Critical Role Professor DM interviews Critical Role Cast

[AlViking]

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.

Especially when they can, and do, have Daggerheart streams. It would be highly risky to try to push viewers into an entirely different system especially with a new GM and rotating groups of people.

 

[SlyFlourish]

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?

It's easy to get big publicly traded companies mixed up with smaller private companies. Critical Role is huge but there's no reason to think that making money is their primary concern. My wife and I run Sly Flourish and earn enough to make a living (except for health care...) but money isn't our goal. Helping GMs run great games is our goal. If it was just about the money, I certainly wouldn't be in the tabletop RPG hobby.

Watching Travis and Matt talk to PDM, I feel the sincerity of what they're saying. You don't have to believe them, of course, but now we're just going with our own vibes instead of any real information. The real information is what they said until we have information to the contrary.

 

[SlyFlourish]

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.

This one thing I keep coming around to. This is their system! They wrote it in house. How was it not taylor-made for the sorts of games they run?

Before One D&D, a fair number of people talked about how the next version of D&D would be designed for streaming online because of how popular that format became. Daggerheart could have (and may be, I don't know) been exactly that format – a deep long-term high-fantasy RPG built for the sorts of dramatic play the CR team exudes at their own table.

I'm certain they must have discussed this pretty thoroughly when making these choices (along with Matt stepping down for BleeM to take on this season) and it would have been wild to hear how those conversations went.

Also, how do the designers of Daggerheart feel about this? They spent years building this game in-house only for CR to then go back to the old standby (though D&D 2024 isn't the old standby). Maybe they're totally cool with it but I'd have felt let down I think.

I'm not arguing for one way or the other. I was just excited to hear the conversation. I knew, no matter what direction they chose, it was going to be a big deal.

 

[SlyFlourish]

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

I think its really easy to get lost in the details – maybe even moreso than if you played an entirely new system. There's a big risk of missing little things like how the Help action is different, how the Magic action plays out with rogue's cunning action, how different a lot of the spells are; there's a lot of little changes that can shift up the flow of the game when you're used to the other way. I'd be shocked if it runs totally smoothly in CR season 4. I bet we hear a lot of little "wait, that's not how that works anymore" bits.

 

[billd91]

I think its really easy to get lost in the details – maybe even moreso than if you played an entirely new system. There's a big risk of missing little things like how the Help action is different, how the Magic action plays out with rogue's cunning action, how different a lot of the spells are; there's a lot of little changes that can shift up the flow of the game when you're used to the other way. I'd be shocked if it runs totally smoothly in CR season 4. I bet we hear a lot of little "wait, that's not how that works anymore" bits.

And if there are some of those moments, I think it's fine because that's what the rest of us are dealing with as well in our shift to 5e.2024. It's OK for them to model how tables can gracefully handle these things when they come up.

 

[SlyFlourish]

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.

It really comes down to whether you think CR using D&D 2024 matters more to CR or more to WOTC. Neither of us are going to be able to prove it because there isn't an alternate universe where they use Daggerheart for CR. Is the reason their other non-CR shows got lower views because of the system they chose or because they weren't their main show? I don't know that we know.

As far as the impact to D&D for WOTC, we can either believe what WOTC themselves said about it as recently as a couple of months ago or not. D&D's popularity exploded over the past ten years and they pointed at two big factors: Stranger Things and the rise of streaming games (which is mostly CR).

I think it would have been a big blow if CR hadn't chosen D&D. Would it have killed WOTC or Hasbro? No. This company lost billions of dollars trying to buy a big entertainment company and it doesn't seem to have hurt them that much. No one even seems to know where the 3.5 billion dollars went. Peppa Pig can't be worth that much...

Anyway, point being, CR choosing Daggerheart over D&D 2024 might not have had a huge effect on Hasbro but I think in the zeitgeist of D&D among us hobbyists, it'd have been a big blow.

