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.

 

[AlViking]

just like in software. No one is forced to work on some Windows app at gunpoint

Software relies on the operating system. When writing software you have a few choices Windows, IOS or Linux. Stand-alone is not an option.

A game? It can be dependent on another game if you want or totally stand-alone.

 

[Clint_L]

Like anything, though, making a living selling a game intended to compete with, or be an alternative to, a behemoth like D&D has to be solvable. There must be ways to do it because we do see examples from time to time. It's a challenge, but most challenges are solvable.

Speaking as yet one more opinionated veteran gamer among millions...to me the biggest barrier to entry for most people when it comes to getting interested in a new fantasy TTRPG is the initial learning curve and the value proposition vis-à-vis D&D.

Why should I spend a few hours to learn it when I'm already familiar with D&D?
Why should I spend any money on it when I already have the books for D&D?
What's in it for me, versus what's in it for me if I just continue to play D&D?
How am I going to get a few other people in my circle of friends interested in it?

I bet the fantasy RPG game developers who answer those questions and address those concerns sell more copies of their games.

I think D&D owns the fantasy genre for TTRPGs. Period. Everyone else is fighting for its scraps, for the reasons that you cite. It's a big enough genre that those scraps can still be enough to support some awesome games, don't get me wrong, and I wish them well. But I think anyone thinking that Daggerheart was going to unseat D&D as the fantasy behemoth was kidding themselves.

When I want to get my group to play a different game, I have to go to not just a simple system, so they don't have to invest much effort, but another genre so that we can create new types of stories. You can see that DH tries to address this by pitching itself as more genre flexible than D&D, and that's likely why CR's Age of Umbra is so tonally distinct from their D&D campaigns (to its detriment, IMO).

This new campaign is getting me excited because a West Marches style gets back to D&D's roots. Mulligan talks about how it was how he first start DMing, from age 12-17, because he had a bunch of groups who wanted to play. So it seems right up his alley, and he's such a flexible DM that he'll likely kill it.

 

[kermit4karate]

I point out that according to Hasbro's reports to investors (so, pretty reliable unless they want to go to prison), MtG dwarfs D&D in terms of revenue. Like, five times as much.

Fair enough. If we're still talking about whether game stores could survive the loss of new D&D books because they'd still have MtG, I won't be convinced of that without understanding the D&D halo effect and seeing the margins. I feel like D&D fuels more than just new core rulebook and adventure book sales. There's also accessory sales and 3rd-party 5e product sales that are then used by people who actually use them to play D&D with.

I still say that most game stores barely break even. Many don't, which is why so many of them go under. If D&D stopped printing, I just don't believe it leaves game stores in a same or better position.

 

[kermit4karate]

it doesn't even tell us much about its initial success, unless we have actual numbers. Darrington could just have printed way too few books

Folks are trying too hard to justify something that simply annoys them. If CR believed they could earn as much or more money featuring Daggerheart they would have. I think it's that simple. We can say it's about so-and-so's love for the game or how D&D's mechanics were better for blah, blah, blah.

Both Daggerheart and D&D are functionally similar enough to have been used. CR didn't simply choose D&D for "reasons." They chose it because it made more business sense. We can invent a bunch of other reasons, overthink it, but I don't believe it was that complex. This was a business decision, which I'm OK with because everyone makes those decisions in real life.

 

[kermit4karate]

@SlyFlourish goes into it in detail here, which is where I first heard it:

I didn't hear anything in this that makes me change my belief that most game stores couldn't afford the loss of D&D merch.

Is Magic bigger for WotC? Maybe. But does that translate into more profit for game store? I don't know that. I don't know what the reseller profit margins are for D&D and Magic.

This is a tangent, but I also believe that D&D has a halo effect that draws people to other RPG products and games. Just like Apple has said about Mac sales. Mac sales fuel a lot of their other product sales, which I feel is very likely similar for D&D. D&D powers a lot of other fantasy RPG and collectible card game sales. It keeps fantasy at the forefront of pop culture with video games and movies. Other games constantly benefit from that.

But back to Apple for second. Why doesn't Apple drop Mac computer sales? After all, they sell about $30 billion/year on the Mac side but $200 billion/year in iPhones. Why not just focus on iPhones and stop making Macs? Answer: because money is money and they want all of it. D&D is still profitable, even if we assume MtG makes more.

 

[mamba]

Software relies on the operating system. When writing software you have a few choices Windows, IOS or Linux. Stand-alone is not an option.

