More details about Critical Role’s next campaign have dropped. We knew it was being run by Dimension 20 mastermind Brennan Lee Mulligan, whereupon I joked that he’d be losing a lot of sleep juggling two massive D&D projects. Folks, I am now seriously concerned for the man, because the pitch for Critical Role Campaign 4, which premiers October 2, is buck wild.
Critical Role’s already-meaty cast is expanding to 13 permanent players—with Luis Carazo, Robbie Daymond, Aabria Iyengar, Whitney Moore, and Alexander Ward joining the table. That’s per both a blog and an announcement video.
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Now, you might say that’s way too many players for a table, and you’d be exactly right. Brennan Lee Mulligan will be splitting off those 13 players into three different parties within the newly-created world of Aramán, West Marches style.
A West Marches campaign, for those unfamiliar, is a shared setting usually helmed by a small number of DMs and dozens of players. Sessions are traditionally drop-in, drop-out, with players accruing experience and exploring a shared world together.
In this instance, the parties are being organised by theme: Soldiers, Seekers, and Schemers. These more-or-less are what they sound like—the Soldiers will be hitting stuff, the Seekers will be uncovering secrets in the world, and the Schemers will be dealing with political intrigue.
In a follow-up fireside chat, Mulligan remarks: “What were the [issues] that Matt and Travis and Marisha were talking about as I was originally pitching this idea, were essentially things that gaming groups have dealt with since time immemorial!” That is, having too many players and varying schedules—which is exactly the sort of circumstance the West Marches model was built for.
It’s not as though Mulligan & Co. are doing it alone, though. Critical Role has Christopher Perkins and Jeremy Crawford on-board for Daggerheart design, but it also means they can tap into a direct vein of D&D 2024 systems knowledge for Campaign 4. Given they both, y’know, helped design the dang thing and have been doing so professionally for years.
All in all, I’m beyond excited. It’s a tall order, and one I’m staggered that Mulligan is attempting—but having been an avid fan of Dimension 20, Worlds Beyond Number, and his Critical Role appearances such as EXU: Calamity? He’s got the range to pull it off. The free time is another thing entirely, but hey—if I could run TTRPG games full-time, I’d be doing that too. In many senses, he is living the dream.
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