Critical Role campaign four


The fourth campaign of the Dungeons & Dragons web series Critical Role premiered on October 2, 2025. Brennan Lee Mulligan replaced Matthew Mercer as Dungeon Master, while Mercer switched to a player role. With the cast expanding to thirteen players, Mulligan will run the campaign in a West Marches format. After a four-episode 'overture' with the full cast, the players divided into three initial groups: the Soldiers, the Seekers, and the Schemers. Rather than Exandria, the setting used in the previous three campaigns, the campaign is set in Mulligan's new world of. The characters' intertwined stories explore a fractured world shaped by the death of gods and the aftermath of rebellion.

Cast

Main

  • Brennan Lee Mulligan as the Dungeon Master
Following the fourth episode, the player cast was divided into three groups:

The Soldiers

  • Laura Bailey as Thimble, a four-inch-tall pixie rogue, from the land of Faerie. Thimble was the closest companion of rebel leader Thjazi Fang.
  • Robbie Daymond as Kattigan "Kat" Vale, a human ranger with a wolf companion named Wulfric. He previously fought alongside Thjazi, Teor, and Azune in the Falconer's Rebellion.
  • Travis Willingham as Teor Pridesire, a lionfolk paladin who fought alongside Kattigan, Thjazi, and Azune during the Falconer's Rebellion.
  • Sam Riegel as Wicander "Wick" Halovar, a human sorcerer from the noble Sundered House of Halovar and a Light Priest of the Candescent Creed, a new religion espoused by his house.
  • Whitney Moore as Tyranny, a demon warlock who recently arrived on the mortal plane. She is an Aspirant in the Candescent Creed, serving under Wick and also acts as his bodyguard.

    The Seekers

  • Matthew Mercer as Sir Julien Davinos, a human fighter/rogue from House Davinos, a vassal to the noble Sundered House of Royce. He is childhood friends with Thjazi's widow, Lady Aranessa Royce, but hates Thjazi and was the one who captured him.
  • Ashley Johnson as Vaelus, an elven paladin from the Mournvale and one of the Sisters of Sylandri, followers of the dead god of life and elves. She wants to reclaim an artifact known as the Stone of Nightsong, which was stolen by Thjazi.
  • Alexander Ward as Occtis Tachonis, a young human necromancer wizard from the noble Sundered House of Tachonis. He has an animal companion named Pincushion, an undead fox made of parts from multiple foxes. After Occtis is murdered by his family, he returns as a Hollow One.
  • Aabria Iyengar as Thaisha Lloy, an orc druid who follows the Old Path of rituals and magic separate from the gods. She is from House Lloy, a smithing house of importance in Dol-Makjar, and shares children with Halandil Fang.

    The Schemers

  • Taliesin Jaffe as Bolaire Lathalia, a warlock and curator of the Archanade, a museum of arcane artifacts. He appears to be wearing a grey mask that moves as if it were a living face; however, he is actually a sentient magic item created during The Shapers' War by the halflings to kill the trickster goddess Rauwyn. When worn, Bolaire takes control of the wearer's body. Bolaire fled to Dol-Makjar during the Falconer's Rebellion; he later befriended Hal but his secret was discovered by Thjazi, who blackmailed him over his true nature.
  • Marisha Ray as Murray Mag'Nesson, a dwarven diviner wizard who is a bursar at the Penteveral, an arcane college. She was friends with Thjazi.
  • Luis Carazo as Azune Nayar, a human paladin/sorcerer. Azune is an Arcane Marshal in the Revolutionary Guard of Dol-Makjar. During the Falconer's Rebellion, he fought alongside Kattigan, Thjazi, and Teor.
  • Liam O'Brien as Halandil "Hal" Fang, an orc bard who resides in Dol-Makjar and was granted the neighborhood's theater by the city's ruling council. He is the half-brother of Thjazi, and has multiple children, some with Thaisha.

    Production and format

Casting

The casting of Brennan Lee Mulligan as the Game Master for campaign four was announced during the August 2, 2025 live show in Indiana and a press release from the studio, Critical Role Productions. Matthew Mercer was the Dungeon Master for the first three campaigns; however, for the fourth campaign, Mercer will appear in a player-role. Rolling Stone stated that "the inclusion of Mulligan is huge, but not entirely surprising" given Mulligan's background as "a well-established Game Master" who created the "titanic success" Dimension 20 along with previous comments made by Mercer on eventually shifting "into a 'Professor X' role as a mentor to the next generation of storytellers rather than remaining the face of the brand in perpetuity".

