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.

 

[TwoSix]

That wasn't necessary. People value different things in games and you know it.

Come on, man. Most of us here have been hashing out these topics for years; for some of us, a decade-plus. We can poke some lighthearted fun at each other. At the end of the day, none of these topics are really that serious.

Plus, I give express permission for everyone to call me a "dirty, realism-hating munchkin powergamer."

 

[Campbell]

@pemerton

Strength includes the portfolio of Constitution in D&D but loses the climbing. jumping, swimming portfolio that now belongs to Agility.

Step 3: Assign Character Traits

Next, you’ll assign values to the character traits on your character sheet. These values reflect your natural or trained ability in each of the core six stats—Agility, Strength, Finesse, Knowledge, Instinct, and Presence. The verbs after each trait (such as Sprint, Leap, and Maneuver) are examples of actions you might take that would involve that trait; these words are just inspiration, and they don’t limit what that trait might be used for.

Agility: Sprint, Leap, Maneuver
A high Agility score means you’re faster on your feet, nimbler on difficult terrain, and quicker to react to danger. You’ll roll with Agility to scurry up a rope quickly, sprint to cover, or bound from rooftop to rooftop.

Strength: Lift, Smash, Grapple
A high Strength score means you’re better at feats that test your physical prowess and bodily fortitude. You’ll roll with Strength to break through a door, lift heavy objects, or hold your ground against a charging foe.

Finesse: Control, Hide, Tinker
A high Finesse score means you’re dexterous and accurate. You’ll roll with Finesse for tasks that require fine motor control - being precise, careful, and quiet – like using fine tools, escaping notice, or striking with an exacting aim.

Instinct: Perceive, Sense, Navigate
A high Instinct score means you have a keen sense of your surroundings and a natural intuition. You’ll roll with Instinct to sense danger, notice details in the world around you, or track an elusive foe.

Presence: Charm, Perform, Deceive
A high Presence score means you have a strong force of personality and a facility with social situations. You’ll roll with Presence to plead your case, intimidate a foe, or get all eyes on you.

Knowledge: Recall, Analyze, Comprehend
A high Knowledge score means you know information others don’t and understand how to apply your mind through deduction and inference. You’ll roll with Knowledge to interpret facts, see the patterns clearly, or remember important information.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But . . . but . . . verisimilitude!

EDIT: There's also no CON analogue, is there?

Two dexteries though!

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Two dexteries though!

They're not wrong in that in D&D, DEX does too much and CON does too little.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It feels like a critical role rpg.

I think the most critical role thing about it are the pregens!

 

[DragonLancer]

We did our first playtest last night and here are my thoughts...

The free flow role-play was great. Everyone got into it and it was nice to have dice dictate everything. Want to find those tracks and there's no danger, don't roll, just go with the narrative. That was an odd breath of fresh air. The only element of this which stuck us initially, was going into combat and not having initiative. But by the second encounter, it felt like we were pros. Quite easy to learn and keeps the flow.

We don't normally do the whole session zero thing, preferring to just get on with the campaign. But this time, to go with the play test, everyone spent an hour building and role-playing through their characters. I even ended up with reams of notes that I can add to the campaign world I am building. Not something we would have done normally but this worked well.

The game felt balanced between the characters and the encounters. The first encounter (reskinned Giant Scorpion stats) was brief and was perfect to get everyone into how Daggerheart combat works. The second encounter against 6 basic bandit types (had five players at the moment) felt to me a bit long but afterwards my players said it was perfect.

If I had any grumble at all, it was simply this... I frequently wound up on 10 Fear tokens and literally nothing to spend them on. I was activating in the combats and during certain non combat action scenes but I still wound up with more than I could spend, unless I wanted to be a real asshat to the players.

At the end of the session, all the players were really stoked for Daggerheart and despite being long time Pathfinder 1st players, they wanted to jump into a Daggerheart campaign as soon as our current PF campaign wraps up in a few weeks. It was a hit and I think part of that was because the system felt simple enough to understand but had hidden complexities that the players enjoyed. Also, everyone felt that they were the hero even at 1st level which isn't something I often find in most RPGs. I can see this taking over our gaming sessions big time.

 

[SakanaSensei]

We did our first playtest last night and here are my thoughts...

The free flow role-play was great. Everyone got into it and it was nice to have dice dictate everything. Want to find those tracks and there's no danger, don't roll, just go with the narrative. That was an odd breath of fresh air. The only element of this which stuck us initially, was going into combat and not having initiative. But by the second encounter, it felt like we were pros. Quite easy to learn and keeps the flow.

We don't normally do the whole session zero thing, preferring to just get on with the campaign. But this time, to go with the play test, everyone spent an hour building and role-playing through their characters. I even ended up with reams of notes that I can add to the campaign world I am building. Not something we would have done normally but this worked well.

The game felt balanced between the characters and the encounters. The first encounter (reskinned Giant Scorpion stats) was brief and was perfect to get everyone into how Daggerheart combat works. The second encounter against 6 basic bandit types (had five players at the moment) felt to me a bit long but afterwards my players said it was perfect.

If I had any grumble at all, it was simply this... I frequently wound up on 10 Fear tokens and literally nothing to spend them on. I was activating in the combats and during certain non combat action scenes but I still wound up with more than I could spend, unless I wanted to be a real asshat to the players.

At the end of the session, all the players were really stoked for Daggerheart and despite being long time Pathfinder 1st players, they wanted to jump into a Daggerheart campaign as soon as our current PF campaign wraps up in a few weeks. It was a hit and I think part of that was because the system felt simple enough to understand but had hidden complexities that the players enjoyed. Also, everyone felt that they were the hero even at 1st level which isn't something I often find in most RPGs. I can see this taking over our gaming sessions big time.

On first read through, I definitely also had the thought that the GM will have to be pretty proactive with using Fear, even outside of combat. In combat, were you dumping fear to create action tokens and get all your baddies moving?

I'm looking forward to giving this a go here either this weekend or next.

 

[DragonLancer]

In combat, were you dumping fear to create action tokens and get all your baddies moving

Yep but over the course of 3 hours actual gaming, rolls with fear were filling my pool up.

The way I tried to look at it was that if I need the Fear tokens then I have them and that maybe I shouldn't be hung up on how many I have acumulated.

 

[Reynard]

Yep but over the course of 3 hours actual gaming, rolls with fear were filling my pool up.

The way I tried to look at it was that if I need the Fear tokens then I have them and that maybe I shouldn't be hung up on how many I have acumulated.

I wonder if you were asking for too many rolls. it seems that the way Daggerheart is written, there should not be that many rolls (like a single roll to resolve an out of combat activity, rather than 3 or 4 "skill checks").

 

[DragonLancer]

I wonder if you were asking for too many rolls. it seems that the way Daggerheart is written, there should not be that many rolls (like a single roll to resolve an out of combat activity, rather than 3 or 4 "skill checks").

Nope. I don't think so. I tried to keep things lite on that front. We were doing actions with one roll and only when necessary. It was combat that generated the most which was why I was a little concerned that the second fight took too long.