Adapting an impossible amount of content into a series (The Legend of Vox Machina)

What do you do if you have a crazy amount of material that you need to adapt into a medium with a limited amount of time and space? This is a question that all artists have had to face at some point. Whether it's adapting books like Wicked or Les Miserables into a two act musical, or condensing a book series like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games into feature length films, some content will inevitably be sacrificed or even changed to fit within a new medium.

But what if you are faced with this dilemma on a bigger scale? This is what Critical Role had to face when adapting their first campaign to the screen. For a bit more context for those of you who may be unfamiliar CR, they are a group of prolific voice actors who play Dungeons and Dragons, a tabletop roleplaying game that often involves sessions over 4 hours long full of complicated lore that each player brings to a table. You can imagine it as a fantasy world building game, where each player contributes to the story and the battles or encounters that may occur along the way.

Their first campaign has over 115 episodes, each over 3 hours long. This doesn't count the hundreds of hours of playtime before they started streaming it on Twitch. So you can imagine that when they sat down to write a script for their animated show, they had a massive task ahead of them. How do you condense literal years worth of complex storytelling with hundreds of characters and locations into a 3 season (now 4 as they've been renewed!) show?

This article could probably be more accurately titled "I'm a huge Critical Role fan and need an excuse to rant about their animated series", but I digress. 'The Legend of Vox Machina' is a beautiful demonstration of how to appeal to long-term fans of a show, who are invested in every nook and cranny of lore, alongside people who might have just spotted it scrolling through Prime Video.

What is 'The Legend of Vox Machina' (LVM)?

First, it's probably important to know a bit of context. LVM tells the story of an adventuring team of 7, who go across the land completing quests and being heroes. Within this story is are complex relationships, competing motivations and diverse backstories that make each character unique and compelling.

Initially, CR just wanted to kickstart a 20 minute animated short to celebrate their campaign and the fans they garnered throughout the series. However, they ended up breaking the record for the most successful fundraiser for a film or TV project, raising over $11 million rather than their initial $750 000 goal. This meant that they suddenly had greater space and freedom to explore more of their story over 10 episodes rather than a short.

There are now three full seasons available to stream on Prime, with another on the way. Within the span of these episodes, they have been able to essentially cover almost all of their 115 DnD sessions, in a manner that I found enjoyable, even knowing all the plot, but also fresh and engaging in the moments it chose to diverge from the original story. Having recently completed a rewatch of all three seasons, with the 3rd having been released this year, I wanted to take the time to reflect on why this series felt so successful, and why, at least to me, it didn't feel like it fell flat in any significant manner like some of the other adaptations I had seen.

Why did LVM work?

I think the first trait of the show, which is shared by many other adaptations like it, is that it doesn't have a fear of losing aspects of the plot, even those that would have made good fanservice. I remember the Walking Dead fandom having heated debates about how Daryl Dixon essentially replaced the original protagonist Rick Grimes in the show. And fanservice isn't necessarily a bad thing. Having a character repeat a line from a previous iteration of the series, even if they never said that, can be a fun detail for longterm fans. LVM certainly doesn't shy away from it, even adding a meta scene where a bunch of guards are playing DnD.

However, LVM had a lot more weight to shed, and it definitely did so. An entire arc of the original campaign was cut in the interest of time, and while walking into the show I was surprised to see it completely absent, it did make a lot more sense for the flow of the show. Certain scenes were modified, like the resurrection of certain characters, which would have felt unnatural if it occurred in the show. I think this is a nice example of good adaptation, as while in the campaign the resurrections that occurred when a character died involved a ritual and objects that could sometimes take over an hour to complete and had a high risk of failure based on dice rolls, this can't be communicated in the same way on screen, as seeing a character resurrect without a cost removes the stakes of the plot. This is why [spoilers to the end of this paragraph], Vex's resurrection with Vax offering up his life to the Raven Queen fit perfectly in the show, as it added tension over whether Vax would die during the party's adventure, but Percy's resurrection wouldn't have (which is why I really liked this moment being at the end of the season).

Another trait is how responsive the story became to its medium. Not only does an animated series mean there is a need to condense complex plot into short snappy episodes, but it also introduces a whole new realm of possibility. How much do you actually want animated? What scenes and moments fit well into an animation?

I personally adored the art style of the show, with the animation feeling very smooth and natural. But more importantly, it had a level of consistency that I think made the show feel more digestible. The world of Exandria, where the show is set, is incredibly complicated, even for viewers of the original series. I remember having to google an NPC's name every couple of minutes just to make sure I was following on properly with the campaign. But LVM manages to cut a lot of the fluff, keeping the colour and detail of certain character's magic/abilities the same, and maintaining an aesthetic that can easily distinguish between 'evil' and 'good' for lack of a better term. To an extent, it felt a lot like an anime in how even when new characters were introduced, their place in the story and their alignment could be gleaned pretty easily, which I thought was a fantastic point of accessibility for those who weren't as deep in the lore as longtime CR viewers.

A final trait is the nice balance in tone. LVM is thankfully more of an 'adult' show, in how it deals with heavy themes and depicts animated violence quite graphically at times, which I thought was perfect for the campaign. The original campaign was mature in its content, and I'm happy it wasn't lost in the animated show at all. The humour and interactions between characters felt natural, and when they weren't heavily based on an existing interaction, they still felt like something the members of CR would have roleplayed and improvised in the actual campaign, probably thanks a lot to the fact that all members of CR acted as producers.

I know some critics felt like LVM doesn't always get that balance right, and I think that is true. But the show feels like a love letter to the campaign and its fans in how genuine it feels. The humour can be crass and crude, but this is never at the cost of meaningful character interactions. I personally thought seasons 2 and 3 were when the show really hit its stride, probably due to the fact that they could write and animate with the knowledge they had more time to tell the story, and there are plenty of heartfelt moments that I keep returning to watch.

Final Thoughts

It's hard to fully communicate how well this show does without spoiling it, and I think it is definitely worth a watch. It balances being a fantasy tale with a level of humanity that reflects on the story's origins as a DnD campaign - neither a purposefully dramatic anime nor a complex story of political intrigue like Game of Thrones. I personally love it as an example of good adaptation, how you can be faithful to all the flavour and energy of the original source material while experimenting with new plot avenues and ways of advancing the story.

Is it perfect? No, but I think that's precisely what makes it great because it doesn't try to be. It feels like a passion project, and the energy of the show is incredibly infectious. So, if you haven't already, give it a watch! Another show based on CR's second campaign 'The Mighty Nein' is currently in the works, so if what you've read or seen appeals to you, keep an eye out for that as well.