Critical Role 4’s Overture is officially all wrapped up, and we’ll be moving onto the three-group, 13-player campaign that’s had me salivating ever since it was announced. As confirmed during the last episode’s cooldown, one of its most shocking moments had been pre-planned. Kinda.
As confirmed then—and re-emphasised now—enough was left up to chance that even the person it was happening to thought the dice had led him astray. That’s per a Fireside Chat on Beacon with Alexander Ward, who plays Occtis. In case it wasn’t clear, I’m getting into spoiler territory for Episode 4.
This was, per Ward’s comments at the time, a pre-planned storybeat with Dungeon Master Brennan Lee Mulligan—Ward had initially intended Occtis to be an undead necromancer who’d been slain by his family, and Mulligan asked him if he’d like to do it at the table. With the understanding that, if the dice disagreed, Ward would be consigned to the terrible fate of playing, like, a normal human wizard. Or straight-up dying.
The exact details, though, were completely unknown to Ward—to the point where, as doubly confirmed in that Fireside chat, he “thought I’d actually fucked up.”
See, being the scion of a house so thoroughly linked to death, and being killed in a mystery ritual, Occtis got to make some rolls and checks on the other side. But “when Brennan told me that my spirit, like, faded away and disappeared … I thought I messed up Brennan and I’s plan by rolling poorly, and Brennan just killed me. So I did leave the table thinking I’d really fucked up.
Honestly, that fourth episode was a great little example of how to make a pre-ordained story beat still have stakes at a TTRPG table. For one, Ward could’ve absolutely rolled high on initiative and—as he said after the episode—skitter out of there with a Spider Climb spell. But seeing Matthew Mercer and Aabria Iyengar fighting for their life in a horde of undead was just as nail-biting and, more than once, nearly went so very wrong.
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