Critical Role’s campaign four announcement was surprisingly divisive. When the actual play behemoth announced it was playing several more years of Dungeons and Dragons, early adopters of its in-house RPG, Daggerheart, were loudly disappointed. ‘This is a betrayal’, many cried online. ‘This is a vote of no confidence in the very system that Critical Role helped design’.
This is, to put it in very blunt terms, a little dramatic. Only the Critical Role teams know their true reasons for playing more D&D, but there’s some clear evidence that this was a sensible business decision rather than a personal slight against Daggerheart.
Campaign four is Critical Role’s most ambitious series yet. As a 13-player West Marches game, the scope of this years-long campaign is beyond anything the media powerhouse has made before. Campaign four has also brought in Brennan Lee Mulligan, who, while very experienced DMing for other shows, is making his debut as a long-term Dungeon Master for Critical Role.
Arguably, the Critical Role cast is the reason that the show is so well-loved. It makes sense, then, that the new campaign should give the audience more of what it enjoys: interesting roleplay performed by beloved talent. Any tabletop RPG system they use is secondary to this need, and it should be chosen based on its suitability for the cast.
One thing this enormous cast has in common is that they have all played D&D before. While some played a crucial role in Daggerheart’s design – and others have likely tested the system – they won’t be nearly as familiar with it yet. So many other aspects of campaign four are new and experimental that the crew needs something familiar to anchor them when shipping out to new seas.
Daggerheart’s newness also introduces other logistical issues. Despite being designed for long-term campaign play, Daggerheart simply isn’t ready to support a series of this scale.
There are only nine classes to choose from, with two subclasses each. That means there are fewer character options for a 13-player cast, and some creative overlap is inevitable. DnD classes benefit from years of innovation, so Critical Role can rely upon a larger pool of storytelling tools with this system.
The same goes for Daggerheart’s monsters. Where D&D has a 300+ page manual of monsters to use, Daggerheart dedicates just 30 pages to pre-generated creatures. That demands a lot more homebrewing from a DM – and with so many other features to manage in a big-budget actual play production, it might be more than the team is willing to dedicate resources to.
There’s another elephant in the room to address, and that’s branding. D&D remains so famous that it’s almost a genericization for the entire tabletop RPG hobby. Most people outside of the TTRPG space (and, indeed, some within) have only ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons. To advertise yourself as a D&D show is to attract an immense existing audience – as well as the curious but less educated newcomer who wants to check out the brand they’ve actually heard of.
These days, it’s fair to claim that Critical Role has almost as much brand power as Dungeons and Dragons. It’s also understandable that campaign four’s critics are disappointed that Critical Role has chosen not to use its clout to introduce a lesser-known RPG to its global audience. The Venn diagram of ‘people upset that campaign four isn’t Daggerheart’ and ‘people who want D&D to stop dominating the RPG space’ is alarmingly close to a circle.
I’m typically all for arguments that force D&D to share its spotlight with smaller RPGs. However, I’m also a realist, and I know that D&D, the all-consuming brand behemoth that it is, isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Its age and fame make it the most approachable entry point for the hobby, even if you don’t think that the rules meet this same standard. Wargamer editor Alex Evans previously wrote about how D&D might kill its dominance with its own complacency, but a future where that’s possible is still a long way off.
As far as Critical Role is concerned, D&D is good for business. It can continue to champion RPGs like Daggerheart in limited series (which, by the way, it plans to keep doing). However, for the company’s primary product, D&D is the most practical choice of system.
Want to share your own thoughts on campaign four? We’re all ears in the Wargamer Discord. Or, if you’d like to play some fifth edition, here’s all you need to know about DnD races and DnD 2024 backgrounds.