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.

 

[FrogReaver]

Could be. Probably a little bit of carrot (like a player who hasn't gone yet gets a free Hope to spend on their action this turn) and a little bit of stick (if a player takes two consecutive turns, the DM gets a Fear or a free turn). Lots of ways to do it.

Maybe. I think most ‘solutions’ will end up taking more away than they add. Like I’m imagining 1 player serving as a lookout at the entrance. The others burst in to kick butt. The lookout stays put but is close enough to come help out fairly quickly. So you put them in the combat and just skip their turn.

Maybe the dm eventually gives the lookout a fleeing enemy that’s going for backup to try and stop. Etc.

That kind of dynamic could easily be ruined by most restrictions.

 

[FrogReaver]

One cool thing the current system could allow you to do is create characters with unique combat niches that don’t screw over the group by their niche speciality because they can pass turns when dealing with most combat situations outside their niche.

 

[SteveC]

It is interesting to see this theoretical discussion keep going. The issues seem to be based on high-level play with a character who's optimized entirely for combat and another who isn't. I think we may see a fair amount of change for high-level play as the playtest continues. I'm sure that as people get more experience, they will make some changes.

But I also disagree with the premise to a large degree. First, this is a totally white room scenario where we don't know the environment, the terrain, or what the stakes are. And it presumes the rogue character built itself with no combat abilities. Over a campaign, especially in a narrative one, you're going to see groups in different places at the same time. I've found that to be the case in any game other than D&D where "don't split the party" is the mantra. That rogue isn't always going to have the fighter to fight their battles for them. When I built my characters to test so far, I had two things going on in my head: look at all the cool shiny stuff I can do, and how am I going to not die when we're in combat.

And beyond that, taking the optimal white room options in combat isn't always optimal. That rogue doesn't need to be as good at fighting as the fighting character, they just have to be better at it than simply handing the token off to the GM. As long as you're moving things forward, you're making progress. Do you only get to succeed by making the most progress with each action? I really don't think so, outside of a purely theoretical perspective.

 

[FrogReaver]

It is interesting to see this theoretical discussion keep going. The issues seem to be based on high-level play with a character who's optimized entirely for combat and another who isn't. I think we may see a fair amount of change for high-level play as the playtest continues. I'm sure that as people get more experience, they will make some changes.

Same principle applies when it’s 2 characters of different combat optimizations. Just not as extreme of results.

But I also disagree with the premise to a large degree. First, this is a totally white room scenario where we don't know the environment, the terrain, or what the stakes are. And it presumes the rogue character built itself with no combat abilities. Over a campaign, especially in a narrative one, you're going to see groups in different places at the same time. I've found that to be the case in any game other than D&D where "don't split the party" is the mantra. That rogue isn't always going to have the fighter to fight their battles for them. When I built my characters to test so far, I had two things going on in my head: look at all the cool shiny stuff I can do, and how am I going to not die when we're in combat.

And beyond that, taking the optimal white room options in combat isn't always optimal. That rogue doesn't need to be as good at fighting as the fighting character, they just have to be better at it than simply handing the token off to the GM. As long as you're moving things forward, you're making progress. Do you only get to succeed by making the most progress with each action? I really don't think so, outside of a purely theoretical perspective.

The thing is, if you taking actions that pull punches then causes my character to die… that is a problem.

 

[SteveC]

The thing is, if you taking actions that pull punches that then causes my character to die… that is a problem.

That's a very good point. I think it depends on how razor thin the margin for error is in Daggerheart. I suspect it's more a combat is a game than combat is war. The test combats we've run didn't put us at risk of being downed.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I agree. Everybody needs to be on the same page in any RPG, but it is especially true in a narrative game where everyone is expected to pull their weight toward a satisfying story for all.

Yes, but its reaches beyond that; people have to understand what needs to be done to do that. You can have people who are all trying to pull the game toward a satisfactory story for all but have different enough ideas what that means to work at cross-purposes. This is particularly problematic in games that have any sort of genre conventions about how activities are divided up, as the older gamist/simulationist approaches can fail out there pretty badly, far worse than with games that are designed for that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is a scenario where a situation is hidden from the users vs in their faces.

You are correct that often DMs would adjust encounters for the number of PCs, but that info is hidden from the players. All they see is Monster Squad X is out to get them. But the action token system is right in their face. They see PC X take an action, do nothing in combat, and yet slap down a big old token that the GM will happily pick up to smack them around.

So ultimately while you are correct that the systems do penalize groups with non-combat characters, it isn't true in "feeling", whereas players can clearly seen how their incompetence let the monsters get more tokens to hurt them. This kind of perception is important in game design and a key part of playtesting, how a user base feels about a game is just as important as how they actually play.

I think you're underestimating the degree to which experienced players notice the difference in other games. Since they don't know whether a 13th Age or Fragged Empire GM is accounting for a relatively non-combatant PC, all they can notice with certainty is said PCs effectiveness, or rather lack of in the fight. Both games (but especially FE) lean into unique opponents for combats so its not going to be obvious in many cases that the weaker combatant has been accounted for. While he should be doing that (and the players can rightful wonder why he isn't if its obvious) more likely the aggravation is going to be directed at the player of the weak combatant instead, if its severe enough.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think "the GM will sort it out somehow" is that great solution to potential design issues. A good GM might, an inexperienced won't. And for both it would be better if they wouldn't have to. I also don't think that "it is narrative" is really a free licence for dumping design issues on the GM's lap this way.

It depends. Once you have things like an encounter budget in a game, its whole point is to pay attention to such things. The problem is usually such games don't think you'll get a really extreme swing like the one described earlier; sometimes they've made it pretty difficult. But usually not impossible. Games that don't do things like that pretty much are already tossing it in the GM's lap from the get-go; if you're in a GURPS game that expects a lot of combat and you build a character who has no combat skills, its pretty much assumed that its the GM (and to a lesser degree, the other players) job to ask you what you think you're doing.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think it is quite as much an outlier than you think. The system allows creating characters with wildly different combat capabilities. It is not terribly unlikely, that in a group of say, six characters, there will be quite significant differences in combat power without anyone making "bad decisions". Or if those are "bad decisions" why does the system allow them?

Usually because to make them impossible would also require making other more reasonable decisions impossible.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Just no. That a player invests more in non-combat aspects doesn't mean they want to completely sit out the combats. (Which are an important aspect of this game.) That is not a result of such a decision basically in any other game. That it is in this one is a serious flaw.

I think I'm going in on Reynard's side on this one. That may not be true at the start of play, but if they're consistently avoiding combat capability over character advancement, that's pretty much exactly what they've decided. And its absolutely a thing that can happen in other games. Its just usually bulwarked against in class games, but they aren't every game.