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The episode opened with the attempted assassination of one Wicander Halovar. Two hours later, they had successfully completed the first round. This isn't because anyone at the table is bad at playing D&D, it's because there were a ton of moving parts:

A Hold Person spell, two assassins with three attacks each, a Command spell from Wic's father to force him to accept his fate, guards who weren't in on the scheme rushing in to protect him, his mother desperately trying to stop it all from happening, his little brother being held back, Tyranny sprinting down the streets of Dol-Makjar to get to the theatre, everyone else barrelling through the stands: Utter chaos.

It's an incredibly difficult thing to do, stacking the deck so thoroughly against one player. On the one hand, you want to do justice to the world everyone's playing in—Wicander messed it up with his wannabe religious dictator grandma, so she decided to have him bumped off. But on the other hand, Wic simply getting instagibbed wouldn't make for a good game.

Even still, the deck was toppling high. Hold Person grants auto-crits to melee attacks and requires a Wisdom saving throw, and Wic has a whopping zero for an ability modifier. What's more, the person casting it clung tight onto concentration, and was vanishing into the crowd. And god, was it close. On his final death save, a bardic inspiration that was a mere one short on the die spelled the end for Wicander Halovar.

Here's where some consternation from the more diehard rules lawyers of the fanbase comes in—particularly those who want the game to be more brutal: Brennan, seeing this unfold, decided to give Sam Riegel a devil's bargain. Make one last save with disadvantage, or release Tyranny from her bondage to his evil family.

If he made the save—which is a roughly 30% chance at disadvantage, since he needed both dice to be a 10 or higher—he'd be able to hold onto his life. If he didn't make that save? He'd die anyway, and Tyranny would be doomed. Or he could go quietly into that good night and release Tyranny for his sacrifice. For some, this scans as going easy, to which I say: Phooey. A few things!

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• A 70% chance of the absolute worst-case scenario cannot, in a sane mind, be considered "going easy" on someone.
• Riegel was, understandably (everyone was stressed) under a lot of pressure to go against his first instinct, which was to just pop the shield spell. Which would've saved him from the attack that put him a single save away from death to begin with.
• It kinda sucks to spend a multi-hour combat just making saving throws while fearing for your character's life.

Anyway, In a moment that will live forever in my memory, Riegel took a moment to look at his dice tray while his panicking, stress-ulcer suffering table flurried around him to look for a way to help, and dropped two dice into the tray. A 12 and a 13: A success.

When this happened, I made a noise.

I can't quite put the noise into words—I wish I had recorded it—but it was not a noise I had made before. It was something between a laugh and a yell. I sort of went "HAAA!" The emphasis on the H was gummy and flimsy, like my primal ape brain, buried in my amygdala, was trying to reach down my stem and out of my throat to throw a rock at my screen. I am considering calling this noise a portmanteau of laugh and yell. A lell. A laull? I'm working on it.

In case you've not started watching Critical Role so far—and are one of those spoiler-immune people, in which case, bless you—let me tell you: This campaign is worth watching, it is absolutely some of the best actual play out there right now, and it will likely produce similarly novel noises from your mouth hole, as well.

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.