Critical Role Professor DM interviews Critical Role Cast

[DEFCON 1]

By your logic every game that doesn't outsels D&D out of the game is a failiure.

I did not say 'failure'. That is you using that term. I said that every other fantasy RPG based off of D&D was a 'fantasy heartbreaker' and would not be as successful or as well-known as D&D.

But a game can sell less and be less well-known than Dungeons & Dragons and not be a 'failure'. They are still a 'fantasy heartbreaker' because they were designed in direct response to Dungeons & Dragons, but its sales might be perfectly acceptable to the designer and thus succeed for what the designer wanted.

 

[bedir than]

Well, the actual play of the company that designed the game to be specifically "the kind of game we want to play" while you know - not playing it. It doesn't encourage faith in the product.

They're running multiple shows with Daggerheart, including some with their season 1 and 2 characters

Meanwhile the guy who designed D&D 5e picked Daggerheart as the kind of game he wants to run on his own actual play, Acquisitions incorporated. So even lead designer of D&D prefers Daggerheart.

That guy, while working for Critical Role and Darrington is ALSO helping with their D&D podcast.

It may be that both Matt and Chris, BLeem and Jeremy, understand that multiple systems can exist and be played by the same people. Because that's what is happening.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

I did not say 'failure'. That is you using that term. I said that every other fantasy RPG based off of D&D was a 'fantasy heartbreaker' and would not be as successful or as well-known as D&D.

But a game can sell less and be less well-known than Dungeons & Dragons and not be a 'failure'. They are still a 'fantasy heartbreaker' because they were designed in direct response to Dungeons & Dragons, but its sales might be perfectly acceptable to the designer and thus succeed for what the designer wanted.

And I find it very insulting towards all these games, as fantasy hearbreaker is, imo, inherently dismissive and insulting term, synonymous with failiure, as well as unspoken implication the person using it considers creators of the game too dumb to know there are other rpgs than d&d. I mean, how can the term NOT be insulting when it from the get go immediatelly positions as lesser than D&D.

It may be that both Matt and Chris, BLeem and Jeremy, understand that multiple systems can exist and be played by the same people. Because that's what is happening.

Well, would be good if every person who acts like CR not using Daggerheart in campaign 4 understood that, until they won't I'm perfectly fine using Chris Perkins running Daggerheart in AI as a counterpoint.

 

[SlyFlourish]

It's a financial decision obviously. D&D has more players, thus more people would watch it than DaggerHeart.

That's not what they said.

 

[SlyFlourish]

In the interview, Matt and Travis were very clear about why the next campaign is using D&D—and it’s worth repeating, since there’s already been still some speculation that overlooks what they actually said. The decision was made long before Daggerheart’s release, and their reasons came down to three main points:

1. System familiarity. The choice was about the DM, not the audience. They wanted their DM to feel fully comfortable, supported, and proficient with the system.

2. Best fit. D&D was judged to be the best match for the type of game they want to run, the setting they’re using, and the group involved.

3. Daggerheart’s newness. Daggerheart is still very fresh. Even though it builds on ideas from other systems, it has a different mindset and play style that takes time to settle in. One new rulebook released only a few months ago can’t reasonably be expected to rival the depth and infrastructure of a system that’s been evolving for fifty years.

They’ve set the record straight themselves—whether people choose to accept that or not is another matter.

One thing I think is interesting in their decision calculus is that D&D may be familiar but D&D 2024 is not. If they made the decision a while ago, they made that decision when D&D 2024 was very new. Sure, it's mostly just 5e, but there's a lot of little changes going on in there. So, for that, we could really consider it a new system and I don't know if they did. We'll see how that plays out.

This is obviously a huge win for WOTC. I think it's really interesting that it wasn't any sort of sponsorship deal. If you were WOTC, how much would you have paid for CR to use D&D 2024? What if they had chosen D&D 2014, which better fits the goals they state?

And, if they had chosen, Daggerheart, I think that would have been a huge blow for WOTC and D&D 2024. I bet there was a lot of big exhales of held breaths when WOTC found out CR was using D&D 2024.

"Oh, Mike. Critical Role isn't that important to a huge behemoth like D&D!" some might say. Well, not according to WOTC:

The rise of D&D liveplay is changing how fans approach roleplaying

“Over half of the new people who started playing Fifth Edition the game’s most recent update, launched in 2014 got into D&D through watching people play online,” says Nathan Stewart, senior director of Dungeons & Dragons.

Insight Check: Greg Tito of Wizards of the Coast Talks About The Future of D&D

Critical Role and live shows like it continue to grow in popularity, and interest in the game along with them. “More and more people are finding out about Dungeons & Dragons, not through family and friends, which has always been the way that people find out about most things in our culture,” says Greg, “but now, streaming is the number one reported answer for how people find out about and want to get into Dungeons & Dragons. It surpassed friends and family for the first time ever that we’ve known in our surveys.”

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/07/nx-s...0-critical-role-madison-square-garden-stadium

The biggest drivers, Bilsland said, are shows like Critical Role, Dimension 20 and others.

