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:
– Mental Magic: Many Ruidus Born people are present and repeatedly use mental magic to communicate, command, and fight.
Recurring Themes:
– Guns: A guest character uses guns to fight.
Recurring Themes:
– Apocalypse: Repeated discussions about the current effects on the world, and mentions of things from before the Calamity.
– Guns: A guest character uses guns to fight.
Recurring Themes:
– Insects: Second half of the episode has the party fighting swarms of buzzing insects and a very large centipede-like creature.
Recurring Themes:
– Guns: A guest character uses guns to fight.
– Harm to Animals: A goat is killed and characters reference it periodically throughout the rest of the episode.
– Unnatural Animal: Characters observe the animals in a magically polluted forest.
Recurring Themes:
– Guns: A guest character uses guns to fight.
– Destroyed city: Episode takes place in the ruins of a city destroyed a long time ago and preserved in a state of destruction. Including bodies and destroyed buildings.
– Horror imagery: Magically corrupted nature.
– Mold and decay: Much of the landscape is decayed. Mold and spores are described multiple times and affect the characters.
– Monster sounds: Many different monster sounds are made and some unsettle the cast.
– Blood visual: Sam’s gas can has bloody hand prints on it.
Recurring Themes:
– Guns: A guest character uses guns to fight.
– Destroyed city: Episode takes place in the ruins of a city destroyed a long time ago and preserved in a state of destruction.
– Horror imagery: Magically corrupted nature.
– Monster sounds: Many different monster sounds are made and some unsettle the cast. Including slurping tentacle sounds.
– Many teeth: Recurring descriptions of monstrous mouths with varying detail.
Recurring Themes:
– Trauma: Characters facing new traumatic situations similar to long held trauma from their backstories and needing to confront their automatic reactions. One character has repeated flashbacks to lost people throughout the episode.