Critical Role's 'Daggerheart' Open Playtest Starts In March

On March 12th, Critical Role's Darrington Press will be launching the open playtest for Daggerheart, their new fantasy TTRPG/

Using cards and two d12s, the system plays on 'the dualities of hope and fear'. The game is slated for a 2025 release.

Almost a year ago, we announced that we’ve been working hard behind-the-scenes on Daggerheart, our contribution to the world of high-fantasy tabletop roleplaying games.

Daggerheart is a game of brave heroics and vibrant worlds that are built together with your gaming group. Create a shared story with your adventuring party, and shape your world through rich, long-term campaign play.

When it’s time for the game mechanics to control fate, players roll one HOPE die and one FEAR die (both 12-sided dice), which will ultimately impact the outcome for your characters. This duality between the forces of hope and fear on every hero drives the unique character-focused narratives in Daggerheart.

In addition to dice, Daggerheart’s card system makes it easy to get started and satisfying to grow your abilities by bringing your characters’ background and capabilities to your fingertips. Ancestry and Community cards describe where you come from and how your experience shapes your customs and values. Meanwhile, your Subclass and Domain cards grant your character plenty of tantalizing abilities to choose from as your character evolves.

And now, dear reader, we’re excited to let you know that our Daggerheart Open Beta Playtest will launch globally on our 9th anniversary, Tuesday, March 12th!

We want anyone and everyone (over the age of 18, please) to help us make Daggerheart as wonderful as possible, which means…helping us break the game. Seriously! The game is not finished or polished yet, which is why it’s critical (ha!) to gather all of your feedback ahead of Daggerheart’s public release in 2025.

 

[Reynard]

Except it's likely that most of the potential customers for this game are coming from a 5e mindset, and may very well be using such a lens.

I think it would be worth the designers talking explicitly about how the game differs from 5E expectations at certain inflection points in the text, but I don't think they should change the design to accommodate 5E-isms where they aren't appropriate for the game they are creating.

 

[FrogReaver]

So what you're saying is that it's worth considering, because it can be a bad idea to have such mechanics? Thus the discussion that is being had here?

Sure. I’ve got no problem with the discussion.

I question the ability to design out these elements as the ‘solutions’ will inevitably take away some of the benefits these mechanics were intended to provide.

I question whether it’s really as big a problem as perceived by some because 5e does the same thing with all out of combat ability.

Etc.

I can disagree without being anti-discussion.

 

[Stalker0]

I think it would be worth the designers talking explicitly about how the game differs from 5E expectations at certain inflection points in the text, but I don't think they should change the design to accommodate 5E-isms where they aren't appropriate for the game they are creating.

Comparing the game to dnd I think the number 1 biggest difference is the "power" of a single die roll.

When I think of a standard dnd game out of combat, a lot of Dms encourage rolling. All of you make a perception check. Rogue wants to look for traps....give me a check. You want to get a knowledge about the ancient paintings on the wall, sure make a check.

My understanding of DH is that rolls (at least out of combat) are meant to be pretty rare and special....and so the success or failure of that roll is always important (not to mention their roll in token generation). If the DM calls for a knowledge check on those paintings its not to give you some fun fluff history (they should do that without a roll), its to see if the players can put together how the painting can help disable the complex trap in the dungeon. Success will clear the way for several more rooms, a failure triggers a cave-in that will dramatically slow their journey.

I can say as a DM that would probably be my biggest change in mindset. You are supposed to kill the casual roll, just tell the players things without rolling until the time when "this is it!"

Part of my personal question of "how to run this in daggerheart" is how to remove the group check mindset. All the time in my groups and games, one player wants to make a knowledge check about something, and the rest of the group jumps in "hey could I make a roll, see if I know anything?" Again my understanding of DH is that really needs to be discouraged, you don't want a bevy of rolls on any given situation. So I guess its a more first come first serve kind of thing, whoever examines the painting makes the check, and the group abides the result. But I know for my players that would be a big change in how they operate.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's not very likely (say 1%) that your car's self driving function will go wrong, so we can safely ignore it?

Its not particularly likely any number of things in life will go wrong that we do ignore, even though the failure state is pretty bad when they do. Because in practice, completely avoiding it without preventing other things you don't want to is nearly impossible.

I mean, civil engineering projects have a factor for how many people they expect to die in the project. Sometimes its a fraction, but sometimes its in full numbers, and its just accepted because the alternative is impractical.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think it would be worth the designers talking explicitly about how the game differs from 5E expectations at certain inflection points in the text, but I don't think they should change the design to accommodate 5E-isms where they aren't appropriate for the game they are creating.

Oh, right there with you. I'm just saying it is impossible to avoid comparisons to 5e (for any RPG at all really, anymore).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This second paragraph is nonsense. The game 100% brings up and answers questions on winning and losing, not screwing things up, etc. I'm not really sure what your post is even trying to say. Did we read the same PDF?

Only the second paragraph!? Maybe you could explain the first to me?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Its not particularly likely any number of things in life will go wrong that we do ignore, even though the failure state is pretty bad when they do. Because in practice, completely avoiding it without preventing other things you don't want to is nearly impossible.

I mean, civil engineering projects have a factor for how many people they expect to die in the project. Sometimes its a fraction, but sometimes its in full numbers, and its just accepted because the alternative is impractical.

That doesn't mean they just ignore potential risks. They carry out risk assessments and take reasonable precautions to minimise them. Just because it's impossible to eliminate all risk it doesn't mean you just turn a blind eye to it.

 

[FrogReaver]

That doesn't mean they just ignore potential risks. They carry out risk assessments and take reasonable precautions to minimise them. Just because it's impossible to eliminate all risk it doesn't mean you just turn a blind eye to it.

No one is suggesting to tun a blind eye to anything?

 

[SteveC]

Isn't this rather the point? If the game has a certain intent it shouldn't have mechanics that incentivize not-that-intent?

That's a good question. I am not convinced that this does that. I don't think the best choice for every situation where a character could die is to have them go out in a blaze of glory. The Death Blossom from Last Starfighter loses its impact if you regularly employ it.

We also have no idea what the expectations are for creating new characters in the middle of a campaign. Do you start over at level one? Don't know. And creating a character takes time that keeps you from playing the game. Creating and introducing a Daggerfall character isn't similar to AD&D days where you rolled 3D6 in order and the DM just hand-waived how you show up.

More than that, I'm not convinced that losing Hope is something that cripples a party. I would have to see in play how often you're going to be at maximum Hope. When we did our test combats, we spent it as fast as it was coming in. I think that if you're using a playstyle that's different from what the game is designed for it might be an issue. But then you're running outside of what the game is built for.

 

[Stalker0]

I question the ability to design out these elements as the ‘solutions’ will inevitably take away some of the benefits these mechanics were intended to provide.

I feel like this is driving a lot of lashback against the concerns people are voicing. The worry is "you have to toss out freeform initiative to address this problem!"

You don't...there are mechanical ways to address the issue of a player going too often in a combat. I've mentioned a couple of simple ones...it could be a stress, a hope, or an extra action token. If the system's default is every player should go the vast majority of the time, then you can offer the flexible options but create disincentives to use that. If a group wants to take the penalty and let one player go multiple times, than fine that's their choice that fits the particular narrative.... but the mechanics have clearly told the players "this is the odd exception not the rule