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:
Recurring Themes:
– Self Harm: The episode is about the training and use of blood hunter powers.
Recurring Themes:
– Gambling: Part 2 takes place in a casino with characters playing games for much of episode.
Recurring Themes:
– Paranoia/Conspiracies: Characters discuss at length the ways in which individuals or organizations could be working against them.
Recurring Themes:
– FCG Flesh Parts: Sam’s gas can has a picture of FCG with a giant tongue.
– Nudity/Sex: Nudity and reference to sex acts takes up much of the episode, far beyond the usual level of lewd jokes for the franchise.
Recurring Themes:
– Horror Imagery: This episode takes place in the Feywild in the house of an archfay/hag. Includes unnatural animals, body horror, extreme taxidermy, and repeated discussions of people imprisoned in objects and plants.
Recurring Themes:
– Unnatural Animal: Episode takes place in the Feywild and monstrous creatures are described multiple times.
Recurring Themes:
– Parental Conflict: Episode repeatedly touches on the emotions and circumstances of a character’s strained relationship with their parents.
Recurring Themes:
– Lying: Recurring lies about the effects a plan will have on someone else, even when asked directly.
– Sacrifice: Many discussions about sacrificing things for a cause.