Stephen Colbert, Critical Role Create Red Nose Day D&D Campaign

Late-night host Stephen Colbert and tabletop game streamers turned animation kings Critical Role are partnering again to raise money for abused and underserved children on behalf of Red Nose Day, beginning tonight.

It’s the fourth year that Colbert has participated in a bespoke Dungeons & Dragons fundraising campaign hosted by Critical Role, who’ve been streaming a weekly D&D game on Twitch and YouTube for several years. More recently, a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign raised $11 million, and led to a deal with Amazon
AMZN
for the hit animated tale The Legend of Vox Machina, which debuted on Amazon Prime this winter and is based on the first narrative arc developed during the years of the group’s weekly D&D games.

Colbert showed up for this year’s taping of his Critical Role campaign with actual swords, either reproductions or even actual prop versions of weapons such as Sting from the Lord of the Rings movies and books, said Ashley Johnson, president of the organization’s Critical Role Foundation.

“Getting to roll some dice with him was absolutely incredible,” said Johnson, who’s also one of the four founding Critical Role players/voice actors (there are eight total) who joined Colbert in this year’s D&D game. The campaign will debut tonight on the Critical Role Twitch channel, and also appear on the group’s YouTube channel.

As part of the run-up to tonight’s debut, the groups allowed fans to vote on key components of Colbert’s campaign, as created by the Critical Role dungeon master. See the video for that on fundraising-campaign site Tiltify below:

TiltifyTiltify – Choose Stephen Colbert’s Adventure… Again

The hour-plus game also includes a lengthy conversation between the Critical Role cast and Colbert. For those wondering about this sort of thing, Johnson’s character in Critical Role’s current Bell’s Hells campaign is a faun druid, chaotic neutral “or chaotically fluid, I like to say,” she said, but for the Colbert campaign, pulled out her Yasha Nydoorin character, “a protector (formerly fallen) aasimar barbarian” from the Mighty Nein narrative arc.

The ongoing relationship with Red Nose Day has been a strong one, said Johnson, raising about $790,000 the past three years with its Colbert collaborations. And Red Nose Day is one of seven organizations (others include 826LA, Pablove Foundation, and the First Nations Development Institute) that are beneficiaries of the Critical Role Foundation.

“I’m blown away all the time about how our community and our fanbase really cares,” Johnson said. “We talk all the time about how our community, we feel like we really got lucky having a fanbase that really genuinely cares. We feel very, very fortunate.”

Red Nose Day is the biggest fundraising initiative of the year for parent organization Comic Relief USA, which originated in the United Kingdom at the behest of writer/director Sir Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Four Weddings And A Funeral) nearly 40 years ago, said Lauren Spitzer, the Comic Relieve USA/Red Nose Day sr. vice president, fundraising and development.

Though it’s called a “day,” RND runs through May 26, and includes such initiatives as selling red-nose prosthetics for $1 at Walgreen’s outlets, said Spitzer.

“It is the signature public campaign that we run, especially here in the U.S.,” Spitzer said. “The lion’s share of funds are raised during the campaign from now through Memorial Day.”

The organization in turn donates funds to between 30 and 40 organizations a year, focused on issues connected to breaking the cycle of child poverty and related issues such as homelessness, Spitzer said.

Spitzer acknowledged that the D&D game with Colbert is perhaps the most unique fundraising effort her organization does, but may not stay that way, given its success in reaching a different crowd of generous supporters.

“It’s perhaps unusual but for us incredibly exciting and interesting,” Spitzer said. “We are born of a traditional telethon entertainment model and have been really searching for other ways to engage people in the cause and in giving.”

Comic Relief had to pivot to digital fundraising initiatives two years ago after the pandemic hit right before many scheduled Red Nose Day events, Spitzer said. Going forward, the organization is trying to expand its reach more broadly into gaming, both tabletop and video, and esports, to connect with a broader, younger audience than typical for fundraising audiences.

The pandemic “made us think about how we invest in our digital campaigns, and see incredible generosity from younger donors,” Spitzer said. “We have continued to grow our digital campaigns. It’s truly a hybrid event now.”