Today, after teasing the announcement via an extensive ARG, Critical Role released a video that answers almost every question that fans have had in the lead-up to Critical Role Campaign 4. This video sets the scene for the world of Araman, highlights all thirteen player characters, and goes into explaining West March-style D&D games and how Brennan is going to use it to tell a story at a scale he’s never been able to before.
First and foremost it was confirmed that Campaign 4 of Critical Role will use the Dungeons & Dragons (2024) ruleset. These new rules, initially introduced last year, feature a number of balancing changes, new subclasses, and a whole host of new rules and interactions. It was specifically pointed out that there would be some homebrew added to the system, interestingly enough this is provided in conjunction with Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins who led the 2024 ruleset project at Wizards of the Coast and recently started at Darrington Press.
In terms of players, the final list of cast for Campaign 4, not including Brennan Lee Mulligan as the GM, is as follows:
- Laura Bailey
- Taliesin Jaffe
- Ashley Johnson
- Matthew Mercer
- Liam O’Brien
- Marisha Ray
- Sam Riegel
- Travis Willingham
- Luis Carazo
- Robbie Daymond
- Aabria Iyengar
- Whitney Moore
- Alex Ward
In the video, it is explained that after a four-episode ‘Overture’, where all of the Cast Members will be introduced and feature in intersecting scenes, the tables will split among three themes; Soldiers, Schemers, and Seekers. Throughout the campaign they will continue to tie in together “with overarching themes and genres.”
When creating the worlds that we build and explore in all of our content at Critical Role, we have always held strong to the belief that we should use the system that best supports the story we want to tell, We are certainly spoiled for choice when it comes to TTRPG systems that the cast knows and loves, so we are very excited to explore more of both Daggerheart and Dungeons and Dragons in our near (and hopefully distant) future.
– Marisha Ray, Creative Director, co-founder, and cast member of Critical Role
Throughout the video we also got a peek of scenes from gameplay, a new Critical Role set, and plenty of behind the scenes footage of the players all gathered around the table or working in meeting rooms rolling dice.
Critical Role Campaign 4 will premier on October 2nd on Beacon.tv as well as Critical Role’s YouTube and Twitch. The VOD will be available for the public the following Monday. Interestingly, for Podcast listeners the episodes will be broken up into two parts. The first will be available the week after airing, and the second part on the subsequent Tuesday. This will create a rhythm where every 3-4 days you’ll get a bit more Critical Role, but it does create a strange scenario that even a free YouTube watcher will have access to episode 1 and 2 before a podcast listener will have access to the entirety of episode 1.
