Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to check back in on the adventures of The Mighty Nein, who as of yet mostly don’t actually know of each other’s existence. Critical Role have taken an exceedingly bold approach to adapting their second long-form campaign, revising and restructuring in order to better fit their stories to this animated format. As such, we haven’t actually reached The Mighty Nein’s original first episode yet, and have instead been documenting the group’s individual adventures across Wildemount, as they circle and converge in the leadup to their fateful union.
And personally, I’ve been absolutely loving the changes. It’s certainly harder to critique this season in terms of direct reflections on its DnD-rooted dynamics, but that is itself a great sign, an indicator that the production team are less interested in animating precise tabletop sequences than in taking the raw material of the Mighty Nein and reconstructing it into its most satisfying, visual drama-native form. Tabletop campaigns have many virtues, but polished narrative coherence is generally not one of them; the format inherently resists the sort of dramatic inevitability that defines traditional fiction, encompassing a lot of circling and getting sidetracked and general reveling in the off-kilter indulgences of collaborative storytelling. Nonetheless, there is the seed of a powerful traditional narrative in the arcs, bonds, and conflicts of the Mighty Nein, and it is clear this production team is determined to make it flourish. Let’s see how our heroes fair as we return to the table!
Episode 3
We open with an aerial shot leading us down to the carnival, the place where all of our heroes seem to be accidentally converging. Basically a reversal of the original tabletop order, wherein the party started by bumping into each other at the carnival, and only slowly had their origin stories explicated from there. An adaptation choice that falls in line with my own general narrative preferences; people often enjoy playing characters that are full of secrets, but in my mind, guessing at a character’s interiority is far less interesting than having some knowledge of what motivates them, and thus being able to enjoy the sympathetic clashes of their desires and beliefs against the feelings of others. People are interesting already, you don’t have to make them a nest of secrets to create a hook
Critical Role in particular have often taken the “secret-based character” concept to an extreme, but in my experience, actual people don’t work that way – we are not all one face publicly and another face privately, we are always a messy mixture of our public and private ambitions. Ironically, this shift in character exploration has actually led to these characters feeling more real, and less like narrative devices
We appear to be arriving in the midst of some great catastrophe, with onlookers fleeing the main tent as our various leads fend off sharp-toothed beasts. Another simple narrative flourish that’s basically impossible in tabletop play – the flash-forward cold open, a tool that inherently breaks the assumption of continuous temporal momentum that helps keep tabletop play coherent. I’ve only seen Brennan Lee Mulligan toy with this assumption in Critical Role’s ongoing campaign, using key episode-opening vignettes starring one or a couple players to keep everyone relevant in their thirteen player campaign
We open the episode proper with the introduction of our last missing player character: Mollymauk Tealeaf, man of a thousand tattoos and even more mysteries. Given my aforementioned dislike of secrets-based personalities, I’m sure you can imagine I have somewhat mixed feelings about Mollymauk. He feels very much like someone’s first player character, in that he suffers the curse of trying to be too much – the coolest guy in the room, the quickest guy with a joke, the most wise and most irreverent, and haunted by multiple layers of secrets, some of which even he doesn’t know about. Characters are generally defined more by their weaknesses than their strengths, as that is the room they have to grow, and Mollymauk basically starts as quippy circus Batman
Mollymauk’s apparent circus-running partner frets that if they don’t pack the house tonight, they’ll be forced to close shop
Their ensuing walk through the circus grounds does a fine job of emphasizing some of my issues with Molly, as he effortlessly smooth-talks everyone and fits neatly into every social interaction. “My guy is the coolest” is just not a strong basis for a character, tabletop games or otherwise – there’s no conflict there, no contradiction or want/need dichotomy
We learn that Mollymauk is a soothsayer, but not really a swindler; he trusts in the cards, but also tells an ailing man to go see an actual doctor
“Everything will be as dandy as a De Rolo.” I gotta give them credit for the meta-humor of Taliesin’s new character hyping his previous character Percy
We then weave in our other arriving heroes, first with Beau looking for her Cobalt Soul contact, and then Nott and Caleb plotting their beetle heist. All of this is tremendously more coherent than the original campaign’s opening; in this version their collision feels almost inevitable, whereas the campaign itself began with that classic “you all bump into each other at a tavern” default origin story
Meeting at taverns is fine for obvious player-avatars who are already motivated to group up together, but is a lot less convincing when you’re trying to portray a living world full of independent actors each driven by their own distinct motivation. Like this story, my own house campaign began with the classic tavern meetup due to my own inexperience, and we later sorta retconned the personal bonds and motivations that placed them there. If I were to run another campaign, I’d likely stage the opening as an in medias res event of some kind, perhaps a military raid where each player character is introduced as the story reaches them
With two episodes of bonding behind them, the story can now naturally revel in one of the key pleasures of the Nott-Caleb dynamic, as they rattle off funny grift titles while deciding how they’ll steal the beetles. Their bond embodies a core truth of DnD: that player characters should not simply be “members of the party,” they should have distinct dynamics with each other member of the party, conceits and relations that embody the qualities they share (or the values that divide them). This doesn’t have to be too complicated – my current campaign has two players who collectively decided on embodying a bickering Zoro-Sanji dynamic, and that simple directive has given them plenty of opportunities to build more nuance into their relationship
Once again, Nott is almost paralyzed by shakes and self-hatred. Sam Riegel tends to play loud, potentially abrasive characters concealing heavy damage, and it’s interesting how the animated adaptations have handled that. Vox Machina significantly softened Scanlan’s most self-destructive impulses, but Mighty Nein is actually leaning into Nott’s trauma and addiction more heavily than the original campaign. It’s good stuff! Such messy, conflicted, and extremely human characters make for great stories
