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.

 

[Clint_L]

I have questions about Brennan Lee Mulligan's ability to run an epic CR campaign - his campaigns have always been much shorter and rely far heavier on improvisation than Mercer's. He doesn't do remotely the world-building prep that Mercer does, by his own admission.

Though splitting it into three sub-campaigns might make it more amenable to his style. And, let's face it, quite a few of us felt that Mercer was starting to get a little too epic.

I am also interested in table composition. For me, a big part of CR has been that particular group of nerdy-ass voice actors. I wonder how the chemistry will be with new additions and configurations.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have questions about Brennan Lee Mulligan's ability to run an epic CR campaign

He does a lot of world building. The Unsleeping City is as detailed as anything in Exandria. The story is improvised. The world is not.

And Worlds Beyond Number is absolutely epic and has a ton of world building involved.

 

[niggy]

Who actually wastes time with this stuff? Obsessing over someone else's dnd games is so strange and against the intention of the genre in the first place.

 

[niggy]

The fact people even obsess over someone else's dnd game is weird enough, completely goes against the intention of the genre.

 

[Clint_L]

He does a lot of world building. The Unsleeping City is as detailed as anything in Exandria. The story is improvised. The world is not.

The Unsleeping City is New York - it's not like Mulligan had to invent the New York Stock Exchange, the Statue of Liberty, Staten Island, etc. It's apples and oranges comparing it to someplace like Zadash, just one of many cities that Mercer built from scratch for Exandria.

And Worlds Beyond Number is absolutely epic and has a ton of world building involved.

I'm quite familiar with Mulligan's work and am a fan. WBN is much smaller in scope than Exandria, and is also much more of a cooperative venture.

Look, I'm not saying anything that Mulligan has not said himself: he has compared his approach to Mercer's and marveled at the scale and scope of Mercer's preparation and world-building, when his typically consists of a few pages of notes for the session. In the announcement video released today, he specifically describes this as "on a scale and size that I have never attempted before." If you want to argue, argue with him.

Whether he can transition to something on the scale of Exandria, or even whether he should, are open questions. Given his style and the way this campaign will be split into three streams, a smaller scope probably makes more sense anyway, and plays into his strengths. Plus, I was feeling burnt out on Mercer's epic storytelling, so this will likely be a refreshing change of pace.

 

[Aldarc]

It came from people who have an anti WotC agenda. They were trying to manifest the end of WotC via Daggerheart/CR by making the presumptive argument that CR playing anything but DH for C4 would be an admission that the system wasn't good.

You paint too broadly with your brush and your depiction of the situation lacks any actual nuance.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

D&D can slip in popularity and still be number one. It's a long way to fall before that changes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Apparently most of them were playing 5.0, not the new thing.

 

[Afroconan]

They are playing 5.5. This decision was made, apparently, after much discussion with Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins.

I love how the theory that Daggerheart and CP and JC moving to Darrington was some sort of declaration of war against WotC and D&D is crumbling

 

[Charlaquin]

I thought the whole Daggerheart thing was because Hasbro wouldn't pay them.

Lol, no. If anything WotC did spurred them to create Daggerheart, it was the OGL debacle. But, also, they’re a group of professional, entrepreneurial adults with an enormous platform in the gaming space. They didn’t need WotC’s help figuring out that making their own system would be a good idea.

If they don't even support their own system, what was the point of it?

They do support their own system. There are a lot of actual plays under the Critical Role umbrella, and they play games using a lot of different systems, including Daggerheart.

I mean the campaign was originally in Pathfinder (Percy was a Gunslinger). They dropped that for endorsement money, but that's a bit different than dropping your own product.

They switched from Pathfinder to 5e when they switched from a home game to a live actual play series, because they knew 5e would have more market appeal, not for endorsement money.

I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but all of it seems to be wrong.