Critical Role: Campaign 4's first 13-player ensemble episode is chaotic, messy, and gripping D&D—and I feel like I've just seen a magician pull a fully-formed rabbit out of a hat

A half-orc stands with a blindfold on before his execution - with a stylistically rendered city placed atop his crown in a bed of clouds in Critical Role Campaign 4.

I have to tell you something, and it might be a little scary—this entire world is actually a simulation designed to entertain me and my specific interests. I can draw no other conclusion from the fact that Critical Role: Campaign 4 is already everything I want out of an actual-play D&D game, and that my prior faith was well-placed.

Critical Role Campaign 4 is a 'planets aligned' moment—run by Dimension 20's usual host Brennan Lee Mulligan, starring Critical Role's typical DM as a player among 12 others, split into three groups, West Marches style. Any dungeon master will tell you that getting four players to glue in a tavern is hard enough, and I'd assumed we'd be spending this episode getting to know one of those groups, not all of them at the same goddamn time.