Of course, it all depends on what you’re collectively looking for from your tabletop experience. If your players are all in the mood for a lighthearted dungeon-crawling experience, than bringing “my character is a traumatized mess whose alcoholism will cause constant problems for the party” is probably not the right approach
Our next arrivals are Fjord and Jester, killing time while waiting for the carriage to Zadash. Kinda funny how, in attempting to answer the question of “why would all these characters be in the proximity of this circus,” the production team was forced to admit that our barbarian lady Yasha clearly wouldn’t be anywhere near here, and was in fact in a totally different part of the continent at the time
“You made a home for all of us broken things, Gustav.” A brief but telling exchange between Mollymauk and his partner, emphasizing this circus as a sanctuary, and further clarifying Molly’s determination to “never look back”
“This grand party must go on.” A nice thematic echo there, with this event intended to distract people from potential war seemingly as fragile as the continental peace itself
Gustav makes his pitch to a family of aarakokra, a sort of bipedal bird-person known for only speaking in words and phrases they’re parroting from others. Feels like the species itself was designed to be a DM flex, showing off their ability to construct conversation out of only the phrases the players feed them
The young lady Toya shows off her fearsome devil toad, which can apparently only be controlled by the Lumino Beetles that Caleb seeks. More intelligent revisions here, both tethering Caleb/Nott to this event through a direct need, and also emphasizing the potential danger of interfering with this performance
Caleb and Nott then set their plan into action, with Nott pretending to have been run over by Toya’s supply wagon. Another adaptive flourish, and a good one – this sort of sequence is a great way to move beyond standard “you gotta fight some bandits” encounters, asking the players to use their abilities in non-combat-oriented ways in order to pull off a time-sensitive heist. Confident, experienced players tend to find their own ways to uniquely approach conflict, but sequences that inherently reward lateral thinking like this are always worthwhile encouragement
Caleb nearly grabs the beetles, but flees when he notices the volstrucker who’s been chasing Beau. Another good adaptive choice here: introducing the volstruckers from Beau’s neutral perspective, rather than having Caleb define them via exposition
Mollymauk then effortlessly solves another circus performer’s personal drama. You see what I mean here?
Nice beat between Mollymauk and Beau – he demonstrates a touch more edge in his insistence on Beau not disrupting the mood, while she gets to reveal a less harsh-edged side of herself through her interest in his divination. The best player character dynamics often shine a light on otherwise downplayed elements of their individual characters
Jester and Fjord then explore a house of mirrors, the perfect venue for Fjord to reflect on his own feigned identity
There was plenty of general romantic tension across the group before any eventual pairings were resolved, but it does seem like a fine choice to really emphasize the Jester-Fjord bond in adaptation. The two of them clearly build off each other – Fjord lends direction to Jester’s whimsy, and Jester helps Fjord get out of his own head, and learn to believe in the performance he’s putting on
Meanwhile, foregrounding Beau’s quest gives this whole intro act a sense of momentum, while also tethering these characters to the larger geopolitical conflict. “We’re working together because we’re adventurers who need money” works passably enough for a tabletop campaign, but it’s pretty thin gruel for a fully designed fantasy narrative (in spite of what too many isekai would like you to believe)
Emphasizing Nott’s problems also serves as a nice counterbalance for Caleb’s own traumas; the two have seen enough of each other’s weaknesses to trust each other without asking questions
As usual, Nott gets the lion’s share of the excellent character acting, as she is grabbed and flung around by an incensed Beau
Love that they’re not softening Beau either; she remains an extremely emotional and frankly terrible spy, swiftly getting herself kicked out of the circus for her violent shenanigans. Marisha loves playing brash, anti-authoritarian characters, and Beau’s contrast of personality and narrative role is probably where that preference played out most effectively
Unsurprisingly, Nott has pickpocketed Beau’s message ball. Another clean, character-appropriate way to keep bumping these characters against each other
Fjord and Jester discuss Jester’s “Traveler” deity, a presumed artifact of Laura’s original plan to play a warlock. A personal god that doesn’t necessarily exist certainly offers some interesting dramatic potential in a campaign, though I can easily see how it could just play out as an irritant – lots of “my invisible friend told me to do that” sort of stuff. Credit to Laura that she’s able to play this as off as charming and only slightly deluded
Love this incidental turtle race going on in the foreground
Playing up Fjord’s curiosity about the Traveler early is a nice way to foreground his own character journey, as he grapples with the being that speaks to him in his own dreams. This adaptation is doing a great job of emphasizing parallels that were somewhat understated in the original campaign
Our next sequence sees Fjord utterly failing at a test of strength, only for Jester to win and offer him a captain’s hat as a prize. A sequence that plays into Fjord allegedly being extremely weak and scrawny for a half-orc (something that his show design doesn’t really seem to support), and also the general dynamic of Fjord feeling inadequate by himself, but through Jester’s belief in him becoming the man he wishes to be. That theme extends to much of this party at the moment, particularly the Caleb-Nott pair
They actually emphasize that “scrawny Fjord” concept through visual contrast, as the pair are accosted by a duo of much larger half-orcs
Jester is immediately dazzled by Mollymauk’s tarot reading, an extremely Jester reaction that embodies another general DnD principle: the players should do their best to take active interest in each other’s stories. You’re not just sitting around a table waiting for your “turn” to do something, you’re weaving a story together, and that means tethering threads to each other with at least as much enthusiasm as your attempts to progress the overall narrative. And this doesn’t even necessarily mean a positive interest, either; so long as both players are comfortable with it, an initially adversarial bond is also a great way to build party dynamics
Quite an impressive cut of movement into depth as Mollymauk surveys the main tent preparations
“That? Child’s play. A fraction of what I can do. Could do.” Nice detail of Caleb briefly staring at his bandaged arms while reflecting on his former power. When adapting to a visual format, embrace visual storytelling!
