Critical Role Announces Age of Umbra Daggerheart Campaign, Starting May 29th

An 8-part Daggerheart miniseries is coming from Critical Role. Announced today, Age of Umbra is a new Actual Play series featuring Matthew Mercer as game master and co-founders Ashley Johnson, Laura Bailey, Liam O’Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, Taliesin Jaffe, and Travis Willingham as players. The new miniseries will take up the bulk of the summer months, providing more of a break to the core cast ahead of an assumed fourth full-length D&D campaign.

Daggerheart is a new TTRPG developed by Critical Role's Darrington Press. Although the base game is intended to be a high fantasy RPG, the game includes several "campaign frames" that add additional rules for specific types of stories. Age of Umbra was developed by Mercer and draws inspiration from games like Dark Souls, Tainted Grail, and Kingdom Death: Monster.

The miniseries will air on Beacon, Twitch, and YouTube, with episodes airing every Thursday. The first episode debuts on May 29th, with Session 0 airing on various Critical Role platforms on May 22nd.

The full description of the series can be found below:

Age of Umbra

is an eight-part Daggerheart mini-series from Critical Role of dark, survival fantasy, debuting May 29 on Beacon, Twitch, and YouTube. Set in the Halcyon Domain, a world abandoned by gods and consumed by darkness, the series begins by following five people from the isolated community of Desperloch as they fight to protect their own in the face of rising horrors.

The Halcyon Domain is a lethal, foreboding land where the souls of the dead are cursed to return as twisted, nightmarish forms. A dark, ethereal mass known as the Umbra roams and holds these fiendish monstrosities, further corrupting anything it touches. Sacred Pyres keep the corruption at bay, and small communities endure through cooperation. Out in the beyond, whispers speak of ancient secrets and powers, wonders of a lost age, ready for discovery to those brave enough (or foolish enough) to seek them.

Game Master Matthew Mercer leads fellow Critical Role co-founders Ashley Johnson, Laura Bailey, Liam O’Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, Taliesin Jaffe, and Travis Willingham in a high-stakes actual play exploring hope, sacrifice, and survival in a world where death is only the beginning.

 

[wicked cool]

Total disaster if daggerheart is a landfill failure. Thats probably the end of the publishing company etc as we know it
To be clear if its a landfill failure

 

[Reynard]

Total disaster if daggerheart is a landfill failure. Thats probably the end of the publishing company etc as we know it
To be clear if its a landfill failure

The special/complete edition sold out. i don't think this is going to be a failure of any sort, lest of all one of that magnitude.

I'm not necessarily accusing you of this, but it sure seems like a lot of folks are hoping Daggerheart fails, and I can't figure out why.

 

[SteveC]

I'm not necessarily accusing you of this, but it sure seems like a lot of folks are hoping Daggerheart fails, and I can't figure out why.

I'm getting that feeling from some people as well, and like you say, I can't explain why. The best I can tell you is that our group of 5E players really bounced off of it hard. If you're coming from a traditional playstyle, it may be a bridge too far for some players. For our group it was the Initiative system (or lack of system) and the armor rules. I, if I'm honest, still don't understand why they didn't like the armor rules, but that was a very unpopular thing.

I loved what I saw, but I come from running and playing PbtA/FitD and similar systems, so I was not surprised by what I saw in the system. I'm not sure it is close enough to be a bridge system for people who don't have any experience beyond 5E. We will see.

 

[Elvish Lore]

I certainly do NOT hope Daggerheart fails. I really want it to succeed in a huge way. A big fantasy rpg that tries to bridge gameplay between rules-rich and narrative-heavy sounds awesome. I want it to feel different than D&D and I think it succeeds in doing that in the few games I've tried with my group.

 

[nyvinter]

Yeah. I'm not sure what the numbers on Candela Obscura are, the game sales not the live play views, but they seem to have simply dropped it like a rock. I really hope they don't base their support for Daggerheart on the numbers from this mini-series. Again, that seems like setting it up to fail.

Not sure about that. They have a small team and the people doing CO things are the same people currently designing and writing Daggerheart — which obviously right now got the focus. At least I hope CO get some more support because it was pretty good when taken for what it was and not what one assumed it "should be".

(And in terms of the videos, the Candela Obscura liveshow was one of their better liveshows by far. IMO.)

 

[UnplayedRanger]

Have all of the frameworks included in Daggerheart been revealed? I'm on the fence about the system, but intrigued.

Pretty much, I think. Though I don't know if there's a conclusive list floating around. You basically have your: Game of Thrones/Poliical campaign, your Dark Souls campaign, your Delicious in Dungeon campagin, your Kaiju campaign, your Final Fantasy/Tech Fantasy campain, your "litterally pushing back the pyshical manifistation of darkness" campaign - which seems to be the plot of most farm life sims.

 

[Shawnster_P]

I didn't back it, but I probably will pick it up. At least the core book. As for the actual plays, its funny because I always get too daunted about the thought of trying to tune in to 40 four hour episodes. That seems too much. But, I can do 8 (and stretch it over a year on youtube).

I actually like the shorter format. I have seen Chaosium do some really good stuff, and those are always shorter.

 

[UnplayedRanger]

I didn't back it, but I probably will pick it up. At least the core book. As for the actual plays, its funny because I always get too daunted about the thought of trying to tune in to 40 four hour episodes. That seems too much. But, I can do 8 (and stretch it over a year on youtube).

I actually like the shorter format. I have seen Chaosium do some really good stuff, and those are always shorter.

There was nothing to back. None of Darrington's Press ttprg games have been crowdfunded. It's a full retail release. I wish we had more of this in the industry.

 

[wicked cool]

The special/complete edition sold out. i don't think this is going to be a failure of any sort, lest of all one of that magnitude.

I'm not necessarily accusing you of this, but it sure seems like a lot of folks are hoping Daggerheart fails, and I can't figure out why.

Not me. I like Mercer and company a lot. But it’s a big gamble and so far their board games have been duds.

 

[Reynard]

Not me. I like Mercer and company a lot. But it’s a big gamble and so far their board games have been duds.

In actual sales, or apparently?