Roleplaying games have been feeding the imaginations of gamers since the 1970's, when iconic titles like Dungeons & Dragons were shaking up the world of tabletop gaming with 20-sided dice and epic tales of adventure. Today, many gamers get their exposure to new settings and rule sets through streamers such as the team at Critical Role. Today, the company announced it is forming a brand new publishing company for its own line of tabletop games, Darrington Press.

Headed by tabletop gaming veteran Ivan Van Norman, with Matthew Mercer serving as creative advisor, Darrington Press is expected to publish its first work, Uk'otoa, in the first quarter of 2021. The flagship game is a semi-cooperative tactical card game in which factions of sailors try to stay alive while their ship is being pulled under by a monstrous sea creature.

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Fans of Critical Role's previous campaigns will be excited to know that the game slated for Q2, titled Critical Role Adventures, is set in Exandria, the setting for many former Critical Role campaigns, though it sounds like it will have its own storytelling mechanic rather than being DnD-based. The third game coming out of Darrington Press will feature a simple dice-rolling mechanic to tell the story of mob families vying for dominance in a low-magic modern setting. The fourth game, Guardians of Matrimonia, is a cooperative card game where players defend against a hoard of monstrous party crashers.

This is not Critical Role's first foray into publishing for tabletop games. Last March, a Dungeons & Dragons source book based on Critical Role's campaigns, The Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, hit store shelves with four starting adventures, three new subclasses, twenty-three creatures to encounter, and enough material to fill 304 pages of adventure.

Not only did Critical Role publish a source book already, but Wizards of the Coast recently started allowing players to access Critical Role's homebrew subclasses in the DnD Beyond character creator. Without a doubt Van Norman and Mercer have proven their chops when it comes to tabletop games, but the publishing company still needs to get product out the door and onto game store shelves. Hopefully, the true publishing date for Uk'otoa will be announced soon.

The first game will be available in Critical Role's AU, UK, and US online shops on launch day, and interested players are encouraged to place pre-orders at locally-owned game stores. A sign-up for Darrington Press's newsletter is available through the publisher's website listed below.

Uk'otoa is expected to hit stores in early 2021.

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Source: CritRole, Darrington Press