In 2023, Critical Role Productions signed a first-look film and television deal with Amazon Studios, and in 2024, they launched a boutique subscription streaming service called Beacon.

[3][4][5] To streamline the game's mechanics for the show, its characters were converted from Pathfinder to Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition before the web series began airing on March 12, 2015.

[8][9] The company's second show, Talks Machina, premiered on Geek & Sundry and Alpha, Legendary Digital Networks' subscription streaming service, in 2016.

[10][11] In June 2018, Critical Role launched its own Twitch and YouTube channels, with cast member Marisha Ray announced as the creative director of the franchise.

[31][32] In September 2019, Critical Role announced that it had negotiated licensing agreements with Funko, McFarlane Toys, Penguin Random House, and Ripple Junction to produce merchandise such as apparel and collectibles.

[35] Following a strong negative response from some fans,[36][37] the Critical Role team removed the VOD,[38][37] and announced via Twitter that they had donated their profits from the sponsorship.

[36][39] Shelly Jones, in an essay in the book Watch Us Roll (2021), speculated that the decision may have been made by the show's development team to deflect criticism about the "failed experiment".

[50][51][52] BBC News commented that this list of payments is unlikely to account for tax paid on income, and observed that many streamers featured in the leak are media operations in and of themselves with associated employees and expenses, meaning that the numbers may not represent actual “take-home pay”.

[53] In January 2023, it was announced that Critical Role Productions had signed a first-look deal with Amazon Studios to create film and television series.

[54] In March 2023, Metapigeon announced that it had purchased the space-western science fiction podcast Midst; this was the first time that Critical Role had acquired external intellectual property.

[68][78] In an essay on live-streamed tabletop RPGs, Friedman noted that "fans [of Critical Role] often recommend that a listener supplement their experience with strategic viewing of notable visual moments".

It follows a group of heroes from the Age of Arcanum who attempt to prevent the Calamity, and are led by Brennan Lee Mulligan as the Dungeon Master.

It was created by Taliesin Jaffe and Chris Lockey, with Steve Failows and Maxwell James as producers, and Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall as the game's lead designers and writers.

The cast of the first three-episode story arc was composed of Laura Bailey, Ashley Johnson, Anjali Bhimani, and Robbie Daymond, with Matthew Mercer as the game master.

[113][114][115] The cast of the second three-episode story arc was composed of Travis Willingham, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Zehra Fazal, Luis Carazo, and Marisha Ray, with Starke as the game master.

[68][78][83] Jody Macgregor of PC Gamer highlighted the length of the individual episodes as a barrier to entry to finishing Critical Role's campaigns.

A third season was scheduled to premiere on August 5, 2020,[128][129] but remained in limbo after the production went on hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020;[130] Foster left the company in 2021.

[139] In preparation for a Valentine's Day one-shot, an episode of Handbooker Helper explaining the basics of the Monsterhearts 2 role-playing game was released February 6, 2020.

[139][69][141] Midst was a semi-improvised space-western audio drama focused on three protagonists, described as "a crotchety outlaw, a struggling cultist and a diabolical bastard – as their paths intersect in unexpected ways".

Cheryl Teh of Business Insider highlighted that Moonward featured "just pure roleplay and acting" in comparison to other shows that had a stricter ruleset.

[33][171] In March 2020, CNBC reported that since its 2018 separation from Geek & Sundry, Critical Role Productions had significantly expanded, and amassed more than 120 million views on YouTube and many subscribers.

[14] Emily Friedman, in the book Roleplaying Games in the Digital Age: Essays on Transmedia Storytelling, Tabletop RPGs and Fandom (2021), highlighted Talks Machina for its "informal, even chaotic space" and how it reveals "additional narrative details".

Friedman called it "a mediated space where fans are names and their labor showcased through the intermediaries of Foster and Carr, who are not players but viewers of the show, and who have become beloved in their own right.

[173] Rowan Zeoli of Rascal noted how they treated their "experimental production as a legitimate business early on" and praised the team's pre-emptive legal protections.

[175] Academic Jan Švelch wrote that an analysis of the company's sponsorships "highlights the complexity of the mediatization process" and stated that both physical and digital gaming producers saw the show as an effective advertising channel.

[176]: 1671  He commented that Critical Role was now "an outlier in the space of actual play where merchandising and product licensing are otherwise considered negligible source[s] of revenue".

[186][183] ICv2 speculated that the company "likely needed to walk a fine line between not criticizing one of their biggest sponsors (WotC/D&D Beyond) while, at the same time, quelling their fan base's simmering outrage".

[183] In the ComicBook.com podcast The Character Sheet, Christian Hoffer speculated that Critical Role could be under contract to use the 5th edition system for the remainder of its third campaign, and that there may be "non-disparity clauses" preventing them from speaking out against Hasbro, its subsidiaries, and its products.

[187] In an interview with Codega, Ray stated the importance of having "an environment that does allow these creators; independent, big, small, to create and make new things.

Ashley Johnson was named president of the organization, with Matthew Mercer, Eduardo Lopez, Rachel Romero, and Mark Koro serving as officers and board members.