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.

 

[Reynard]

The Daggerheart terrain is set up much quicker than the D&D terrain... it's set up beforehand offscreen and he just brings the board over.

I was answering the question of why there might be a difference between Campaign 2 and Campaign 3 times.

 

[Imaro]

I was answering the question of why there might be a difference between Campaign 2 and Campaign 3 times.

Ah ok, my bad I misread.

 

[SteveC]

Matt has spoken up a couple of times about rules issues that he's trying to get across to the viewers, so I have no doubt that there's some rules teaching going on. And (and this is just my opinion, of course) that's a very good thing. I think there should be more of it, right up to the point where it interferes with Matt's ability to run a fun game.

This is the first exposure to the full Daggerheart rules for just about everyone. You only get one shot at a first impression, so treating it like it was just another season of Critical Role with a game where we all know the rules by heart isn't the best idea.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm not saying DH definitively isn't faster than D&D... I'm saying I think it's premature to start claiming it runs 2x faster.

You're flatly wrong.

I can say that with absolute confidence having run both. It's not at all premature. You trying to guesstimate based on people playing primarily as a form of entertainment to others is not a way to get a good read, frankly. At the same level too - this is faster than low-level D&D combats, and that's with a group more competent with D&D's rules than the CR crew.

I suggest you get back to us once you've run it with a group before saying anything about "premature".

Also note you're probably not comparing like with like battle complexity/difficulty-wise. The default encounter difficulty in DH is roughly equivalent to Deadly in D&D 5E - that's why in every DH AoU battle so far the PCs have nearly died, and come out extremely battered. Are the battles you're comparing it with Deadly+ in D&D 5E terms? If they are, great!

 

[Imaro]

You're flatly wrong.

I can say that with absolute confidence having run both. It's not at all premature. You trying to guesstimate based on people playing primarily as a form of entertainment to others is not a way to get a good read, frankly. At the same level too - this is faster than low-level D&D combats, and that's with a group more competent with D&D's rules than the CR crew.

I suggest you get back to us once you've run it with a group before saying anything about "premature".

Also note you're probably not comparing like with like battle complexity/difficulty-wise. The default encounter difficulty in DH is roughly equivalent to Deadly in D&D 5E - that's why in every DH AoU battle so far the PCs have nearly died, and come out extremely battered. Are the battles you're comparing it with Deadly+ in D&D 5E terms? If they are, great, but I'm guessing "Zombies" and "Devil Toad" singular are not Deadly encounters (I could be wrong).

Ok... because your anecdotal experience is all the data needed to come to a sound conclusion... especially since you earlier rejected another poster's anecdotal claim... but yes continue to tell me how I'm wrong with your minimal data points. I'm not wrong because I haven't come to a conclusion yet, or are you claiming I'm flatly wrong because I wont accept your conclusion from a minimal data set as truth?

EDIT: Wait are you claiming the players have almost died in every encounter? Are you actually watching the series because that is flat out false. I believe there was one encounter (unless I missed it and please let me know which ones) where possible death came up... that was it.

 

[Clint_L]

Have you ever watched the same exact people do 5E combat lol? I'm guessing not because I find it hard to believe you could say "DH combat looks slow in this" if you had. This is lightning fast compared to how they do 5E combat.

As stated, I’ve watched pretty much every episode of CR, many multiple times, and I’m not seeing lightning fast combat on AU.

So I literally timed it, this being a (somewhat) quantifiable claim. Nope, player turns are about the same.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You're flatly wrong.

I can say that with absolute confidence having run both. It's not at all premature. You trying to guesstimate based on people playing primarily as a form of entertainment to others is not a way to get a good read, frankly. At the same level too - this is faster than low-level D&D combats, and that's with a group more competent with D&D's rules than the CR crew.

I suggest you get back to us once you've run it with a group before saying anything about "premature".

Also note you're probably not comparing like with like battle complexity/difficulty-wise. The default encounter difficulty in DH is roughly equivalent to Deadly in D&D 5E - that's why in every DH AoU battle so far the PCs have nearly died, and come out extremely battered. Are the battles you're comparing it with Deadly+ in D&D 5E terms?

I've also run both - and, despite the fact that I (like many of us) have literally years and hundreds more sessions with 5e than DH the question isn't if 5e combat is faster but by how much. And getting true "like for like" comparisons is an art given different levels mean different things (I'd go with DH1 = 5e 3) and different levels of danger.

 

[Reynard]

right up to the point where it interferes with Matt's ability to run a fun game.

I think it is worth noting that Matt's primary responsibility is NOT to run a fun game, but rather to run a game that entertains the audience.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I can say that with absolute confidence having run both.

It may be faster for your group, but that doesn't tell us anything about the general situation.

with a group more competent with D&D's rules

Maybe that means they take a long time selecting what is optimal, rather than just hitting everything with an axe, which is typically how my players approach the game. Whereas the lack of familiarity with DH means they make decisions based on the narrative flow, rather than optimal tactics?

There are many other reasons why your experience might not be generally representative.

 

[SteveC]

Yeah it's almost like both systems have variable factors that can increase or decrease the time a combat takes depending on how and what the GM/DM sets up, how focused your players are, what classes are played and so on... on top of the fact that one really hasn't been played enough to really pin down whether it is all out faster or not and whether factors in the game can change that. You know what I was saying earlier.

I think you hit it spot on here. There are tons of factors in how long combat takes (or any other part of the game, for that matter), and we've had the game released in final form for about a month. I'd question anyone who says "this is how the game plays..." at this point, since we'll only really know that over time and experience. And not to mention experience with the game procedures. We learn about everything over time.