Critical Role’s Candela Obscura is but a pale shadow of its inspiration

In May, Critical Role launched a brand new series of actual plays entitled Candela Obscura. Darrington Press has released a tabletop RPG based on similar themes and mechanics. Fans will now be able find Candela Obscura Core RulebookThey can be purchased at local stores and online. The game is a hit with fans, who want to experience episodic stories set in the fictional world. However, the initial release does not have the depth nor the novelty needed for broader appeal.

Candela Obscura Like the streaming service, the game also uses the Illuminated Worlds developed by Stras Aimovic and Layla Adelman. Acimovic has been best known for the work he did on The Scum and the VillainsThe following are some examples of how to get started: Band of Blades, which both use the Forged in the Dark license of John Harper’s Blades In The Dark. Illuminated worlds The DNA of both species is very similar. Candela Obscura designers Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall acknowledge that Harper’s work inspired both their mechanics and also the tone of the book’s intro, and Harper even designed the deluxe edition of the game’s cover. But Candela Obscura can’t hold a candle to the critically acclaimed Blades In The Dark game itself, or Harper’s evocative world-building.

Image: Justin O’Neal/Darrington Press

You can also Like Blades In The Dark, Candela Obscura The game uses a system based on d6 where the only players can roll dice. They may also use their character resources to provide an additional die to ally. It also uses the same difficulty system, where a 6 is considered a real success while a lower number means failure or a successful outcome with complications. There are also countdowns — represented by dice used as numerical markers rather than by filling in a clock face with a pencil as in Blades In The Dark — used to ramp up tension by letting the players know the situation is about to escalate.

The game’s primary conceit is also similar to Blades In The Dark. Rather than play a criminal band operating in the haunted City of Doskvol Candela Obscura Players assume the roles of agents of the organization, tasked with protecting the planet from hidden threats. Instead of going on jobs, you’re sent on assignments that provide episodic adventures. Then you spend your downtime training, recovering and building up the base.

The character archetypes in both games are similar, too Candela Obscura Gives each primary option a couple of specific roles rather than a single role. The slink could be a criminal or a detective, while a face might be a reporter or magician. This makes it easier to give characters highly specific abilities, like a detective’s Mind Palace, which allows them to get clues from the game master by piecing information together. This also gives the impression that it limits players’ options.

Darrington Press

Candela Obscura’s mechanics are surprisingly a bit gentler on the characters compared to Blades In The Dark. This seems odd, given that this game is a horror one. Characters have a drive pool for each of the game’s core stats — nerve, cunning, and intuition — representing the ability to push themselves and add extra dice to a roll. The higher the permanent pool, the more resistance they have to use in order to prevent negative consequences from a failed check. Each character also can gain back drive by using their specialty’s favored action, whether it’s a criminal hiding or a medium sensing.

The characters can now spend their resources on ensuring good roll results during an adventure. Sometimes, they can use these to ignore negative effects. Marks are placed on characters who have been injured, tired, or are affected by magic. These marks can be turned into scars when a character has too many of them before they rest and recover. Probably the most dangerous thing players can do is choose to use dangerous magic themselves and take too many points of bleed — that is, the game’s term for damage from coming in contact with occult sources. These scars, however, are not meant as a way to burden players with statistics or mechanics. They’re intended for role-playing purposes. Characters never lose stats, but can shift them around to indicate how they’ve adapted to anything from being possessed to losing a limb.

The RPG is designed for episodic, monster-of-the-week-style adventures, suggesting GMs start a session with a cold open where some form of supernatural threat causes havoc. A veteran NPC called Lightkeeper gathers the party of members from a Candela Obscura house and sends them on an adventure. They’ll have to figure out what happened You can also find out more about the following: ideally secure the cause of the problem so it can be taken to the organization’s stronghold, the Fourth Pharos.

