This Week in RPGs: Critical Role and Control Collide, Plus Arcana Unleashed Hits Turbulence (18-25 September 2026)

Critical Role spent this week borrowing from a video game instead of the other way round, teaming up with Remedy Entertainment for a Daggerheart one-shot set in the world of Control. It’s the kind of crossover that says a lot about how porous the line between tabletop and other media has become.

Elsewhere, Wizards of the Coast’s Arcana Unleashed hit shelves along with some shipping headaches, Chaosium’s newest crowdfunder is closing in on its deadline, and we’ve got a system-neutral GM tip drawn straight from this week’s biggest collaboration.

Story	Category	Key Detail	Why It Matters
Critical Role x Control one-shot	Actual Play	Daggerheart crossover, 22 Sept, with Remedy Entertainment	A major collab bridging video game and tabletop audiences
Arcana Unleashed launches, bundle delayed	Tabletop release	New 5.5e sourcebook; US/Canada Ultimate Bundle delivery delayed	Closes a gap in 5.5e’s big-campaign content, with early shipping snags
Time Without Tide crowdfunding	Crowdfunding	Chaosium, Backerkit, closes 24 September	Foggy post-apocalyptic setting from the Call of Cthulhu studio
Foundry VTT and D&D Beyond updates	Digital/VTT	Foundry Release 14.368 rolling out alongside D&D Beyond changes	Improves the digital toolset most online tables depend on
WotC reflects on the OGL fallout	Industry	Dan Ayoub: “very loud, very public missteps”	Signals how Wizards is trying to rebuild trust after 2023’s OGL controversy

Headline News

Critical Role and Control collide in a one-shot. On 22 September at 7pm Pacific, Critical Role streamed a custom Daggerheart one-shot built around Remedy Entertainment’s Control, with “reality is collapsing” as its premise. Marisha Ray, Travis Willingham and Sam Riegel sat at the table alongside Sean Durrie from Control Resonant, with newcomer Zachery Renauldo making his Critical Role GM debut.

With Critical Role’s audience running into the millions, this is significant promotion for Control Resonant, and a good example of how much narrative mileage a game-within-a-game one-shot can get. If you’re planning something similar at your own table, our guide to running Daggerheart encounters without a grid is a useful companion piece.

Arcana Unleashed arrives, then hits a shipping snag. Wizards of the Coast’s new 5.5e sourcebook launched this week, adding eight new subclasses and closing out what the studio’s been calling its “Season of Magic” content gap for big campaigns. Almost immediately, WotC and D&D Beyond confirmed the Ultimate Bundle’s physical delivery is delayed in the US and Canada, alongside a new Underdark Unearthed Arcana preview meant to soften the blow. If you’re rolling up a character for it, our 5e multiclassing guide and our rundown of the best classes for experienced players are both worth a look before the new subclasses arrive.

New This Week

On the tabletop side, EN Publishing’s EN5ider Monthly #17 went out to subscribers this week with a dwarf-focused issue: new class options, Runes of Power material, a handful of monsters, and encounters set in the Mines of Herekda. It’s a smaller release than Arcana Unleashed, but a solid pickup if your table’s due a dwarf-heavy session.

On the digital side, Foundry Virtual Tabletop pushed Release 14.368 this week, the latest build in its ongoing V14 cycle, while D&D Beyond continues rebuilding parts of its own platform in parallel. Between the two, this is a good moment to check your VTT setup is current before your next session. If you’re new to running games online, our guide to Daggerheart on VTTs and Demiplane covers the basics.

Actual Play Corner

The Critical Role x Control one-shot is the story of the week, but it sat alongside the cast’s regular programming rather than replacing it, so Campaign updates are still on their usual schedule. If you want the fuller picture of where the main campaign stands, our recap of Campaign 4’s return is a good refresher.

Outside Critical Role, EN World’s Jessica Hancock hosts “This Week in TTRPG” every Friday for a quick news roundup, and Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk podcast covers the same ground in more depth on Mondays. Both are worth a follow if you like your actual-play adjacent to actual news.

Crowdfunding Watch

Featured: Time Without Tide. Chaosium’s latest campaign closes on Backerkit on 24 September, and it’s a strong one: a foggy, faux-Victorian post-apocalypse setting caused by a fallen moon, built around a d6 dice pool system, with a core rulebook running past 250 pages. Coming from the studio behind Call of Cthulhu and Runequest, it’s got the pedigree to back up the pitch.

Also closing this week: Nord Games’ Treacherous Traps 2 (Kickstarter, closes 25 September) adds 250 simple and 25 complex traps for 5E and 5.5E, complete with a random generator. Mars Watch (Kickstarter, closes 25 September) is a Powered by the Apocalypse survival horror campaign set 150 years into a cut-off Mars colony, worth a look if your group likes PbtA’s lighter rules footprint.

Community Spotlight

WotC’s Dan Ayoub gave a candid interview this week reflecting on the 2023 OGL controversy, admitting the company is “recovering from a lot of missteps, very loud, very public missteps.” It’s landed well with a community that’s been watching closely for signs Wizards has actually changed its approach, and it comes not long after Chris Cocks took the wheel at Wizards more broadly. Whether the sentiment translates into policy is still an open question, but the tone shift itself is notable.

Media & Entertainment

It was a quiet week for TV and book news specifically, with most of the oxygen going to the Critical Role crossover and Arcana Unleashed instead. Keep an eye on next week’s roundup for LitRPG releases and any streaming announcements that build on this week’s Control tie-in.

GM Toolkit: This Week’s Tip

The tip: borrow the fiction, not the whole rulebook. When you’re running a genre-mashup one-shot like this week’s Control crossover, resist the urge to import a second game’s full subsystem. Reskin two or three signature elements of the source material onto tools your system already has instead.

Why it works: your players already know how your system resolves actions, so all their mental effort goes into the fiction rather than learning new mechanics on the fly. That’s exactly what makes a one-shot land in a single session instead of sprawling into a rules tutorial.

How to use it: pick the handful of things that make the source material feel distinct (for Control, that’s reality-bending hazards and creeping dread) and represent them with existing conditions, tags or a simple countdown clock rather than new dice pools or stat blocks.

Example: running a Daggerheart one-shot in a Control-style setting, you might reskin the Fear track as a rising “Altered World Event” meter, no new subsystem needed, just a fresh coat of narrative paint on a mechanic your table already understands. For more on using Daggerheart’s Hope and Fear economy this way, see our piece on Hope and Fear as GM tools, or start from the fundamentals in Game Mastering in Daggerheart: Agenda, Principles and GM Moves.

Coming Next Week

Time Without Tide wraps up its campaign, so expect stretch goal news either way it lands. Watch for word on whether the Arcana Unleashed Ultimate Bundle delay gets a firm new delivery date, and we’ll have any fallout from this week’s Critical Role one-shot once the dust settles.

Community Question

If Critical Role tackled another video game crossover next, which one would you want to see, and what system would you run it in? Tell us in the comments.

Catch up on last week’s roundup for the Daggerheart casting news and the Ravenloft series announcement if you missed it.