Critical Role Campaign 4 Details

 Today we got some big announcements for Critical Role's 4th campaign!

As we already knew, Matt Mercer is going to be changing seats to play as a PC in this campaign, while Dimension 20's Brennan Lee Mulligan (who has run stuff for CR in the past) will be helming the campaign. But what about the new details?

First off, somewhat to my surprise, the game is going to be using D&D - specifically the 2024 version of 5E. While they're very proud of the huge success that Daggerheart has been, they decided that for now at least they'll continue doing shorter-form games like Age of Umbra with Daggerheart while leaning on the familiarity everyone has with 5E. (I've been going through Age of Umbra, and it's entertaining, but much as there were a lot of rules questions in the early days after converting Vox Machina from Pathfinder to 5E, the game does encounter a little friction with the brand-new system).

Another reason to stick to 5E: with Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins working for Darrington Press now, the two of them have been able to help create bespoke character options and flesh out the world for the 4th campaign. They are, after all, two of the central figures behind 5E, and lead the 2024 revamp.

Secondly, the campaign is going to be a broad, West Marches-style game. What this means is that there are 14 - yes, fourteen - core cast members for the campaign. This includes all 8 of the core Critical Role folks, along with Robbie Daymond, Luis Carazo, Aabria Iyengar, Alex Ward, and Whitney Moore.

However, the thirteen players aren't all going to be at the table together. The players are divided into different groups: Soldiers, Seekers, and Schemers, based on the style of adventure that the players prefer.

The Soldiers will have a more combat-focused story in the campaign, with classic monster-fighting. Schemers will be involved in a lot of cloak and dagger and political intrigue. Seekers are going to explore and discover lore across the world.

And what world is that? Aramán.

Aramán (sorry, as an American, we don't have accented letters on the keyboard, so this is probably going to be come Araman in these posts very soon) is a fully new world. 70 years ago, the gods and mortals of Araman went to war, and the gods were slain. Now, in the power vacuum that has followed, various factions and individuals vie for power and seek to determine how the world will work in the absence of such powers.

Evidently, Perkins and Crawford are heavily involved in helping Mulligan build out this setting, and I have to imagine we'll get a Darrington Press campaign setting book for it (perhaps for both 5E and Daggerheart?)

The three groups' stories will be happening simultaneously, and I think the idea is that individual characters might migrate between groups at times.

It's a profoundly ambitious project, but I also think that if anyone has the resources to pull off such a thing, it's this group of people. I'll be excited to check it out when it launches in October.