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Critical Role's Aabria Iyengar wants to calm your Campaign 4 fears over being overwhelmed by a "sheer tonnage of extraordinarily hot PCs"

Iyengar, who transforms into Thaisha Lloy for Critical Role's biggest campaign yet, understands that you're scared about the next adventure being simply too sexy. But being slightly scared of art, she says, is a great thing

News by Grant DeArmitt, Staff Writer

Published on Thu Sep 25 2025

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Critical Role Campaign 4 will host the largest number of player characters in a campaign yet, made possible by its West Marches style of storytelling. (Details on what that means here.) Recently, Popverse was able to sit down with some of the cast (Laura Bailey, Robbie Daymond, Matthew Mercer, Aabria Iyengar, Marisha Ray, Alexander Ward, and Sam Riegel in particular) to get details on how that will affect fan experience in the next adventure, and we couldn't think of a better person to get answers from than Aabria Iyengar.

In case you don't know, Iyengar is one of the biggest names in the arena of TTRPG liveplay, having GM'd for Dimension 20, been a part of Worlds Beyond Number, and guest-run stories in The Adventure Zone (not to mention her role as frequent star of Dropout TV programs). So when it comes to how fans will experience the upcoming, absolutely massive game, few people would have a better idea than the frequent GM (and massive TTRPG nerd herself!).

"I think the great benefit here," began Iyengar, "Is that it is an opening of the scope - in the same way that it is that the original CR Founders opened up their table to let all of us new kids hang out. [...] There's something about the ambition of having a brand new world so people can jump in, feet-first, and not feel beholden to years of beautiful lore."

"West Marches," continued the Dimension 20 GM, "Allows you to play a lot of 'What could happen here?' and 'What could we follow?,' because we can always play with table balance and table formula and pursue what the characters care about. I think this is just ambitious in the right way. I think if you're not trying to make art that scares you in it's scope a little bit, then you're not you're not pushing yourself."

"I know it's a lot for Critters to digest," Iyengar concluded, "And I know there is some fear for being overwhelmed by the sheer tonnage of extraordinarily hot PCs running around in the world. But I think it's ambitious in all the right ways [...] amd all the people here are the best of the best. It's 14 dope storytellers getting let loose on a brand new playground. It's going to be so fun. it already is."

What an incredible sentiment to end with, Aabria - we couldn't agree more that where art is scariest, sometimes is where it's most beautiful. That said, we're still not gonna Google "Campaign 4 fan art" without SafeSearch on.

Critical Role's Campaign 4 debuts on October 2 on Critical Role's Beacon, YouTube, and Twitch channels.

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Grant DeArmitt: Grant DeArmitt (he/him) likes horror, comics, and the unholy union of the two. In the past, and despite their better judgment, he has written for Nightmare on Film Street and Newsarama. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner, Kingsley, and corgi, Legs.