Hellboy and Penny Dreadful Despite being cited explicitly, the idea feels like Warehouse 13 —The quirky but beloved action adventure series that mixed The X-FilesWith steampunk devices and occult elements. While players will gain some benefits from their chapter house between sessions, there’s not nearly as much depth to the organization as there is to a criminal crew in Blades In The Dark. It’s a clear opportunity for a follow-up release that could add more content than could otherwise fit inside this slim 200-page chapbook-sized hardcover.

Image: Marc Moureau/Darrington Press

The game’s primary setting is Newfaire, the capital city of the Fairelands. It’s a patchwork of London, Chicago, and Amsterdam, with ruined Atlantis buried underneath it all. Hubris and arcane experiments flooded the ancient city of Oldfaire, which remained vacant for more than a millennium until it was settled by refugees from The War of Embers, the game’s equivalent of the Crusades. Newfaire is located above Oldfaire’s ruins, and the barrier between them remains very thin. This allows supernatural events to occur. The world is otherwise very much like ours in the early 1900s — with the exception of an absence of institutionalized racism, homophobia, transphobia, and other common forms of prejudice present in our own timeline.

That very intentional act of revisionism could work to produce a diverse utopian setting akin to Dungeons & Dragons’ Travels through the Radiant CitadelNewfaire is described as being fairly homogenous. The section about food and drinks is dominated by people who love beer and rice. Other key groups outside of Candela Obscura include a religion that is similar to Christianity, mad scientists, drug-smugglers and an evil cult. The government also plays a role. There’s also a group of immortals that seems like it should be way more developed, but they mostly just seem to be a way to make a few NPCs from other organizations extra intimidating. They’re less antagonists themselves in this book and more a prestige class for high-level boss enemies.

Candela Obscura makes vague efforts at exploring themes of social justice with plots involving corruption and police malfeasance, but they are hamstrung by the game’s explicit denial of intersectionality. Scarlet, for example, is outlawed despite being used by religious groups and recreationally for many centuries. It’s a clear parallel to America’s Prohibition movement and its parallel crackdown on cannabis use, but doesn’t acknowledge that both were driven historically in our world by anti-immigrant sentiment.

Given the Fairelands have just won another devastating war, issues related to immigration would be a natural addition to the book’s list of themes, but they’re not touched upon. There’s some concern about the enemy nation of Otherwhere acquiring the electrical weapon that ultimately won The Last Great War, Candela Obscura’s equivalent to World War I, but the game also doesn’t have any hooks related to espionage. The book mentions the danger of militarized law enforcement, but the agents who work for them are often portrayed as more like allies than enemies to players trying to solve mysteries.

Amelia Leonards/Darrington Press

Each of the book’s key locations offers a one-paragraph suggested assignment that could take players there, whether it’s trying to figure out why bodies are walking out of the cemetery or recovering medicine stolen from a warehouse. While some of them might bring in other organizations, there’s no real connecting plot or any answers given to where monsters come from or how most people have managed to avoid noticing them. They are fairly dull procedurals that have a few evocative visuals but don’t offer any big surprises.

Candela ObscuraIt is a solid book with a mix of watercolors and drawings to show the terrors in the city. Most intriguing are the notes from a Candela Obscura member who believes that they should be learning more about magic than locking it away. This would help to prevent another world war. It is similar to what motivated Warehouse 13, James MacPherson is a former agent who becomes a primary antagonist, portrayed by Roger Rees, the great Roger Rees.

The show was able to harness the power of engaging episodic stories based in real history, woven together with an interesting metaplot. Unfortunately, Candela Obscura doesn’t offer much in that regard. There are few details about the world, and no answers to the questions raised in the metaplot. Without those tools, it’s really up to the game master to flesh out a session into something engaging and scary rather than a bland supernatural procedural. That might make a great way for the Critical Role crew to show off their acting talents, but it doesn’t seem as useful for someone who just wants to run a game at home with their friends.

Candela Obscura Core Rulebook Review was conducted using an advance copy from Darrington Press. Vox Media is affiliated with other companies. Vox Media earns commissions from affiliate products, although this doesn’t influence the editorial content. Find out more about affiliate links. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.