Brennan’s latest trick on Critical Role is actually one he’s done before—breaking with D&D tradition to let players choose when they level up, instead of just after they’ve taken a really good nap

Critical Role’s fourth campaign is a banger—and while I haven’t kept up with it as much as I’d like (it’s Christmas, you’ll have to forgive me for not having four extra hours to put aside every week) I have still been tuning in and keeping up with secondary news when I can.

Thus it reached me through the grapevine (some people call it Polygon) that Brennan Lee Mulligan was changing D&D forever, shaking things up, the madman, the maverick! He was doing so by, as the video below from the official Critical Role channel details, allowing players to level up at a time of their choosing—doing the pesky things like rolling for HP in advance, but otherwise letting them hold off until a satisfying moment occurred.

“We’re going to prepare for a level up, that, actually—we don’t know exactly when it will occur. That’s right, folks are home! We’re holding off levelling up to occur in game, not in a moment of my choosing, but in a moment indeed of each and every individual player’s choosing.”

As I sat there, watching Brennan pop open a cool and exciting new concept, I found myself going—wait a second, where have I heard this before?

There’s a slight wrinkle to it, given that the podcast I’m about to talk about has Brennan himself choosing when characters level up—but that’s also because it’s less of a live actual play and more of a structured, narrative-focused shindig—tightly edited with an original score and lots of table talk cut out. Even so, he’s done this trick before in Worlds Beyond Number.

Worlds Beyond Number, which I literally cannot recommend enough (and am presently taking any excuse to talk about) is a podcast DM’d by Brennan Lee Mulligan, featuring Dimension 20 guest star Erika Ishii, current Critical Role player Aabria Iyengar, and D20 regular Lou Wilson.

It’s been going on for two years and, as I said back when Brennan was announced as DM for this season of Critical Role, is complete proof that the man can handle what’s been presented to him with Campaign 4. Moreover, he also repeated this trick there.

Rather than level up characters after a conveniently-placed nap, Brennan waited until there were narratively significant moments—ones which I shan’t spoil here—for most of their level-ups. Again, this is a smidge different from what Brennan’s doing here, but the man already has a lot to manage with, you know. 13 players.

That’s 10 more players than Worlds Beyond Number. An increase of 430% in raw headcount. I’m not surprised he’s leaving the moment of levelling up to them. Still! It’s a cool technique I’m glad to see adopted—it’s always been a little weird that the whole party gets stronger at the same time, after all.

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