Critical Role is a bunch of voice actors who are geeks (said affectionally and consider that these are the people who were in the acting club and comedy sports back in high school... they're still geeks today) and get together and play D&D.
> In March, the folks behind the “Dungeons and Dragons” webseries launched a Kickstarter campaign to create an animated special based on its first campaign. Within an hour of its launch, it raised more than $1 million in funding.
And you can see that there is a lot of money there... but there's also a "these people have a sizable following and even those who are second hand consumers of D&D and don't sit down at a table are now aware of what is trying to be done to it."
Critical Role is a bunch of voice actors who are geeks (said affectionally and consider that these are the people who were in the acting club and comedy sports back in high school... they're still geeks today) and get together and play D&D.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Role - click the links to the cast and then look at the filmography. And they're fairly dedicated to playing ( https://youtu.be/Ou-0Lj-gOt8 )
They filmed/streamed their sessions and that has brought in a good chunk of money. They did a "let's try a kickstarter for doing it as an actual animation series" and had a $750k goal... and got $11M. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/criticalrole/critical-r... // https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/19/critical-role-vox-machina-ki...
> In March, the folks behind the “Dungeons and Dragons” webseries launched a Kickstarter campaign to create an animated special based on its first campaign. Within an hour of its launch, it raised more than $1 million in funding.
This is the reaction video to that first day on kickstarter - https://youtu.be/oAF2ZNcYBok
And it got made... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Vox_Machina
And renewed for a second season... and a third season...
https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Vox-Machina-Season-Trailer/dp/...
And you can see that there is a lot of money there... but there's also a "these people have a sizable following and even those who are second hand consumers of D&D and don't sit down at a table are now aware of what is trying to be done to it."