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.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm just going to throw this out there, but...

This card and domain system that Daggerheart uses would make for a super interesting basis for a Magic the Gathering TTRPG.

 

[Reynard]

Random thoughts as I skim through the playtest doc:

"Experiences" is a weird word for this. they are essentially Aspects from Fate.

"Domain" is a totally fine word for this but too many decades of D&D still mean I double take at it.

The art is generally good, although it is edging toward that modern "cutesy" look of which I am not a huge fan.

I think the "action rolls" section should have gone before the explanation of Hope and Fear dice.

"Rolling tokens" is weird.

The action tracker sounds interesting. I can't recall having played a game using the same system. I will be interested to see how it actually plays.

UGH. GM moves.

I do like Fear as the currency with which the GM gets to cause the PCs trouble, tho.

The GM using a single d20 is an interesting design decision. I am curious how it is going to wrok out in play.

And I am out of time.

 

[Zaukrie]

Demiplane created the Daggerheart tools in days. It was the original idea for DnDBeyond too, to have an infrastructure in place to rapidly generate software for new content.

https://x.com/badeyeadam/status/1767591024245756126?s=46

This is impressive!

 

[darjr]

Oh! I like the new catch phrase.

“Roll with hope”

 

[Reynard]

I don't think there is any "danger" of Daggerheart overtaking D&D. it is a pretty solidly PbtA game and I just can't see that being as broadly popular with casual gamers -- especially casual GMs. Narrative games, even though they allow the players opportunities to drive plot and define features, are a lot more work for the GM. The GM still has to do all the usual work of GMing, plus being "on" 100% of the time due to narrative requirements.

 

[CleverNickName]

It's a huge leap, going from "Check out our new project" to "OMG they're replacing D&D!"

We gamers have no chill.

 

[overgeeked]

From a lot of the criticism it’s clear people haven’t run PbtA games before. They’re orders of magnitude less work to run than 5E. That whole “play to find out” thing means drastically less prep. But yeah, you’re improvising a lot. Which is fantastic because it means no railroading.

With all the other 5E variants going heavier on rules, I’m glad there’s a lighter alternative from someone who will get attention. Looking forward to more.

 

[Reynard]

It's a huge leap, going from "Check out our new project" to "OMG they're replacing D&D!"

We gamers have no chill.

Well, they have a lot more riding on it that we do. If the goal is to build their streams on their own games, they are "replacing" D&D. I found it very interesting that the main cast did the one shot last night. I would have expected a different crew if they were planning on using DH for a side project rather than their next main campaign.

 

[Zaukrie]

From a lot of the criticism it’s clear people haven’t run PbtA games before. They’re orders of magnitude less work to run than 5E. That whole “play to find out” thing means drastically less prep. But yeah, you’re improvising a lot. Which is fantastic because it means no railroading.

With all the other 5E variants going heavier on rules, I’m glad there’s a lighter alternative from someone who will get attention. Looking forward to more.

Improvising is not easy for many, especially newer GMs.....

 

[Reynard]

Improvising is not easy for many, especially newer GMs.....

Also, "play to find out" doesn't necessarily mean less prep. The prep is just different. People inclined to write up reams on information, draw detailed maps or build terrain are all going to do that regardless of whether they are playing 5E or Dungeon World. You still have to know what the world is like and who is in it and what their motivations are and how the various factions interact and on and on in order to "play to find out" in a way that has any worthwhile consistency.