The Mighty Nein animation series is "definitely more than half done", says Critical Role CEO. This will make not one but two famous D&D campaign turned into TV.

You're probably even more green at the thought of a newseries being produced based on a different campaign.

Critical Role has done it twice. It's the platonic dream for anyone who's played a TTRPG with enough advanced features to imagine how their characters would appear on the big screen. Mighty Nein is a film adaptation of Critical Role's 2nd campaign (which ran between 2018 and 2021, over 141 episodes). Fans have known this for a while. Prime released a teaser in July. You can watch it below.

We've now got an update via a recent Polygon Interview with Travis Willingham Marisha Ray and Liam O'Brien. All three are prolific videogame voice-actors andthe cast members of original campaign being adapted.

Willingham (voice of Grog, soon to be voice of Fjord and CEO of Critical Role) told the site that "We have written the entire Season 1". If they haven't already been locked, the storyboards will be. It's now off to our overseas studio. We're getting back animation tests and seeing things in colour. All the characters have been designed. We're also thinking about the magic spells and effects. We're discussing music and how it will be different from Vox.

"It's definitely more that half done, and I'm sure everyone will be very happy with the outcome."

I've always believed that a Mighty Nein TV adaptation would be better suited for television. TTRPG-brained as I am, I watched the entire series almost episode-by -episode. I found the fantasy politics, dramatic twists and more complex ethical issues to be more appealing. Less dragon-slaying gung-ho, more Game of Thrones, with an excess of terrible fathers (except for Yeza, my short king).

The Legend of Vox Machina is not having a bad time, quite the contrary. It's getting a 4th season. But the original campaign was based on a Pathfinder game that the cast played in their homes. The Vox Machina team is very classic because it was many (but not all of them) their first attempts at the hobby. You have your big dumb bard, your feelings-focused druid (but still kickass), your edgy, rogue and smutty, bard. It works, don't worry, but it is definitely playing the D&D classics.

The Mighty Nein are much more complex. O'Brien's Caleb Widogast, a deeply troubled Wizard with a haunted past, Willingham's Fjord, a Texan Warlock who keeps vomitng water, and Ray's Beau, a severe monk, are just a few examples. These are the characters that a table will create once they have become comfortable with the rules and wish to spice things up.

Willingham says that the campaign will, for similar reasons delve deeper into the pasts of its characters before they are all looped together. It's not going to have the same tone as Vox. In Vox they start together. They're a bunch slap-dicks who are just trying to make the best of their circumstances."

Willingham says that with the Mighty Nein they wanted to "backtrack even further and start from a perspective I would call Session Zero, which is meeting each character individually, taking time to see how they come together. Willingham says they wanted to "back up even further and start from what I think we would call a Session Zero perspective, which is meeting the characters individually, taking our time with how do they come together?

"Because, as anyone who knows the Mighty Nein Campaign would know, the characters do not even know if the are the good guys or bad guys. We're excited to explore that." Ray adds, with a foreboding tone: "Yeah we didn't start out as friends." Bring on the drama and the heartache.