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.

 

[MoshBit]

if i hadn't seen the announcement video myself, i would have thought this article's title was something from the onion.

 

[mamba]

Because the broader impacts and individual risk level are way lower, D&D dominance is not nearly as intense at suppressing alternatives. Pretty much all carrot, no stick.

when it comes to branching off your own OS vs TTRPG I agree, the barriers of entry are lower (as I mentioned before). Apart from that, the world is your oyster, decide what you are interested in and go from there. No one is forcing you to work on a Windows app, just like no one forces you to write a D&D adventure, and the level of success an individual can accomplish in software far outstrips that for TTRPGs, see Minecraft

 

[Micah Sweet]

and despite the sales slump, D&D was still the best selling TTRPG, or very close to it

Yup. If anything, 4e proved that the brand can take a hit without losing an unacceptable amount of market share.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The tangent came up because someone stated D&D was just like MS and Windows. Except they have very little in common because MS used all sorts of anticompetetive practices to establish and maintain their dominance in both the OS and web browser markets.

WOTC may have won the popularity contest for now but they didn't do it through shady business practices. Compare that to TSR, who threatened lawsuits against every company that encroached at all on their turf.

TSR's AD&D had less competition than today, but I would argue fiercer. To my recollection, non-D&D games had more prominence in the hobby than they seem to now. All IMO of course.

 

[SkidAce]

I'd be pretty sure Geek and Sundry were paying them. If not, G&S would have been horribly exploiting them.

Thats fair, i was thinking about outside sponsers.

 

[Chaltab]

TSR's AD&D had less competition than today, but I would argue fiercer. To my recollection, non-D&D games had more prominence in the hobby than they seem to now. All IMO of course.

White Wolf was the big competitor in the 90s, from what I've heard. They had a bigger slice of a smaller pie. But after 3E and especially after 5E the pie grew exponentially, with the majority of that growth being D&D.

 

[Micah Sweet]

White Wolf was the big competitor in the 90s, from what I've heard. They had a bigger slice of a smaller pie. But after 3E and especially after 5E the pie grew exponentially, with the majority of that growth being D&D.

There were a ton of other games I remember getting play in the 80s and 90s too. Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Deadlands, L5R, Traveler, Palladium et al, various supers games, and more.

 

[CleverNickName]

and despite the sales slump, D&D was still the best selling TTRPG, or very close to it

Not for a brief moment. During 4E's run, Pathfinder actually beat D&D from 2011 until 2024 (when 5E was released.) There was a whole bunch of threads about it back in the day.

 

[Aldarc]

Guess it's time to change the sign about the number of days it's been since people mentioned the controversial claim that PF1 outsold 4e D&D to zero days.

/sigh

There goes the thread.

 

[CleverNickName]

Guess it's time to change the sign about the number of days it's been since people mentioned the controversial claim that PF1 outsold 4e D&D to zero days.

/sigh

There goes the thread.

I'm just sayin', the D&D brand isn't an invincible juggernaut and WotC doesn't always do everything right. They are easily the #1 TTRPG in the industry, but that hasn't always been the case. They dropped to #6 in the span of 3 years...even Fate outsold them for a brief moment. And it was only 11 years ago, but people tend to forget (or try to forget).

I would argue that it was less about these other games beating D&D, and was more about WotC making a series of bad plays. (However you feel about 4th Edition D&D, their attempts to strangle PDF sales and replace the SRD were bad plays.) IMO, better games didn't rise up and overthrow them, they dropped the ball.

TL;DR: Wizards of the Coast are their own worst enemy. Not other games/publishers.