Critical Role is branching into a new, spooky direction. The company announced an original horror tabletop roleplaying game: Candela Obscura. Premiering at the end of May, the game brings together investigators with a mission. Running on Darrington Press’ ( Critical Role’s publishing arm) Illuminated Worlds System, Candela Obscura has a cast full of your favorites. Watch the trailer:
Created by Taliesin Jaffe and Chris Lockey, with Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall serving as lead designers and writers, and Steve Failows and Maxwell James as producers, Candela Obscura is a new ongoing show. Critical Role keeps bringing us different settings to explore, and we’re not mad about it. Related, they’ve shared a free Candela Obscura Quickstart Guide. You can download everything as PDFs (the full rulebook will be out later this year). The system is built on 6-sided dice and focuses on “narrative, arc-driven play.”
Candela Obscura‘s synopsis is as follows:
Set in a fictional turn-of-the-century inspired region known as the Fairelands, Candela Obscura follows an esoteric order of investigators as they use centuries of knowledge to fight back against a mysterious source of corruption and bleed. At the beginning of each episode, an inciting incident occurs, prompting a team (or “circle”) of investigators to uncover and solve the mystery at hand. The general public is unaware of the otherworldly truths of these paranormal phenomena, and the organization known as Candela Obscura works to maintain that secrecy and keep the world safe.
Justin O’Neal/Darrington Press
The cast includes Laura Bailey, Ashley Johnson, Robbie Daymond, and Anjali Bhimani. Matthew Mercer joins as the first chapter’s game master. The first chapter of Candela Obscura premieres on May 25 at 7:00 p.m. PT. You can watch it on Critical Role’s Twitch and YouTube channels. New episodes will drop on the last Thursday of the month.
