What do you get when you put a merry band of voice actors together each week to play Dungeons and Dragons on Twitch? You get one of the most watched role-playing game streams on the platform, Critical Role. And then you get Amazon Studios, working with Critical Role and Titmouse, to present an animated series based on the adventures from their first campaign, The Legend of Vox Machina.

Recently, Amazon Studios released a teaser for the new animated series, entitled “My Toothpick!” In the teaser, the heroes are faced with the dilemma of trying to get through a locked door. This is something that the party had problems with a fair few times during the course of the Vox Machina campaign. In fact, one Critter by the name of Ashley Allensworth made the following comment on Youtube in response to the teaser: “Inaccurate: they never open a door that quickly. I'm so glad they've introduced Vox Machina's greatest enemy this early.” You can watch the teaser below.

Fans of Critical Role, fondly referred to as Critters, are excited to see these characters on the screen. Originally, only planned to be a one shot animated special, the Critical Role team took to Kickstarter to fund the project. Critters responded quickly with their wallets, because they wanted to see their favorite heroes on the screen. The initial goal funded within hours, and the Critical Role team kept adding stretch goals and promising more episodes. When the campaign concluded having raised over $11.3 million, making it the most successful film or television project in Kickstarter history.

The Critical Role team intended to make one 10 episode season with that money, but Amazon Studios quickly took notice of just how popular the project was on Kickstarter and picked them up, immediately ordering a second season upon pickup. The news of the Amazon pickup made fans of Critical Role even more excited about the project, knowing they were going to get more of the show than they originally planned on.

Critical Role is a weekly Twitch and Youtube stream wherein a merry band of voiceover artists meet and play a campaign that lasts episodes over many years. The first campaign, Vox Machina, is what the new Amazon show is based upon. Since that campaign completed, they have played an entire second campaign, where the party was known as the Mighty Nein. They recently started their third campaign. The Critical Role cast is comprised of Matthew Mercer as the dungeon master, Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham, Liam O’Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, Talliesin Jaffe, and Ashley Johnson.

The members of Critical Role, much to the delight of their fans, are themselves voicing their characters in The Legend of Vox Machina. The party consists of Vex’ahlia Vessar (Bailey), Vax’ildan Vessar (O’Brien), Keyleth (Ray), Percival de Rollo (Jaffe), Scanlan Shorthalt (Riegel), Grog Strongjaw (Willingham), and Pike Trickfoot (Johnson). Since he did not have a regular character in the Critical Role show as the DM, Mercer will be voicing a character called Sylas Briarwood. Having the voice actors themselves playing their characters makes The Legend of Vox Machina even more special for Critical Role fans.

"Based on the beloved characters and adventures of Critical Role’s first livestreamed tabletop role-playing game campaign, The Legend of Vox Machina is an animated fantasy-adventure series for adults that follows Vox Machina, a band of misfits with a fondness for boozing and brawling," a description on Amazon Studios reads. "In a desperate attempt to pay off their mounting bar tab, these unlikely heroes end up on a quest to save the realm of Exandria from dark magical forces. From a sinister necromancer to a powerful curse, the group confronts a variety of obstacles that not only test their skills, but also the strength of their bond."

The Legend of Vox Machina premieres on January 28, 2022 in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide on Amazon Prime Video.