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.

 

[overgeeked]

If I ran 450 four hour long sessions of D&D (plus how many years before that), and then sometimes did 5 pbta/fitd sessions in total, I'd too probably default to D&D mindset. The only way to break it is by playing other things and getting things wrong — habits don't change right away.

(I'm the other way in that I try to run D&D as PbtA. It's not good.)

Absolutely fair.

Though that's only what there's video of. Despite running D&D for a living, Matt doesn't just play D&D. He's talked about a bunch of the other games he enjoys and plays. It's probably a very safe assumption that he's played a hell of a lot more D&D 5E than any other game, sure. But it's not true that he's only ever played 5 total sessions of PbtA or BitD games.

It's still weird that he'd have a game designed specifically for him and his, that's supposed to explicitly support their style...and yet that bespoke design and how he runs it doesn't match.

 

[Neonchameleon]

If I ran 450 four hour long sessions of D&D (plus how many years before that), and then sometimes did 5 pbta/fitd sessions in total, I'd too probably default to D&D mindset. The only way to break it is by playing other things and getting things wrong — habits don't change right away.

And Mercer clearly learned 2e and uses a lot of DM force as you have to with that system.

The two other things going on are that Daggerheart doesn't make Critical Role better at their style so much as it helps others into that style, and that they are all getting better as the campaign goes on

(I'm the other way in that I try to run D&D as PbtA. It's not good.)

Daggerheart may end up being exactly your jam

 

[nyvinter]

Absolutely fair.

Though that's only what's there's video of. Despite running D&D for a living, Matt doesn't just play D&D. He's talked about a bunch of the other games he enjoys and plays. It's probably a very safe assumption that he's played a hell of a lot more D&D 5E than any other game, sure. But it's not true that he's only ever played 5 total sessions of PbtA or BitD games.

Well no, he did a few play tests of DH and a Deadlands miniseries too, and occasionally played in a parthfinder oneshot. Most of the other things he's talked about playing was in collage, at least as far as campaign goes. Otherwise it's bite-sized samples that will not change how he play a game. I do not think he's had time to play much outside of CR since they started. That's ten years of 5e dedication.

It's still weird that he'd have a game designed specifically for him and his, that's supposed to explicitly support their style...and yet that bespoke design and how he runs it doesn't match.

I think Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall did the game they wanted and on paper that looked like what Matt wanted as well but it wasn't designed around him. Because the Matt Mercer designed game was supposed to be Syndicult that we have hear nothing of since it was announced way back.

 

[nyvinter]

Daggerheart may end up being exactly your jam

Oh yes. I read the game and told people "this is what we should have played in 2016 rather than the highly modified Dungeon World!" (We had to add social things from Urban Shadows and fix the dungeon parts of the playbooks — we don't do dungeon crawls.)

Darrington Press just have the worst timing as I have GM burnout.

 

[The Soloist]

It's still weird that he'd have a game designed specifically for him and his, that's supposed to explicitly support their style...and yet that bespoke design and how he runs it doesn't match.

It is remotely possible that they are doing it on purpose and will slowly evolve towards a more narrative style?

In episode 3, when Taliesan talks about the city from which he ran away with Ashley (the one with the Queen Mother), it felt to me as if he was inserting his ideas into the setting. It was cool and horrific. I don't believe Matt was aware of this beforehand.

 

[overgeeked]

It is remotely possible that they are doing it on purpose and will slowly evolve towards a more narrative style?

Absolutely could be. I’ve posted basically that same theory in one of the many Daggerheart threads here. As a counter to that I keep coming back to Matt also running Candela Obscura as if it were D&D 5E. At this point I think it’s just habit, as the others are saying. He will soften his D&Disms over time, I hope. But I’m not convinced it’s some master plan on his part.

In episode 3, when Taliesan talks about the city from which he ran away with Ashley (the one with the Queen Mother), it felt to me as if he was inserting his ideas into the setting. It was cool and horrific. I don't believe Matt was aware of this beforehand.

There was also a lot of that in the session zero. The collaboration on the worldbuilding was kinda wild to see. There are clearly some fixed points on the map and in the setting, but Matt did a good job asking questions and incorporating the answers.

 

[Reynard]

Have their been any examples in this AP of the type of worlbuilding collaboration that the actual rulebook seems to push pretty hard. I'm thinking I may just have overlooked or forgotten about it but are there examples of Matt asking his player collaborative worldbuilding questions during the play of the game?

Session 0 episode.

 

[Imaro]

Session 0 episode.

Thats why I asked about in play. Daggerheart definitely suggests and even advocates for you as GM to have your players answer questions about the world while playing that help to define it.

 

[Clint_L]

Thats why I asked about in play. Daggerheart definitely suggests and even advocates for you as GM to have your players answer questions about the world while playing that help to define it.

The rules definitely encourage that kind of play. Critical Role has really high production values, though, so there’s only so much players can add when the hyper detailed battle maps are already prepared, for example.

It kind of feels like an odd situation where CR are not the best at demonstrating their own game.

 

[Neonchameleon]

The rules definitely encourage that kind of play. Critical Role has really high production values, though, so there’s only so much players can add when the hyper detailed battle maps are already prepared, for example.

It kind of feels like an odd situation where CR are not the best at demonstrating their own game.

In meaningful ways they are almost the worst at demonstrating their own game. For the past ten years Critical Role have been probably the best in the world at fighting against 5e's mechanics, using a whole lot of GM force, player dramatic skill, and production budget to give a series of intense, dramatic, and strongly characterised D&D games. While Daggerheart makes it easy to create an intense, dramatic, and strongly characterised D&D game.

What Daggerheart does is the equivalent of removing almost all the friction in the engine, streamlining the car other than adding variable down force, and adding a rocket booster for players and GMs who want intense, dramatic, and strongly characterised stories making things much easier for GM and players alike.

In the hands of the CR team they know each other so well and have such good dramatic instincts that their combined push at the start is about as fast as the rocket boost would give them, and Matt Mercer corners about as tightly as it is safe to anyway. What Daggerheart mostly gives them is a speed boost along the straights and a ride where they are spending a lot less effort pushing (but we don't see that). So all we see from outside is Mercer cutting a little off his lap times.

Daggerheart is at its strongest not with the Critical Role group but with a group with a solid but unexceptional GM and players that barely know each other. The rocket boost from the collaborative character generation will get them into the first corner at something approaching Critical Role's normal pace and the rest of Daggerheart's mechanics from the Hope and Fear to the Death Moves and the spotlight initiative will give them faster acceleration and a higher top speed on the straights (I still can't believe he runs 5e combat with seven players!) and easy handling of twists and turns. So their lap times can easily be competitive with Mercer's normal rather than seeing him disappear into the distance at the first corner.