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.

 

[nyvinter]

I caught the first 45 minutes or so of the Age of Umbra Session 0 last night, but then had to go to bed. I was going to watch the rest while I worked this morning but alas you must sub. I think I may anyway since there's no way i will be able to watch the full sessions live.

Available to non-subs on Monday.

 

[Reynard]

Available to non-subs on Monday.

Thanks.

I may sub anyway just because I like to support things I... er, like.

 

[Reynard]

The Session 0 character generation is both entertaining to watch and really solidifies what this game wants from the players and GM as far as collaborative worldbuilding are concerned.

 

[Mannahnin]

You take talented people and put the constraints of D&D on them and time and time again you see excellent end product (Adventure Zone, Critical Hit, Dimension 20, Critical Role, Dungeons of Drakenheim, BG3, etc). I don't believe that's a coincidence.

I am not a big actual play consumer, but I did make it all the way through the first Adventure Zone campaign (the Balance arc). One observation I remember having was that they dropped close adherence to D&D rules PDQ and by the end of the campaign weren't really even using them at all, borrowing mechanics from another game entirely.

Of course that was with roughly hour-long episodes and only three PCs. Critical Role has much longer episodes but also a much larger cast. As I understand it CR sticks more closely to D&D rules and running structured round by round combats, for example, where TAZ was more improvisational and winging d20 roll high with a lot of judgement calls.

I think that D&D is created with the purpose in mind to be a fantasy story generator and that the combination of lore and rules refinement over the last 50 years has made it very good at doing exactly that. It's designed to enhance the storytelling abilities of those playing it. The better those natural abilities going into the game, the better the final product coming out. I think that's the real secret of the play testing they do. The metric is, does this rule lead to people having better stories to tell about their game session. Does it make for a more exciting session. A more memorable session.

And the game seems to have the right balance of structure and freedom. The structure (lore and rules) provides both the bones of conflict as well as inspiration for action. And it's all been tested and refined over decades, much in the same way comic book characters are before they make it to the big screen. Part of comic book movie success is the fans going to see it, but part of it is the characters and lore have already stood the test of time and gone through countless iteration before hitting the big screen so that the writers and directors know what kind of story works best with the character. But along the way, how many characters were let to disappear because they didn't resonate? The same is true with the rules and lore of D&D. But it takes constant work. Constant creative effort to reap those gains. If you sit on your hands, your whole product slides away into obscurity. But the amount of freedom the rules give you, like @Whizbang Dustyboots noted about BLeeM's observation with D&D is equally important and once again arrived at through years of steady refinement by the game system and the players.

So yes, D&D has a huge advantage because they've worked for 50 years to create it. CR has been around for 10, and if they play their cards right, could start building up their own set of lore and rules to create a system that will enhance other's abilities to tell stories in the same way.

I think D&D has great brand recognition.

I think the archetypes and concepts it originated (character classes, alignments, hit points and leveling up!) have propagated through pop culture and especially video games in ways which increases their familiarity and accessibility to people who aren't already D&D players but who've experienced media influenced by it.

I think the core "d20, roll high" mechanic is simple enough for anyone to grasp, and lends itself to extra random opportunities for dramatic narration with the occasional nat 1 or 20.

I think the combat system is way too time-consuming and granular to work well with live actual plays. It's always slow and clunky to watch and when I've watched groups try to do full combats it always seems to work better the simpler the rules they're using.

I don't think D&D was really created with the purpose of being a story generator in mind. We've seen several approaches to that function over the years. Classic or OSR play tends to have hooks and then let the players create the story retroactively. Trad play classically involved the DM pre-planning an epic story and then engaging in varying levels of railroading/guidance to encourage the players to play it out, or adapting to them running off the rails. I don't think that, mechanically, it's inherently great at that.

 

[Reynard]

I have the dumbest of questions: is there an audio only/podcast version of Age of Umbra? I'd prefer to listen to it on my commute.

 

[mcmillan]

I have the dumbest of questions: is there an audio only/podcast version of Age of Umbra? I'd prefer to listen to it on my commute.

They do post audio versions later - According to the schedule post the podcast will be split into two parts, the first part will post the Thursday after the original airdate, and the second the following Tues. Unfortunately it's looking like they didn't release the session zero episode as a podcast though

 

[Reynard]

They do post audio versions later - According to the schedule post the podcast will be split into two parts, the first part will post the Thursday after the original airdate, and the second the following Tues. Unfortunately it's looking like they didn't release the session zero episode as a podcast though

So a week and then again 5 more days after that?
Thanks.

 

[The Soloist]

Halfway through episode one. Liking the story so far. Sam gives a good show as always, but he needs to remember his card's special abilities!

I like how Mat deftly avoided a shopping detour by saying the characters bought everything they needed for the expedition. He is doing a lot more forward ellipses, which is good for the tempo of the show.

 

[overgeeked]

Halfway through episode one. Liking the story so far. Sam gives a good show as always, but he needs to remember his card's special abilities!

I like how Mat deftly avoided a shopping detour by saying the characters bought everything they needed for the expedition. He is doing a lot more forward ellipses, which is good for the tempo of the show.

I am hopeful that at least carries through to the next campaign. So much wasted time doing nothing.

 

[Arilyn]

Daggerheart starts you off with basic supplies, weapons and armour and very little gold. There would be nothing to shop for.