coming across as liking the combat and investigation (though not cryptic-letter 🤣) parts of this game more than the emotional roleplay parts.
The latest episode has given me a bit more insight. Teor being a paladin confused me when he hasn’t shown the committment to a specific cause or principle typical of a paladin (in the Ep 6 faerie fight, Kattigan acted more like a paladin than he did: Teor escalated the most, while Kattigan took risks to deescalate, leading Teor to follow suit). But now it seems like ‘paladin’ is representing something else, a form of divine magic that neither Teor or Cyd truly understand but that’s growing in them, and that’s likely going to be a significant part of Teor’s ongoing story.
