Storyline crashing consistently when playing timeline

Hi Ryan and welcome to Heroes!

I'm sorry to hear about the crashing you're experiencing when using that play button. I haven't experienced it myself, and don't see it as a known bug (they are not listed publicly, but you can always as us, or connect with our Support engineers) but it doesn't mean that it's not a bug. So with that being said, I'd like to have you go through the following troubleshooting steps, and then if the behavior continues on a new file, can you share that file with us here or using the previous link to our Support team? 

1. First, you already confirmed you were working with local project files, but please also check the file name and file path as described here. 

2. Follow the repair steps outlined here to repair Storyline. 

Also, if the crash continues you'll want to pull the error logs as described here.