Critical Role - The Wish | Falcon Talks
Wherein two best friends create a magical storytelling moment.
I’m jealous of Critical Role.
And of Oxventure, and of Adventure is Nigh!, and probably of a whole ton of other actual play shows1 out there.
Let me explain. 😅
Hi everyone,
As a fiction writer, my storytelling has largely been a solo effort.2
So, imagine my surprise when, one day, I discovered… what would become Oxventure3! 😉
And thanks to Oxventure being a much easier4 gateway into actual play shows, I would later also give Critical Role a try and fall in love with it as well.
Watching these friends come together to play a game and create a story together was magical to me.
Of course, I had heard about people collaborating on stories before - collaborations at DC and Marvel Comics are par the course, there are novels out there with two or more writers, and many people collaborate on TV shows and movies all the time.
But, to see the cast of Critical Role5 come together and tell a story with so much joy and happiness; to see the players act out scenes that they come up with on the spot for their characters; to see the Dungeon Master rejoice at how his players react to the world, scenarios, and NPCs6 that he’s come up with for them, and to see how the players, in turn, react with joy at the storytelling playground that their friend has created for them…
All of that makes me so happy for them and so envious of them at the same time.7
And there is no better moment, I think, that encapsulates what I’m talking about better than the one found in Critical Role’s Campaign 1 Episode 114 - a moment that has stuck with me and has shown me how beautiful collaborative storytelling like this can be.
(But, first - spoiler warning for Critical Role’s Campaign 1 and The Legend of Vox Machina!)
The Wish
It’s the final battle.
Vox Machina, the players’ party of heroes, face Vecna, The Whispered One - an evil lich who is about to achieve godhood.
Liam O’Brien plays Vax’ildan, a half-elf rogue/paladin.
More important, Vax’ildan is a Champion of the Raven Queen - the goddess of death. And the reason why he became the Raven Queen’s Champion in the first place was because he offered his life and eternal service to the Raven Queen so that his sister, Vex’ahlia, would be brought back to life after a hunt for a powerful relic went wrong.
After this final battle, the Raven Queen will finally collect on the deal - Vax’ildan will leave the mortal plane to join her side as her eternal Champion.
Sam Riegel plays Scanlan Shorthalt, a gnome bard.
More importantly, Sam is Liam’s best friend. They’ve played this game with their friends for more than three years now. And he knows that Vax’ildan’s deal with the Raven Queen happened around the time when Liam’s mother died, and that the plotline has been helping Liam with his grief.
The final battle starts, and it is an epic one.
As it drags past the four hour mark (in real-life!), the party’s stamina and resources are dwindling.
Crucially, they’re also using up their ever-valuable spell slots, which is the game’s way of representing if and what spells their characters can still cast.8
But, they’ve managed to back Vecna into a corner, getting ever closer to being able to start the ritual to seal Vecna away.
However, Vecna starts to cast Teleport.9
Our heroes panic - letting Vecna get away now would be devastating, to them and to the world.
Sam, hesitantly, asks the other players, “Is it worth it?”
Aptly, it’s Liam who responds first, saying, “To keep him here? Yeah.”
The other players agree.
And so, resignedly, Sam has Scanlan cast Counterspell… at 9th level - using his one-and-only highest-level spell slot to GUARANTEE that Vecna’s Teleport is cancelled.
The other players are relieved, but Sam’s head is in his hands.
He looks over at his best friend, lets out a sad sigh, and reveals, “That was going to save Vax.”
It takes several minutes (because, as this was still a live-broadcasted show, the game had to continue), but it sinks in for Liam and some of the other players what Sam had meant.
Episodes earlier, Scanlan had gained the ability to cast the spell Wish - which, exactly as it sounds, gave him the ability to make a wish. And though not even Wish could guarantee something as powerful as breaking off a deal with a god, it at least gave them a fighting chance.
But it could only be cast using a 9th level spell slot - the only one of which he had just used to counterspell Vecna.
Scanlan could no longer cast Wish that day.
He could no longer use Wish to try and save Vax’ildan from having to leave with the Raven Queen.
And in the background of this epic battle, Liam is moved to tears by what his best friend tried to do for him.
It’s never addressed in-character, but the implications in-story are clear - Scanlan wanted to save his most powerful magic to save his friend, Vax, but he was forced to use it to help save the world instead.
Critical Role (and other actual play shows) are a weird and unique blend of narrative and meta-narrative.
The narrative is Vox Machina’s story, but we’re also watching the meta-narrative about the PLAYERS as they come together to play this game and weave this narrative together.
Scanlan’s struggle about whether or not to sacrifice his use of the Wish spell during the final battle means so much more because we’re also watching SAM struggle with it.
It means that much more because we then find out that Sam wanted to use it to save his best friend Liam’s character.
It was a beautiful, bittersweet, and magical moment of collaborative storytelling and of friendship.
Aftermath - The Final Wish
This article is already very long, so I won’t go into too many details.
Vecna is defeated after this, and the characters and cast bid a beautiful goodbye to Vax’ildan as the Raven Queen comes to take him away soon after that.
Around a year later10, Vex’ahalia is set to marry Percy, another member of Vox Machina.
And Scanlan makes a Wish.11
It’s a simple wish, but a powerful one - and powerful wishes run the risk of the caster being rendered unable to ever cast Wish again.
And indeed, when the die is rolled, Scanlan loses the spell forever.
But, “it’s worth it”, because his last Wish ever was for Vax’ildan to be able to say a few words at his sister’s wedding.
And those words were beautiful.
Thank you for reading! 😄
I hope that some of the emotions and feelings that I felt came across - articles like this can be tricky! 😅
This moment means a lot to me, and I hope that I get the chance to experience something like that, one day.
Let me know below if you’ve ever experienced anything like this - I would love to hear about it!
For now though…
An actual play show is a show where the cast comes together to play a TTRPG (tabletop roleplaying game) - in the case of all three shows mentioned, they are playing Dungeons & Dragons (usually).
To my collaborators: I said LARGELY, not all! 😆
Oxventure started out as a 2 million subscribers special where the crews of Outside Xbox and Outside Xtra would come together for a D&D game with Dungeon Master Johnny Chiodini. It has since spun-off into its own channel.
Thanks to the much shorter episodes and the episodic nature of the first few seasons.
This applies to Oxventure and Adventure is Nigh! as well, but we’re just going to stick with Critical Role moving forward.
Non-player character - characters that the players don’t control.
Yes, I understand that these are still shows with production crews that are filmed with the purpose of being broadcasted as entertainment - so they’re not completely representative of how TTRPGs would be played at home.
I’ve never played D&D, so I’m just trying to piece this together as best as I can. Sorry if the mechanical details are wrong!
During a special one-shot episode played nearly two years after in real-life.
My son is (or maybe was) heavily into The Adventure Zone, which in itself is interesting because it’s a father and his sons, all adults, still playing D&D and streaming their adventures on the internet.