Critical Role Campaign 3

Themes:

  • Abandonment: Characters explore negative feelings of having been left by or separated from loved ones. Sometimes they are reunited and confront the person about their resentment.
  • Adult humor: Jokes are often raunchy or deal with bodily functions. There is a lot of swearing.
  • Ageism: Many jokes about dying from old age and what age effects.
  • Alcohol: Characters frequently drink, and many scenes take place in bars. Sometimes alcoholism is depicted or discussed.
  • Assassination attempt: A character's backstory involves being present for an assassination attempt on their leader and losing people in the attack.
  • Black goo: A black goo substance is part of a character's monstrous transformation and frequently described.
  • Blood and gore: Frequent scenes of injury or combat, often to the death.
  • Body Horror (Form of Dread): A spell is used that transforms the character into something horrifying of their choice and is described when used.
  • Body horror (transformation): Character backstories involve unwanted body transformations that occurred after traumatic events.
  • Class divide: The story highlights the way opportunities for people change based on their money and connections.
  • Complicated family relationships: Many characters have complicated relationships with their families, including abuse and neglect.
  • Conspiracies: Many in-world conspiracy theories are discussed. Some turn out to be true conspiracies affecting the characters.
  • Corruption: Certain powers cause a distressing progressive effect as the character levels up.
  • Creepy Whispers: When using mental communication spells, Laudna's words are echoed by the cast collectively overlaying their voices to make ghostly whispers.
  • Death, dying, and grief: Many character backstories deal with death, and characters lose people close to them during the story. Characters often discuss their grief and how they're processing it.
  • Debates about personhood: A character questions when a conscious being qualifies as a person and the nature of agency and consciousness.
  • Dislocations, breaks, and decay: A character's body is partly decaying and frequently breaks down for comedic effect. This includes weak joints that frequently dislocate and are quickly reset and broken bones that quickly heal.
  • Exotic pet: A character has a dangerous supernatural exotic pet with some intelligence.
  • Experimental medicine: A character's backstory involves having experimental medicine used on them.
  • Exploitation (debt): Substantial debt is used as leverage against a person, forcing them to repay it in labor.
  • Fear of crowds: A character expresses distress at being in crowded spaces.
  • Flesh Tongue: Running joke that FCG has a fleshy tongue.
  • Food: Frequent scenes set at restaurants or during mealtimes. Often players snack at the table.
  • Guns: In Campaign 3, gun usage has become common knowledge and characters outside of whitestone now use and reference them more than before.
  • Heights: Frequent scenes where characters are on tall land formations, in cable cars, flying, or otherwise far above the ground.
  • Horror monsters: Many different kinds of horror creatures appear. Including corrupted creatures, creatures that mutate, ghosts, giant insects, carnivorous plants, things that aren't animals, undead, werewolves, and more.
  • Inconsistent time: Time in different planes working differently causing gaps in experienced time for characters.
  • Institutional childcare: A character's backstory involves growing up in an orphanage.
  • Kleptomania/petty theft: A character steals very frequently for the thrill of it, sometimes endangering the group.
  • Law Enforcement: All cities have been shown to have armed guards with law enforcement powers.
  • Loss of control/compulsion: Occasionally characters experience moments where they lash out without conscious direction. Repeated conversations happen acknowledging the possible triggers and mitigating tools to help each other manage it.
  • Lying: Characters frequently lie.
  • Mental magic: Characters can shape the thoughts of others and control their behavior.
  • Mind reading: Psychic powers are used to read and speak into other people's minds. Sometimes this is secretive or unwanted.
  • Misogyny: Repeated jokes that use sexism and alpha male beliefs to highlight that they are harmful and incorrect ideologies.
  • Missing time: For various reasons, characters lose long stretches of time in their lives and are separated from their past because of it.
  • Monstrous transformation: Characters transform into monstrous forms. Sometimes this is in their control and sometimes it's not. The transformations are often described in graphic and unsettling ways.
  • Near death experience: Characters experience close calls with death. Their experiences and visions are described.
  • Queer death/spouse death: A character's backstory involves their queer spouse dying.
  • Reoccurring nightmares: A character experiences a recurring dream that is frequently distressing and expresses doubt about what is real.
  • Self-harm: A character's class abilities are activated through drawing their own blood.
  • Self-sacrifice: Characters frequently put themselves in serious danger to protect other characters. Some characters have game mechanics that encourage this.
  • Social isolation and persecution: Characters share experiences of being ostracized, socially isolated, or forced to leave towns due to the circumstances of their upbringing and innate traits.
  • Survivor's guilt: Characters express negative feelings about making it through traumatic experiences when other people they cared about did not.
  • Taxidermy: A character has a puppet made of remains from multiple animals are stitched together that they frequently play with and perform for others.
  • Therapy: Poorly done therapy and positivity are used by a character to resolve conflicts and hard feelings. Sometimes this is unasked for. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy vibes but not practices.
  • Toxic positivity: A character uses relentless positivity to respond to all situations. This is discussed with them.
  • Toxic work environment: A character's backstory includes a workplace where owners disregarded the feelings and expertise of workers to the point of violence.
  • Trauma: Characters frequently explore the trauma they've endured, how it's affected them in the past, and how it's affecting them currently.
  • Traumatic Injury: repeated discussions about the event and the long-term physical effects.
  • Undead: A character's backstory includes details of dying and being revived in an incomplete way through necromancy.

