Critical Role Announces Two New RPGs

overgeeked · Aug 4, 2023

Micah Sweet said:
That's interesting. I want more crunch and less story focus and superhero fantasy out of D&D.

Well, it’s mostly because 5E tries to do that but does it so badly that I’d like to see something that does it well. It’s also the style that CR plays and their cartoon shows off. I have zero interest in crunchy systems. The fewer mechanics the better.

Jaeger · Aug 5, 2023

Reynard said:
I am a little surprised to discover it is a flavor of PbtA. I would have guessed a more traditional RPG, seeing as how they (and their audience, presumably) are coming off 5E.

While the level of crunch based on seeing the character sheets/Cards, and the reddit thread, it seems about what I thought it would be crunch wise.

But...

I thought they would do it with a trimmed down d20/5e math core mechanic so that they could tie into existing d20 system familiarity...

overgeeked said:
You don’t have to “beat D&D“ to be wildly successful in the RPG industry.

^THIS^

D&D has always been the outlier in the RPG hobby in terms of sales.

For various reasons we have always had a 800lb gorilla, then everything else.

There is money to be made in the everything else category if you can build up a sustainable player network for your game.

Micah Sweet said:
As I said, if they don't make their own games the primary stream of their own company, they are demonstrating a lack of faith in their own product.

I would tend to agree.

They have a built in pool of potential customers that every other developer not named WotC could only dream about.

That being said - it is a risk.

We do not know their audience breakdown, or whatever financial data they may pull from that. Only CR is in a position to analize how much of their audience they might lose do to a system switch on their bread and butter stream...

overgeeked · Aug 5, 2023

Jaeger said:
We do not know their audience breakdown, or whatever financial data they may pull from that. Only CR is in a position to analize how much of their audience they might lose do to a system switch on their bread and butter stream...

No, we don’t know their internal numbers but we can compare their public numbers…so long as we recognize comparing the non-campaign games to the campaign games is apples to oranges. We won’t really know the numbers until we see the whole main cast play a campaign of something non-D&D. One-shots and partial cast is all we have that’s not part of the main campaign.

Reynard · Aug 5, 2023

overgeeked said:
No, we don’t know their internal numbers but we can compare their public numbers…so long as we recognize comparing the non-campaign games to the campaign games is apples to oranges. We won’t really know the numbers until we see the whole main cast play a campaign of something non-D&D. One-shots and partial cast is all we have that’s not part of the main campaign.

I don't know anything about the one shots: are there 5E ones as well as not 5E ones we can compare, so we aren't looking at campaign versus one shot?

For the record, my "order of magnitude" comment uptrend was based on C3 vs CO numbers on YouTube. The C3 premier had about 10 million views and the CO premier had about 1 million views. Later episodes of C3 were hovering around 2.5-4 million while CO were hovering around 300k. I admit I did not look beyond those numbers.

overgeeked · Aug 5, 2023

“At least a year from being published.”

overgeeked · Aug 5, 2023

The turtle people are called Galapa. As in the Galapagos Islands. Nice guys. I love the silly names.

overgeeked · Aug 5, 2023

Reynard said:
I don't know anything about the one shots: are there 5E ones as well as not 5E ones we can compare, so we aren't looking at campaign versus one shot?

There are a few 5E one shots. They include most, if not all, of the main cast and they're generally tied into the main campaigns.

Reynard said:
For the record, my "order of magnitude" comment uptrend was based on C3 vs CO numbers on YouTube. The C3 premier had about 10 million views and the CO premier had about 1 million views. Later episodes of C3 were hovering around 2.5-4 million while CO were hovering around 300k. I admit I did not look beyond those numbers.

Again, apples to oranges. C3 episode 1 is how old now? It was posted on 25 Oct 2021...so almost 2 years ago. CO episode 1 is how old now? It was posted on 8 Jun 2023...so less than 1 month ago. It's not a fair comparison. Further, full main cast vs partial cast with guests. Of course the numbers are drastically lower.

Until they do a long campaign with the full main cast we can't really say how the numbers will change or how they will compare.

overgeeked · Aug 5, 2023

The Critical Role discord seems to be where the action is. Major run down on the system from players at GenCon over there. Lots repeated from the Character Sheet video.

The Character Sheet people are also answering questions in the comments of their video.

This is a very early playtest build. Announcement later this year. Release sometime next year.

2d12 vs TN. Hope die and Fear die. Success if you meet or beat the TN. If hope is higher, complete success and gain a Hope. If fear is higher, mixed success or GM move (or equivalent). This gives us the PbtA or BitD trifecta. Fail (>TN), mixed success (Fear high), and complete success (Hope high).

Armor is opt-in damage absorption. But can only work so many times, hence the opt-in. Once the clock on the armor is filled, the armor is broken.

Threshold damage they talked about in the video.

No initiative in combat, it's more freeform.

The enemies only do stuff when the PCs fail rolls or get mixed successes.

Gain stress from failed rolls or mixed successes. No one "stressed out" so no idea what that does.

Experiences are player defined character skills, a la Fate aspects, give a flat bonus to an applicable 2d12 roll.

Crits on doubles, even double 1s.

Micah Sweet · Aug 5, 2023

overgeeked said:
The Critical Role discord seems to be where the action is. Major run down on the system from players at GenCon over there. Lots repeated from the Character Sheet video.

The Character Sheet people are also answering questions in the comments of their video.

This is a very early playtest build. Announcement later this year. Release sometime next year.

2d12 vs TN. Hope die and Fear die. Success if you meet or beat the TN. If hope is higher, complete success and gain a Hope. If fear is higher, mixed success or GM move (or equivalent). This gives us the PbtA or BitD trifecta. Fail (>TN), mixed success (Fear high), and complete success (Hope high).

Armor is opt-in damage absorption. But can only work so many times, hence the opt-in. Once the clock on the armor is filled, the armor is broken.

Threshold damage they talked about in the video.

No initiative in combat, it's more freeform.

The enemies only do stuff when the PCs fail rolls or get mixed successes.

Gain stress from failed rolls or mixed successes. No one "stressed out" so no idea what that does.

Experiences are player defined character skills, a la Fate aspects, give a flat bonus to an applicable 2d12 roll.

Crits on doubles, even double 1s.

Sure seems very PbtA to me.

BRayne · Aug 5, 2023

Here’s the rule sheet we were working from:

Critical Role Announces Two New RPGs

overgeeked

Open-World Sandbox

Jaeger

That someone better

overgeeked

Open-World Sandbox

Reynard

aka Ian Eller

overgeeked

Open-World Sandbox

overgeeked

Open-World Sandbox

overgeeked

Open-World Sandbox

overgeeked

Open-World Sandbox

Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast

BRayne

Adventurer

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