My partner Heidi and I recently finished watching through the final moments of Critical Role’s Campaign Two: The Mighty Nein. If you’re not already familiar with Critical Role, it’s a long-form actual play Dungeons and Dragons web series, featuring a cast of extremely talented voice actors who also happen to be very good friends with one another.
Critical Role has garnered a reputation for being a titan of a show in the DnD community—both in popularity (bringing in an average of over 20k viewers during livestreams, and millions of views on each YouTube re-upload) and in sheer length (141 episodes in Campaign Two, averaging four hours each, for a total of over 500 hours of content). The former is even more impressive considering the latter—this is not an easy show to get into, and it’s even less easy to make your way through the whole thing.
But we did just that, over the course of about two years, and throughout that time we got to know the characters in the show pretty well. One of our favorite things to talk about was what the Enneagram types of those characters might be, so if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to go through the cast of Campaign Two and briefly describe the traits of each character that seem to me to point to a certain type.
That being said, the rest of this post will contain major spoilers for Campaign Two, so if you do plan on watching it, proceed with caution.
Jester: Type 7
Jester is, first and foremost, a mischief maker. She is relentlessly positive, sometimes to a fault, and she is probably the one in the group who is having the most fun, most of the time. She sometimes struggles with taking her sadness seriously, trying to laugh it off even in otherwise serious moments. She is clever, funny, and an overall joy to be around.
Caduceus: Type 9
Caduceus is a calm, serene presence, highly spiritual, and extremely wise. He is protective and selfless, both on behalf of his actual family and of the group, and he often acts as a moral compass for that group. He brings a positive, optimistic energy, but he is also slow to violence and extremely gentle in nature.
Beauregard: Type 8
Beuregard is assertive, confident, and willful. She is a physical force, both on the battlefield and off, and her fierce loyalty to her convictions puts her often at odds with authority figures. Socially speaking, she tends to be passionate but somewhat abrasive, though it’s clear that she would sacrifice anything for the sake of her friends.
Caleb: Type 5
Caleb is a reclusive, brooding wizard with a dark past and an affinity for cats. These things alone don’t make him a 5, but his expression of them certainly does. He is highly intellectual, extremely guarded, and socially speaking he is cautious at best, standoffish at worst. He reads constantly, has an impeccable memory, and seems to possess an almost insatiable thirst for knowledge.
Yasha: Type 9
Despite her initial appearance, Yasha’s actual demeanor tends to be some combination of sweet, patient, and awkward. A foil to Caduceus, Yasha’s 9-ness deals a lot more with her inner anger, coming out in dream sequences and most notably in battle, being a barbarian. Though physically imposing, she is generally understated in person, but when she lets loose she is a force to be reckoned with.
Veth/Nott: Type 6
Veth is in many ways a stereotypical 6. She is outwardly anxious and tends to assume the worst, but she is unshakably loyal—at first just to Caleb and to her family, but eventually to the rest of the party as well, once they have won her over. For much of the campaign, she relies on substances to imbue her with the bravery she feels like she needs, but by the end of the campaign she has discovered that that bravery was within her already. She often puts the needs of the group over her own personal needs, especially at first, but eventually learns how to advocate for herself as well.
Fjord: Type 3
Fjord was the most difficult for us to settle on a type for. He is perhaps the least exaggerated character, personality wise. But there are a few things that point toward type 3: first of all, he’s charming and charismatic—not in a flashy way, but he is notably personable, often being the group’s voice to others, along with Jester. He is hard-working and adaptable and takes easily to leadership on the seas. Most importantly, his primary arc in the story deals with the change from pretending to be someone he isn’t to accepting and embracing his actual self.
So there you have it. These are just our observations, and that’s just the core types—I think there are some compelling arguments to be made for wings and instinctual variants, but for obvious reasons it starts to get harder when you get that in-depth with fictional characters.
Maybe in a while I’ll revisit this idea for the Campaign 3 characters, but we don’t know all that much about them yet, being only twenty-ish episodes in. I already have my guesses, though.
Philip Rienstra (‘21) majored in writing and music and has plans to pursue a career in publishing. They are a recovering music snob, a fruit juice enthusiast, and a big fan of the enneagram. They’re currently living in St. Paul with their spouse, Heidi.
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While I know very little about DnD, but LOVE the Enneagram! Super interesting read!