Game system and production design

Critical Role is an actual play which uses a tabletop role-playing game system. Cheryl Teh of Business Insider noted that the initial announcement of the fourth campaign did not reveal which game system the campaign will use and further highlighted that Critical Role's tabletop game imprint Darrington Press had just released their own tabletop role-playing game, Daggerheart. Then in a August 21, 2025 press release, Critical Role released the cast and campaign structure for the fourth campaign which included the announcement that the campaign would be using the 2024 revision to the 5th Edition ruleset of Dungeons & Dragons. The campaign features homebrew design contributions by Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins. Mulligan has also introduced additional house rules that come into play when a player character is at 50% or less hit points, when they are rolling death saves and after the players reach a level-up milestone; at that point, they can increase their level during gameplay "in a narratively satisfying moment for their characters to acquire more power and health, including in the middle of combat".
After the opening four overture sessions of the campaign, Mulligan split the players into three initial groups: the Soldiers, the Seekers, and the Schemers. The campaign then continues in a West Marches-style structure, where the actions of one group of players can impact the shared narrative—potentially having implications for the other groups. On the use of the West Marches-style, Mulligan noted that while it is not a frequent actual play format, the "idea of a massive world explored by a party that splits to cover more ground and then reconverges is baked into the DNA of the fantasy genre" and is seen in "foundational texts of high fantasy" such as Game of Thrones and The Two Towers. In the third episode, it was revealed that Travis Willingham, Laura Bailey, Whitney Moore, Sam Riegel, and Robbie Daymond are part of the Soldiers group. Following the fourth episode, it was revealed that Aabria Iyengar, Ashley Johnson, Mercer, and Alexander Ward are part of the Seekers group while Luis Carazo, Taliesin Jaffe, Liam O'Brien, and Marisha Ray are part of the Schemers group.
Mulligan and Ray, who is also the creative director of Critical Role Productions, explained that there is pre-planning to include episode cold opens as well as aiming for a specific number of episodes per table. However, they also stated that they are prioritizing the story so episode count will increase or decrease based on when the narrative "venture feels concluded". Mulligan commented that they are not "living and dying by 'we need to deliver that plot point by this episode, because then we're outta here.' I mean, hey, we had our four-episode overture, but by the end of it, we still hadn't split up the Schemers and Seekers tables, so we just did that in episode five". Following the overture, the first narrative arc focused on the Soldiers group; the second arc will feature the Seekers group.

Broadcast

The fourth campaign premiered on October 2, 2025. It will then air weekly each Thursday at 7 p.m. PT. It will be broadcast on Critical Role's Twitch and YouTube channels as well as on the studio's streaming service Beacon. The public VOD will be available the Monday after each episode "and podcast episodes will drop in two parts: the first one the week after the premiere, and the second on the following Tuesday". Additionally, an immediate aftershow with the table cast – Critical Role Cooldown – airs exclusively on Beacon after the release of each episode. Tale Gate is an upcoming live talk-back show, hosted by Whitney Moore, for the fourth campaign. The cast will answer fan questions submitted on Beacon's Discord channel. It is scheduled to premiere on January 20, 2026 on Beacon, YouTube and Twitch; it will also feature a "Night Cap" segment exclusive to Beacon.

Setting

The fourth campaign steps away from Mercer's Exandria – the world setting used in the first three campaigns and the Exandria Unlimited anthology web series. In August 2025, the name of the new world was teased through an augmented reality game. was then confirmed as the name of the new setting on August 21. Mulligan, the new setting's creator, described it as a "love letter to Exandria". Following the release of the campaign's first episode, Mulligan explained that rather than doing a monologue establishing the lore of, he took inspiration from the start of The Wire, one of his favorite television shows. Mulligan commented that on "the first watch-through of , you're watching the first four episodes and you're like, 'Huh?! What?! What?!' And then you're like, 'This is fucking awesome".
Seventy years before the start of the campaign, the people of killed the world's gods in a conflict called the Shapers' War. Mulligan noted that this revolution occurred due to the orcs rising "up against their oppressor", the god of war and suffering, which led to a wider war between the gods and mortals. He explained that the gods of decide to aid their fellow god against the orcs, prompting dwarves, elves, and humans to question why they should "save the god of war and suffering". Mulligan framed the conflict as "a story of class solidarity", in which the gods "would rather protect one of their own than save their followers". While the war ended with the gods defeated, Mulligan highlighted that although this leaves mortals "at the helm of their own destiny", they are still faced with challenges even without the divine. During the Shapers' War, two noble priestly houses – House Halovar and House Tachonis – sided with the gods while three other noble houses – House Royce, House Einfasen, and House Cormoray – rebelled. Collectively, these nobles became known as the Sundered Houses due to the losses they sustained during the Shapers' War; however, they continued to wield significant political and social influence afterward. At the campaign's outset, the land of is still dealing with the long-term consequences of the war with the gods and the Falconer's Rebellion, a secondary conflict between the Sundered Houses and the wider population that happened twelve years previously. It begins in the city of Dol-Makjar and initially focuses on the execution of Thjazi Fang, a hero of the Falconer's Rebellion, whose death brings together the player characters in a quest to unravel the conspiracy behind his execution.