'The Legend of Vox Machina' is that interesting case where the story behind the creation of the series is no less fascinating than the story told in the series itself. But even apart from its origins, you shouldn't skip this work. And many have missed it.

1. A project born from love

It's December 2012.

Two friends, Sam Riegel and Liam O'Brien, who had gained relative popularity dubbing anime into English, chose the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons for the second episode of their podcast about various hobbies. They didn't have to look far for an opportunity, because their good friend Matthew Mercer, also a voice actor, periodically ran campaigns for friends in his own setting. Plus, the party had long been promised to Liam as a birthday gift, but they never got around to it.

Together, they assembled a team for one small session, but they were so enthusiastically immersed in the atmosphere that their campaign, which was moved from the Dungeons & Dragons system to the more player-friendly Pathfinder, lasted about three years. During this time, all participants of the home games grew to love their characters like family, and Mercer had to come up with new challenges matching the players' rising levels.

In 2015, one of the campaign participants, Ashley Johnson (whom you may know as the voice of Ellie from the game The Last of Us), shared the story of her favorite pastime with a good acquaintance, actress Felicia Day. She was just looking for ideas to develop her online media company 'Geek & Sundry'. So everyone involved got the opportunity to continue the game on streams, returning to Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition and dubbing their show Critical Role. The group of characters was named Vox Machina (by the way, in home games they were first called 'The Super High Intensity Team' or abbreviated 'The S.H.I.T.s', which, for obvious reasons, wasn't very suitable for broadcasts).

2. An incredible fan community

Over three years, Critical Role became the flagship project of 'Geek & Sundry', practically the only one that consistently attracted viewers. Eventually, the team managed to become independent and amicably parted ways with Felicia Day (with whom they remain friends).

The fans' love caught them off guard in many ways. One of the first signs of a large and friendly community around the Vox Machina characters was that during the seventh stream, 100 custom T-shirts sold out in 5 minutes (the team hadn't even finished announcing the availability of these T-shirts).

Since the streams didn't cover the beginning of the home games, in 2019 Critical Role launched a fundraising campaign on KickStarter to animate the story of their first missions for new viewers in collaboration with Titmouse, Inc. For a 22-minute animated short, they needed to raise $750,000 in 45 days (and they planned to cover all additional expenses from their own funds).

An hour after the campaign started, fans had already thrown in $1 million. By the end of the first day, over $4 million had been raised. Final collections at the end of the campaign amounted to $11,385,449. Thus, the community sponsored the creation of a full-fledged ten-episode animated series about the adventures of Vox Machina.

Realizing what a goldmine this was, Amazon Studios contacted the team and bought the rights to stream the series – and also ordered two additional episodes, thus practically guaranteeing the creation of a second season.

3. The Vox Machina team

On one hand, the full-fledged creator of the universe in which 'The Legend of Vox Machina' takes place can be considered the game master, Matt Mercer. But Dungeons & Dragons is such an interesting thing that it can only develop with the direct participation of each player.

The half-elf twins Vax'ildan and Vex'ahlia came into being by a coincidence - both players, Liam O'Brien and Laura Bailey, were born on May 28.

To create Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III, actor Taliesin Jaffe together with Mercer created the Gunslinger class almost from scratch (it didn't exist as such in DnD at the time).

Sam Riegel became the gnome bard Scanlan because his friend Liam named that race and class as the most useless. Needless to say, Scanlan is an undeniable fan favorite?

Travis Willingham (Laura Bailey's husband) became the goliath barbarian because he didn't want to roleplay any romantic storylines with anyone. And who could a barbarian with low intelligence stats even romance in such a setting?

Marisha Ray largely based the awkward and socially unadapted druid Keyleth on herself – although initially she wasn't supposed to play at all, but attended sessions as a game master assistant to help new players.

And Ashley Johnson, as the last player to join, decided the campaign needed a healer – someone to heal this perpetually trouble-prone rabble.

Each member of Vox Machina was born quite organically but became an indispensable part of the team. And Matt Mercer (who always has a cameo in every episode) confidently led this team towards adventures.

4. A simple story with serious themes

If you look at the overall plot of 'The Legend of Vox Machina', it might seem overly simple. Indeed, the adventures of rowdy drunkards and troublemakers is a completely classic Dungeons & Dragons campaign with quite recognizable archetypes.

So why is it so interesting to watch?

In fact, to raise interesting themes, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. For instance, almost every character here has certain daddy issues – but how the characters choose to deal with them is unique to each and depicted very realistically.

And besides, people will always need stories about true friendship, mutual support, the need to let go of past problems and forgive one's offenders. The main thing is that these stories happen to characters you empathize with. And that's exactly what happens with Vox Machina. Because behind every ribald joke lies personal experience and deep trauma, which the series works through as best it can.

5. A well-deserved (and fun) 18+ rating

Speaking of ribald jokes. It's better not to show 'The Legend of Vox Machina' to kids, because its rather high age rating was given for a reason.

It shows hardcore sex. It displays dismemberment in graphic detail. There is mockery of corpses, hints of incest, and the destruction of entire cities (shown far better than in the last season of Game of Thrones). And none of it feels out of place.

On the contrary, you see serious adults who decided to go wild with all $11 million. And that's worth a lot (pardon the pun).

So, if any of the above interests you, I advise you to go watch the two released seasons – fortunately, we have at least two or three more ahead.

Meanwhile, the author of this article continues the marathon of the second Critical Role campaign, about an even more unhinged group of characters, The Mighty Nein (who also await an adaptation in the future).

In the meantime, I suggest you check out how the actors look in cosplay of their characters.