Roleplaying games have played a huge part in feeding and cultivating the imagination of many gamers since the 1970s, with highly-renowned titles such as Dungeons & Dragons paving the way for tabletop games with its epic adventures and dice-rolling.
Today, Dungeons & Dragons fans who aren’t able to play the game themselves can indulge and experience it through streamers such as Critical Role. In an exciting announcement, the company has revealed that it is launching its very own tabletop publishing company called Darrington Press.
Darrington Press, which is headed by Ivan Van Norman and with Matthew Mercer as the creative advisor, already has a game that it plans to release during the first quarter of next year.
The first game, Uk’otoa, is a semi-cooperative tactical card game wherein different groups of sailors try to survive while their ships are being dragged down to sea by a grotesque sea monster.
Those who are fans of Critical Role’s past campaigns will be glad to know that the game set to release during the second quarter, which will be called Critical Role Adventures, will be set in Exandria. This is the location where a lot of Critical Role’s campaigns were set.
Although, it’s worth noting that it seems like this one will have its own narrative rather than being particularly based on Dungeons & Dragons.
Darrington Press’ third game, Syndicult, which is scheduled to release during the third quarter of 2021, is an original RPG designed by none other than Matthew Mercer. Syndicult tells the story of mob families competing for dominance in a low-magic world, featuring a simple dice-rolling mechanic.
The fourth game in Darrington Press’ library is entitled Guardians of Matrimonia, and it is described by the company as a “cooperative card game” where players fight against monsters a.k.a party crashers with the use of pre-built decks.
https://twitter.com/DarringtonPress/status/1321118880606101504?s=20
That being said, this is definitely not Critical Role’s first time dipping its toes into publishing tabletop games. Just last March, a brand-new Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook was published and sold in stores. This book was entitled The Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, and it was based on Critical Role’s campaigns.
The Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount was definitely jampacked with content, as it contained four starting adventures, three new subclasses, and twenty-three different creatures to battle and simply encounter. Basically, it’s a 304-page book full of adventures.
Critical Role has done more for the tabletop RPG community than just publishing a sourcebook, though. Wizards of the Coast also began allowing Dungeons & Dragons players to make use of Critical Role’s homebrew subclasses using the content creator in DnD Beyond.
As such, there isn’t a shadow of a doubt that Van Norman and Mercer are kings in the realm of tabletop games. However, this doesn’t change the fact that their publishing company is still new and they will first need to get their games out the factory doors and onto shelves.
For now, we’ll just have to wait for Darrington Press to announce the official publishing date for Uk’otoa. Once the game is launched, interested players will be able to get the game on Critical Role’s AU, UK, and US online storefronts.