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Age of Umbra

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Age of Umbra (Web Video)
Age of Umbra is an eight-part Actual Play miniseries, by the team of Critical Role, using Daggerheart, the TTRPG system they developed and created.

To showcase Daggerheart to their audience after its release, Age of Umbra makes use of the campaign frame of the same name included in the game, a Dark Fantasy world inspired by Souls-like RPG, which includes some unique setting-exclusive mechanics. In the Halcyon Domain, the gods have abandoned the world, leaving what's left to fend for themselves around around Sacred Pyres to keep out the encroaching darkness, the Umbra. Five inhabitants of the small community of Desperloch try to cling onto hope for a better tomorrow as they survive the terrifying world they live in.Notably, from the session zero, the team promised that Anyone Can Die is in full effect, enabled by the death save rules of Daggerheart; rather than start with the full roster of Critical Role, Laura Bailey and Liam O'Brien are absent outside of the introductions for the first three episodes and their characters are introduced in episode 4.

The cast of Age of Umbra is as follows:

Age of Umbra provides the following tropes:


  • After the End: Dark Fantasy version of it. Much like the Souls-like RPG games that inspired it, Age of Umbra takes place in a fantasy world that has now been abandoned by the gods, left to waste away as a magical darkness known as the Umbra slowly consumes it, and what's left of society huddles around sacred pyres to stay alive. Misty is a remnant of the old world, being a statue-like automaton designed to house the spark of a divine entity, and is equally reviled and revered for this.
  • Anyone Can Die: Hyped from the beginning that this was going to be a merciless campaign, with Daggerheart's death saves rules specifically enabling this. note 
    • This gets demonstrated when Adelia is downed and fails a Risk It All roll, and as such dies, made even more shocking given she was a Tag Along Kid, albeit a creepy one. Matt twists the knife further by then using Fear to have them resurrect as a shambling zombie. Later in the same episode, Taliesin decides to have August make a Blaze of Glory and Heroic Sacrifice for the others.
    • During the final battle, the Blasphemous Angel cuts down Skreev, Misty and Snyx in one devastating attack. Skreev and Misty manage to kill the Final Boss with their respective Blaze of Glory's, Snyx wanting to get back up and support Idyl and Brixton in the fight, but fails the Risk It All roll. Sam confirmed immediately afterwards that he knew (via Matt whisper) that Liam and Ashley had already gotten the "how do you want to do this?", but still made the roll in-character. As such, only two of seven player characters survive the campaign; everyone else dies.
  • Author Appeal: Matt is a huge fan of Souls-like RPG games, and Age of Umbra takes many cues from the genre.
  • Cowardly Lion: Snyx is described by Sam as a coward, and even has some character-specific benefits based around his cowardice. He still manages to end the threat in the first episode thanks to one throw of his boomerang with all his abilities pumped into it; over the course of the next few episodes, he proceeds to rack up the highest body count of significant foes compared to everyone in the party.
  • Darker and Edgier: Critical Role could certainly have its dark moments, between Matt's willingness to attack downed characters and his love for macabre and Cosmic Horror, but for the most part each campaign was a firm Heroic Fantasy with even their darker arcs having an underlying theme of hope. Here, the setting is a bleak After the End Dark Fantasy using a more brutal difficulty curve and even more emphasis on Anyone Can Die. Not to mention, a child who is friends with the party gets corrupted and turned into a nightmarish abomination they're forced to kill, and later another child who joins them is killed and zombified.
    • By the end of the campaign, only two of the seven party members survive.
  • Establishing Series Moment: The Souls-like RPG inspiration is obvious from the atmosphere and set pieces, but the brutally hard difficulty curve is made clear within the first five minutes. The Cold Open has Sam's Faun-character Snyx being pursued through the undergrowth to deliver messages to the settlement of Desperloch alone, with a twisted nightmarish bear-thing hot on his heels. Snyx's attempt to use a Tanglefoot spell to slow it down backfires on him instead thanks to a bad roll from Sam, tripping Snyx and allowing the bear-beast to claw him for "severe" wound damage, taking him down to half his 6 hit points (though Sam manages to lower that to only 2 by sacrificing one of his armour slots). It's only through utilising his character's high evasion that Snyx survives at all, barely reaching the settlement in time for its defenders to kill the monster for him, and even after getting healed up by the local medic, Sam retains the damage to his Armour and increased Stress level from the encounter, potentially making combat harder for him in the future. Combat is unforgiving, bad rolls will have severe consequences, either immediately or long-term, and the players cannot expect any mercy from Matt this go-around (along with All Deaths Final being in play throughout the Campaign).
    Travis: Yes! Yes, Matthew! Yes! Come for Blood! I'm ready to eat goat tonight!
  • Jump Scare: Thanks to improved production values, Matt's GM chair has a switch that enables him to make the player's table "judder" without warning to accompany his spooky narration or increase their immersion, such as simulating "thundering footfalls" of immense beasts moving about. He first showcases this in Episode one when Snyx is ambushed by a twisted bear-like thing jumping out of the underbrush after him, with even notorious Goth Talisian getting startled by it. Travis by far proves the be the most susceptible to getting spooked by the table as the episodes go on.
  • Our Fairies Are Different: In Daggerheart, Faeries tend to have some degree of insectoid traits, sometimes being more or less giant anthropomorphic bugs. August takes this to truly unique levels in a way that only Taliesin Jaffe could come up with, being in fact a spider-person with a large moth literally stitched into his back to act as his wings. Marisha, who has a phobia of moths (something Taliesin knew about), is particularly icked at this detail.
  • Put on a Bus: After Snyx shoots and kills the zombified Adelia in Skreev's arms towards the end of the battle in Episode Six, the latter gives Snyx a meaningful look before disappearing into the shadows. His fate inside the ruins is left ambiguous, Brixton electing to later include him in the brief eulogy for the fallen August and Adelia, Liam himself being absent from the table after the episode's break. He makes a return in Episode 8 to help the party in battle.
  • Sanity Slippage: Common for many in the world, and is even an apparent effect of the Umbra itself. Aside from this, Brixton has suffered this as a result of her duty of watching the Pyre all on her own having eroded her sanity, combined with her desire to be a heroic chivalrous knight getting out of hand.
  • Wham Line: From the last episode: "I don't know what about her." As the remains of the group are descending into the final dungeon, Snyx is overcome with a vision that amplifies his guilt, and forces himself to confess to Brixton that the woman that Brixton has been corresponding is someone he's never met. He never found her, and wrote the letters to Brixton himself. This absolutely devastates Brixton at a moment when she's already reeling and cracking under the strain of her assumed burden.
  • Windmill Crusader: Downplayed in that the threats of the world are real, but Brixton has spent so much time staring at the Pyre that she's suffered Sanity Slippage, and is so desperate to be a chivalrous knight. Marisha outright describes Don Quixote as an inspiration for the character.

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