The time has come, the Walrus said… to get more details about Critical Role Campaign 4. Critical Role recently broke the internet by announcing that longtime Game Master, Matt Mercer, would be stepping down from his ten-year position. Instead, Critical Role Campaign 4 will have the talented Brennan Lee Mulligan at its helm. This announcement immediately incited a flurry of questions. Would Matt Mercer still be involved in Campaign 4? What would the cast of Critical Role Campaign 4 look like? What world would it take place in? What kind of game would it be? Well, Critical Role wasn’t telling… YET. But now we have answers to all these questions and more. And yes, to ease your fears, Matt Mercer WILL be a player in Critical Role Campaign 4. Huzzah!
Will Matt Mercer Be in Critical Role Campaign 4?
We just said so, didn’t we? Yes! For the first time in 10 years, Matt Mercer will participate in a Critical Role campaign as a PLAYER. We’re excited to see what he does.
Who Is in the Full Cast of Critical Role Campaign 4?
But Matt Mercer isn’t the only player in Critical Role Campaign 4. Joining him in the cast are Critical Role founders Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Liam O’Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham, alongside Luis Carazo, Robbie Daymond, Aabria Iyengar, Whitney Moore, and Alex Ward. Of course, Brennan Lee Mulligan joins as Game Master.
What Game System Will Critical Role Campaign 4 Use?
Critical Role Campaign 4 has revealed that it will be played using Dungeons & Dragons (2024 rules), as well as some homebrew from Darrington Press’s own Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins. Very exciting stuff! We can’t wait to see what the homebrew brings us.
Marisha Ray, Creative Director, co-founder, and cast member of Critical Role shares of Critical Role‘s system choice for Campaign 4, “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.”
Or as Matt Mercer shares in the video above, “Daggerheart or D&D, we say ‘Both!'”
What World Will Critical Role Campaign 4 Take Place In?
Critical Role Campaign 4 will be leaving Exandria behind and heading to the new world of Aramán in a West Marches-style approach to gameplay. For those unfamiliar, a West Marches approach is one that prioritizes exploration of a world and player-driven narratives. It offers the players much more agency in their gameplay than other approaches to TTRPGs. Brennan Lee Mulligan reveals, “The West Marches campaign style is effectively a shared world with more adventurers that are player characters than can fit at the table in one session. And also, on a storytelling level, it really maps the form of fantasy storytelling that people are intimately familiar with and know and love.”
As for the world of Aramán, the setting of Critical Role Campaign 4, well, we don’t know too much about it yet, but we feel eager to find out. Mulligan does share with us, “This is a world very much in conversation with Exandria. And so much of that story is about mortals and their relationships with gods and gods and their relationships with mortals. I talked to Matt, I went, ‘What is a relationship to divinity that would be based in the same logic and principals of everything we know and love about Exandria, but where they made a radically different choice. So we see the gods make a decision to put themselves and their role in the cosmos over the well-being of the mortals. And the mortals responded by then banding together themselves. Gods and mortals fight a terrible war, with many mortals staying loyal to the gods in that conflict. But the gods are defeated and killed, oops!”
And that leads us to Aramán, 70 years after that revolution and “what we’re dealing with is that magic is wild, chaotic, and unpredictable, it doesn’t work like it used to. The issues of the afterlife, where do the souls of the dead go now that gods do not part the souls to various afterlives?
What Will the Story of Critical Role Campaign 4 Be?
Game Master Brennan Lee Mulligan introduces us to the story of Critical Role Campaign 4, sharing, “In the world of Aramán, there exists a growing darkness in the shadow of revolution. 70 years ago were the Shapers cut down, those seven lords of creation that saw fit to cast their children into shadow and ruin forever. Now, a new age, a new conflict arises, and our heroes must rise to the task.”
Details aside, Mulligan shares that he boiled down his storytelling into five parts: “Swords: conflict, combat, bravery, danger. Family: Deep relationships, the nature of deep bonds of love. Death: Finality. Magic: The fundamental premise of Fantasy that anything is possible. And kissing. That one’s just kissing. People like kissing. And those five brought together create what we want in fantasy storytelling.”
Do We Know Anything About Critical Role Campaign 4‘s Characters?
We don’t yet know any specifics about the characters of Critical Role Campaign 4, except that they will divide into three categories: “Soldiers, Schemeres, and Seekers.”
A release reveals that bit of character information, alongside a reveal that the cast listed above won’t all be playing together all the time. Critical Role shares that the first four episodes of Campaign 4 “will act as an Overture, introducing and weaving all 13 cast members through intersecting scenes before the story splits into three smaller tables – the Soldiers, Schemers, and Seekers – for the rest of the campaign, with overarching themes and genres tying them altogether.”
This system, shares Brennan Lee Mulligan, will give us “an expanded view of the world through different tables that mix and match.” But the challenge of it is “to take an enormous party of epic heroes across multiple adventures concurrently, on a scale and size I have never attempted before.”
In the end, Critical Role Campaign 4 divided people by the particular playstyle they were interested in engaging with. In the end, Critical Role formed the three tables, “Soldiers, Schemers, and Seekers.” The Soldiers, Brennan Lee Mulligan shares “The Soldiers table are the people who are interested in a traditionally charged combat and conflict-driven story mode—where the non-violent answers were few and far between.” Meanwhile, “The Seekers are people that tie directly into lore, cosmology, magic, big questions around problems facing this universe that are in the weave of the dance between divinity and arcane, and magic, and demons, and fairies, and dragons, and these big kinds of questions. It’s very classical fantasy.” And finally, “The Schemers table is very much set in intrigue, espionage, skullduggery, and relationships with each other and other NPCs and instituations and the machinations of power. Their adventuring looks like cloak and dagger. There are enemies right here in your hometown, and they are moving against you as we speak.”
Curious and curioser. We think we’ll love the Schemers. But we can’t help but wonder what the Seekers are seeking.
When Will Critical Role Campaign 4 Release and How Can You Watch It?
We will get the answers to all our questions (and probably more questions) about Campaign 4 when it releases in October. Critical Role shares that “Campaign 4 will premiere with instant access on Beacon.tv as well as streamed to Critical Role’s YouTube and Twitch channels on October 2, with the VOD available for everyone the following Monday and podcast episodes available in two parts: the first one week after the premiere, and the second on the following Tuesday. Beacon members will also get exclusive access to all episodes of Critical Role Cooldown for Campaign 4, where the cameras keep rolling and you get a front row seat to the cast’s post-show reactions.”
In the meantime, you can go back to the beginning with Critical Role‘s very first episode, ever. And stay tuned for any new announcements by keeping an eye on Critical Role’s website or Instagram at @Critical_Role.
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