Today’s a big day for Critical Role with the premiere of Campaign 4. The adventures will be bigger with the largest roster yet, and Matt Mercer will be stepping down as the GM to become one of the players. Veteran Sam Riegel will be back, along with Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Liam O’Brien, Travis Willingham, and many more.

“Everyone is super excited,” Riegel tells Nerd Reactor. “Everyone in the cast is super excited about Campaign Four. We’ve already shot several episodes, and I can tell you with all honesty, it is really, really good. We’re very proud of the stories that we’ve created and that our new GM, Brennan Lee Mulligan, is shaping.”

Matt has been the Forever GM of Critical Role, and it’s a nice change of pace to finally see him as a player.

“We’re especially excited to be playing alongside Matt as a player character because he’s never had an opportunity to do that on our channel for a longer campaign anyway,” the actor said. “And the chemistry is amazing. The story is fresh. It really feels like we’re rebooting Critical Role in a way that is both familiar and novel.”

In the previous campaign, Riegel played a robot who was eager to help others. However, the end of Fresh Cut Grass can still be felt from Campaign 3, with the character sacrificing himself to save his friends.

For those who want to see more of his adventures, Riegel has written a short illustration book, Critical Role: Smiley Day!, about helping each other and yourself from the point of view of FCG.

“After Fresh Cut Grass sadly left the story in deadly circumstances, we knew that we wanted to tell more of their story,” Riegel said. “Even before that, I’ve been thinking about ways of sharing Fresh Cut Grass’ positive message of optimism, and he really did try to be a really good therapist. He wasn’t the best at it in the campaign, but he wanted to share some good advice. Just like in the campaign, the good advice that he was trying to share, he wasn’t always perfectly received or well articulated, but he did his best.

“In this book, I wanted to give some good advice, and it turned out that Fresh Cut Grass learned a lesson that I think we all need to learn, which is that sometimes the best advice should be taken by yourself and not given to others. You need to take care of yourself sometimes before you are able to reach out and help your friends. Self-care is just as important as bending over backwards to please other people sometimes.”

Critical Role: Smiley Day! is now available on Amazon and other stores.