Candela Obscura: Core Rulebook

There are things in the dark that should not be there. Someone has to investigate.

Welcome to Newfaire, a turn-of-the-century-inspired city of industry, old secrets, and dangerous magick.

Candela Obscura is an investigative horror tabletop role-playing game from the world of Critical Role, where players become members of a secretive organization charged with investigating strange occurrences and containing supernatural threats before their corruption spreads.

Your circle of investigators will follow clues, confront horrors, and make difficult choices in a world where exposure to magick can leave very real scars.

This Core Rulebook contains everything you need to begin telling stories of mystery, occult danger, and consequences using the Illuminated Worlds System.

Welcome to Newfaire

Newfaire is a city caught between progress and something much older.

Beyond its streets—and sometimes directly beneath them—dangerous supernatural forces leave behind bleed, a corrupting residue of magick that can affect people, places, and the world around them.

That's where Candela Obscura comes in.

Its investigators are people with different talents, histories, and reasons for stepping into the dark. Together, they pursue unexplained phenomena, uncover what happened, and attempt to contain threats that most people will never know existed.

Build Your Circle

Rather than sending a lone hero into the unknown, Candela Obscura centers its stories around a circle of investigators working together.

Create characters with different specialties and perspectives, then follow an investigation wherever it leads.

The Core Rulebook provides the rules and character options needed to build your investigators, along with guidance for developing the relationships, abilities, and complications that make their stories their own.

Investigative Horror with the Illuminated Worlds System

Candela Obscura uses the Illuminated Worlds System, designed for narrative-focused play and character-driven storytelling.

Investigations unfold through clues, choices, consequences, and encounters with forces your characters may understand only after getting dangerously close to them.

For Game Masters, the book provides guidance for running investigations and building campaigns, along with extensive setting material for Newfaire and the world beyond it.

What’s Inside

Complete rules for playing Candela Obscura

Character creation options

The Illuminated Worlds System

Guidance for Game Masters

Tools for creating and running investigations & campaigns

Extensive lore for Newfaire and the surrounding world

Supernatural threats, dangerous magick & bleed

Everything needed to gather your circle and begin investigating.

Why We Love It

The setting is gorgeous. Newfaire has that wonderful gaslight-and-industry atmosphere where elegant rooms, shadowed streets, and deeply unsettling things can comfortably exist side by side.

Investigation comes first. The game is built around uncovering mysteries rather than simply finding the monster and rolling initiative.

Consequences matter. Magick isn't merely something impressive your characters can encounter—it can leave damage behind.

It's wonderfully character-driven. Different talents and histories come together in a circle, giving the mystery plenty of room to become personal.

And for viewers who discovered Candela Obscura through Critical Role, this is the book that lets you step into that world and tell a story of your own.

Book Details

Title: Candela Obscura: Core Rulebook
Type: Investigative horror tabletop role-playing game
Setting: Newfaire & the surrounding world
Genre: Gothic & occult horror
Game system: Illuminated Worlds System
Play focus: Investigation, narrative storytelling & supernatural horror
Includes: Complete rules, character options, GM guidance & setting information
Publisher: Darrington Press
Associated with: Critical Role

About Darrington Press

Darrington Press is the tabletop publishing arm of Critical Role, creating games built around memorable worlds, collaborative storytelling, and beautiful objects for the table. Its catalog includes original role-playing and board games designed to give players new worlds to inhabit—and new stories to make their own.

Gather your circle. Something strange is happening in Newfaire.