Visual appearances:

  • Flashing lights: Effects on projections screens, post-production effects, and in many ads.

Critical Role Logo

Time: 0:16

Visual appearances:

  • Flashing lights and fire: The logo has a fire effect flaring up on a dark background.

Campaign 3 Intro 1:

Time: 1:44

Visual appearances:

  • Colonialism: Costumes based on late 19th century to early 20th century British explorer stories.
    Flashing Lights: Lanterns carried in dark scenes throughout, camera flash at 1:11, and fire effects at the end.
  • Fire: Fire effect on ending logo.

Sound effects:

  • Repetition and whispers: Opening starts with ghostly whispers repeating the same words over and over before the lyrics start.

Campaign 3 Intro 2:

Time: 1:47

Epilepsy and light sensitivity

  • Rapidly alternating colors: High contrast bright colors, often on bright white, that rapidly shift with frequent jump cuts.
  • Flashing motion effects: Low frame animation without blur frames. Motion blur at the beginning Jumping stills with bright white lines on a dark background appear to flash as they change.
  • Jumpy rotoscoped shots: Short cuts for rotoscoped animation with a lot of movement can appear jumpy and disorienting. May affect motion sensitivity.

Episodes:

Campaign 3, E31: “Breaking Point”

August 18, 2022
Campaign 3, Episode 31 thumbnail features Sam Riegel wearing black and gray against a yellow and blue watercolor-themed background.

Recurring Themes:
– Betrayal: unexpected harmful actions from trusted people.

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Campaign 3, E32: “A Stage Set”

September 1, 2022
Campaign 3, Episode 32 thumbnail features Travis Willingham wearing black and gray against a watercolor-themed background.

Recurring Themes:
– Discussions of personhood
– Trauma recovery

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Campaign 3, E33: “Blood and Dust”

September 8, 2022
Campaign 3, Episode 33 thumbnail features Laura Bailey, Liam O'Brien, Ashley Johnson, and Marisha Ray wearing black and gray against a watercolor-themed background.

Recurring Themes:
– High tension, above table dread: Boss fight including extensive lead up.

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Campaign 3, E34: “What Dreams May Come”

September 15, 2022
Marisha Ray in a creepy stance in front of purple watercolors. A "34" is written in the upper left-hand corner.

Recurring Themes:
– Death and Grief.

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Campaign 3, E35: “Pyrrhic Return”

September 22, 2022
A watercolor thumbnail with the number 35 in the upper left corner. Taliesin Jaffe stands in between Laura Bailey and Sam Riegel with a far-off, alarmed look in his eyes. Sam has his eyes closed, concentrating, one hand over his heart and his other hand touching Taliesin’s temple with one finger. Laura has one hand to her own temple and is delicately touching Taliesin’s temple with her other hand - she looks shocked.

Recurring Themes:
– Grief and Mourning
– Discussions of Death
– Confrontation with Trauma
– Mistreatment of a Prisoner

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Campaign 3, E36: “A Desperate Call”

October 6, 2022
Campaign 3, Episode 36 thumbnail features Taliesin Jaffe, Laura Bailey, Liam O'Brien, Travis Willingham, Matthew Mercer, Sam Riegel, and Ashley Johnson wearing black and gray against a watercolor-themed background.

Recurring Themes:
– Grief/Death
– Confronting trauma

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Campaign 3, E37:”From the Boughs”

October 13, 2022
Campaign 3, Episode 37 thumbnail features Matthew Mercer wearing a black jacket against a watercolor-themed background.

Recurring Themes:
– Horror imagery
– Hostile living environment
– Hanging (imagery and threat)
– Death/dying

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Campaign 3, E38: “A Dark Balance”

October 20, 2022
Campaign 3, Episode 38 thumbnail features Sam Riegel and Marisha Ray. Sam is carrying Marisha and they both are wearing black and gray against a yellow watercolor-themed background.

Recurring Themes:
– Death and dying
– Discussions of trauma

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Campaign 3, E39: “The Momentum of Murder”

November 3, 2022
Campaign 3, Episode 39 thumbnail features Ashley Johnson, Travis Willingham, and Liam O'Brien wearing black and gray against a watercolor-themed background.

Recurring Themes:
– Death and grieving

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Campaign 3, E40: “Compulsions”

November 10, 2022
Campaign 3, Episode 40 thumbnail features Travis Willingham and Laura Bailey wearing black and gray against a watercolor-themed background.

Recurring Themes:
– None

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