Critical Role: What's The Correct Order To Watch Everything?
For some, starting the Dungeons & Dragons web series "Critical Role" might seem just as daunting as starting something like the decades-long anime "One Piece" — since both series have several hundreds of hours of content to work through. Thus far, "Critical Role" has produced two full actual-play D&D campaigns, two smaller Anthology campaigns in the "Exandria Unlimited" series, and nearly 50 different "One-Shot" campaigns.
That's not to mention the ongoing third campaign, which has been running since October 2021 and is currently at 66 total episodes. And the first campaign was adapted as an Amazon Prime series, "The Legend of Vox Machina." As if that wasn't confusing enough, many of these projects take place at different points throughout the history of Exandria — the fantasy world in which most "Critical Role" content is based, which was created by dungeon master Matthew Mercer.
If a new fan wanted to watch all of the "Critical Role" content in chronological order, using the in-universe history of Exandria rather than the real-life release dates, then they would have to start with "Exandria Unlimited: Calamity." This adventure takes place during the Age of Arcanum and concerns the war of gods known as "The Calamity," with all events after this being denoted by the label "P.D." or "Post Divergence." Next up would be the Vecna-centric Campaign 1 (set over a millennia after the Age of Arcanum, in the year 810 P.D.), then Campaign 2, which picks up in 835 P.D. From there viewers can jump to the first "Exandria Unlimited" series, set in 842 P.D., before finally starting Campaign 3, which begins in 843 P.D.
Fans have assembled a much more in-depth chronology for the series' one-shots, comics, and novels
Though it's relatively simple to puzzle out exactly how to watch the larger "Critical Role" projects (since all take place at easily designated spots on the timeline), it's much harder to figure out when all of the one-shots occur.
To solve this problem, the "Critical Role" fanbase has assembled a Media Chronology page on the official "Critical Role" wiki to denote which one-shots take place during which campaigns. This list also clarifies which one-shots take place in between the campaigns, like the "Dalen's Closet" one-shot that occurs in the time between Campaign 1 and 2.
In addition to extensively sorting through all of the one-shots to figure out where they fall in the timeline, this fan-made chronology also factors in other forms of "Critical Role" media like comic books and novels. The page also identifies which one-shots don't have a specific spot in the timeline; particularly adventures of questionable canon, like "Stephen Colbert's D&D Adventure with Matthew Mercer." In any case, fans wishing to follow the full story in chronological order ought to look at this page, since it helps make sense of the dizzying number of one-shots and spin-offs that "Critical Role" has produced.