Matt Mercer and Me

If you know Critical Role, you know Matt Mercer. Brilliant Dungeon Master. Voice actor. Built an empire out of “a bunch of nerdy-ass voice actors” playing D&D in someone’s living room. Amazon Prime series. His own streaming platform. Sold-out theaters.

But, if you’ve been watching lately, you know the energy’s different.

The weekly home game vibe has been replaced by an industry. Campaigns stretch 400+ hours. Fans dissect every beat. Matt seems tired. Critics are noticing.

Rcently, Mercer announced he’s stepping down from the DM chair.

The new guy is Brennan Lee Mulligan. Younger. Faster. High-energy. Brennan’s games run under 50 hours—short-form campaigns. Less polished. More fun.

In speech terms, more like an Impromptu Speaking round than a marathon Original Oratory season.

Some fans are nervous. Others are thrilled.

I’ve been where Mercer is. Not in a “slay the dragon” sense. In a “this thing I love has started eating me alive so I need to switch it up” sense.

The Speech & Debate Years

From 2010 to 2020, I coached at a pace that would make an Olympic athlete tell me to slow down. One of my mentors sure did. I didn’t listen.

We went to a tournament just about every single weekend. I taught until the end of the day and then stayed until the end of the evening. My students won hundreds of championships a year.

Has your success ever stopped feeling like success?

One student told me, after winning a tournament, that it didn’t feel like anyone noticed. Because the next weekend, there was another tournament. Another win. A constant stream. Like Mercer crafting award-worthy narrative arcs every Thursday night and having people complain about the flavor text.

Just imagine having hundreds of fans complain about you every week.

The Power of Reinvention

In 2010, I built a new Impromptu Speaking approach—highly theatrical, reactive to other competitors in the room, pulling examples from history, pop culture, and whatever was on my breakfast cereal box. A little chaotic. Very nerdy. A blast to perform.

I won the state title in 2010. Students I coached did the same in 2013, 2014, and 2015.

By 2016, I was getting a little tired of my approach.

I swapped that storytelling structure for a cause–harm–solution framework (an Original Oratory-friendly structure) that leaned harder on research and argumentation.

A different student with a different style won state, but, by the next year, we were back to national titles.

Cause-harm-solution has led my students to national championships as recently as 2024. I wouldn’t have ever gotten there if I wasn’t being honest with myself: I was getting bored with my approach.

Here’s my breakdown.

The Pandemic Reset

By 2020, I had to slow down. I was so burned out that I wrote my thesis on it.

When COVID hit, I felt… not happy, but relieved. An enforced break. I still worked as a speech coach—this time in private sector training—but the hamster wheel slowed down.

Sort of.

I was having actual nightmares about competing again. One recurring dream: I go to a college tournament and get second place. Shouldn’t have made a difference.

But the idea that somebody would see an imperfect result and think of me as a failure haunted me. I thought about my own students. Nobody always won. Living this way made me feel like a hypocrite, so I challenged myself to start competing again. The only way out was through.

I signed up for a virtual debate.

Didn’t win. Got 3rd.

Survived.

Came back later and set a national championship record.

What changed? I stopped playing in my safe zone and leaned into riskier delivery: faster pacing, bigger risks, unconventional presentation.

Most competitors won conservative suits and ties. I wore turtlenecks.

Most competitors stayed at the podium. I walked the room.

Most competitors sounded formal. I used conversational language.

Not every judge liked it. I did. I didn’t feel burned out.

Pushing the Envelope

In college mock trial, I’d won two national titles with slow, deliberate, traditional performances. I didn’t do this by taking a lot of risks. I earned safe, consistent 9/10 scores.

After graduation, the game shifted. Everyone had footage. Everyone could copy that style.

When I was asked to rejoin the UCLA program as a coach in 2021, I saw an opportunity to help my alma mater differentiate.

So I studied real trial lawyers. Gerry Spence’s folksy confidence. Camille Vasquez’s rapid-fire, surgical cross. Both freer, riskier, more theatrical.

Most mockers, especially younger judges who haven’t yet seen top-tier trial work, probably wouldn’t get what we were doing.

I brought that into competition coaching: deliberately short (2-3 minutes in a format that’s normally 6-8 minutes) cross examinations, comedic yet argumentative witness control, attorneys who were characters.

It worked. Another national college championship in 2023. Dozens of high school championships. Ranked #1 college program over the last three years in the nation (2025) — an honor I never achieved as a student.

Here’s a video breaking down the differences between 2014 and 2023.

Again, I want to emphasize that this does NOT always work as intended.

One of my former students (great work, Ria!) did one of my favorite cross examination performances of all time in the final round of the witness tournament of champions.

Her theatrical aggression also brought some amazing acting out of her opponent, inadvertently helping her win.

We didn’t get the gold, but it feels like we raised the bar.

Last week, in China, I noticed one of the flaws in this approach. If you’re coming at things in such a big, fun, performative way, any moments of uncertainty or mistakes are even more highlighted.

We were doing a coaches’ showcase, I was demonstrating a series of impeachments, and I was 100% wrong on one of them. If I wasn’t so full of adrenaline, I’d probably have noticed the mistake sooner. Whoops. (Opinions are divided on how well I rolled with the punch.)

Still! At the same contest, I saw one of my younger former students putting his own spin on this crowd-pleasing, over-the-top style. He was brilliant (shout out to Kole!).

Charming, accessible, enjoyable to watch, and as loose/comfortable as real trial attorneys. If my final closing argument was a 10, his was a 10+. He was innovating on my innovation.

After the round, a few of the observers asked me about our passionate, dramatic, aggressive approach.

“Is that allowed in college?”

What is allowed is up to your audience.

If your audience is open to new ideas and hasn’t formed an opinion yet, then anything is allowed (at least once).

I am very confident that UCLA will keep innovating as performers. I think, if/when we do, we’ll win the 2026 national title. If/when that happens, we will won the most titles in the history of collegiate mock trial. Let’s do it.

We ended up taking third place here. Our opponents went even more nuclear than we did. I was proud.

Could we theoretically do it with the 2014 style? Yeah. But it wouldn’t be any fun.

Why This Matters (to Mercer, to You, to Me)

Some say burnout is about doing too much. It’s about doing the same thing too much.

The cure is more than rest.

It’s reinvention. Risk. Testing imperfect, unpolished ideas.

I hope Brennan’s high-energy style gives Matt Mercer the space to play again.

And when he’s ready, I hope he comes back to the DM’s chair with the same things I found in my bright turtleneck era.

Whimsy! Fun! Joy!

Where are you stuck? And what’s the bright turtleneck you haven’t tried yet?

There are only three results: winning (achieving what you want), losing (not achieving, and not knowing why), or learning.

I don’t always win, but I’ll never lose.