14 for the campaign 4 ask game! If that’s already been answered, 1.
It has been asked, so we're going to answer 1, which I think I've mentioned, but it is a story I like telling and I'll give the long-winded version below. Short answer is sibling tried to get me into it, did a bad job, I got into actual play via other means and they were like ok watch campaign 2 it's starting soon and I was like sure, and I started watching with the first episode of C2.
My (younger) sibling was a fairly early adopter for C1 (I do not know how nor exactly when, though they play more video games than I do and probably followed Felicia Day on Twitter in 2015-2016 as I think they watched The Guild, which I never did) and repeatedly tried to get me to watch it, but they are not good at like. recommending things to people, and showed me the Goblins To the Poop! episode. I think I watched like 3 minutes and was like what is this and why is it 3 hours long, no thank you. Anyway they did successfully get me into D&D in late 2016.
Unrelated, but I'd been a fan of Sawbones with Justin and Dr. Sydnee McElroy since around 2014 thanks to the recommendation of a virology grad student friend, and got into MBMBAM a year or two later while in graduate school. Then, in Fall 2017, my laptop frame broke badly while it was under warranty. I was, at the time, not making a lot of money so clearly I decided to send it in for free repair. I was also tutoring on the side due to not making a lot of money while living in the proverbial NYC shoebox apartment and one of my best friends was getting married in a different borough and I was in the wedding part which meant I was going all around the city anyway, and so since I had no laptop on which to watch bad television decided to check out The Adventure Zone Balance, which had just finished and which I could listen to at home or on endless subway rides. I became deeply hooked and missed my subway stops at least twice because I was so absorbed, and when I mentioned it to said sibling she was like "so now that you understand what actual play is, Critical Role has a new campaign in January, and you don't need to watch all the other episodes". Anyway I was like yeah, as long as it's not about the poop goblins, and she was like it's not. That was correct, and it was good, and it was in fact so good I went back and also watched all of C1 in like 4-5 months (while watching C2 week to week), catching up in late summer 2018.
