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.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You're a tough critic, for sure. This is one of the least-sloppy playtests I've ever seen, imo. I'm curious what you must have thought about, say, Pathfinder2's playtest.

One can think the game itself is sloppy while praising the process by which its playtest is conducted.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I’m still reading through it. As @Manbearcat mentioned above, it’s likely the next game that he’ll be running for me and @Campbell and a third player.

I find most of what I’ve seen so far interesting, some of it very much so. But I don’t think the concern that the game may be using too many different pieces of game tech is without merit. There’s a lot going on. A whole lot.

Hopefully it meshes well in play. I’m not quite as pessimistic about it as @andreszarta seems to be… but I can see the concern. Dual dice of different colors, hope and fear, hit points and stress, damage thresholds, armor and evasion, power cards, tokens… there’s a lot going on.

I’m eager to see it in play and find out how it goes!

 

[Campbell]

My biggest concern is how hope and fear currencies, especially fear, interface with GM Moves. In systems like 2d20 threat is used to apply the equivalent of hard moves in a game system that otherwise does not integrate them. Based on my initial combat tests I feel like it functions fairly well in that more structured environment, but I think I need more active game experience to see how to integrate PbtA/FitD GM Moves with the Cortex/2d20 style GM currencies.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Why? The death mechanic is one of the strongest parts of this system IMO. for a narrative game like this it is an excellent interpretation. Death, if it happens or just threatens to, is painful and has lasting effects. Giving PCs who get scars an advantage would IMO fo nothing but weaken a valuable narrative tool.

Because they became a liability. Next fight they are more likely to go down again because they have less hope, which endangers the whole team and leads to more scars. Tactically, the blaze of glory option is always the one you should use. So “one character dies” would be the standard outcome of any tough fight.

 

[SakanaSensei]

Because they became a liability. Next fight they are more likely to go down again because they have less hope, which endangers the whole team and leads to more scars. Tactically, the blaze of glory option is always the one you should use. So “one character dies” would be the standard outcome of any tough fight.

"Hey guys, Joe sprained his ankle 3 years ago. I swear if you try to draft him into our league baseball team I'm gonna snap."

In a game that has probably 30 minutes to an hour at LEAST during the beginning of a campaign or even one-shot where you spend time building connections between characters and each other/the world, I can't imagine getting into the headspace of "welp, having only 4 hope means it's time to put our ranger, Rook, who has saved our skin countless times and has been a constant pleasure with roleplay during downtime scenes, out to pasture."

 

[Micah Sweet]

Because they became a liability. Next fight they are more likely to go down again because they have less hope, which endangers the whole team and leads to more scars. Tactically, the blaze of glory option is always the one you should use. So “one character dies” would be the standard outcome of any tough fight.

Not the way I see it. Not a great story either.

 

[overgeeked]

"Hey guys, Joe sprained his ankle 3 years ago. I swear if you try to draft him into our league baseball team I'm gonna snap."

In a game that has probably 30 minutes to an hour at LEAST during the beginning of a campaign or even one-shot where you spend time building connections between characters and each other/the world, I can't imagine getting into the headspace of "welp, having only 4 hope means it's time to put our ranger, Rook, who has saved our skin countless times and has been a constant pleasure with roleplay during downtime scenes, out to pasture."

Some people want to optimize everything. If it’s not perfect, it sucks. So a character with one scar is seen as a liability. I don’t agree with it in the slightest, but I get it. I think it drains every ounce of fun out of the game, personally. But that’s how some people want to play. I can’t imagine why they’d want to play a game so diametrically opposed to their chosen style.

 

[SakanaSensei]

Some people want to optimize everything. If it’s not perfect, it sucks. So a character with one scar is seen as a liability. I don’t agree with it in the slightest, but I get it. I think it drains every ounce of fun out of the game, personally. But that’s how some people want to play. I can’t imagine why they’d want to play a game so diametrically opposed to their chosen style.

I don't think Critical Role would ever come out and say it like Matt Colville has in regards to MCDM's upcoming game, but I think it's really important to be able to see that kind of gap in expectations and just say "this game isn't for you" without it coming across as some kind of attack.

I, an English Language Arts teacher, am not huge on the Bard himself, Billy Shakes. His work not being to my tastes doesn't mean it's not a foundational touchstone of literary culture!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Some people want to optimize everything. If it’s not perfect, it sucks. So a character with one scar is seen as a liability. I don’t agree with it in the slightest, but I get it. I think it drains every ounce of fun out of the game, personally. But that’s how some people want to play. I can’t imagine why they’d want to play a game so diametrically opposed to their chosen style.

But if the D&D does really press the press the players, as I think you suggested earlier, and they are not optimising, then characters are going to die - frequently.

I can see it's perfectly viable for the DM not to use all their fear tokens and go easy on the players, which seems to be what has been happening in the playtests, but then it becomes exactly like 5e.

 

[SteveC]

Because they became a liability. Next fight they are more likely to go down again because they have less hope, which endangers the whole team and leads to more scars. Tactically, the blaze of glory option is always the one you should use. So “one character dies” would be the standard outcome of any tough fight.

That is totally not the way I'd play it. It sort of reminds me of Ricky Bobby and "if you're not first, you're last."

How big an impact the loss of maximum Hope sort of depends on how often you're up at that total. Without playing the game, I don't know. At this point, I see the mechanic as being the analog for Blades in the Dark's Trauma: it's how close is your character to finishing their story and having to retire?

If I'm playing in a game, I'm taking that loss as a life-changing impact and seeing how my character reacts to it next. YMMV.