Critical Role continues the ambitious expansion of its specific brand of storytelling with a preview of its new role-playing game, Candela Obscura, based on Darrington Press’ new Illuminated Worlds role-playing system. On May 25, the group started with a free quick start guide, released ahead of the release of the full game in late 2023. The public got a first look at it Candela Obscura in action with a new streaming series of the same name that premiered the same day.
While Darrington Press does not brand Illuminated Worlds as a system nor Candela Obscura as a game specifically intended for played play, it’s clear that the rules are designed to get out of the way, avoiding lengthy rule searches that can slow down live play. Mechanics took a backseat to character intros and world-building in the first half of the episode, but even once the dice started rolling, the system felt particularly suited to fast-paced, impromptu action. Polygon spoke to several cast members via email ahead of that premiere to learn more about the design inspirations and player experiences in this new system.
Image: Critical Role via Twitch
Candela Obscura is explicitly billed as a Forged in the Dark system, taking inspiration and some key mechanics from John Harper’s beloved heist RPG Blades in the dark as well as Free League Publishing’s Nordic horror game vases. While popular actual games such as Friends at the table and The Adventure Zone have run many acclaimed campaigns Sheets, it is noteworthy that both are edited podcasts, where moments of looking up lines and the like can be brought back. Indeed, there is a slight trend toward real plays that are so heavily edited that they lean away from the sporting pleasures of real play and become almost indistinguishable from scripted audio dramas. Consider Critical Role’s Most Recent Acquisition, “Semi-Improvised” Middle, in that part of the fiction podcast spectrum, as well as Fool & Scholar’s upcoming horror adventure Dark Dice: Banks of the Silver Thrum. That project mentions that in its Patreon announcement “there are hardly any references to the fact that this impromptu podcast was originally a game at all.”
In contrast, live and live-to-tape actual plays don’t have the luxury of post-production edits, so brevity comes from trimming rulesets, as Hyper did with Children on bicycles for Kollok and Gabe Hicks did with his Mythical Lite for Dimension 20’s Shriek Week. It should come as no surprise that these examples, and Candelaare based on systems that use a single die type (usually d6 or d10) in large numbers rather than a series of multiple shapes that can be confusing to new players or awkward in the heat of battle.
Speaking to Polygon, cast member Taliesin Jaffe (Lightkeeper) was reluctant to make any claims about how mechanics affect gameplay and performance (“I’m still learning”). But he would admit that Candela Obscura was one of the “performance-enhancing” systems and wryly compared the use of role-based character sheets to “commedia dell’arte,” a form of theater known for using stock characters. Like those familiar with co-creator Spenser Starke’s other blockbuster TTRPG Alice is missingcan work within such constraints be transformative in the game.
However, Candela Obscura presents a style of play and execution that focuses on the character as the place for players agency – as game designer Navi Drake pointed out on Twitter during the premiere, it’s “a hidden rails game with extensive player desk” ideally suited to groups with a lot of faith in their GM, who in turn has a penchant for author-style story construction and pacing. Viewers familiar with the quick start guide will be able to identify the story phases that are included in a Candela assignment, the revelations that propel players from one scene to the next, and how game master Matt Mercer lengthens or speeds up each stage depending on role-play choices. In that respect, it’s similar to Darrington’s genre-crossing Until the last gasp, which Polygon praised earlier this year for its approach to impromptu storytelling. Similarly, Anjali Bhimani (Charlotte) described how scenes and situations served as starting points for internal reflection: “Searching within for the ways in which some situations [presented] affect a character’s mental, emotional and spiritual state was a very satisfying challenge to take on.”
Indeed, when asked about the benefits of the system, Bhimani and Laura Bailey (Arlo) were quick to praise what they could do in terms of both collective character creation and individual performance. Bailey noted how the system “makes you think outside the box”, adding: “In other systems it’s easy to feel like a superhero. But this game system makes you understand how mortal you are. It raises the stakes of every That means the successes wash over you with relief!” Bailey used the shorter series as an opportunity to create a character with more “extreme personality traits” […] that can be intimidating in the long run. Arlo is always half in, half out [of her own awareness]. She has a head tilt aspect that is super fun to experiment with. She leans into her weirdness instead of trying to hide it.
Image: Critical Role via Twitch
The Candela Obscura set is a good visual representation of the goals of the show (and game): to create a rich and impactful experience while still working within the constraints of the multi-camera layout that has been the trademark of Critical Role since the earliest days is. The depth of the set gives the feeling of crowded rooms with tantalizing glimpses of curios behind the players while leaving minimal space for them, with custom dice trays and glassware to match the set, no tablets or computer screens seen anywhere . Lighting highlights active players while keeping the rest of the table and their reactions legible. The production team (including director Steve Failows, co-producing with Maxwell James) experimented with “dozens of atmospheric tools,” Jaffe noted, but which of those tools will appear on stream in future installments is still a mystery.
Indeed, Jaffe kept quite a few secrets, including the nature of his own role as Lightkeeper, described in the early press as “a steward to viewers” and in the Quick Start Guide as a non-player character used by the GM to carry out assignments. to introduce. We see him at the beginning of the first episode as an introduction to the circle, addressing not the players but the audience, seemingly looking back at the events we are about to experience. When asked if the Lightkeeper owed Rod Serling van The twilight zoneJaffe commented that the parallel “is a great touchstone for our Lightkeeper. I’m not sure how soon we’ll show our hand on that, but it’s very intentional.
It seems like Darrington Press and Critical Role are playing a game Candela for all of us this summer – we’ve heard the hook, have arrived, but more revelations to come before full relief. They know the end, but what we as audiences and potential players do with this world remains to be seen.
Candela Obscura‘s standalone episodes air during Critical Role’s dark week on the last Thursday of each month at 7 p.m. PDT on Twitch And YouTube channels. Twitch subscribers will be able to access video-on-demand versions immediately after the broadcast, and podcast and YouTube VOD will be available two weeks later.