Matthew Mercer, voice actor and primary Dungeon Master for the Critical Role Actual Play series, ran a special one-shot tabletop RPG campaign set in the world of Elden Ring, FromSoftware's dark fantasy action RPG. To emulate the tense, unforgiving combat and exploration gameplay of Elden Ring, Mercer heavily modified the rules of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, introducing new spells, abilities, and resources for his players to manage as they explored the Lands Between, encountered signature characters/enemies, and tried to "speed-run" through certain challenges with physics-breaking exploits.
This isn't the first time that Critical Role, the Actual Play tabletop gaming group famous for streaming long-running Dungeons & Dragons campaigns on Twitch and YouTube, has run one-shot sessions set in the worlds of tabletop fantasy video games. In 2017, Mathew Mercer ran a one-shot TTRPG adaptation of Middle Earth: Shadow of War, his players taking on the role of grimy, gritty Orcs and Trolls in the Dark Lord's army, while his 2020 one-shot of Doom: Eternal put players in the shoes of an eccentric group of demons sent on a one-way suicide mission against Samuel Hayden and the Doom Slayer. The Diablo one-shot, designed to commemorate the remaster of Blizzard's Diablo II, featured a dark and edgy party of adventurers who made fourth-wall-breaking comments about how every foe they killed dropped gold, while The Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood one-shot told the story of waiters, bartenders, chefs, and bouncers trying to run a classic fantasy RPG tavern and serve difficult customers.
Critical Role's most recent one-shot, Elden Ring: Oh Ye Of Little Faith, brought together a lively cast of actors, comedians, and show hosts to role-play a ragtime group of Tarnished wanderers seeking out fragments of the Elden Ring in the war-ravaged Lands Between. Critical Role veterans Sam Riegel and Marisha Ray portrayed Nihl the Bloody Wolf and Kara Gen the Warrior, respectively. Alexander Ward, an actor and stunt performer who took part in the Vampire: The Masquerade Actual Play series LA By Night, role-played as an Enchanted Knight called Twin-Soul Marcus. Krystina Arielle, host of the Star Wars: The High Republic Show web series, portrayed an Incantation-wielding Elden Ring Prophet named Mariah Van Der Ness who is protected by Briggida, an axe-wielding Hero role-played by Brennan Lee Mulligan, a College Humor alumni, and host of the Dimension 20 Actual Play series.
Critical Role's Elden Ring One-Shot Added Characterization To Classes
Each of the player characters in Critical Role's Elden Ring: Oh Ye Of Little Faith one-shot were modeled after the starting classes players can select at the start of an Elden Ring playthrough - specifically, the starting classes available in the Elden Ring Network Test from the previous year, which went on to inspire several armor sets in the game. The descriptions for the outfits, weapons, and spells of Elden Ring's starting classes each paint a general picture of their origin stories - the Prophet was an oracle exiled for heretical visions, the Enchanted Knight a spell-casting warrior who hunted down rogue Sorcerers, etc. The unique roleplaying approaches and whimsical humor of each player, however, gave these Elden Ring starting classes a lot more personality.
Krystina Arielle's Prophetess character was overly serious and recites prophecies that are dramatic statements of the obvious ("It once existed, and now it does not"). Brennan Lee Mulligan's Hero character, meanwhile, leaned fully into the "grimy barbarian aesthetic," being a short, stocky axe-wielding hellion who smeared themselves with filth to hide, breathed the dragon-fire of Elden Ring's Agheel, and earnestly treated everything her "prophetess" said as the height of wisdom.
Critical Role's Elden Ring Hack Added Complexity To D&D 5e Combat
Combat in the Elden Ring video game, just like in Dark Souls and Demon's Souls, is an unstable equilibrium of where players expend stamina to attack their foes, retain just enough stamina to block or dodge attacks, then distance themselves from their foe's attacks and wait for their stamina to recharge. To recreate this risk vs. reward dynamic in his tabletop one-shot, Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer hacked the rules of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, adding a pool of Stamina Points and Focus Points to his player's character sheets.
During combat in Critical Role's one-shot session of Elden Ring: Oh Ye Of Little Faith, player spent points of Stamina during their turn to make one or more attacks with their weapons - attacks mechanically resolved by rolling a D20, adding attack bonuses, and trying to overcome the target's armor class. Outside of a player's turn, the rules for resolving enemy attacks changed considerably from the D&D 5e template; instead of rolling dice for enemy attacks, Mercer would instead declare a flat amount of damage players would need to counter by spending Stamina and making a roll to Dodge or to Block; Blocking was a lower-risk option for reducing damage, with natural twenties functioning as the foe-staggering parries of the Elden Ring video game, while Dodging was an all-or-nothing maneuver that could completely negate damage if players rolled high enough.
Critical Role's Elden Ring One-Shot Cast Reinterpreted Lore
Starting with Demon's Souls and culminating with the studio's most recent release, Elden Ring, every FromSoftware-made "Soulslike" RPG has delivered its plots to players through clues and hints scattered through their game worlds. Items with eerie descriptions, dialogue from NPCs with biased perspectives, statues, paintings, and murals depicting ancient events all inform the stories of various Soulsborne games, and Elden Ring is no exception. Because of this, it's possible for players who have been exploring the Lands Between to interpret the George R.R. Martin-derived dark fantasy lore of Elden Ring in distinct, mutually contradictory ways, reaching their own conclusions about what happened in the game's backstory and which NPCs (if any) are on the side of good.
Both the players and the Dungeon Master of the Elden Ring: Oh Ye Of Little Faith one-shot wound up creating their own interpretations of Elden Ring's lore purely through the act of roleplaying and introducing their own ideas to the game setting. Critical Role Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer created a brand new NPC for his campaign - a friendly giant fire golem named Calvis who asks the Tarnished adventuring party for help finding his missing arms. Sam Riegel's own character, Nihl the Bloody Wolf, briefly monologued about having a pet cat they were forced to leave behind after being exiled from Elden Ring's Lands Between; when the adventuring party entered Stormveil Castle, they encountered Nihl's old pet, grown into a massive and very angry lion. On a more humorous note, players of the one-shot questioned the metaphysics of the Spectral Steeds players can summon in the Elden Ring video game proper, wondering aloud if the horses could excrete "ghost poop" while also stacking their Spectral Steeds on top of each other to form a makeshift ladder.
Source: YouTube/Critical Role