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


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Someone over on Reddit linked to a Knights of the Last Call video on running Daggerheart. Pointing out the best section starts around 30 minutes and goes to about 60 minutes. One observation is really sticking with me. Even if you don't run Daggerheart in all its PbtA, BitD, narrative-first glory...it will still default to your bog standard game of D&D 5E with narrative-focused metacurrency that will still push cool story moments.

 

We enjoyed the first episode and will keep watching. The CR crew gave a good show. Knowing it's only 8 episodes helps.

I'm not buying the RPG since I have no use for it. My group doesn't do fantasy campaigns, and I don't see myself soloing it.
 

One observation is really sticking with me. Even if you don't run Daggerheart in all its PbtA, BitD, narrative-first glory...it will still default to your bog standard game of D&D 5E with narrative-focused metacurrency that will still push cool story moments.
I think this is such an important point. If you run the game on the same way as you do a 5E game, even at worst you’ll have the Hope and Fear mechanics and be able to shape the game with them. And your players will do the same.

And if you’re interested in Daggerheart or other similar games, by all means check out the Knights.
 


3. D&D (whatever the current edition is). The backbone of D&D Club. Frankly, I don't see much difference between any rules heavy fantasy RPG, and D&D has the brand awareness and ubiquity, plus DDB, which is an invaluable resource for running short games with kids who don't even own dice, let alone rule books.
To me this says your knowledge of modern systems stops in about 2010. Because there was a vast leap forward in using mechanics to encourage characterisation starting in about 2010 with games like Fate Core, Apocalypse World, the Cortex Plus games, and others. And Daggerheart has basically collected a whole lot of these factors into one game that "fails" into D&D. (It's at this point worth noting that I'm pretty sure Matt Mercer learned his trade on AD&D 2e where you had to use a whole lot of DM force to beat the system into shape if you wanted heroic fantasy).

Off the top of my head things that Daggerheart does that D&D doesn't (many of which can be adapted into D&D) include:
  • Much faster combat (a big problem with 5e is that combat is slooow with nothing much going on as you grind hit points to zero)
    • An initiative system that keeps people engaged rather than able to look up things on their phones.
  • Background questions and connections questions so you can establish in Session Zero how the characters know each other and have a clear idea of the foundation of the relationships. (Easy and worthwhile to steal!). Below comes from the Guardian character class; each class has a different set.
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  • "Death moves" when you hit 0hp so something consequential happens rather than faffing about with death saves and Revivify (incredibly worth stealing or adapting)
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  • Metacurrency; Hope (Mana) and Stress (Stamina) for characters to spend to be able to add focus to their actions and say they are important rather than being relatively robotic and untiring
  • Success/Failure with Hope/Fear being separate actions. This is the only one that really takes improv experience and takes the DM being on the ball. Or you can just have it collapse into taking hope and fear points for the same emotional hit but less opportunity to narrate
  • More meaningful abilities, fewer ribbon abilities.
  • Fewer trivial numbers (You don't e.g. have a stat, a stat modifier, and a stat saving throw, and potentially multiple skills based off it, just a single trait (and a total of two freeform Experiences replacing skills))
    • You do have hope, stress, and armour to track - but none of these reach double digits.
  • Levelling up offers choices. The Daggerheart equivalent Life Clerics with the same stats are not going to be mechanically almost indistinguishable other than equipment (and feats) at the same level.

I'm not seeing how Daggerheartfits into my needs, though I am a very big Critical Role fan (I have enjoyed almost every episode of their content and am currently re-watching Season 2, to give you context), and I love that it is on Demiplane. I might wind up buying it just to try it with my home group, though none of them are gamers like me, so they are pretty content just sticking with D&D, in general, or one-shots/micro-campaigns with other systems as long as they are very simple and in a different genre.


To me, Daggerheart looks like it is designed to work really well for experienced groups who have developed a good rapport. Improv experience would be a definite plus! Basically, it looks like an ideal system for the Critical Role cast.
To me that appears backwards; Daggerheart looks like it is designed to work really well to build rapport between characters. It looks to me like an ideal system for people who want to get closer to doing what the Critical Role cast do but the group starts off at a standing start.
 
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