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This article may contain spoilers for Critical Role campaign three.

It’s a good time to be a fan of Critical Role, the Dungeons & Dragons streaming show featuring voice actors from several famous games and shows. On Saturday, June 15, the core cast will perform their first live show as Bells Hells, a fascinating and fraught group of characters.

You may have heard chatter of Chinese conglomerate Tencent looking to buy the Dungeons & Dragons IP from Hasbro. According to the IP’s publisher and Hasbro subsidiary, Wizards of the Coast, that’s complete nonsense.

Word of this supposed sale originated from a report by Beijing-based outlet Pandaily on Jan. 31, which claimed have heard Hasbro was looking to sell Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) due to its recent financial troubles. Hasbro’s profits declined throughout 2023, which prompted mass layoffs throughout the company in December 2023. Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios would act as an intermediary since it’s worked with Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast (Baldur’s Gate 3 is directly based on D&D), and Tencent owns shares in Larian.

Hasbro, considered one of the biggest toy manufacturers in the world, has announced a massive round of layoffs only a couple of weeks away from Christmas. CEO Chris Cocks himself made the announcement via an internal company memo.

In the memo, he spoke of laying off “approximately 1,100 colleagues globally in addition to the roughly 800 reductions already taken.” Hasbro already had a round of layoffs in January of this year. In a relatively short amount of time, the total will reach a staggering 1,900 eliminated positions within the company.

Matt Mercer, the Dungeon Master for the acclaimed video series Critical Role, said on Nov. 29 that he’d love to turn the show into a video game in the future. Though the idea sounds exciting, Mercer hinted that it needs to be done carefully.

“The leap into video games would be an incredible endeavor and would require the right idea, the right development studio, and the right budget,” Mercer said in an interview with Dicebreaker. “I would love to see that in the future, should all those stars align.”

DnD‘s newest playtest, Playtest 8, has just hit Unearthed Arcana, and it features big changes to Barbarians, Druids, and Monks.

Barbarians and Monks walk away as huge winners, gaining resource regeneration, while Druids limp along with wrist-slaps to Wild Shape utility from their DnD 5E counterparts, instead getting casting potential.

Critical Role’s production arm, Darrington Press, released the core rulebook of Candela Obscura today. The rulebook comes in a basic and limited edition and includes rules on character building, running a campaign, and lore about the Fairelands.

Critical Role’s Candela Obscura has been a series on their channel since May of this year, with their Twitch stream revealing the new system’s existence. The system, focused on occult investigation, was poised as a “monthly horror drama that follows an esoteric order of investigators as they use centuries of knowledge to fight back against a mysterious source of corruption and bleed.”

It starts in a crater. As it turns out, everything starts in a crater; an end that inevitably becomes a beginning.

Now imagine the crater but bigger, bigger than you’ve ever thought one could be. A ring of craggy peaks surrounding deep forests, grassy plains, an inland sea. An entire continent stretching out, with cities of crystalline towers, towns, and hamlets dotting the landscape. Zoom in further, and you’ll find creatures,characters living their lives. And in one particular graveyard, a curious band of warriors, mages, and rogues, banded together through a mysterious organization known only as The Web.

Arcanum Worlds, a well-respected third-party writer with backing from Wizards of the Coast, unleashed hell with Chains of Asmodeus on DMsGuild on Oct. 30, a level 11 to 20 adventure path written by game design legend James Ohlen. All proceeds will go to the charity fundraising organization Extra Life.

A rare campaign type, Chains of Asmodeus sees a party of level 11 adventurers cascade through the Nine Hells of the Forgotten Realms until they reach level 20 in a nearly 300-page sourcebook. They’ll slay demons, loot infernal items, and deal with an Item Corruption mechanic that warps the items that you pick up. This book comes with stellar artwork from several industry names, including Sergei Sarichev and Julian Calle, and statblocks for several high-ranking demons—including Asmodeus, Lord of the Nine, and his archfiends.

Critical Role’s newest charity event—their annual Red Nose Day live-streamed campaign Choose Their Adventure… Again—has risen $10,000 since their announcement on Oct. 25—and the donations aren’t slowing down.

This marks another year that Critical Role is working with charitable organization Red Nose Day and Comic Relief U.S. on a live-streamed campaign, an event they’ve run since 2019.

The DnD 5E book set, Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse dropped on the official DnD Store on Oct. 17th.

This outlandish bundle comes with three distinct books: A character option tome in Sigil of the Outlands, an adventure book with Turn of Fortune’s Wheel, and a bestiary expansion with Morte’s Planar Parade.