Despite preparation for April Fool’s Day, many Critical Role fans, blinded by excitement, failed their perception checks on Thursday and wound-up planning ill-fated trips to Critical Role Land. On the holiday befitting a rogue-ish trickster, the YouTube channel for the immensely popular actual play Dungeons & Dragons streaming series posted a “proof of concept video” that introduced fans of the show – known as Critters – to Critical Role Land, a theme park designed after the show’s first two campaigns.
As Critical Role’s clout has levelled up over the years, with their reach expanding beyond the table and into a blog, comics, novels, spin-off content, toys, an upcoming Amazon animated television series and even a successful non-profit organization. While this growth has been exponential, the leap into a full-fledged theme park struck most Critters as unlikely, especially considering that the video was posted on April Fool’s Day.
The Mary Sue catalogued some of their favorite pranks from this past April Fool’s Day, denoting that the best ones go over-the-top enough to signal that their claim’s fictitious but the “creativity behind it makes it feel like it’s worth engaging in.” The creativity behind Critical Role’s post, which saw artists Sung Jin Ahn and Arthur Loftis laying out the plans for a theme park split in half to accommodate elements from the series’ two Dungeons & Dragon‘s campaigns, certainly engaged fans on Thursday. While some were initially tricked by the prank, the consensus among fans who realized it was joke was that Critical Role Land was a place they’d desperately want to visit.
On social media, some Critters even encouraged the Critical Role team to attempt to turn the fake project into a reality on Kickstarter. Critical Role’s intense fanbase has garnered a reputation of being capable of blowing fundraising goals out-of-the-water, as was done with their Vox Machina animated series and their non-profit organization, The Critical Role Foundation.
Unfortunately for Critters, Critical Role Land is a place that can only be visited in one’s own imagination, though Thursday’s April Fools prank lent fans the blueprints.