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.

 

[Imaro]

Distinction without a difference.

That's like claiming an advertisement for a videogame and a tutorial/playthrough are the same thing... I'd say there's a pretty big difference though both could convince you that a particular product is for you.

But again this is you telling us about you and your frustrated expectations rather than anything else. Which is fine, but like, "should in my opinion" is not really the same as "They're screwing this up!".

What else am I supposed to speak to, isn't that what all of us are posting about... and we won't know if they screwed it up until much further down the road... though I honestly can't see how not knowing the rules of your own game while publicly playing for profit can really be spun into a positive regardless of the result.

I don't think it's uncommon among a tiny number of us TTRPG nerds who already bought the game, no. But I doubt it's a common expectation at all in CR community as a whole (and indeed, I doubt many of them are even seeing any issues, because they're not familiar with narrative games, let alone Daggerheart specifically), and looking at the CR subreddit I absolutely nothing about this and nothing to support your claim it's common expectation there (whereas on the Daggerheart subreddit there are threads which do). In fact on the CR subreddit, all the commentary re: AoU I could find on the Best and Hot tabs and in the AoU E4 discussion thread was positive about the series and system, and there was no "Omg they're doing it wrong!" at all.

Go check fansofcriticalrole... the criticism is much more harsh there.

 

[nyvinter]

Go check fansofcriticalrole... the criticism is much more harsh there.

They on the other hand don't seem to like anything and seem to have a lot of people who think Daggerheart is broken and bad because it's not 5e.

 

[Imaro]

They on the other hand don't seem to like anything and seem to have a lot of people who think Daggerheart is broken and bad because it's not 5e.

I didn't get the 5e vibe from them... but they are more concerned with mechanics, balance, and the actual gameplay... including why use DH instead of 5e if you're just going to play it like 5e... which admittedly is an intriguing question.

 

[nyvinter]

We have vastly different readings on that reddit then. For me, they're a gathering of people who have made cynicism their main character trait combined with being extremely thin-skinned in any sort of self-criticism.

I think there was one positive Daggerheart thread there, the rest was "this is bad and not a finished game" and "without the constraints of 5e, this game will make your game worse" in ways that to me says they're really not used to any narrative games whatsoever.

To borrow a phrase from television: "they're not serious people."

Edit: perhaps I'm being a bit unfair above but I honestly feel that this isn't: they're the Heathers of CR fandom.

 

[Imaro]

We have vastly different readings on that reddit then. For me, they're a gathering of people who have made cynicism their main character trait combined with being extremely thin-skinned in any sort of self-criticism.

No but I think you're overstating

I think there was one positive Daggerheart thread there, the rest was "this is bad and not a finished game" and "without the constraints of 5e, this game will make your game worse" in ways that to me says they're really not used to any narrative games whatsoever.

So are we speaking about Daggerheart or the AoU AP? And this is exactly the audience (Mainly traditional ttrpg players that AoU should be showing their criticisms are unfounded if the game is ran properly... Instead we see the AoU in fact being run with the constraints of 5e by CR. So is DH only for those who have run narrative games before?

To borrow a phrase from television: "they're not serious people."

If you say so...

 

[Clint_L]

I've been enjoying Umbral overall, but this is the big criticism from my point of view. They're in a situation where they are putting out content that they KNOW will be used to judge and evaluate Daggerheart, yet the majority of them don't seem to be even passingly familiar with the rules. This is the first big actual play with your company's brand new ruleset, wouldn't you think you'd want to present it in as positive a light as possible?

But, much as I think they're great, these (as you say) are the people that have played more D&D over the past ten years than possibly anyone on the planet and the players still don't know a chunk of those rules either.

I’m wondering if this was an intentional strategy, so that Mercer would be required to constantly explain things for the audience. Because Johnson and to a lesser extent Riegel often struggle with rules but the rest of the cast are usually pretty good. And they’ve not included OBrien in the initial episodes, who is almost as rules savvy as Mercer.

But, again, the aspect of Daggerheart that I’ve not yet seen much of is the part I’m most interested in: collaborative, meaningful world building during the game itself. And by meaningful, I mean more than character choices and flavour, I mean actual plot and story progression. The rules suggest it should play somewhat more like a PbtA game in this respect, but what I’m seeing looks a lot more like D&D with different dice mechanics.

 

[nyvinter]

I would really like to see Laura and Liam's session zero as well.

 

[overgeeked]

We have vastly different readings on that reddit then. For me, they're a gathering of people who have made cynicism their main character trait combined with being extremely thin-skinned in any sort of self-criticism.

I think there was one positive Daggerheart thread there, the rest was "this is bad and not a finished game" and "without the constraints of 5e, this game will make your game worse" in ways that to me says they're really not used to any narrative games whatsoever.

To borrow a phrase from television: "they're not serious people."

That's my impression as well. The main CR subreddit is mostly filled with toxic positivity where even the slightest whiff of not absolutely loving CR in every way imaginable is shouted down and down voted to oblivion. Fansofcriticalrole is basically the opposite. Nothing but complaints and criticisms and anyone caught daring to enjoy anything about CR at all is shouted down and down voted to oblivion.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I actually think Critical Role are doing a great job of advertising Daggerheart even if they aren't showing what you can truly do with the system when you try.

Essentially what they are running is their normal very good 5e campaign with much snappier and more dramatic combat (and tedious combat is the big 5e actual negative) and Matt Mercer pulling some drama out of the fear system and Session Zero that would not come out of 5e.

So they are showing that Daggerheart is better while at the same time making it non-threatening. And being no more on the ball with the Daggerheart rules than D&D shows you don't have to be. And the crowd that knows it wants "like 5e but better" is much bigger than the crowd that knows it wants full on PbtA mayhem.

 

[nyvinter]

So are we speaking about Daggerheart or the AoU AP? And this is exactly the audience (Mainly traditional ttrpg players that AoU should be showing their criticisms are unfounded if the game is ran properly... Instead we see the AoU in fact being run with the constraints of 5e by CR. So is DH only for those who have run narrative games before?

No, DH are for the people who want to play it. But we should also allow people some lenience to unlearn rules baggage from other systems. It's not easy to get rid of that even if you know the new rules in theory.

The subreddit started to watch with the consensus that "Matt will be terrible, Ashley will be terrible, the rest will also be bad theatre kids but perhaps not as bad. AoU will be horse manure unless characters die in session one." So of course they're going to be critical of it.