Critical Role to Use D&D 2024 Rules For Campaign Four, Expands to Three Tables and Thirteen Players

Critical Role will continue to use Dungeons & Dragons as the play system for its upcoming campaign, with the cast expanding to three distinct tables consisting of a total of 13 players. Today, Critical Role announced new details about its new campaign, which is set to air on October 4th. The new campaign will feature the full founding cast members as players, alongside several new players. In total, the cast includes Laura Bailey, Luis Carazo, Robbie Daymond, Aabria Iyengar, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Matthew Mercer, Whitney Moore, Liam O’Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, Alexander Ward, and Travis Willingham, with the previously announced Brennan Lee Mulligan serving as GM.

The campaign itself will be run as a "West Marches" style of campaign, with three separate groups of players exploring the world. The groups are divided into gameplay styles, with a combat-focused Soldiers group, a lore/exploration-focused Seekers group, and a intrigue-focused Schemers group. All three groups will explore the world of Araman, created by Mulligan for the campaign.

Perhaps most importantly, Critical Role will not be switching to Daggerheart for the fourth campaign. Instead, they'll be opting for the new 2024 ruleset of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. Daggerheart will be represented at Critical Role via the Age of Umbra and "other" Actual Play series, as well as partnerships with other Actual Play troupes.

 

[kermit4karate]

if they can do it for D&D, what stops them from doing it for DH?

The premise what that DH is not ready for this kind of sweeping show yet while 2024 is (“Yah, it would be a heavy lift for a new game as light on material as it is.”). If they have to create a lot of stuff either way, then that cannot be a reason for why one is but the other is not

Oh, I'm sure the content isn't what led them to choose D&D. The content part is easy. Just create settings, races, classes, etc. That's the storytelling part that applies to every game.

The beloved D&D mechanics and the system itself and the global zeitgeist surrounding D&D make it vastly more appealing to vastly more people than DH. There's simply a much bigger audience for it by orders of magnitude.

 

[Chaltab]

I don't understand why people are so put off by this decision honestly. I'm personally less interested in watching a long-form Daggerheart AP because I have little interest in running the game. But people are acting like this is a shady move or displays a lack of confidence in their own game and I just... don't see that. They're doing a second season of Age of Umbra in Daggerheart and they're still publishing a lot of content.

I cant help but feel people were eagerly hoping for a big split between CR and WOTC and now are just let down their fanfiction didn't play itself out.

 

[kermit4karate]

I don't understand why people are so put off by this decision honestly. I'm personally less interested in watching a long-form Daggerheart AP because I have little interest in running the game. But people are acting like this is a shady move or displays a lack of confidence in their own game and I just... don't see that. They're doing a second season of Age of Umbra in Daggerheart and they're still publishing a lot of content.

I cant help but feel people were eagerly hoping for a big split between CR and WOTC and now are just let down their fanfiction didn't play itself out.

Haters gonna hate.

 

[Retreater]

A sea change kinda requires most people to actually want a change. D&D is more popular than ever far as I can tell.

That's not what I've seen. From my angle, few are playing 2024 D&D (based on DND Beyond character numbers, GenCon events, and reported book sales). The 3D VTT that was going to be a cornerstone of the new revision proved to be DOA. Virtually every high profile employee at D&D is gone.
It's certainly not "more popular than ever" if you consider the height of the pandemic. I'm not saying it's dead, but it's certainly slipped in the pop cultural zeitgeist.

 

[kermit4karate]

That's not what I've seen. From my angle, few are playing 2024 D&D (based on DND Beyond character numbers, GenCon events, and reported book sales). The 3D VTT that was going to be a cornerstone of the new revision proved to be DOA. Virtually every high profile employee at D&D is gone.
It's certainly not "more popular than ever" if you consider the height of the pandemic. I'm not saying it's dead, but it's certainly slipped in the pop cultural zeitgeist.

Yeah, I think that's wishful thinking. Movies, the shelf space in game stores, Critical Role, etc. on down the list. There are literally tens of millions of D&D core rulebooks out there in circulation covering the decades of different editions, many blended together by DMs, being used daily.

Not a chance that anything is anywhere remotely near D&D's popularity.

 

[JConstantine]

For those interested and haven't watched the fireside chat, one of the questions asked was why D&D2024? Brennan's answer was essentially that it was about player comfort - there was a long conversion in which Crawford & Perkins (accurately in Brennan's view) made the case that it's the system/edition that would facilitate the most players given the expanded cast. Matt also followed up that they were reticent about moving on from D&D2014 because of their familiarity with it. No mention of Daggerheart making it sound like it was never even a consideration.

 

[GarrettKP]

That's not what I've seen. From my angle, few are playing 2024 D&D (based on DND Beyond character numbers, GenCon events, and reported book sales). The 3D VTT that was going to be a cornerstone of the new revision proved to be DOA. Virtually every high profile employee at D&D is gone.
It's certainly not "more popular than ever" if you consider the height of the pandemic. I'm not saying it's dead, but it's certainly slipped in the pop cultural zeitgeist.

Idk what GenCon you went to, but the one I attended this year had full D&D tables throughout all four days. I played at them constantly and it was almost always packed tables. The only time there wasn’t was for the learn to play events from my experience.

 

[tombowings]

Why create their own system if they're going to abandon it?

 

[Imaro]

Why create their own system if they're going to abandon it?

They announced a season 2 of Age of Umbra... Age of Umbra is Daggerheart... this is the opposite of abandoning a system...

 

[kermit4karate]

Why create their own system if they're going to abandon it?

I doubt they're abandoning it. Featuring it now just didn't make as much business sense. We all know it came down to money at the end of the day.