D&D campaign-turned-animated series The Legend of Vox Machina uppercuts fans with some brutal departures from the source material, and I'm here for it

You might want to stop here if you haven't been watching the animated series The Legend of Vox Machina on Amazon. I'm about to get into some spoilers of episodes 7-9 of Season 3.

Let me bring you up to date if you don't mind spoilers. The Legend of Vox Machina, an animated series based off a livestreamed Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition campaign that ran between 2015 and 2017 over 115 episodes under the name Critical Role. The campaign featured a few of the most prominent voice actors from the gaming industry. The series is still running today, with its third campaign. But it's based on the 100+ episode debut.

Critical Role, a TTRPG, is credited - fairly - with causing a bit a renaissance. It's on par with Stranger Things when it comes to getting people interested in rolling dice. To put things in perspective, the now-bigboy firm asked for Kickstarter funding to fund The Legend of Vox Machina. It broke $1 million within the first hours, then proceeded with $11.3 million of total funding. They have enough money to manufacture and distribute their TTRPG systems. People like this thing.

The animated series' departures last week from the livestream story are bloody brave, in the literal sense. Two character deaths have rocked the boat so hard that water is leaking through the cracks. I feel like a sicko screaming "yes, yes!" Through the window.

Percival de rolo, voiced by Taliesin Jaffé, has taken the bullet after Anna Ripley (who is supposed get the coup de grace by a group of very pissed-off adventurers, but doesn't) shoots him in the chest. The death itself doesn't matter, but the permanence is.

D&D 5e's resurrection rules are generally lax. In 2015, DM Matthew Mercer was forced to create a homebrew ritual to make character deaths meaningful. The Legend of Vox Machina has a much more strict set of rules. Percy was originally resurrected shortly after Ripley had killed him. He is now dead as a doornail, in a stone casket. He gets a full funeral scene, and everyone is happy with it.

His soul isn't in the afterlife, as his toxic ex-demon Orthax eats the spirits of gun victims. It's a whole system, so it's very likely that he will be resurrected. The tone of the rest of the season is changed, however, because several beats in the livestream now lack a white-haired nobleman.

Then, there's Kashawvesh, the guest character from Will Friedle's livestream, who is turned into paste.

Percy's demise was a brave and interesting departure from the original material. But turning a well-loved character into a Red Dragon Pancake is like stabbing it with a knife. Vax'ildan's chosen oomfie, the goddess of Death, watches him enter the embrace of the Raven Queen. This is the spiritual equivalent to taking a bow and then backflipping in traffic while on fire. It's not a situation you usually survive. Kashaw went to the farm upstate willingly.

The series hasn’t been afraid to make changes in its narrative, but they have mainly been done for efficiency. The average D&D game lasts four hours. That's a lot of time to fit into a show. These changes are massive compared to the original 115 episodes. As someone who watched them all live, I am excited.

These changes will ensure that long-time players like myself aren't sat here just crossing off entries on bingo cards. If that were the case, I would be mildly entertained but not really respond to the dramatic stakes in these final battles. Critical Role and Titmouse made it clear that no one is safe. Main cast members, like Percy, will probably return with the appropriate gravitas. But what about side characters? They could be blown up forever.

Matthew Mercer appeared on X to ask the fans "So... How are we doing this morning?" After the episodes were released. I won't go into detail about tweets, but suffice it to say that this is not good. I guess I'll have to wait until a Critical Role game is released so I can defend Kashaw Vesh myself.