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.

 

[Charlaquin]

This feels like it's going to be even harder to follow. To be fair, I've never played in a West Marches campaign, so maybe I'm just overestimating how chaotic it's going to feel, but I think to what it would be like watching a non-bingeable TV series where it would rotate between three completely different casts of characters on a weekly basis.

Well, the video made it sound like it won’t be three groups with three completely different, consistent casts. Rather, the players will be able to jump around between the different groups as interest and availability allow. The groups are more like “home rooms” in a lot of schools (or maybe that’s just American schools?) The players’ first adventures will be with their chosen group, and that group will probably be the one they play with most often. But they’ll be able to jump around between groups.

I don’t expect it will be as confusing as you think. Lots of books, movies, and TV series have ensemble casts and shift focus between different groups at different times.

 

[Charlaquin]

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.

As others have pointed out though, this probably won’t solely be on Bennan’s shoulders. There’s a whole team of folks who will likely be working behind the scenes to help him develop and manage stuff if need be.

Also, as you said, the nature of Weatmarches kinda makes leaning on improvisation over heavy prep easier than a long-form adventure path style campaign.

 

[Staffan]

Critical Role has always been "a bunch of nerdy-ass voice actors who play Dungeons & Dragons."

 

[mamba]

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.

it’s a TV show with millions (?) of viewers that happens to prominently feature a D&D game, not some table with a handful of players somewhere in a basement

 

[Parmandur]

it’s a TV show with millions (?) of viewers that happens to prominently feature a D&D game, not some table with a handful of players somewhere in a basement

But still, people seem to have put weird expectations on this.

 

[The Soloist]

Darrington Press is not Critical Role, and Critical Role is not Darrington Press. They are two distinct corporate entities divisions that sell a different product. I'm not surprised CR season 4 is with D&D. That's the CR brand.

One does not kill the Golden Goose if it's still dropping the gold nuggets. They are regular people running a business. They have the google analytics and other sales indicators, we don't.

Attempting a West March campaign is brilliant. I would not have watched season 4 if it had been the same format as the three other campaigns. Looking forward to it.

I hold my position: I won't buy an RPG from Darrington Press until they have proven they will support it with supplements.

 

[AlViking]

I've actually made the comparison with friends that what's happened with CR does feel a lot like what happens with some bands, where they start out small and unknown and gigs feel intimate, before eventually making it big and selling out arenas. More like My Chemical Romance than Metallica, though.

Dude 1: "Dude, remember that band we really like."
Dude 2: "Yeah, the one that did that thing, they're awesome!"
Dude 2: "Yeah, I just found out a lot of other people also like them."
Dude 1: "Total bummer, man."
Dude 2: "Yeah, I hate it when a lot of people like something we like."
Dude 1: "Yeah, they like totally sold out and now we can't like them any more."
Dude 2: "Bummer man. Hey, I heard this new group. I hope no one else actually enjoys their music."

 

[thatOneLinuxDM]

Darrington Press is not Critical Role, and Critical Role is not Darrington Press. They are two distinct corporate entities that sell a different product. I'm not surprised CR season 4 is with D&D. That's the CR brand.

One does not kill the Golden Goose if it's still dropping the gold nuggets. They are regular people running a business. They have the google analytics and other sales indicators, we don't.

Attempting a West March campaign is brilliant. I would not have watched season 4 if it had been the same format as the three other campaigns. Looking forward to it.

I hold my position: I won't buy an RPG from Darrington Press until they have proven they will support it with supplements.

Critical Role Productions LLC. is the parent company of Darrington Press, they are explicitly not two distinct corproate entities, one is a subsidiary of the other. I don't believe the Podcast is its own corporate entity either?

 

[Aldarc]

I hold my position: I won't buy an RPG from Darrington Press until they have proven they will support it with supplements.

They are working on additional content for Daggerheart.

 

[Reynard]

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

No no no. You see, if they don't go all in on DH and burn all of their D&D books, they aren't REALLY committed to the new game and are telling everyone to stop playing and buying it immediately.