"It's widely agreed that \[the most recent edition\] is the most successful edition of D&D ever, and that is largely accounted for from the success of streaming and live play," Bilsland said.

 

[cranberry]

That's not what they said.

Well, of course they aren't going to say that it's about the money.

But, in business, money is always the primary consideration.

Even people with a YT channel are concerned about money (if it's their primary source of income), right?

 

[DEFCON 1]

And I find it very insulting towards all these games, as fantasy hearbreaker is, imo, inherently dismissive and insulting term, synonymous with failiure, as well as unspoken implication the person using it considers creators of the game too dumb to know there are other rpgs than d&d. I mean, how can the term NOT be insulting when it from the get go immediatelly positions as lesser than D&D.

Well, if that's how you feel, then so be it. If you find the phrase "fantasy heartbreaker" insulting and you then infer things about me and my intentions if I use it, there's nothing I can do about that. You believe what you believe, regardless of what the truth actually is.

 

[DEFCON 1]

This is obviously a huge win for WOTC. I think it's really interesting that it wasn't any sort of sponsorship deal. If you were WOTC, how much would you have paid for CR to use D&D 2024? What if they had chosen D&D 2014, which better fits the goals they state?

It might be a big win, but I would question whether or not the possibility of CR switching to Daggerheart would actually impact WotC enough to warrant them ever having been truly concerned? I mean from my personal POV (as uninformed as I will freely admit)... it feels like CR switching Daggerheart would be much more of a risk to CR themselves and a possible drubbing of their business model than anything WotC might suffer from if CR did.

Would CR using Daggerheart potentially reduce WotC's overall success with D&D 5E24? Sure. Would it cripple them? I don't believe so. Not even close. However, I think CR would be much more likely to be crippled as a streaming business if their switch to Daggerheart didn't pan out. I mean I know they now have a large fanbase that cares more about them as a group than about any particular game (since their streams that use other systems still generate an audience)... but can their business survive if their primary stream numbers dropped to the same level that their shows like Age of Umbra do? I dunno. But it seem to me the odds of CR getting truly hurt by a bad switch are much higher than WotC. And if WotC believed that too, then perhaps they took the calculated risk that CR wouldn't cut off their own nose and thus WotC didn't feel as though they had to pay into the CR with some sort of sponsorship deal. They might have assumed CR would make the same determination that we all have done, in that it is the combination of both the cast AND Dungeons & Dragons that have allowed Critical Role to succeed as well as they have. So why change things now? Tryin to sell some more Daggerheart books is not nearly a good enough reason.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

One thing I think is interesting in their decision calculus is that D&D may be familiar but D&D 2024 is not. If they made the decision a while ago, they made that decision when D&D 2024 was very new. Sure, it's mostly just 5e, but there's a lot of little changes going on in there. So, for that, we could really consider it a new system and I don't know if they did. We'll see how that plays out.

This is obviously a huge win for WOTC. I think it's really interesting that it wasn't any sort of sponsorship deal. If you were WOTC, how much would you have paid for CR to use D&D 2024? What if they had chosen D&D 2014, which better fits the goals they state?

And, if they had chosen, Daggerheart, I think that would have been a huge blow for WOTC and D&D 2024. I bet there was a lot of big exhales of held breaths when WOTC found out CR was using D&D 2024.

That’s a good point about 2024 being “new” in its own right. I agree there’s definitely some unknowns there, though I think the degree of newness is very different compared to Daggerheart. Even with the tweaks and revisions, the backbone of D&D 2024 is still 5e, and the DM (and players) can lean on ten years of familiarity with that ecosystem. In that sense, the learning curve is incremental, not foundational.

From a business angle, I also agree—this is an unquestionable win for WotC. Critical Role committing to the 2024 rules rather than sticking with 2014 or shifting to Daggerheart avoids a lot of messy optics. If they’d gone with Daggerheart, that would’ve been a very different story in terms of perception and impact.

Personally, I would have loved to see them adapt to Daggerheart. It’s one of the more innovative and inspiring systems I’ve come across in years, and the first new system I bought right at release in a long time. That said, I completely understand why it may not have been the right time—or the right campaign—for them to use it as the backbone of their next big series. I’m confident we’ll continue to see them showcase it in smaller, limited-run series, and hopefully even return to Age of Umbra for another season.

Speaking just for myself, though, I’m far less interested in their new campaign because it’s using D&D. That’s nothing against the system itself, but in my experience it tends to get in the way of the aspects of Critical Role that I personally find more entertaining and engaging. I am, of course, in the minority here.

 

[wicked cool]

How much really is the learning curve from 5.0 to 2024. Isn’t it basically some small tweaks and art changes

I think Matt explained it perfectly why they aren’t using daggerheart and they have given zero indication they would switch to daggerheart on campaign 5

The biggest myth that was dispelled was the money aspect and wotc panic etc

Travis seems to be very careful on making rash decisions as they all have a stake in its financial future