Daggerheart Sold Out in Two Weeks, Has Three-Year Plan in Place

A recent interview with Business Insider revealed just how well Daggerheart did for Critical Role's Darrington Press when it first launched earlier this year. Ed Lopez, Critical Role's chief operating officer, revealed that Daggerheart sold out in two weeks. According to Lopez, Critical Role anticipated that their stock would last a year, but the game was forced to go into reprints in a hurry. "The amount of units that we ordered we thought was going to last us a year, and it lasted us literally two weeks," Lopez said. "It's a great problem, it's a Champagne problem, but it's now changing our view in terms of what this product can be."

Lopez also revealed that Darrington Press has a three-year plan in place for Daggerheart, which includes the already announced Hope & Fear expansion, which adds a new domain and several new classes and backgrounds to the game.

Lopez also spoke about the hires of Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins, stating that the two would be working on both Daggerheart and D&D material for Darrington Press. "We really want their creative juices brought to the world of 'Daggerheart.' That being said, we're also doing a bunch of 'D&D' stuff, and who better to bring in than the guys who used to do it?" Lopez said.

 

[Reynard]

How many articles in the magazine Variety did Pathfinder get when it started publishing...?

And Pathfinder never overtook D&D, as has been established a number of times. Daggerheart won't, either.

I did not say no game has ever sold as much, I said there was no exact parallel to what they were doing and how it was going down.

More importantly, "overtook D&D" is not an especially relevant metric for any game.

 

[Mournblade94]

deleted due to formatting

 

[Parmandur]

More importantly, "overtook D&D" is not an especially relevant metric for any game.

I mean, it would be unbeslthy of someone putting out a new boardgame to compare their success to Monopoly or Candyland. A given game is a given game, the most important metric is how well they sold versus their hopes and estimates.

 

[Mournblade94]

The same reason that I would find Dungeon World, Stonetop, or Blades in the Dark APs cringe. IMHO, APs are antithetical to this sort of system. But I also recognize that it's for the fans who think Daggerheart is just 2d12 D&D 5e and play it like such. And way too much ink and blood has been spilt regarding that point in the General forums for the past ten or so years. If you believe that they aren't, then I would say that this difference of opinion is irreconcilable and leave it at that. Happy New Year.

Wasn't Daggerheart made for the AP format? This was started by the people that made AP popular. It seems like this is exactly the sort of game that would do well in AP. I wouldn't expect the people that make money off of AP not to make an AP friendly system.

There are tons of AP for Daggerheart from what I read from others (I don't know personally). It seemes like if you want to do an AP this is the system you'd want to use. Certainly better than D&D 5e with its more emotional Role Play bend.

Personally I think all AP is a separate Hobby completely. I'm not liking how alot of games are designed with AP in mind. I don't think that is a good thing for gaming.

 

[zakael19]

@Aldarc is referring to “adventure path” not “actual play” there.

DH is no more “made for Actual Play” then D&D 2024 or idk Blades in the Dark is.

 

[Reynard]

Wasn't Daggerheart made for the AP format? This was started by the people that made AP popular. It seems like this is exactly the sort of game that would do well in AP. I wouldn't expect the people that make money off of AP not to make an AP friendly system.

There are tons of AP for Daggerheart from what I read from others (I don't know personally). It seemes like if you want to do an AP this is the system you'd want to use. Certainly better than D&D 5e with its more emotional Role Play bend.

Personally I think all AP is a separate Hobby completely. I'm not liking how alot of games are designed with AP in mind. I don't think that is a good thing for gaming.

I am not sure you could point to anything in particular in Daggerheart's design that says "made for actual play/streaming." It wears its influences on its sleeve and they range from 4E D&D to Blades in the Dark to Genysis/Star Wars.

People only associate Daggerheart with streaming because it is made by Darrington and therefore Critical Role. If it came from any other company, no one would tie is success to whether it is a streaming giant or not.

Folks need to take the game at its face, for what it is as a game

But they won't, because CR has too outsized a role in the success of D&D.

