Legend Of Vox Machina: 5 Things That Were Directly From Critical Role (& 5 Things That Changed)

With the recent completion of the first season of The Legend of Vox Machina, fans both new and old were able to enjoy the action and adventure of the first campaign of Critical Role in a condensed animated form. Even without a release date, viewers are already excited about the upcoming second season of the show.

After leaving the end of the first season on a dramatic cliffhanger straight from the campaign, fans are left to compare the changes made in converting hundreds of hours of content into a shorter animated form and wonder what changes are coming next.

Things That Were Kept The Same

Percy’s One-Liners

Voiced and created by Critical Role cast member Taliesin Jaffe, Percival Frederickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III is known for his one-line quips in the original campaign. Fans were rightfully excited to hear his iconic lines, even if they weren’t in the original place; for instance, his line “Your soul is forfeit” was said to a character that did not appear in the animated show.

Fans are left to wonder which of his plethora of lines will make it into season 2 of The Legend of Vox Machina.

Graphic Language/Violence

When adapting their stream to animation, the cast and creators of Critical Role and The Legend of Vox Machina wanted to stay true to the source material. Most D&D games, whether a Livestream, podcast, or small home game, include copious amounts of gore, violence, and swearing.

The animated show has a large amount of each, deaths being particularly bloody and gruesome. This leads to the main characters having some plot protection from the gore, as is the nature of most TTRPGs; when everyone around you is cut down bloodily and you’re hardly touched, it borders on being gratuitous.

Pike’s Arrival

While Pike and Ashley Johnson were absent from moments in Critical Role, there were times when the actress would play remotely from across the country, resulting in a grand spectral appearance courtesy of the cleric’s deity. In Vox Machina, the gnome, who matches the Pisces Zodiac sign, reprised her most iconic entrance on an even grander scale.

She originally appeared on top of a surrounded stone pillar before using her divine abilities to turn the tide, while in the show she appeared at the base of the Sun Tree in a beam of divine light, destroying many of the zombies without issue.

Acid Room Trap

A classic fixture of fantasy dungeons, the acid room trap was adapted from the original campaign. While the trap was far from deadly, it gave half-giant barbarian Grog a chance to show off his endurance.

Made bigger to accommodate the animation and to make the scale grander, the room otherwise functioned very similarly, with difficult-to-reach handles, walls made of residuum (a special magical glass-like substance), and its own purpose aside from being a trap: the creation of more residuum.

Sylas’ Sword

Pictured in the show drinking the blood of anyone it slashes, the dark, jagged sword wielded by Sylas Briarwood is a well-known item from the stream. After fighting the Briarwoods, Grog claims the sword, a decision that worried the rest of the characters in the original stream.

The sword has an impressive ability based on the blood it drinks, prompting a relatively large printed item card during the stream. Seeing it in use in The Legend of Vox Machina, fans are left to wonder what role it will play in season 2.

Things That Were Changed

Orthax

Known to fans as the evil entity behind Percy’s pact and the design of his pepperbox sidearm, Orthax was originally a D&D creature known as a “shadow demon.” Identified in The Legend of Vox Machina as simply a “demon,” the fight against Orthax is depicted as a struggle between Percy and his literal inner demon.

In Critical Role, the fight was much more straightforward as players battled to reduce Orthax’s hit points, but the show was able to expand the fight into a battle between friends, the past, and the present.

Pike’s Absence

Much of the first Critical Role campaign and The Legend of Vox Machina missed Ashley Johnson’s gnome cleric, Pike Trickfoot. At the time, Johnson, who is best known for her iconic role as Ellie in The Last Of Us, was filming the 2015 drama series Blindspot, but the writers of The Legend of Vox Machina saw an opportunity to develop the story and explain her absence.

Rather than fixing up a temple, the original excuse given in-world, Pike was able to receive a spiritual journey to understand herself and her faith better. Her absence in the campaign influenced the events and characters too heavily to write her in a different way. 

Story Timeline

Condensing hundreds of hours into twelve half-hour episodes, it’s inevitable that the timeline would need to be adjusted. The band of heroes finds a rough start in The Legend of Vox Machina fighting the blue dragon Brimscythe, an enemy from before Critical Role’s first stream.

The TTRPG characters had been together and establishing their team brand for much longer than that. From there, many of the events line up, but with side adventures removed or condensed to make time for the main plot and characters.

Copyrights

As most TTRPG players are used to, Critical Role contained a vast number of real-world jokes, references, and names. While a successful Kickstarter funded The Legend of Vox Machina originally before it was eventually picked up by Amazon, the show had to be careful about what they said. 

The real-world references are okay for a Livestream game, but when converting it to an animated show they had to avoid using unlicensed intellectual property, leading to words like “chenga” and even reimagined forms of classic undead D&D monsters.

Side Characters

Many of the important side characters, such as Jarret, were originally relatively unimportant. In The Legend of Vox Machina, he takes on a different role as a soldier of Emon. Fans of Critical Role grew to know Jarret and see his often exasperated reactions to Vox Machina, employed as a guard of their keep and a trusted, capable ally.

Other characters that came into their own in the animated show include Archie and Sovereign Uriel Tal’Dorei, NPCs originally made and controlled by Matt Mercer now brought to life by their own voice actors.

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