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]

Totally agree with you, it could have been something else. Being a first mover is part of what got D&D to this point. But if it never changed or adapted something else would have replaced it now.

Oh, sure, but people are inclined to give the "new D&D" a lot more leeway and chances than any other new RPG without the brand strength.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

The "netowrk externalities" issue that WotC identified in 2000 and built 3.x and the OGL around are very real things.

The OGL is huge here, in my opinion, (not that I always held it) but it created an ecosystem where semi pro designers get to gain a foothold and identify and serve niches that are not being served by the main producer and this made the D&D ecosystem more diverse and attractive to more and more people. It is a self reinforcing phenomenon.

 

[AlViking]

This seems at odds with your suggestion that any other company could out-D&D D&D if they just tried hard enough.

You keep putting words in my mouth. It's an open market, WOTC is not doing anything to prevent competition. Other than that? There have been plenty of opportunities over the past half century for a different game to become top dog.

 

[Parmandur]

I am not convinced of that, I think it has close to the right amount of complexity, it gives the more mechanically minded players enough levers without getting too much in the way of the players that want to work out of the box.
It will be very interesting to watch the future trajectory of games like Daggerheart and Draw Steel and 5e over the next number of years.

I agree, the one to watch h IMO is the Plotweaver system that Brotherwise Games is using for the Cosmere RPG: it is hitting that sweet spot and borrowing a lot of key 5E elements while making a fundamentally different game.

 

[Reynard]

You keep putting words in my mouth. It's an open market, WOTC is not doing anything to prevent competition. Other than that? There have been plenty of opportunities over the past half century for a different game to become top dog.

Right. And the reason no one else has is due more to the D&D brand inertia than the actual relative game design quality of various editions of D&D.

 

[AlViking]

Right. And the reason no one else has is due more to the D&D brand inertia than the actual relative game design quality of various editions of D&D.

There are a lot of reasons.

What's your point?

 

[Parmandur]

Right. And the reason no one else has is due more to the D&D brand inertia than the actual relative game design quality of various editions of D&D.

The main reason is that there isn't enough of a market for someone else to come along and put in yhe R&D budget and marketing muscle it would take: D&D is way, waaay far ahead of everyone just in marketing research and gametesting raw data.

 

[Reynard]

The main reason is that there isn't enough of a market for someone else to come along and put in yhe R&D budget and marketing muscle it would take: D&D is way, waaay far ahead of everyone just in marketing research and gametesting raw data.

Again, I don't think this is the "main reason." The main reason is D&D brand inertia, it's "kleenex factor" as others have brought up previously.

 

[Reynard]

There are a lot of reasons.

What's your point?

I legitimately do not understand your intention any more. Obviously I must have misunderstood your point from the get go. So that's on me.

It would have been nice if you had tried to reiterate it when that became clear, though.

 

[AlViking]

Right. And the reason no one else has is due more to the D&D brand inertia than the actual relative game design quality of various editions of D&D.

If past performance guaranteed sustained popularity we'd still gave Pan Am, Toys R Us, Blockbuster just to name a few off the top of my head.

I like the current version of the game as do people I play with. Seems like millions of people also like the game. So yes, the game is well designed for a lot of people even if it doesn't work for you.

If that ever changes there's no reason to assume D&D will stay on top.