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.

 

[Valetudo]

I wasn't impressed with TOV. But I kinda agree the the .24 Mm is kinda weak.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

...But how would that even work?

Level alone tells you next to nothing.

To answer your question for Cypher:

A creature succeeds at tasks below its level and fails at tasks above its level.

A creature has (level) x3 hit points.

A creature deals (level) points of damage on a hit.

The base difficulty to interact with the creature in any way (attack, dodge, persuade, trick, etc) is rolling (level)x3 on a d20.

 

[kermit4karate]

I wasn't impressed with TOV. But I kinda agree the the .24 Mm is kinda weak.

Valetudo, love your handle, BTW! Is it in reference to the sport?

 

[TiQuinn]

I stopped watching the Professor DM video when he reached the whole "I can only speculate because even IF someone told me they received money...<Extra long self-congratulatory pause to suggest he's been told this behind the scenes by someone>...I wouldn't be able to tell you."



Frankly, why is any of this actually important? Am I surprised they didn't use Daggerheart? Yes. Did I care once they announced that they did? Not really. I'll still watch it.

 

[Valetudo]

Yes I'm an og fighter

 

[mamba]

Second, the stat blocks are all on a single page which is something both TOV and A5e don't manage to do in their books.

ugh, I really hate that about the others, work on your layout…

 

[Valetudo]

Im not hating on CR for using .24. I don't really watch the show like I used to but I wouldn't mind seeing the rules put through the paces from a different perspective. And I do think money is involved. I understand that aramon is bleeds project but craw and perk have been me toned making subclasses for the campaign. That's money yo.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

Lots of people seem to forget that Critical Role is a business before anything else.

We don't know:

• What their budget is
• What their cashflow is
• What new projects, products, events, they have planned in the future
• What contractual agreements they already had
• What projections they had made
• Their actual numbers when it comes to subscriptions, views, merchandise sales, etc

It's very easy to sit in your office and say "Daggerheart sold well, it's obvious that the right business decision is to use it for the fourth campaign instead of D&D" but you don't know that. A good business decision stems from data (generally incomplete). You don't have the data, so you have no idea which decision is the right one.

For all we know, maybe they had a contractual agreement to use D&D that was signed a while ago. Maybe they had committed to this project with Brennan, the actors or WotC because they didn't expect Daggerheart to be so popular. Maybe Daggerheart is popular, but maybe they have the numbers and its not as popular as we think or it doesn't reach their threshold. Maybe they have a decent budget, but a bad cashflow and they can't take any risk this year. Maybe there's a new show, D&D book, reprint or other product coming out in November.

Very often in business, you knowingly take a decision that you know might not be the best in a vaccuum, but might be best considering the current circumstances.

They've been successful at creating one of the most successful business in TTRPG. I think we can give them the benefit of the doubt that they took their decision with the right data in hand.

 

[Valetudo]

You know I'm sure i have atleast a couple of 3rd party books that have either dual stats or a regular version and a 5e version. Its not that rare is it?

 

[AlViking]

Did you watch it?

So I did watch it (waiting for something else and I can replay at 1.5 speed). His whole spiel seems to be based on annoyingly implying that he has insider info and "Taking an upfront payday just to continue to run the game they're already playing is a no brainer" at around 4:40. Then he goes on to say other things like "CR is responsible for how popular D&D becomes." Really? Whether or not people enjoy playing the game has nothing to do with it? AL, support for gaming at schools, every other stream that uses D&D has no impact? Towards the end he just throws in more speculation, ties in the franchise idea that doesn't really prove anything, on and on.

But the funny thing is that he claims specific numbers of how CR is making tens of millions of dollars per year which, if true, why would they take the gamble of switching to DH? Why not have Matt take the lead of DH games, do separate streams for those, and pull in even more money? At this point it sounds like their stream and the deal with Amazon for their show are their main money-makers, DH is practically just a side gig for them. If DH takes off, fantastic! Now they have two potentially equally profitable streams. It would be a win-win for them. If DH doesn't take off, they've hedged their bets and maybe they do something else down the road.

I guess I'm not surprised they're sticking with D&D for campaign 4. Maybe WOTC is spending a big percentage of their D&D advertising budget on CR, maybe they aren't. We simply don't know.