How to Score a Massive Hit

is the first episode of Critical Role that was separated from their main campaign by Geek & Sundry. Scheduled during San Diego Comic-Con 2015 as part of the Nerdist Conival, this panel starred the cast of Critical Role at PetCo Park from 4:00–5:00pm PDT on Thursday, July 9th, 2015.

Introductions

 * Taliesin Jaffe got into roleplaying in high school, playing Vampire the Masquerade, GURPs, Rifts, and Cyberpunk in the early 90s and late 80s. A while later, Taliesin played in "a completely different game" with Matt and a few friends of theirs for about a year and a half. Then he got invited into the game for Liam's birthday that would become Critical Role, and "it has ruined him for every other game he could possibly want to play".
 * Marisha Ray: Matthew Mercer got her into tabletop roleplaying and DMed her first game six or seven years ago. She was also a part of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer tabletop RPG, playing a pyromancer.
 * Liam O'Brien played RPGs when he was younger and, learning this, his professional colleague Matt kept offering to DM for him. When Liam and Sam Riegel were doing their podcast All Work No Play, they took up Matt's offer and invited several friends to join them. This grew into what became Critical Role.
 * Ashley Johnson had never played TTRPGs before. She learned of their campaign during Troy Baker's birthday party.
 * Travis Willingham had also never played TTRPGs before Critical Role. He was 20 minutes late for the game and terrified hearing everyone doing accents at the table. He improvised Grog's race, class, name, and occupation (fine maker of leather boots) on the spot.
 * Orion Acaba had never played TTRPGs before Critical Role.
 * Taliesin designed the red t-shirts with Critical Role logo.

Q&A
For Orion: "When you wanted that thing from Scanlan, how long did it take you to think that up, to do that on that board?"

From Dani Carr: "How did you all come up with your names individually?"
 * Ashley "had been trying to put together a webseries ages ago that was basically a post-zombie apocalypse type of thing" with her character named Pike, which she liked. She does not remembers where her Trickfoot surname came from.
 * Laura: Vex is her go-to-name when she creating a character for RPGs. She also thought that apostroph is the nessesary part of the name for elves, so she added one.
 * Laura did matching names with Liam's character Vax, because he accidantaly took both the rogue subclass and hal-elf race, which Laura wanted to pick. This turn of events gave her the idea to make her and Liam's characters twins.
 * Several years later since the campaign begining, most of the cast, including Liam, still cannot get their names right. To create an association between the name and the character, Marisha uses stubby postfix for Vax's name, because this is what he does as a rogue.
 * For her character, Marisha wanted a name name with meaning. As a druid connected with air elements, she searched for elvish word meaning "air", originally finding "Quenya", but Marisha "switched it and renamed it and got Keyleth.
 * Taliesin: The origin of the names has three parts. "One of them is the name of a character he played as a child actor (?). The other section of it is the name of an anime character from Legend Of The Galactic Heroes (von Musel). And the third chunk of it is actually a friend of Taliesin, who he will not name, but who has the greatest name on earth (he's 80s years old and lives in Italy)."
 * Travis wanted a simple name for his simple barbarian, which was inspired by an alcogolic beverage from Monkey Island. Then Matt came with the surname, because Grog "got possessed or something at one point".
 * Orion: His first name was inspired by Tiberius Caesar because they both share a political occupation and the last, Stormwind, was a name of a location from Elder Scrolls Online.

"What each character's most heroic moment was. On the show, any time, including the pre-stream game?"
 * Fighting their first umber hulk in Crystalfen Caverns, there was an about 170-foot drop into a lake that had an island in the center and Grog, trying to grab it and throw it through the hole that dropped into the giant cavern, was knocked off instead. He fell, took enough damage to put him unconscious and the umber hulk then was pushed out after him via Tiberius, leaving vulnerable Grog with a hungry beast. Tiberius decides he's going to leap of faith out after him and cast Feather Fall. The spell had "a really hard concentration check", and if he failed, he'd have probably died. "He needed a 14 on a d20, and he rolled exactly a 14, cast Feather Fall, landed, and managed to stop the umber hulk in time to let the rest of the party come down via rope."
 * Vex deaing a killing blow on Juurezel for Pike.
 * When Pike died, Keyleth wildshaped into an eagle and brought her to the temple for resurrection.
 * Taliesin quite proud of the Carpet of Flying story.
 * Grog's most heroic moment was "when giant crushed his cask of ale and he avenged it by headbutting them in the face".
 * Vax's most intense moment was sneaking into the mind flayer's/duergar's camp in.

'''"How are you guys enjoying your time here in San Diego or, more specifically, at Comic-Con?" Most shocking cosplay you've seen, or a cosplay?'''
 * "They've been here the whole time" and therefore haven't seen any cosplay. The best cosplay Matt have seen at Comic-Con was a Mass Effect group from a couple years ago. One of them waas dressed as Urdnot Wrex who had a functional animatronic face. Taliesin saw a Hodor cosplay with a box of Raisin Bran on his back.

For Matt: "I had problems with this in previous campaigns as a player and now as a DM with six new players. How do you keep battle going when players take time to roll? How can you encourage people to keep a flow going so at the end of the game you're like, "That was epic!" instead of "That was math?"
 * Smaller quantity of modifiers can reduce the amount of math. DM's energy sets the rhythm for the battle with every player following their intensity or sluggishness. Battle music also helps. Make sure that players put their energy into the game, preparing their turns, making quick decisions, and following the rapid timing of the battle as far as they can.

"Was there ever a time when you die in Matt's game where you're afraid that this is going to be the death of the character and they're not going to get revived this time?"

"Will you be at San Diego Comic-Con next year?"