Candela Obscura & the Illuminated Worlds
or how Critical Role is possibly being quite genius with their publication schedule
(NOTE: This isn't a review on Candela Obscura itself but a discussion on the publishing schedule/pipeline)
Okay I'm going to just assume you've never heard about anything to get to this point about any of this - Critical Role started off as a live stream actual play in the D&D 5e space of a 'bunchy of nerdy ass voice actors' that started in 2015. From that point, they have since grown to their own little octopus company entity with an animated show based on Campaign 1 [Vox Machina], comics, figures, collectibles, and more. They've also built up their own merch store, non-profit and most importantly for our purposes their publication arm with Darrington Press. While they still keep the core cast around for their weekly live-streamed actual play [they are currently on Campaign 3], each member has also taken on a responsibility in one of its many octopus arms. They also often bring in friends and guests to their own core stream and to short shots they do in other systems or for special events.
With their new publication arm going strong they announced 2 TTRPGs the team was working on - Illuminated Worlds and Daggerheart. The focus of which today is Illuminated Worlds. It is a system that says it is made for micro campaigns, things that are a complete story arc on their own but that you can explore different things in with the same characters or different characters if you wanted to. The strength of which for live stream actual plays should be obvious especially if you are looking to share the wealth of your success and bring on more players that haven't been seen before. Please notice the word used as Illuminated Worlds is a SYSTEM had has itself not been released yet.
This is where we start to get into what I think is the genius bit. Instead of releasing their SYSTEM book first they instead released a SETTING book to show off just what it could do in Candela Obscura. Which in the book itself on the first actual page tells you - it is built using the Illuminated Worlds SYSTEM. Candela Obscura is an investigative horror setting in which the players at the table are members of the organization the book is named after investigating strange occurrences and dangerous magic. It provides a full world, lore, monsters, flavorings, and everything you need in a SETTING book to really set the tone. To show off this fact Critical Role started to release sets of videos of different 'circles' what the game calls its narrative arc micro campaigns. Not only does this show off how different playthroughs of the same SETTING can be, but it allows Darrignton Press to get a lot of new and experienced players going thru the system at once from character creation thru end of a micro campaign. I'm pretty sure they are up to 3 at this point with about 6 players at each table that is feedback from 18 players right there from the perspective of playing it for an audience. Along side the releases of these "Circle of...' streams/VODs they released the SETTING book itself. My lovely fiance was kind enough to get me the limited edition one for Christmas and I have devoured it.
At this point you are probably rolling your eyes and saying 'I get it Kayla but I don't see the genius'. But its right there - they made Illuminated Worlds and instead of releasing the full SYSTEM book they did Candela Obscura, a SETTING book, first. Why does this matter? Well Illuminated Worlds is touted as this system for micro campaigns that can be done to play ANY kind of game, that means any kind of SETTING. So it might be smart to release a set of wildly different SETTING books using the SYSTEM first to show off how diverse it is. They showed off an investigative horror but why not also show off a high sci-fi adventure or a non-magic western? This also lets you mine it for content with 3-5 micro campaigns per SETTING book. All the while you are able to provide tweaks, adjustments, and experiments on the SYSTEM book itself to make sure it can actually handle such a wide array of SETTINGS. Now instead of just a SYSTEM book released with maybe modest sales on your SETTING books to go with it, flipping and reversing it gives you a bigger pay off as well.
Now you may be like 'but Kayla that is all speculation' and to that I have to say OF COURSE IT IS! Do you think if I had a secret in source at Critical Role you wouldn't have already heard me say something? I love those guys and I think that what they have done taking a live stream actual play group into a multi-armed company and non-profit is a masterclass in business for creatives. But as someone who freelances in TTPRGs and now operates as the General Manager for Underground Oracle Publishing I think its important to pay attention to it. We, UO Publishing, has already done one Kickstarter for a SETTING book in Cypher and are working on the prep for another one. So production schedules and how to best leverage those into content to engage communities and your user base is always on my mind. Critical Role has played chess with this because we are going to buy every single one of those SETTING books because they will be wildly different but also because we will want to see if we can spot the similarities to get a hint at what will be in a SYSTEM book for Illuminated Worlds.
Falling down the rabbit hole as a freelancer I caught the Darrington Press Community Gaming License [DPCGL] posted in the copyright area and instantly googled it. While it does state that early 2024 we can see an Illuminated Worlds Standard Resource Document [or IWSRD] which is pretty common for companies that want to see 3rd Party Publishers like myself take it and run with it. I still think that they may be going with the above master plan before publishing a full SYSTEM book. An SRD is pretty common for companies that want people to make things around their SYSTEMS or SETTINGS in order to help foster and build communities of gamers loyal to them. That's what Wizards of the Coast did, before they shot themselves in the foot with an attempted sneaky OGL 2.0, its what Cypher System and many others do. So with one SETTING book already out with a lot of people wanting to play it on streams it was a smart thing to include early on before the hype died down. Will I personally be making 3PP stuff for Candela Obscura? Hell fucking yeah. I already have a game plan of creating 'circle' supplements that are played on charity live streams before release. Is that insane to think about with everything else in my production pipeline when its just me? Also yes, but have you met me?
With that little rambling over with, I’m JustKay your regular DM Dalliance on the web and I’ll see you next post.