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• Critical Role GM Brennan Lee Mulligan says Jurassic Park played a role in Campaign 4's opening moments

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We all know that Critical Role Campaign 4 owes a lot to GM Brennan Lee Mulligan's love of orcs. He said as much recently - you may even remember us reporting on it. But apparently those Aragorn-slayed baddies aren't the only kind of cinematic monster to play a part in shaping the webseries' latest campaign. According to Mulligan himself, dinosaurs also factored into the matter.

Specifically, the kind from that Jurassic Park nobody will stop returning to.

The topic game up during an interview Mulligan did (alongside castmates Marisha Ray and Luis Carazo) with Paste Magazine, published December 4. During the discussion, Mulligan was asked to explain the already-iconic opening to Critical Role Campaign 4, a "cold open" that started with just Liam O'Brien's Halandil Fang and one unspeakably important NPC... who was just about to be executed.

"Look," began Mulligan, "I will have a deep and profound love for 'We all meet in a tavern!' for as long as I live. But this campaign is happening on a channel that has done the best possible versions of 'We all meet in a tavern!' that have ever been done or will ever be done. So in part, I was just trying to figure out 'What can I bring that’s not already been done?'"

Popping in here to say: in case you're unfamiliar, Mulligan is referring to one of the most popular ways to begin a Dungeons & Dragons campaign (or hell, any fantasy TTRPG), which is to have all the characters meeting in one location. And since it is fantasy, after all, that location is often a tavern.

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"I also really believe there’s a benefit in starting with very high stakes," Mulligan said, "The example I always use—that I remember was on the EXU: Calamity intro document that I gave to Marisha and Luis and our other Calamity players—is Jurassic Park. There’s a whole hour of the movie where the T-Rex isn’t out of the paddock and dinosaurs aren’t attacking, but they start the movie on a velociraptor killing a guy, right?"

Huh. You know, I guess I've never thought of it that way. For me, the opening moments of Jurassic Park usually begin with me staring worriedly at the Google results for "Sam NeiLl Laura Dern age difference."

"So I think there’s something to be said," Mulligan wrapped, "For, like, 'We’re introducing a new world and our players are going to have total free rein to go where they want, so let’s start with what the stakes of the world are.' Opening with this war hero of the rebellion, who we understand to be a complicated but largely good guy, and seeing him killed right out of the gate—and then seeing everyone in his life at the funeral—that’s a kind of automatic investment."

Fair enough, Brennan, although we have to admit that the roles are kind of flipped in the opening of Jurassic Park. I mean, aren't we all kind of rooting for the velociraptor in that scene? They put her in a cage! 

Critical Role Campaign 4 is streaming now on the group's Beacon, YouTube, and Twitch channels.

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From the lands of Exandria to your very own smartscreens, Popverse has everything you need to know about the TTRPG phenomenon that is Critical Role. Here you'll find:

• Popverse's Critical Role watch order
• An interview with GM Brennan Lee Mulligan
• The cast's appearance at C2E2 '25

...and more. Roll initiative, player. Adventure awaits.