Generation Nord

is the 49th one-shot. It takes place in the Nordverse, a narrative developed through series of ad sketches for NordVPN, which also sponsors this one-shot. The one-shot features Sam Riegel as Game Master with Laura Bailey, Aimee Carrero, Liam O'Brien, Christian Navarro, Lou Wilson, and a surprise special guest.

Player characters

 * Alex Peters, WYREWIZZARD
 * Fontaine Savoy, CompostGuru or UnseeingOracle
 * Lilith Ferrera, Jinxx
 * Lucas Dankworth, NerfWormGrim01011
 * Wrigley Rincon, Rigglemethis89

Returning
These characters previously appeared in a Nordverse sketch.
 * Agent Emmanuel Goldstein, director of the NSAA (played by Matthew Lillard)

New
These characters have not previously appeared in a Nordverse sketch, though they may have been mentioned.
 * Iris Nobode
 * Kyle Middlebroock, the Head of Security

Mentioned
Fictional characters:
 * Don Johnson, CEO of Johnson Corp
 * Maxwell, son of Kyle Middlebroock

Real people mentioned:
 * Bill Clinton
 * Julia Roberts
 * Kiefer Sutherland
 * Oliver Platt
 * William Baldwin

Behind the scenes
The one-shot uses a modified d20 system where the players instead roll a d8, to match the 8-bit aesthetic. Sam developed this 8-Bit System the night of filming and did not test it beforehand. At the beginning of the one-shot, he was not convinced that system was even balanced. The system was modified after the break to roll two d8s "as we're now in a 16-bit environment".

The laser maze encounter in the second half uses the Laser Maze logic game by ThinkFun. Sam learned how the play the game himself thirty minutes before filming started. The video game played was SnakeByte developed by Ferdie Swinkels (@FerdieQO), released onto Steam in 2022. The game has a near-identical name to another snake game Snake Byte, released in 1982.

Matthew Lillard played his character live, though the cast did not realize he was in the studio until the second half of the game. To keep this a secret from the cast, Matthew entered the building through the back door and had his own, separate dressing room.

The pixel artwork for the player characters were created by Justyna Rerak (@Justyna_Rerak). The stream graphics were created by Critical Role Productions' illustrator and designer Jordyn Torrence (@atjordyn), whose favorite detail was the Javascript look to the sponsorship card in the lower left.

Trivia

 * This one-shot is mentioned off-hand by Marisha Ray in ; while the guests joked about Criss Angel briefly appearing at the end of Campaign 3, she said that this would be a good cameo for this one-shot. The one-shot was announced about three hours before that 4-Sided Dive episode was broadcast.