Critical Role’s Co-Founders Talk 10th Anniversary Releases

• The nerdworld business Critical Role celebrates its 10th anniversary on March 12.
• They started off playing “Dungeons & Dragons” on Twitch, but have built a sprawling business from it.
• CR’s cofounders tell BI that in 2025, they’re expanding on five fronts.

On March 12, Critical Role celebrates its 10th anniversary — a capstone for its rise to nerdworld business supremacy.

Now, four cofounders — Liam O’Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham — told Business Insider their crew is ready to roll out its road map for 2025 and beyond.

The business’ eight cofounders have come a long way from a group of nerds streaming their home “Dungeons & Dragons” game on Twitch. In 2022, CR raised seed funding of more than $11.3 million to create an animated series — a project that’s turned into not one, but two Amazon-backed animated series’ on Prime Video.

The CR business has multiple segments, including Darrington Press, its game publishing arm; Metapigeon, its production wing; and the Critical Role Foundation, its charity initiative. And CR and its peers are now selling out arenas and hitting the road for global tours.

“We have been planning and planting and nurturing the earth for so long — I think we’re just looking forward to watching the garden grow,” O’Brien said.

In 2025, the team is expanding in five areas.

1. A Critical Role video game

Willingham, CR’s CEO, said that the crew is “hard at work” on a video game — a new area for CR. He won’t tell BI the name yet, but plans to announce it “any day.”

For now, he’s calling this gaming venture the “interactive slate.” He says it’ll expand on Exandria, the gaming world that Matthew Mercer, the crew’s longtime game master and chief creative officer, created over a decade ago.

“They’ll actually be getting their hand on the stick and controlling the outcome of the story, changing what might be possible from not just some of their favorite characters, but new offerings in the world of Exandria,” Willingham said.

2. Back to streaming and more live shows

The company’s 10th anniversary dovetails with the February finale of the third “Critical Role” campaign.

But the cofounders will be back on stream soon. In the interim, Ray says Riegel will take over Mercer’s seat as game master for a new program.

CR is also hitting multiple cities in the US and two arenas in Australia for live shows this year. Riegel told BI the crew is now scouting some dream locations — and they’d love to play in venues in Canada, Europe, and South America.

Lauding CR’s peers at “Dimension 20” — who just performed in front of a sold-out Madison Square Garden — Ray said what they do isn’t niche anymore.

“It honestly doesn’t make sense that ‘D&D’ shows are selling out arenas that Taylor Swift has played,” Ray said. “This medium has grown, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.”

The company plans to announce its 2026 live show slate in the spring, Ray said.

3. Daggerheart’s official release

The cofounders said “Daggerheart,” a tabletop game more than two years in the making, is scheduled to launch on May 20, accompanied by a slate of CR programs and “new offerings.”

Gameplay-wise, “Daggerheart” is structured like an answer to “D&D” — the game that made the team famous.

Ray told BI that Mercer and Spenser Starke, one of “Daggerheart’s” designers, already have “years” worth of ideas for game content and expansions that are in the works.

Willingham says the company’s Darrington Press division is also collaborating with game developers to make more products.

“We’ve been gamers our entire lives,” O’Brien said. “My hope for Darrington is that it becomes synonymous with great games and that it’s attractive for the best game makers.”

4. Books and TV

O’Brien, who fronts CR’s publishing push, told BI he’s excited about the slate of books the team’s rolling out, including “Der Katzenprinz,” a children’s book he wrote. In collaboration with Penguin Random House, CR also released its “Vox Machina — Stories Untold” short story collection this month.

Riegel told BI that CR’s expansion means ideas outside their wheelhouse land “somewhere within our octopus of a company” — and for him, that division is TV and film projects.

Riegel said O’Brien is developing an idea for a TV show, and that Ray is developing an idea for a TV show and graphic novel.

“They’re already in active development in various stages,” Riegel said, hinting that the new projects will have “nothing to do with Exandria.”

5. More animation

Riegel — a two-time Emmy Award-winning voice director — told BI the cast is in the thick of recording two seasons of animation in partnership with Prime Video. That’s the fourth season of “The Legend of Vox Machina” and the first season of “Mighty Nein” — both based on the crew’s “D&D” campaigns.

The eight cofounders, who got their start as voice actors, are playing their own characters.

“Sometimes in the same session, we’ll go into the studio and record some for one animated series and some for the other, and it’s a bit of a mind freak to keep it straight in our heads,” Riegel said.

In the works: ‘experiential offerings’

A long-running inside joke among the cofounders and their fandom is the idea of a “Critical Role Land” theme park, similar to Disney World. The crew has taken this idea so far that they have made theme-park T-shirts with the name on them.

“We say it’s the most dangerous thing in the world to say stuff out loud at CR because it might come true,” Willingham said.

But Willingham said the crew is exploring the possibility of having “experiential offerings” down the road.

Now, they just need “the right partners” and good timing, he said.