Critical Role to Run Grimdark Daggerheart Miniseries

Critical Role has a new Daggerheart miniseries in the works, which will showcase the Age of Umbra campaign frame developed by Matt Mercer. In a recent video posted to social media, Mercer showed off the final print version of Daggerheart's core rulebook, which will release in May. During the video, Mercer discussed some of the campaign frames that will appear in the new book, including the previously announced Age of Umbra setting. In the video, Mercer announced that Age of Umbra will be featured in the next Daggerheart Actual Play miniseries being developed by Critical Role.

Mercer developed the Age of Umbra campaign frame as an intentionally grimdark setting inspired by Dark Souls and Kingdom Death: Monster. Speaking at PAX Unplugged, Mercer discussed the setting in further detail. "The campaign I created, Age of Umbra, is [similar to] a Soulsbourne," Mercer said. "It is a dark, challenging very grim place by design. In Daggerheart, our menagerie games are very silly and very fun and lean on flexing and going over the top with our characters. Age of Umbra is meant to be the opposite. It is a landscape that has been without gods for over 100 years; they abandoned the people and the realm itself is kind of rotting and dying. The survivors that exist there have to hold on to what community there is to get by as the dark things in the shadows grow darker and larger as time passes."

"There are threats and dangers whenever you rest that might give the GM more Fear," Mercer said later in the panel. "You might actually be attacked before you finish resting, so you want to have somebody take the Watch action while you have downtime to mitigate that danger. There are mechanics in this frame to set that theme that no place is really safe. There are things lurking out there and there's longstanding corruption beyond just damage that exists in this space."

The announcement, while minor, has some major implications for Critical Role. The popular actual play show recently wrapped up its third campaign and there was speculation that the show would switch from Dungeons & Dragons to Daggerheart for the next ongoing campaign. Considering that Age of Umbra is developed by Mercer and is being featured in a new miniseries, it seems like the plan is still for Critical Role to focus on Exandria in their ongoing campaign and use various miniseries to explore other kinds of stories and worlds. We'll have to see as Critical Role said they'll make more announcements about its future later this spring.

 

[zakael19]

Multiple people here have stated over and over that the Ageof Umbra frame isn’t “grimdark” despite what the article says. Heck, it’s not dissimilar in overall vibe (perhaps even more hopeful) to The One Ring. A bleak high fantasy world that asks if you’ll be the ones to fully rekindle hope.

 

[dbm]

I think I believed campaign frameworks to be more than minor rules tweaks at first but realize that's exactly what they are and more for injecting mood or tone than actually changing the genre.

They are a sliding scale of complexity in the changes involved. I think you need to actually see the content to get the full understanding of what they are doing / demonstrating.

The most involved frame is a Weird West setting which involves battling giant monsters Shadow of the Colossus style. Their physical forms become part of the battlefield and you climb up them during combat to reach their vulnerable areas.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

So it's heroic fantasy and yet the very title of the article claims it's a grimdark campaign.

There's no hard contradiction between those two genres in terms of mechanics that support them.

That's just tone. You can run grimdark 5E no problems despite 5E being clearly a heroic fantasy game. It's about what happens plot/character-wise not how it happens so much.

It's bizarre and kind of funny even trying to argue that they're separate and exclusive when grimdark is massively broad that it includes ultra-super-heroic stuff like the top end of 40K, and grimy, ultra-gritty stuff like the bottom end of 40K! And that's from the trope-namer itself! Grimdark is everything from badass god-men battling on a spaceship over the fate of the universe to some poor grunt slogging it through mud, wishing he'd make it home to see his family but knowing he's going to ripped in half by a Tyranid. Mechanically, the superheroes and the grunt are absolutely different genres. You wouldn't want to use the same RPG for both, and indeed that's part of why 40K has multiple different TTRPGs with different mechanics by the same company! (Wrath and Glory and Imperium Maledictus, for example)

But they're both grimdark.

But if you're saying it's heroic fantasy with different coats of paint... well cool I accept that...but I feel like others weren't viewing or presenting it as such and perhaps that mistake is on me, Ill own it. Better to finish reading it and decide for myself.

I'd say go ahead and do that but I'm surprised you were seeing a conflict between "grimdark" and "Heroic fantasy" or "Epic Fantasy". Those genres overlap very significantly. Indeed, a significant proportion of heroic and epic fantasy is "grimdark" in the sense that it's set in a very dark and unpleasant world, that people come to bad ends, that there's an element of hopelessness and so on. Also note, you can have pure heroes in a grimdark setting - this has always been true - 40K (which is the original "grimdark") has figures who are purely or primarily heroic and always has done.

You might say this is people using the term "grimdark" too liberally but that's how it's been used for the 10+ years so...

Also, more to the point, I wouldn't personally call Age of Umbra, or say, Elden Ring, "grimdark" but perhaps that's a separate issue. It's reasonable shorthand for a lot of people I guess, but I don't love it. There's a focus on real "tragedy" and "humanity" in both Age of Umbra and as was mentioned by @zakael19 The One Ring that isn't present in a lot of grimdark stuff (though it is present in some).

 

[SteveC]

Multiple people here have stated over and over that the Ageof Umbra frame isn’t “grimdark” despite what the article says. Heck, it’s not dissimilar in overall vibe (perhaps even more hopeful) to The One Ring. A bleak high fantasy world that asks if you’ll be the ones to fully rekindle hope.

I'm watching the "session 0" for this campaign on YouTube and I think this is correct. Matt talked about how it is a "soulslike" game, but also that the group is going to be the only hope for bringing light back. It will be really interesting to see how this goes. I don't think a bleak grimdark game where the players are constantly getting abused with no impact in a positive way would be particularly possible. But we'll see!

 

[CubicsRube]

I'm surprised how I haven't seen anyone yet bring up Age of Umbra's similarity to Tainted Grail.

In AoE society has fractured because of a mysterious entity (The Umbra) that is only held back by small communities who tend sacred pyres in the Halcyon age.

In Tainted Grail society has fractured because of a mysterious force (the Wyrd) that is only held back by small communities who tend sacred pyres in the Avalon age.

There seems to be quite a lot of similarities in general. I haven't looked at the details to see how many things match up. But I certainly get the same vibe.