This approach to the main performance is a huge improvement over the original, where the party were essentially all just random spectators listening to a DM monologue. A benefit of starting this story at a much earlier point; the more you can tether your party’s motives directly to the ongoing action, the more it’ll feel like “their” story. I particularly like how this approach makes characters like Caleb and Nott feel directly responsible for the action, further emphasizing how their temperament and actions aren’t just flavor text, but facilitate meaningful negative consequences in the world. “I’m playing a scoundrel” doesn’t really mean much if the world always accommodates you
Sequences like this simultaneous performance and heist are tricky to pull off in tabletop format, as DnD has no clean way to simulate time’s passage outside of the “every round is six seconds” combat system (which itself is a pretty loose interpretation of time in combat). Like many things, this requires a confident DM’s hand – you basically choose where to aim the camera, giving each player or sub-group a quick sequence in the spotlight before jumping to the next in line, and trying to conclude each of these beats on a dramatic stinger. I’ve at this point DMed a couple of such sequences; one where my party is investigating a gala (one player commands the party floor, one player interrogates a target, one player sneaks through the basement), and one where my party is attending a play (one managing the stage props, one fighting in the rafters, and one actually performing on-stage)
I quite like this sequence of Nott directing Caleb from the rooftops – it’s another adaptation-original sequence, but I could see ways you might simulate it at a table, perhaps by giving one player a map that they must use to steer another player to safety. The trick is the emergent variables (like how the carnies here keep wandering across the field) – perhaps the sequence would proceed in combat order, with the DM moving pieces on a map visible only to the guide, while the actively sneaking player can only see the static variables
Jester of course volunteers to face the Devil Toad. Pretty much every table needs some number of players who are willing to actually push things forward, to take risks and chomp on bait and maybe make a royal mess of things. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re committing to an actively stupid character, though – there’s a variety of ways to justify a proactive character, from Jester’s joie de vivre to Nott’s addiction-borne desperation
Caleb and Nott’s touching reunion is interrupted by a belligerent Beau intent on retrieving her message ball, resulting in the three of them accidentally freeing the beetles. Another flourish of adaptation that would be extremely tricky in tabletop play; for all we can try to separate ourselves from the characters we play, it’s tough to include an outright adversarial character relative to the rest of the table
The toad thus runs wild, firing off spines that seem to transform the spectators into leathery monsters
As they’ve effectively telegraphed all episode, Jester being in danger gives Fjord the courage needed to take a stand
Terrific Jester cut for her first use of that signature lollypop Spiritual Weapon. Jester makes even murder look adorable
Incidentally, choosing unique forms for summoned objects is a great way to inject some personality into your combat. My own goblin cleric loves mushrooms, and thus her Spiritual Weapon (who she calls Mildred) is basically styled as one of those Dark Souls mushroom guys
Gustav is the next to turn, prompting Mollymauk to activate his nine-eyed nightmare form. Alright there, Sasuke
As ever, Caleb’s component and rune-based magic is a dramatic treat. His style is basically the only compelling argument I’ve seen for the existence of DnD’s magical components system
Thus our party concludes their tragically characteristic first meeting, arrested by the town guards for whatever role they might have played in this impromptu massacre
And Done
With that, we’re finally something resembling a party, albeit mostly a party of people who actively dislike each other. But that’s great! Opening with an antagonistic, forced bond is an excellent way to make these characters really bounce off each other, revealing their personal motivations and perhaps maybe coming to respect each other’s feelings along the way. The Mighty Nein’s dramatic adaptive revisions have at last brought us to the tabletop campaign’s opening, blessed with a much clearer understanding of their motivations, as well as a variety of narrative hooks driving them forward. And now, of course, comes the tricky part – having assembled these fractious characters, can the narrative concoct a convincing reason for them to stay assembled? I suppose we’ll tackle that perennial DM dilemma next episode!
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