Critical Role campaign 4 is underway, and the series’ original DM Matt Mercer had an important lesson for his successor, Brennan Lee Mulligan, which he imparted in the most tonally-appropriate way I can imagine.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Mulligan revealed that at the outset of Critical Role’s fourth campaign, which began officially last week, Mercer gave him a gift. “He gave me two swords, full swords with scabbards – awesome, beautiful blades forged by whom I do not know.”
Those two swords – “given to me by the Smith of Exandria, the All-Hammer himself” Mulligan explains, referencing the blacksmith God Moradin from previous Critical Role campaigns – are inscribed with their names. “The first one is called Compartmentalization. The second one is called Dissociation.”
If those sound like slightly strange names for swords, it’s because they’re intended to impart an important message. In our interview with Mercer and Mulligan back in March, the former discussed the need to sometimes distance themselves from the court of public opinion. Mulligan describes the idea of the “digital corona,” a term borrowed from his friend, performance artist Tigre Bailando, who died in 2022. It’s intended to describe the version of himself that Mulligan is prepared to share with his audience – a difficult balancing act, especially given that he says, “I am myself in the shows that I do.”
Mercer’s gift, then, serves as a reminder to be wary of the parasocial relationships that viewers can develop with their favorite creators, especially over the course of projects like years-long actual-play D&D campaigns (Campaign 3 ran for 121 episodes across more than three years, and Campaigns 1 and 2 totalled 460 and 564 hours, respectively). Mulligan is less wary of that parasociality than Mercer, who admits he “doesn’t like being perceived,” appears to be, but there’s clearly an important lesson to be imparted by the swords. Happily, it was well-received: “I [told Mercer], ‘I cannot tell you how much this means’,” Mulligan explains. “He’s just the sweetest guy of all, man. He’s the best.”