 

[zakael19]

I am not sure you could point to anything in particular in Daggerheart's design that says "made for actual play/streaming." It wears its influences on its sleeve and they range from 4E D&D to Blades in the Dark to Genysis/Star Wars.

People only associate Daggerheart with streaming because it is made by Darrington and therefore Critical Role. If it came from any other company, no one would tie is success to whether it is a streaming giant or not.

Folks need to take the game at its face, for what it is as a game

But they won't, because CR has too outsized a role in the success of D&D.

JINX, lol

 

[Tigris]

Looks at Pathfinder That game actually overtook D&D for a while...

No it did not! This was disproved YEARS ago. Why does this still come up?


Here 2 links: Pathfinder Never Outsold 4E D&D (ICYMI)

It only showed better results in a really really limited survey of us based hobbyshops.

D&D alone did even made more money than the whole of paizo in the year 2013 where not a single new D&D book was relleased:


Exactly because of these wrong statements go around so easily, I am also skeptical about this news.


In the end this was from an interview so its marketing and "the game sold out" just sounds good/gives a strong narrative.


D&D 5e did exactly to the same. People still believe today that 5e had amazing initial sales because WotC reportes that they had to reprint several times and that it exeeded their expectation. (Which might be true because they had low expectations and low initial printruns).

But in fact it only had good sales after Critical Role and then amazing ones after Stranger things, so yes big actual plays are THAT important! It made the D&D version with the weakest initial release into the one with by far the best sales.


You know "5e did sell out really fast" sounds a lot better than "5e was by far the weakest release of any D&D edition under WotC", which also would be true. (D&D made 29 millions in the year 5e released. That is about the same as the 25 millions at the end of 3.5 where we know that 3e and 3.5 had a really strong dropp off to half or less)

 

[Parmandur]

No it did not! This was disproved YEARS ago. Why does this still come up?


Here 2 links: Pathfinder Never Outsold 4E D&D (ICYMI)

It only showed better results in a really really limited survey of us based hobbyshops.

D&D alone did even made more money than the whole of paizo in the year 2013 where not a single new D&D book was relleased:


Exactly because of these wrong statements go around so easily, I am also skeptical about this news.


In the end this was from an interview so its marketing and "the game sold out" just sounds good/gives a strong narrative.


D&D 5e did exactly to the same. People still believe today that 5e had amazing initial sales because WotC reportes that they had to reprint several times and that it exeeded their expectation. (Which might be true because they had low expectations and low initial printruns).

But in fact it only had good sales after Critical Role and then amazing ones after Stranger things, so yes big actual plays are THAT important! It made the D&D version with the weakest initial release into the one with by far the best sales.


You know "5e did sell out really fast" sounds a lot better than "5e was by far the weakest release of any D&D edition under WotC", which also would be true. (D&D made 29 millions in the year 5e released. That is about the same as the 25 millions at the end of 3.5 where we know that 3e and 3.5 had a really strong dropp off to half or less)

Well, no, that's not true, either. 5E had very strong sales prior to Stranger Things or Critical Role, stronger than 3E or 4E.

 

[CommodoreKong]

Glad to see Daggerheart was such a huge success.
I haven’t personally played it yet but it looks like it was be an awesome game for in person play.

Daggerheart is, among other things, a Play to Find Out game, with explicit advice for the GM to hold on loosely and let play guide the narrative. That is harder to do while also have a linear Adventure Path style adventure in front of you.

Yeah reading over the core book you’re 100% right about that, and while some people are great at that, I think a lot of GMs aren’t great at that kind of narrative and need some sort of adventure path/guideline. I know I need something like that - that was part of the reason (but not the only reason) I decided to run Draw Steel - I could run the Delian Tomb. Sure I do sometimes make small changes or adjustments to adventure modules but I don’t have any interest in just taking a few page long campaign frame and run a full game. More power to people who do but I think they need to figure out something that’s like an adventure for Daggerheart. I don’t think it’s going to look like a traditional DnD/Pathfinder/Draw Steel type of linear adventure. I honestly don’t know what form it will take.