 

[SlyFlourish]

And if there are some of those moments, I think it's fine because that's what the rest of us are dealing with as well in our shift to 5e.2024. It's OK for them to model how tables can gracefully handle these things when they come up.

Sure, and lets not forget that the two lead designers are literally on staff at CR now. BleeM even said he can just text them on a rules question and get an answer.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It really comes down to whether you think CR using D&D 2024 matters more to CR or more to WOTC. Neither of us are going to be able to prove it because there isn't an alternate universe where they use Daggerheart for CR. Is the reason their other non-CR shows got lower views because of the system they chose or because they weren't their main show? I don't know that we know.

As far as the impact to D&D for WOTC, we can either believe what WOTC themselves said about it as recently as a couple of months ago or not. D&D's popularity exploded over the past ten years and they pointed at two big factors: Stranger Things and the rise of streaming games (which is mostly CR).

I think it would have been a big blow if CR hadn't chosen D&D. Would it have killed WOTC or Hasbro? No. This company lost billions of dollars trying to buy a big entertainment company and it doesn't seem to have hurt them that much. No one even seems to know where the 3.5 billion dollars went. Peppa Pig can't be worth that much...

Anyway, point being, CR choosing Daggerheart over D&D 2024 might not have had a huge effect on Hasbro but I think in the zeitgeist of D&D among us hobbyists, it'd have been a big blow.

You're absolutely correct, none of us are really going to know the actual answers and I don't even think most of us actually care one way or the other. So all I can do is make a supposition as to why things happened as they did. As far as we on the outside are aware, CR was not offered money by WotC to stick with D&D and they chose to stick with D&D anyway instead of moving over to "their own" game. This could be for any number of reasons, but with my untrained eye I would venture to guess that it's because they know like we all know that hooking (general) your wagon to Dungeons & Dragons gets more eyeballs on your product and thus probably more sales than if anyone chose to do some independent thing. So a D&D stream will be more likely to have a larger audience than a Daggerheart one (which I think they already know to be true.)

It's the same reason why so many people who publish RPG products do so through DMs Guild or make products that are D&D expansions or D&D-adjacent-- the potential audience is exponentially bigger than just making a generic RPG product that is not in any way connected to the largest-selling and most popular RPG there has ever been. And if (general) you want to make money off your work... you go where the most dollars are.

 

[wicked cool]

Sure, and lets not forget that the two lead designers are literally on staff at CR now. BleeM even said he can just text them on a rules question and get an answer.

Since they work there I hope they are on standby like those game shows where you phone a friend or how the nfl has the x ref to give the audience the best answer
It’s funny but has some of this already been recorded? Is it no longer a live show at all? I’ve seen still shots with them around a table

 

[SlyFlourish]

As far as we on the outside are aware, CR was not offered money by WotC to stick with D&D and they chose to stick with D&D anyway instead of moving over to "their own" game. This could be for any number of reasons, but with my untrained eye I would venture to guess that it's because they know like we all know that hooking (general) your wagon to Dungeons & Dragons gets more eyeballs on your product and thus probably more sales than if anyone chose to do some independent thing. So a D&D stream will be more likely to have a larger audience than a Daggerheart one (which I think they already know to be true.)

I believe them when they say they didn't take compensation and I believe them when they say they chose D&D 2024 because its what they and BleeM were comfortable with. I don't know that they did any big sort of analysis on gaining or losing viewers.

It's the same reason why so many people who publish RPG products do so through DMs Guild or make products that are D&D expansions or D&D-adjacent-- the potential audience is exponentially bigger than just making a generic RPG product that is not in any way connected to the largest-selling and most popular RPG there has ever been. And if (general) you want to make money off your work... you go where the most dollars are.

People aren't publishing to the DM's Guild very much these days and bigger publishers hardly ever did. The audience wasn't worth the exclusive perpetual license and the 50% margin for a lot of folks.

I, myself, am working on two big projects and both are system agnostic because that's the kind of product I like using and like writing.

It's not always about the dollars. In this hobby, I think it rarely is.