Critical Role Announces Publishing Company

The first game will be a board/card game called Uk’otoa. This will be followed by role playing game products including Syndicult, “an original modern magic roleplaying game designed by Matthew Mercer in which mob families jealously guard secrets and battle it out for power on the city streets.”

Announcing Darrington Press, Our Game Publishing Company | Critical Role

critrole.com

I’ve long wondered whether there might one day be the official Critical Role role playing game, and whether CR's massive influence could make a dent in WotC, the traditional 800lb gorilla.

 

[MarkB]

Mercer will never screw over D&D. They’ll dance around the edges and publish things like what they’ve announced.

Probably - but I wouldn't say certainly. They struggled with high-level play in their previous campaign, and they're getting there in this campaign. The battle in their latest episode had a series of rules mis-recollections, effects being remembered and applied retroactively, and players frozen by decision paralysis due to an excess of options in a difficult situation. They might genuinely appreciate working with a simpler ruleset.

They'll most likely persevere through this campaign until they hit max levels and bring it to a natural conclusion, but where they go after that could be wide open.

 

[jerryrice4949]

I don't think this is entirely unfair. I wonder how many people who picked up D&D after watching Critical Role are more CR fans than they are D&D fans.

Good point.

To be honest I am not sure this is a great idea. RPG publishing is a low margin business. Having Green Ronin and then WoTC publish and market their books so they could focus on what they are good at seems the smarter route. But that is just me.

 

[Zaukrie]

I think people active on message boards and Twitter over estimate the impact of controversy on WotC. I bet none of the people I play with even know about them.

 

[Morrus]

I think people active on message boards and Twitter over estimate the impact of controversy on WotC. I bet none of the people I play with even know about them.

Well, they're being sued for $10M by Weis and Hickman because they allege that controversy impacted WotC so much that they walked away from a lucrative trilogy of new Dragonlance books. I'd say controversy impacts WotC and the decisions it makes, and thus impacts the people you play with. I'm surprised, based on the evidence of the last half decade or so, that anybody would think that social media stories don't impact companies.

 

[MockingBird]

I think people active on message boards and Twitter over estimate the impact of controversy on WotC. I bet none of the people I play with even know about them.

I dont even know about all of them and I visit this site daily. Im positive my players don't know about them. In fairness I just look at whats coming out or interesting threads being discussed.

 

[Zaukrie]

Well, they're being sued for $10M by Weis and Hickman because they allege that controversy impacted WotC so much that they walked away from a lucrative trilogy of new Dragonlance books. I'd say controversy impacts WotC and the decisions it makes, and thus impacts the people you play with. I'm surprised, based on the evidence of the last half decade or so, that anybody would think that social media stories don't impact companies.

I didn't say no impact....I said over estimate.

 

[Morrus]

I didn't say no impact....I said over estimate.

I think it's the opposite. I think most people underestimate the impact this stuff has.

 

[EthanSental]

Social media attention span is like a gnat....2 weeks later the news cycle is passed to the next hot social topic to talk about. So I don’t the impact is as lasting or if it does probably depends on the age and demographics.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This is no threat to WotC, but it does mean the third party publishers who might have hoped the next Critical Role campaign (the current characters are getting pretty high up there in levels -- if you can now pop into your own pocket dimension tower, complete with magical servant cats to wait on you, you're running out of conventional threats to deal with in D&D) would have a sourcebook published through them are probably out of luck.

I'd guess the next campaign will be on a new continent, so as not to compete with the Green Ronin or WotC sourcebooks and we'll see, eventually, a pretty steady flow of material from them.

Also, Dimension 20 is fantastic. If you only listen to or watch Critical Role, you're missing out on a lot of other great shows with professional performers, like Dimension 20, Not Another D&D Podcast, Nerd Poker etc.

 

[OblivionDrive]

"Legacy-lite". I'm not sure exactly how to interpret that, but I'm guessing it means that they've stripped out most of the original game mechanics in order to make this a self-contained game.

There are plenty of RPG-esque boardgames which allow you to play out specific scenarios and present a curated storyline, but while many of them have a lot of flexibility built in and allow you to replay them multiple times, experiencing different scenarios, I haven't heard of many that push it to the extent of character progression and an extended campaign. This sounds like it could be closer to a full-fledged rules-lite RPG system.

I wonder whether it'll include anything that could be repurposed for use in a tabletop game, such as minis of Vox Machina and their opponents, or battlemaps of the scenarios being played out.

My assumption there is that they mean similar to Legacy games like Risk Legacy, Pandemic Legacy, Betrayal Legacy (from Betrayal at House on the Hill) and games like Seafall, which is to say a boardgame experience that incorporates elements of an ongoing narrative where permanent changes are made to the rules and play materials (cards get ripped up, written on, etc) which ensures that each experience is totally unique and consequences carry through multiple play sessions.

Tl;dr - a boardgame with RPG-like progression and narrative elements where decisions have consequences, but not a rules-lite pen and paper RPG.