Critical Role‘s Animated Dungeons & Dragons Series Is Kickstarter’s Highest-Funded Project of All Time

By Scott Russell | March 7, 2019 | 4:48pm

Image courtesy of Critical Role

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Critical Role‘s Animated Dungeons & Dragons Series Is Kickstarter’s Highest-Funded Project of All Time

The team behind Critical Role, a weekly, live-streaming web series in which well-known voice actors play tabletop classic Dungeons & Dragons together, have a new animated production in the works, The Legend of Vox Machina, and if the project’s crowdfunding efforts are any indication, the people want to see this thing.

Originally planned as a single special, but now a full-fledged series, The Legend of Vox Machina has broken the record for the highest-funded film or TV project in Kickstarter history, Kickstarter Film announced Thursday, with backers pledging a whopping $6 million in just four days, and with 42 more days still to go. Support for the special is still rolling in as of this writing, with $6.11 million piling up courtesy of over 44,000 donors, further surpassing the previous record of $5.76 million set by the Mystery Science Theater 3000 revival in 2015.

The Critical Role team is currently planning six 22-minute episodes of The Legend of Vox Machina, with further funding-dependent installments still waiting to be unlocked. Emmy-winning animation studio Titmouse (Big Mouth, The Venture Bros., Metalocalypse, Niko and the Sword of Light, Star Wars: Galaxy of Adventures) will produce the series, to be scripted by Jennifer Muro (Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: Forces of Destiny, Marvel’s Spider-Man series, Netflix’s Stretch Armstrong).

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“Critical Role’s success, like those of Mystery Science Theater and Veronica Mars, shows Kickstarter’s ability to tap the power of a fan base,” said Elise McCave, Kickstarter’s Director of Narrative Film, in a statement.

Fans of Critical Role—Critters, natch—are legion, but some background for the rest of us: The weekly D&D game is set in Exandria, a world created by Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer, the veteran voice actor behind Overwatch’s McCree, as well as myriad other videogame characters. The game started in 2012 as a group of friends playing in each other’s living rooms, but has since evolved into a self-evident entertainment sensation—the web series is said to pull over a half million viewers each week, airing Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on Twitch.

You can help push The Legend of Vox Machina even further over the top via Kickstarter right here and get a taste for Critical Role’s adventures below.