'Critical Role' to Explain 'Dungeons & Dragons' Basics in New Weekly Show

The cast and crew of Critical Role are producing a new weekly web series designed to help players learn the basics of Dungeons & Dragons.

Handbooker Helper will feature the cast of the popular D&D-themed web series giving a crash course on the rules of the popular tabletop roleplaying game. Each episode will run for about five minutes and will cover everything from quickly building a character to explaining the difference between a saving throw and a skill check.

Critical Role started in 2015 as a web series starring a group of voice actors (including Matthew Mercer, Liam O'Brien, and Laura Bailey) playing Dungeons & Dragons. The show quickly gained a huge following and is now in the middle of its second D&D campaign. Earlier this year, Critical Role announced that it had opened its own studio and would begin filming content for their brand new YouTube and Twitch channels.

Dungeons & Dragons has seen a major resurgence in popularity in recent years, in large part due to the abundance of streaming shows like Critical Role. These live play shows help de-mystify the rules and gameplay of Dungeons & Dragons, but they don't usually take the time to explain some of the game mechanics to folks generally unfamiliar with the rules. Handbooker Helper appears to be a bridge for helping newcomers that watch these streaming shows to become D&D players themselves.

It helps that Dungeons & Dragons' current edition is incredibly new player-friendly. While the cast of Critical Role are definitely pros at the roleplaying experience, Handbooker Helper should help showing the elegant simplicity of D&D's current 5th edition rule set.

Handbooker Helper will air every Wednesday at 10 a.m. PT beginning on Aug. 29th on Critical Role's YouTube channel. New episodes of Critical Role air on Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on Geek & Sundry's Twitch and Alpha. The episodes are then posted on YouTube the following Monday.