A game? It can be dependent on another game if you want or totally stand-alone.

technically the OS is also software and yes, you could write an app that goes straight to the machine level without an OS in between, there just is no need for that any more, everyone has an OS these days

Apart from that it doesn't change the point. The software developer can still decide to write an app on any platform or work on an OS, or use something that is platform independent like Java or web-browsers (JavaScript, etc.). So the developer has much the same choice ahead of them as the 3pp TTRPG creative.

 

[Clint_L]

I didn't hear anything in this that makes me change my belief that most game stores couldn't afford the loss of D&D merch.

Is Magic bigger for WotC? Maybe.

There's no "maybe." It isn't close. On some stockholder reports D&D barely rates a mention, just being lumped in with WotC, whereas MtG is a pillar not just of WotC but of Hasbro. It's just a much, much more profitable game.

But does that translate into more profit for game store? I don't know that. I don't know what the reseller profit margins are for D&D and Magic.

We have game store owners who post here; presumably they can share.

I know that at my local stores, MtG is not just important for sales of boosters and so on, but probably more so for the aftermarket. It also brings players in - there are always games going. Then there are board games, and the all important Games Workshop section. D&D and TTRPG stuff is significant as well, but not on the same scale. And that's setting aside that we also have an entire Games Workshop store here in Victoria.

Given that we know that MtG sales were recently reported as about quintuple D&D sales, we can reasonably assume that it is also responsible for a similarly large share of sales in the average game shop. And that's not even factoring aftermarket sales.

This is a tangent, but I also believe that D&D has a halo effect that draws people to other RPG products and games. Just like Apple has said about Mac sales. Mac sales fuel a lot of their other product sales, which I feel is very likely similar for D&D. D&D powers a lot of other fantasy RPG and collectible card game sales. It keeps fantasy at the forefront of pop culture with video games and movies. Other games constantly benefit from that.

I'm somewhat skeptical here - there are a lot of variables. I think Tolkien and Harry Potter have probably done a lot more to mainstream fantasy, though D&D is important. And it was MtG that saved D&D when TSR went bust.

But back to Apple for second. Why doesn't Apple drop Mac computer sales? After all, they sell about $30 billion/year on the Mac side but $200 billion/year in iPhones. Why not just focus on iPhones and stop making Macs? Answer: because money is money and they want all of it. D&D is still profitable, even if we assume MtG makes more.

We know MtG makes a LOT more - around five times as much. Those are publically reported numbers with legal consequences - you can't fib on shareholder reports. But, yes, D&D certainly seems to be profitable, and its value to Hasbro has certainly grown from 2014, when it was basically an afterthought. However, it's ultimately not a superstar earner because, as Hasbro has complained, it's difficult to monetize. Ultimately, most of those sales are books, which is a notoriously thin market. Thus their repeated attempts to diversify the D&D brand, with mixed results.

 

[Clint_L]

I would argue that Critical Role has built a much more diversified business than WotC.

 

[JConstantine]

Ha! Perhaps I am misunderstanding you because I didn't see where you cited your source. "D&D and TTRPGs are a drop in the bucket for most game stores. Magic the Gathering is where the bulk of their ill gotten gains come from."

I'd be interested in how you came to that determination.

It's a little outdated being from 2017, but you might want to look at this.

I can also add that a few friends of mine looked into starting their own game store, and were basically told: Warhammer sells, Magic: the Gathering and Pokémon sell, barely anything else does.

Individual board games have 30-40% profit margin, while an individual booster pack for a TCG is only 10-25%. However, a gaming group only needs one copy of a board game (or RPG book for that matter) for the whole group to enjoy, whereas every participant in a TCG needs their own cards, so while the profit is smaller on an individual sale, stores are making a lot more sales. The other factor is events: events bring people into the store; once inside, a person is more likely to buy something; TCGs take up less space so you can fit more people, so more sales. Lastly, there's the aftermarket: many FLGS offer trade-ins and sell loose cards, though it's hard to quantify the impact of that, obviously.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

in theory, I doubt they will. Still, what is DH missing to allow for such a campaign?

DH is missing a big pile of WotC cash according to this guy.

So if his sources are right D&D will be heavily advertising D&D 5.24e & D&D Beyond on Critical Role, in exchange for a ton of money, more then what extra cash from switching to DH would have brought them. Especially since DH sold out, so it really doesn't seem to need the help.

This is just smart from a business perspective. And no one can say they don't have faith in DH because they went with 5.24 instead, because instead WotC bribed them to do it so no hit to DH's rep. Matt Mercier clearly has the lobes for business as the Ferengi say.