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.

 

[Reynard]

Such is the economics of game stores. There’s a lot of factors to their continued viability beyond just D&D. All I’m saying is that if I’m judging by the activity in the store, and the percentage of space dedicated to the games, D&D is probably not the primary driver.

We could just ask one of the posters here who does, in fact, run a game store.

 

[Reynard]

I like DnD and other games.

And it would be objectively better for those other games if D&D did not crowd them off the shelves.

Enjoy my opinion that 2014 DnD is both an elegant and simple system that is a mixture of both old school game play and new innovations in the rpg industry and continue to run games for my friends?

Congratulations. It is always good to find a game you really enjoy. But no game is perfect, and we have thoroughly explored 5E and its weaknesses. D&D is due for a new edition.

 

[TiQuinn]

We could just ask one of the posters here who does, in fact, run a game store.

I don’t like calling on anyone in particular but if they stumble across this and wanna offer their viewpoint, that’d be cool.

 

[SkidAce]

I think we should trust a person who has been playing the game for a dozen years to know what she means when she says she loves the game that she's played professionally for a dozen years.

There's no reason to think she's an idiot or a fool.

She says D&D saved her. She knows herself better than we do.

Probably should be a separate thread, but from the perspective of playing from the early 80s to now, and watching social interactions...

I think DnD may have helped/saved a lot of people.

 

[Scribe]

But no game is perfect, and we have thoroughly explored 5E and its weaknesses. D&D is due for a new edition.

Hmm wonder what the general thought would be now that 5.5 has been out for a bit.

What did 5.5 do wrong, what was already wrong with 5, and how would the general 'you' go about fixing it for 6.

 

[SkidAce]

And it would be objectively better for those other games if D&D did not crowd them off the shelves.

Congratulations. It is always good to find a game you really enjoy. But no game is perfect, and we have thoroughly explored 5E and its weaknesses. D&D is due for a new edition.

Understood, but that presupposes that "edition" or "mechanics" is a driving factor of game enjoyment (which is valid).

For us (us meaning groups over the years) the adventures and scenarios is our main factor.

I mean, gee whiz, we make decisions in the Talisman board game based on RP. You might say we are pathetic in our way, but we have fun.

 

[SkidAce]

Congratulations. It is always good to find a game you really enjoy. But no game is perfect, and we have thoroughly explored 5E and its weaknesses. D&D is due for a new edition.

A second thought after posting...

instead of a new dnd edition...you could roll to one of the other systems and help make it popular.

win/win

 

[kermit4karate]

but it kinda was for a while already...after TSR and before WotC.

Exactly. There are probably more D&D players in the world who regularly run the game without a SINGLE published book on the table than people who run Pathfinder and Daggerheart combined using ALL their official books.

I literally no longer need the books to run D&D games anymore, and I know I'm far from alone on that. Been using it for 43 years.

D&D is so huge that even if all new book sales were to halt, it would remain the hugest by order of magnitude for years.

 

[CleverNickName]

but it kinda was for a while already...after TSR and before WotC.

Hm, good point. When that happened, folks in my area just kept playing the old BECM or AD&D game, and would scour the used bookstores and comic shops for out-of-print modules and stuff. Maybe it was different in other places, but there wasn't a sudden and massive shift to another game to fill the void. Other games existed, and we knew about them, even played a couple...but they just weren't what we wanted.

I suspect that if it all happened again and WotC somehow went out of business, history would repeat itself. I think people would scour the Internet for .pdfs of their out-of-print 5E stuff for years until they ran out of material or another company brough D&D back. And there is a lifetime of 5E-compatible content on the internet to keep us interested.

Really though, the only time I remember a sudden and massive shift of D&D fans moving to a completely different game was in 2008 (with the shift from 4E to Pathfinder). And the jury is still out on whether or not PF qualifies as "completely different."

 

[AlViking]

And it would be objectively better for those other games if D&D did not crowd them off the shelves.

Congratulations. It is always good to find a game you really enjoy. But no game is perfect, and we have thoroughly explored 5E and its weaknesses. D&D is due for a new edition.

If there was demand for those other games they'd find room for them. Meanwhile no game is perfect, that doesn't mean a lot of people don't enjoy playing it as much as any other game.