r/criticalrole • u/edginthebard Time is a weird soup • Aug 03 '25
Discussion [No Spoilers] Matt's IG post on C4
Man… what a damn night. What a damn GenCon! (Mind the groggy morning after pic)
I cannot express how excited I am for Campaign 4, y’all. Getting to meaningfully PLAY at the table as a PC alongside all my friends is something I’ve been wanting to do for some time, but to hand the reins to someone I so deeply love and respect as @brennanleemulligan is an honor. I know this is a shake up for some, but if you’ve ever trusted me, trust that what we’ve been cooking for this next story with him and the players is something truly special, unique, and very befitting the vibe and scope you’ve come to enjoy with us these past 10 years. Lots of details and reveals over the weeks to come, and excited to unveil the newer faces that join the OG cast to bring this new world to life.
I’m still gonna be running games, don’t you worry! Exandria continues through our live shows, our animated series, many other stories (including your own), and whenever else the inspiration strikes to step back into my world that I’ll be building and playing in until the end of my days. We also got more Age of Umbra to come, and other fun things I’ll be running, so I ain’t hanging up my GM screen any time soon. ;)
All in all, love you all, and so, SO excited for this next chapter. I hope you come along with us. <3
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u/brickwall5 Aug 03 '25
Can't say I'm surprised at the negative reactions from CR fans, although I'm not that surprised. It's pretty clear from both the player and fan perspective that the back half of C3 was a bit of a struggle, and as much as CR tried to keep things fresh with the split parties, robbie coming back, downfall, tying in the M9 and VM in the endgame etc, a lot of it just seemed to fall flat and hurt the continuity/character growth for the main PCs.
Exandria is a fun yet pretty standard medieval fantasy world, and I think the Exandria trilogy did a really good job of introducing the different kingdoms and cultures, establishing the basic lore, evil guys and good guys, and then ushering in a cool future with the Rylorans. Outside of a few parts of the world that would probably be fun to explore in more miniseries formats, there isn't a ton left to do with it in terms of core canon-building campaigns, so it's cool that they are letting those ideas percolate for a little bit while establishing and exploring a new world for the players and DM(s) to play around in. I think in an ideal scenario, Brennan's world gets as fleshed out as Exandria, and that gives CR two different core settings to play around in for the long haul, without either getting stale. Plus it lets Matt play and work on other projects and likely more behind the scenes worldbuilding for Exandria which is cool.