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.

 

[DarkCrisis]

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.

D&D (RPGs) have definitely kept me sane over the years. Especially now a days when getting together for a few hours with friends is a Herculean task.

 

[kermit4karate]

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.

Yeah, I think the bigger factor is that there isn't more room within most people's headspace for other games.

Most casual gamers -- and let's be real here; it's casual gamers who established D&D -- don't need/want to learn something completely different from D&D simply to play another fantasy RPG with friends. Why would they? D&D is good enough, and someone at every table is already familiar with it. It's not like it's a flaming dumpster fire with the dumbest mechanics known to man.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Yeah, I think the bigger factor is that there isn't more room within most people's headspace for other games.

Most casual gamers -- and let's be real here; it's casual gamers who established D&D -- don't need/want to learn something completely different from D&D simply to play another fantasy RPG with friends. Why would they? D&D is good enough, and someone at every table is already familiar with it. It's not like it's a flaming dumpster fire with the dumbest mechanics known to man.

I am inclined to agree, which is why, if WoTC D&D was to cease, it would be replaced by the closest clone game.

 

[AlViking]

D&D (RPGs) have definitely kept me sane over the years. Especially now a days when getting together for a few hours with friends is a Herculean task.

Same. Doesn't mean a different game could also have done that, but finding a game that works for everyone that we can play for years? D&D does that for the people I play with.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm personally unconvinced by the claim that Daggerheart is doing extremely well because Critical Role announcing it 'sold out' doesn't tell us anything concrete about its staying power. It will always have those people who buy it because they buy anything vaguely attached to Critical Role and then it lives on their shelf for years because they're not actually playing it.

Well, selling out primarily means it has done better than their business estimates, which is great. There have been over half a.million characters created for Daggerheart on Demiplane, which is a heck of a lot of interest.

Doesn’t mean it will "replace D&D", anymore than a board game taking off means Chess is going out of style.

 

[Parmandur]

Oh yeah. I would bet money that only Matt and maybe Jaffe seriously care about the brand. Matt played many things, but genuinely loved D&D as the game of his childhood. It wasn't until the OGL issue that his faith was shaken.

Jaffe is probably very familiar with the brand, but has no grand love for it specifically, and probably enjoys lots of quirky systems.

The rest probably only mean Dungeons & Dragons in the sense of "Roleplaying Games." Oh, they might love the fireball or polymorph spell, but it's because of familiarity. Liam was just glad to play, it barely mattered what. When Ashley says D&D has improved her life, she very likely means "Roleplaying Games with her friends" has improved her life, not the brand itself.

This is projecting a separation of D&D the brand experience and TTRPGs as a hobby onto another person that might not exist in their emotional complex.

It exists for you and foe me, but not necessarily for everyone.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, I think the bigger factor is that there isn't more room within most people's headspace for other games.

Most casual gamers -- and let's be real here; it's casual gamers who established D&D -- don't need/want to learn something completely different from D&D simply to play another fantasy RPG with friends. Why would they? D&D is good enough, and someone at every table is already familiar with it. It's not like it's a flaming dumpster fire with the dumbest mechanics known to man.

This is what I think the Cosmere RPG did that is massively clever: it is a very different game from 5E D&D I key ways, but it very much "feels" like playing D&D in a moment to moment way.

 

[CleverNickName]

Very true. I suppose the issue is at this point, do all those other games still need D&D sitting on top of the heap like an emperor?

Or to my point: should these other games even care if D&D is sitting on top of the heap?

If your mission is to find (or create) fun alternatives to D&D, you're in luck: the market is huge, the demand is high, loads of people play TTRPGs as a hobby, and indie games are more popular and accessible than ever.

But if your mission is to dethrone that emperor, we aren't just talking about games anymore...we're also talking about branding and marketing and shareholders and industry and $15B in cash. That's something else entirely.

 

[kermit4karate]

This is what I think the Cosmere RPG did that is massively clever: it is a very different game from 5E D&D I key ways, but it very much "feels" like playing D&D in a moment to moment way.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. For a brief moment I was interested in making iPhone video games and getting them in the Apple App Store, so I did a bunch of research into the top games to figure out what they had in common. Funnily enough, most of the top games were either the ones people were familiar with -- Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, other instantly recognizable titles -- or they were copycat clones and derivatives of those very same top games.

Seriously, one of the best paths to take as an app developer, if one actually hopes to make a survivable wage, is to imitate something that's already successful.

Who knew!?

Is that sad? Yeah, kinda.... But it's also true.

 

[Clint_L]

Yeah, I think the bigger factor is that there isn't more room within most people's headspace for other games.

Most casual gamers -- and let's be real here; it's casual gamers who established D&D -- don't need/want to learn something completely different from D&D simply to play another fantasy RPG with friends. Why would they? D&D is good enough, and someone at every table is already familiar with it. It's not like it's a flaming dumpster fire with the dumbest mechanics known to man.

I think that it is mostly DM types (i.e. 90%+ of the people on this forum, I suspect) that are driven to try out different TTRPGs and mechanics. It's a lot of expense, in terms of time, money, and effort, and as you say, your average player doesn't see the value in the proposition.

I can get my players to play a different game when it offers a distinctly different experience with minimal effort required from them. So running a game of Dread is a good sell. They were down for a short Call of Cthulhu campaign, and for Alien. An evening of Fiasco here and there.

But swapping from D&D to Pathfinder or Daggerheart? That would involve a lot more expense for a similar experience (especially for PF). Most folks don't see the value in it. People switched in 2008 because PF felt more familiar than did 4e - the whole point of PF was that it was continuing 3e's legacy. And that greatly decreased the effort needed to switch brands, especially since WotC had just increased the effort needed to stay with D&D.

I think the Critical Role team A) enjoy playing D&D and have been immensely successful with it, and B) recognize that, successful as DH has been, it is not remotely in the same league as D&D when it comes to brand recognition, and neither are they. So rather than asking all their fans to switch, they're staying focused on their main brand, while still offfering support to their other ventures. They even brought in D&D2024's main architects to facilitate the new campaign.