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

System plays on 'the dualities of hope and fear'.

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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.
 

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Zaukrie

New Publisher
While I love how the initiative system works (I hate cyclical init)....I can see plenty of whining from players (not mine) about how unfair the GM is being .......The more I look at this, the more it looks interesting to me.
 

Weiley31

Legend
I'm actually wondering how far they will take the cards. Not mechanics per se but as a combination of different versions with art and as Merch.

Will there be like Limited Edition versions of the cards later on down the road? Holographic? Different variants of the same cards? Cross reference promotions featuring Crit Role characters like the members of Vox Machina? (Like how they did with Till the Last Gasp, by Darrington Press, which had Vox Machina as bonus characters to play as).
 

John Lloyd1

Explorer
My previous experience with cards from Hero Kids, is that they are fiddly. But, wonder if they solve the problem of paper based character sheets.

D&D paper character sheets have the problem of how much of the book you rewrite on your character sheet. Maybe you could layout the cards on a photocopier to create a unique sheet of your 'features'.
 



Minigiant

Legend
Supporter
I noticed this has Social Adversaries. I always thought more combat heavy games should have more monsters/enemies/NPCs who has totally geared to noncombat situations and major obstacles in them if geared to them.
 

I'll be honest, I kind of love how giving Wizards the Splendor domain positions them more as abjurers/protectors/healers by default. It's a solid twist on what is (to me) the overly familiar, near cliched, Wizard archetype.
I do find it amusing that making wizards healers - which is what they are in actual folklore - is considered a "twist." Really reflects the self-referential nature of RPGs.
 

overgeeked

B/X Known World
I'm actually wondering how far they will take the cards. Not mechanics per se but as a combination of different versions with art and as Merch.

Will there be like Limited Edition versions of the cards later on down the road? Holographic? Different variants of the same cards? Cross reference promotions featuring Crit Role characters like the members of Vox Machina? (Like how they did with Till the Last Gasp, by Darrington Press, which had Vox Machina as bonus characters to play as).
The fewer boardgame elements they try to force into an RPG the better.
 

overgeeked

B/X Known World
I really enjoy seeing improvised damage and monster stats in RPGs. It warms my heart. Daggerheart has some advice to that effect towards the back of the book. Explicitly talking about setting monster damage so they will deal certain levels of damage is fantastic.

While I really like all the explicit story advice, thinking in scenes, using beats, etc, but I wish they'd go further and go more in-depth with that stuff. A lot of people only have a vague idea of story and how they work. Giving more concrete examples would go a long way to help people use RPGs to make something more like a coherent story. Screenwriting advice like starting late and ending early is great, but not enough. Thinking in beats is great, but not enough.
 

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