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

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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.
 

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Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer

Now you have me interested: what are the armor rules?!
It sounds like the final rules were changed so what I can tell you would be wrong. I will be picking up the PDF when it launches and I'll circle back to this and answer it once the game finally launches.

The issue was that you looked up how many actual hits you took based on how much damage the attack did. You had a limited number of armor slots that would reduce damage but it didn't directly reduce the hits, just the damage. So you had to math out what the most effective use of those slots were. It was not tough math (and I played a character who could fix those armor slots on a short rest) but this was too much for more than one player. I know it's been simplified, just not by how much.
 

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View attachment 405274An 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.
I think this campaign is a great way to promote and and reintroduce Daggerheart. Those of us who got in on the kickstarter should be receiving them with in the next week. Enough time to review and familiarize ourselves with the ruleset. For me, I learn by first reading then watching, then doing myself. Looking forward watching.
 

I think this campaign is a great way to promote and and reintroduce Daggerheart. Those of us who got in on the kickstarter should be receiving them with in the next week. Enough time to review and familiarize ourselves with the ruleset. For me, I learn by first reading then watching, then doing myself. Looking forward watching.
Daggerheart did not have a kickstarter.

It is really weird that even people that pre-ordered it a mentally making that leap.
 


Now you have me interested: what are the armor rules?!

Care to share?

It used to be that you subtracted your armor value from the damage you took in order to figure out your damage threshold (most of the time you're comparing damage to your thresholds do figure whether to mark 0, 1, 2, or 3 HP). Of course that meant math on every hit, which slowed the game down.

Now you have armor slots (heavier armor has more slots). Mark a slot to drop the damage down by a threshold. Lots simpler at the table.
 

Daggerheart did not have a kickstarter.

It is really weird that even people that pre-ordered it a mentally making that leap.
It’s got to be a side effect of the current state of the industry. Everything kickstarts so Daggerheart must have as well. Or people are confusing it for Draw Steel, but that also wasn’t on Kickstarter. It was backerkit.
 

It’s got to be a side effect of the current state of the industry. Everything kickstarts so Daggerheart must have as well. Or people are confusing it for Draw Steel, but that also wasn’t on Kickstar er. It was backerkit.
Yeah it did have a Kickstarter - one of the stretch goals was a reissue of Sinbad's Shazaam movie. Interesting choice for a tie in, but there you have it
Shazaam.jpg
 


I do think this is testing the waters for where to go with Daggerheart moving forward, they're likely hoping it'll be popular and they can use it for their big season. Seems likely they'll continue with D&D. Then the question becomes... 2014? Or 2024? Ohh the drama if they stuck with 2014 😅
 

I do think this is testing the waters for where to go with Daggerheart moving forward, they're likely hoping it'll be popular and they can use it for their big season. Seems likely they'll continue with D&D. Then the question becomes... 2014? Or 2024? Ohh the drama if they stuck with 2014 😅

I can see them playing D&D on stream again, since it's what they became known for. But I can't see them running a long-form campaign again in D&D, but when they have a purpose-built system that fits their style better and is their own product as well.
 

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