by in
Critical Role, the darlings of the Dungeons and Dragons world who were responsible for introducing an insane amount of people to the game over the last few years, have announced that their next campaign will once again focus on Wizards of the Coast’s titan, D&D, rather than switch to their own roleplaying game, Daggerheart.
Brennan Lee Mulligan from the Dimension 20 actual-play series will be stepping in as a quest gamemaster for the season. Meanwhile, the usual gamemaster for Critical Role will be sitting at the table as a player, as Matthew Mercer will join the rest of the cast as an adventurer this time.
The ruleset will feature some homebrew from Darrington Press’ Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins, but will mostly be straight-laced D&D. It seems that many folks were expecting a switch to Daggerheart, but if I had to guess, I would say that the first edition of that game being out has done little to slow the demands of development.
Perkins and Crawford only recently joined the team at Darrington Press, and while I have zero inside information, I would have to guess that Mercer stepping back from gamesmaster is to allow time to do all the work that will involved with truly trying to make Daggerheart the type of game that could act as a foundational system for a season of their show.
One thing I have learned from talking to many people in the TTRPG development space is that the first edition of anything is really just the start of the process.
