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.

 

[TiQuinn]

Consult with a copyright attorney if you have earnings you want to protect is all I'll say to that. Sometimes a "community's" gut feeling leads to financial ruin.

It's not about copyright. It's also about negative press which, whether you think that's an angry mob or not, does exist and can likewise lead to "financial ruin". It can also be easily avoided with a little forethought in many cases.

Edit: And I'm going put financial ruin in quotes above. I don't want to ratchet this up to extreme outcomes, but avoidable bad outcomes. If you have a product, you want to sell it to as many people as you can. If you can head off a possible barrier to someone buying, that is a good idea.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Right. The amount of money that it would take up front in order to be able to overcome that inertia is immense. Companies with the money won't want to take that chance, because if they spend that amount of money, they could easily still fail and be out the cash. Individuals might want to take the chance, but there are exceedingly few individuals with both the money and the desire. The one individual that I can think of that both games and has the money, is Elon Musk, and I don't think many of us want him to be the one to take the shot.

 

[bedir than]

They have kinda hinted on Aramon being created by Crawford and Perkins and they need to advertise the campaign world before they release it.

The explicitly said Aramon is BLeeM's creation and that Crawford/Perkins will help with statting monsters/spells/etc

 

[kermit4karate]

It can also be easily avoided with a little forethought in many cases.

Fair enough. I agree with this part here but might quibble on the shape the forethought entails. For some people, that's contracts and written agreements, copyright, trademarks, etc. For others, maybe it's a mention in the introduction.

 

[Reynard]

The explicitly said Aramon is BLeeM's creation and that Crawford/Perkins will help with statting monsters/spells/etc

The irony here, of course, is that no one actually believes they are any better at this than most other professional designers and plenty of amateurs. in fact, if the 2024 rules are any indication, they are behind the curve compared to other 5E games.

 

[bedir than]

The irony here, of course, is that no one actually believes they are any better at this than most other professional designers and plenty of amateurs. in fact, if the 2024 rules are any indication, they are behind the curve compared to other 5E games.

If Critical Role (and their audience) didn't believe they were good designers they wouldn't have poached them from Wizards.

The evidence is that Perkins and Crawford are in fact respected for their design.

 

[Reynard]

If Critical Role (and their audience) didn't believe they were good designers they wouldn't have poached them from Wizards.

The evidence is that Perkins and Crawford are in fact respected for their design.

I did not say they were bad designers. I said that they weren't any better. They were "poached" because they are famous in the field.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If Critical Role (and their audience) didn't believe they were good designers they wouldn't have poached them from Wizards.

The evidence is that Perkins and Crawford are in fact respected for their design.

Both of your points are why I'm eager to see more of their work outside a WotC context and when they're working "closer to the metal" as it were (as opposed to being in charge of others). With Crawford, whilst Sage Advice kind of ummm, wasn't a great look, I'm not sure it's ever been a great look for anyone nor, perhaps, could be (I dread to think what insane mechanical opinion I'd show the world were I doing Sage Advice!), and some of his other design work is clearly excellent for the era (like the original Blue Rose, which was amazing for 2005 imho).

I want to see what they can actually do. Kinda hoping I'll be impressed.

One thing 5E managed better than almost any other game in 2014 was to be pretty balanced (between classes at least, not so much subclasses/races), which was highly unusual at the time (and particularly for D&D - 4E was more balanced than 3E, but that's not a high bar!).

 

[Imaro]

The irony here, of course, is that no one actually believes they are any better at this than most other professional designers and plenty of amateurs. in fact, if the 2024 rules are any indication, they are behind the curve compared to other 5E games.

Ill assume by no one, you actually mean...you.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, that's a bit of truism, isn't it?

Like, if you looked at 5E in 2014/2015 you might reasonably have said "Eh it'll probably do okay but it's not going to grow D&D, just please some old fans", based on sales and impact, but the combination of accessibility, broad appeal and massive non-WotC-related cultural factors (very much including CR!) in the next few years (and then pandemic on top!) boosted it into the absolute stratosphere.

(Intentionally avoiding examples of the other direction to avoid starting something lol)


I mean, there's "legal responsibility" and then there's "doing what's right" and then there's "doing what's smart", three separate things, and calling out your influences tends to fall into the latter two categories.

I cannot think of a single TTRPG that I thought less of because it called out its influences. Can you? Some might have the odd risible one in there (usually a movie or book that's a bit silly, or an RPG that it's hard to see how it relates, but in among a lot of cool stuff), but overall, "influences"-type stuff tends to make people like a game a lot more than otherwise. It tends to give them a connection to it and a perspective on it.

If I was writing an RPG, I absolutely would make sure I had a decent-sized influences section!

Plus I have thought less of RPGs for seeming to be heavily influenced by X or Y but making absolutely no reference to that fact. Not in some exciting "torches and pitchforks" way, but in a "really we're not going to talk about this elephant that has me squeezed up against the wall? Okay guess..." way.

I wish all RPGs called out their influences better, and honestly, in the books.