Critical Role team talks bringing D&D to the screen with The Legend of Vox Machina

Translating a podcast into a TV show is no easy task — especially when that podcast runs for hundreds of hours. So when the team behind Critical Role, the popular Dungeons & Dragons podcast and livestream, set out to adapt their first campaign into the animated series The Legend of Vox Machina, they had to figure out what elements of their voluminous backlog were absolute musts to feature on screen.

As actor Sam Riegel (who plays the charismatic gnome bard Scanlan Shorthalt) recalled during EW's panel discussion with the Critical Role crew for this year's SCAD TVfest, they first had to revisit their original D&D campaign.

"It's been years since we've done it, so we all had to rewatch/relisten to the original campaign to remember what happened, because it's hundreds and hundreds of hours of content that we made together," Riegel said. "We knew we needed to boil that way way down, so all of us went through and did the greatest hits. We all picked a few moments from the campaign and were like, 'This has to be in there.' We wrote down a list, and that list was the starting-point outline for what the show was going to be, this list of epic moments we wanted to revisit in some way. A lot of stuff didn't make it onto the show, but we at least wanted to preserve a piece of magic that made our show in the first place."

What's interesting is that the adaptation process didn't just involve subtracting material, but also adding some. Ashley Johnson (who plays the gnome cleric Pike Trickfoot) was absent from the for a stretch of the original campaign and missed out on some iconic moments. In the animated show, viewers now get to see what Pike was up to during her separation from the group.

"We've been able to figure out a story for Pike that represents that time away but also tells a divided story line so that there are multiple things happening at the same time," says Travis Willingham, who plays the goliath barbarian Grog Strongjaw. "We took it as an opportunity to improve the story, and build it out more, and flesh it out and give her stuff to work with."

Watch the video above for more from the Critical Role team. The full first season The Legend of Vox Machina is available to stream now on Amazon Prime Video.

Related content:

• How a scrappy Dungeons & Dragons game night evolved into an R-rated animated series
• The Legend of Vox Machina first look assembles Critical Role D&D crew in animated form
• The Legend of Vox Machina crew squabble in exclusive clip as show gets new premiere date