The story of the Mighty Nein in Exandria will continue this November courtesy of Random House Worlds.
Random House Worlds, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, will continue its successful publishing program with Critical Role, the massively popular media company, with Critical Role: The Mighty Nein – Children of Empire by Hugo, Nebula, and Ignyte Award-nominated author Nibedita Sen publishing on November 10, 2026.
Critical Role’s adventures began in 2015 with a group of friends—veteran game master Matthew Mercer and award-winning voice actors Ashley Johnson, Marisha Ray, Taliesin Jaffe, Travis Willingham, Sam Riegel, Laura Bailey and Liam O’Brien—sitting down to create new characters, roll some dice, and tell a story that would soon become immortalized in their livestream tabletop roleplaying game. Since then, Critical Role has become a cultural phenomenon with a devoted global fanbase dedicated to storytelling, community, and imaginative entertainment across multiple platforms.
Critical Role: The Mighty Nein – Children of Empire is an official sequel to the hit Mighty Nein campaign from Critical Role, exploring the fates of “Empire Kids” Caleb Widogast and Beauregard Lionett. In this original novel, fans can return to Wildemount and explore what happens after the heroes’ original party adventure has ended. Complete with intrigue, political machinations, and the occasional fist fight, Critical Role: The Mighty Nein – Children of Empire bridges the stories of Campaigns Two, the Mighty Nein, and Three, Bells Hells, of Critical Role.
Author Nibedita Sen is a Hugo, Nebula, and Ignyte Award-nominated queer Bengali writer, gamer, and artist from Kolkata whose work has appeared in Uncanny, Podcastle, Nightmare and Strange Horizons. She accumulated a number of English degrees in India before deciding she wanted another in creative writing, and that she was going to move halfway across the world for it. These days, Sen can be found in NYC with her spouse and their sweet toothless old cat, where she moonlights as an editor to fund her TTRPG and craft supply addiction.
Critical Role: The Mighty Nein – Children of Empire will publish on November 10, 2026 and is available for pre-order wherever books are sold.
