That’s a wrap for Critical Role‘s second Age of Umbra mini-series. There were many heartening moments in such a miserable setting, thanks to some stellar performances from the cast. Sallowlands, however, never gripped me the way a mainline series does. In fact, now it’s over, my first thought was ‘I can’t wait for campaign four to come back’.
I’ve thought long and hard about why things haven’t hit me the way I’d hoped, and I’ve boiled it down to a few key factors:
The system
I don’t think Daggerheart is a bad tabletop RPG (if you’ve read my recent Hope and Fear review, you’ll know I’m actually quite the fan). I do think it’s an unfamiliar one for most of the Sallowlands cast.
D&D, for all its flaws, is like a comfy pair of slippers for most roleplayers. We know its cadence so well that we barely need to think about how a scene (or our DnD classes) works. That familiarity is crucial for a show like Critical Role, where I’m mostly watching to become invested in the story, not the system itself.
I don’t enjoy watching Laura Bailey, brilliant battle strategist that she is, because I want to see how her character tackles combat with a vampire. I want to see her bring a character to life (and maybe death) in an emotional, nuanced, and exciting way.
D&D is the vehicle for the stories that Critical Role usually tells. The character arcs come to the forefront, and the rules fade into the background.
That doesn’t happen so much in Sallowlands. I think it’s because the cast are still getting to grips with Daggerheart as an actual play system. Bailey and her fellow Critical Role co-founder Matt Mercer will be more familiar than most – but even they’ve had just a few years of Daggerheart versus a few decades of D&D.
The rest of the cast are even more alien to it. In fact, with varied backgrounds and experience levels, almost all of them are making their Critical Role debut. That’s even more waters to test before dipping your toe in.
A lack of experience isn’t a problem, but it creates an atmosphere that feels markedly different. It’s less performance and more play.
‘Above table’ discussion, as the Critical Role team call it, wades into the fray more often, breaking immersion. At times, a player’s immediate focus on how the game actually works means they have less to give to spontaneous character moments. Those moments often make an entire episode. We do still get them in Sallowlands (I’ve never recovered from the ‘Mr Beaks’ escapade), but they’re further and fewer between.
I want to stress that the performances in Age of Umbra are fantastic. I sincerely hope Jennifer English and Abubakar Salim appear in more actual play shows, because they were the standout stars of Sallowlands. They brought real heart to the party, with both silly and severe moments carried wonderfully.
Vico Ortiz, too, shines as Caguama. If English and Salim are a top-notch double-act, Ortiz is an eloquent solo artist. They’re almost always found at center stage in Sallowlands’ most emotional moments. Without Caguama, the story’s pace and punch would have suffered greatly.
Talking of pace…
The structure
We get far less time with these characters than we would in a typical campaign. Again, this isn’t a problem in isolation – there are many fantastic mini-series in the world. But, in the case of Sallowlands, Critical Role’s storytelling struggles with this limitation.
With less time to tease backstories, there’s less emotional impact when characters reveal something personal. I’m nowhere near as upset when they die (and, because this is Age of Umbra, several of them do).
What’s worse, the cast seem in a hurry to create the kind of arcs we’d expect from months of standard campaign play. There’s a rush to ascribe more meaning to the events of Sallowlands than the series has actually earned.
At one time, English’s character describes the rest of the party as ‘found family’. Given how little time they’ve practically spent together (and how few of the scenes show them doing anything other than fighting or exploring), this feels insincere.
Perhaps this is a flaw in the setup more than anything else. English, Salim, and Bailey all play characters with pre-existing relationships, but for the most part, this party of five is thrown together entirely by circumstance. Everyone heard rumors of a city that could save them, and they’re sticking together because it makes sense for survival.
This sets up player goals that are simple and external. It gives us a structure of play that feels passive, like the world is happening to our cast rather than being impacted by them. That’s a far cry from the living, breathing city streets of Aramán.
Speaking of setting…
The setting
The Halcyon Domain, Mercer’s setting for Age of Umbra, is a dreary, depressing place. We visit dank swamps and cages, dust-filled wastelands, and towers of desperate zealots. It’s very Bloodborne, and in a world where Soulslikes are dime a dozen, I feel like I’ve seen it all before.
None of the scenery stands out in Sallowlands. That’s a real shame when so much of Daggerheart’s system gamifies the environments you traverse. Exploration is more important here than in a game like D&D, and less attention to detail has been given by our narrator.
Almost none of the NPCs stick in your mind, either. Mercer isn’t giving his best performances as Bowen, the straggler the party picks up on their journey. And beyond him, I can only recall one a handful of other notable figures – the charming cajun merchant who bought Mr Beaks from Caguama, and the delightfully disgusting boss we face in the finale.
Mercer’s guidance (or lack of it) lets the series down more than anything else, I think. He is single-handedly responsible for creating the show’s backdrop. When that background is bland, the rest of the details can all-too-easily start to blur together. Things become harder to follow (and, when episodes are several hours long, you really need to give your audience reasons to pay attention).
There’s a point in Sallowlands where Zachery Renauldo says “we’ve come too far to not know what’s going on”. It wasn’t meant to, but it summed up a lot of my feelings about Sallowlands. There are some utterly wonderful singular moments, but the sum of its parts were passive and, at worst, forgettable. It didn’t quite work, however much I wanted it to.
Want to share your own thoughts on Age of Umbra: Sallowlands? I’m always keen to chat about actual play in the Wargamer Discord.
Source: Wargamer
