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.

 

[Campbell]

We had similar issues when we first started to play Infinity (which has a similar currency). Spending to add narrative complications or raise the difficulty became a big part of my GM's spends increasingly over time.

 

[SteveC]

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.

For the Fear tokens, you can convert them into action tokens at 2 to 1. And then spend 2 Fear to have your monsters go right now. So you can effectively create an ambush with it. Matt does this in the sample adventure. Just one way to spend them that you might not want to do all the time, but ... if your players see a lot of Fear, they might think "uh-oh."

 

[overgeeked]

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.

The game also makes extensive use of clocks and countdowns, so doing 3-4 skill checks to resolve a complicated non-combat challenge is 100% in line with Daggerheart.

 

[Jahydin]

There’s 5 game designers listed of which Matt Mercer is one.

Yeah, but Spencer Starke is the Lead and judging by interviews like this one the main creative driving force.

Not saying in anyway this is a bad thing, but makes sense why it's a "story game" and not "D&D, but better".

 

[Paul Farquhar]

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.

Perhaps add something like "when the GM accumulates 10 fear tokens, they are all discarded, and a dragon swoops down".

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yeah, but Spencer Starke is the Lead and judging by interviews like this one the main creative driving force.

Mercer isn't really a rules guy. He probably had more input into the scenario and characters.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Perhaps add something like "when the GM accumulates 10 fear tokens, they are all discarded, and a dragon swoops down".

from what i've been hearing, that sounds like you'd be seeing a comical amount of dragons...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

from what i've been hearing, that sounds like you'd be seeing a comical amount of dragons...

There is no such thing as too many dragons.

 

[Manbearcat]

So this is looking like the next game for the group that I'm involved with which includes @Campbell and @hawkeyefan . As I go through the materials, I'm pretty pumped to be honest with you. This looks to be shaping up to be the sort of novel game engine experience I've been thinking on and hoping would emerge in the "wilds-of-design "over the several years.

We'll probably start a thread about our game and do some session or excerpt postmortems. Game should probably start up in 6 weeks-ish once we wrap The Between.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

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.

I think you just needed to spend them.

You seem to be hung up on the idea that you're being an "asshat" if you use them, which is not their point. When the players are rolling "with fear" (regardless of success or failure) it means that things are looking dire for them. You need to spend them to add complications. Come up with things that are exciting and fun based on whatever is going on. The simplest thing, if I understand the game correctly, is to spend them to add disadvantage (-1d6) to the PCs' rolls, caused by a narrative complication.

If they're rolling a lot of fear, the story should be getting more fearful.

You can literally brew up a storm. Turn the weather against them.