Critical Role has a plan for making sure dead players don’t get screwed over

After eleven years sitting at a table playing Dungeons & Dragons together, Critical Role has grown from a streaming show on Geek & Sundry into a multimedia empire. Its campaigns have animated adaptations, spin-off books, and novels, and Critical Role now has its own tabletop publishing arm, Darrington Press.

No matter how much fun the cast has, this is still a job for them. Besides the eight co-founders, Critical Role employs a rotating host of guest stars and semiregulars. They have to get paid somehow, but unlike other shows, the dynamics of a D&D game mean that a player doesn't know how long their character will be around. Death is always a possibility, especially in the unforgiving Campaign 4, where Dungeon Master Brennan Lee Mulligan isn't pulling any punches. With a flexible number of episodes in each campaign, and the lingering possibility of character death, there’s always been a niggling question about how the Critical Role’s cast gets paid.

Thanks to the latest Tale Gate, a Critical Role live talk show, we now have a much clearer picture of what goes on behind the scenes with the cast, how they are paid, and a particularly interesting aspect that is part of each Critical Role player’s contract.

During the Night Cap segment of Tale Gate , Marisha Ray — Critical Role’s creative director and one of the company’s co-founders — addressed how the show handles character death beyond its impact on the game’s narrative.

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