Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to check back in on the trials of The Mighty Nein, or at least whatever portion of its members are hitting the spotlight this episode. As this adaptation’s first episode well demonstrated, Critical Role are taking a drastic approach to reimagining their second tabletop campaign, reordering and reframing and generally attempting to make a coherent, propulsive narrative out of a largely unguided collaborative experience. And so far, I have to say they are absolutely nailing it.
While The Legend of Vox Machina did a fine job of recreating the experience of participating in a tabletop campaign in animated format, it’s clear that they’ve adjusted their goals for The Mighty Nein, and are instead attempting to assemble the best story possible out of the campaign that was. They are not attempting to strictly recreate The Mighty Nein in video format – they are diverging and restructuring in service of the campaign’s potential, rather than its played reality. It’s pretty much exactly what I hoped for from Critical Role’s simultaneously best and least fully realized campaign, abandoning both the inherent limitations of tabletop storytelling (the primacy of the party, the singularity of perspective, etc), as well as the narrative pitfalls of a party and dungeon master not being entirely on the same page. It’s an audacious trick, but I’ve been thoroughly impressed with their adjustments so far, and am eager to see how this new edition of the story unfolds. Let’s get to it!