Critical Role Announces Age of Umbra Daggerheart Campaign, Starting May 29th

Arilyn said:

Daggerheart starts you off with basic supplies, weapons and armour and very little gold. There would be nothing to shop for.

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The Soloist said:

With the CR cast, you never know.

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Whizbang Dustyboots said:

I assume there's a supplement coming about running four-hour shopping expeditions.

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overgeeked said:

One observation is really sticking with me. Even if you don't run Daggerheart in all its PbtA, BitD, narrative-first glory...it will still default to your bog standard game of D&D 5E with narrative-focused metacurrency that will still push cool story moments.

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Clint_L said:

3. D&D (whatever the current edition is). The backbone of D&D Club. Frankly, I don't see much difference between any rules heavy fantasy RPG, and D&D has the brand awareness and ubiquity, plus DDB, which is an invaluable resource for running short games with kids who don't even own dice, let alone rule books.

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• Much faster combat (a big problem with 5e is that combat is slooow with nothing much going on as you grind hit points to zero)
  • An initiative system that keeps people engaged rather than able to look up things on their phones.
• Background questions and connections questions so you can establish in Session Zero how the characters know each other and have a clear idea of the foundation of the relationships. (Easy and worthwhile to steal!). Below comes from the Guardian character class; each class has a different set.

• "Death moves" when you hit 0hp so something consequential happens rather than faffing about with death saves and Revivify (incredibly worth stealing or adapting)

• Metacurrency; Hope (Mana) and Stress (Stamina) for characters to spend to be able to add focus to their actions and say they are important rather than being relatively robotic and untiring
• Success/Failure with Hope/Fear being separate actions. This is the only one that really takes improv experience and takes the DM being on the ball. Or you can just have it collapse into taking hope and fear points for the same emotional hit but less opportunity to narrate
• More meaningful abilities, fewer ribbon abilities.
• Fewer trivial numbers (You don't e.g. have a stat, a stat modifier, and a stat saving throw, and potentially multiple skills based off it, just a single trait (and a total of two freeform Experiences replacing skills))
  • You do have hope, stress, and armour to track - but none of these reach double digits.
• Levelling up offers choices. The Daggerheart equivalent Life Clerics with the same stats are not going to be mechanically almost indistinguishable other than equipment (and feats) at the same level.

Clint_L said:

I'm not seeing how Daggerheartfits into my needs, though I am a very big Critical Role fan (I have enjoyed almost every episode of their content and am currently re-watching Season 2, to give you context), and I love that it is on Demiplane. I might wind up buying it just to try it with my home group, though none of them are gamers like me, so they are pretty content just sticking with D&D, in general, or one-shots/micro-campaigns with other systems as long as they are very simple and in a different genre.


To me, Daggerheart looks like it is designed to work really well for experienced groups who have developed a good rapport. Improv experience would be a definite plus! Basically, it looks like an ideal system for the Critical Role cast.

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Reynard said:

I finally got to finish the first episode. I really enjoyed it, but I will say that Matt is pretty much running in 5E mode. I don't think I saw him interpret a narrative consequence one time.

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