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.

 

[mcmillan]

This is how an actual playtest needs to be presented if it is going to be useful for providing feedback on design, rather than just beings a marketing stunt. Games have lots of moving parts that interact with one another in unexpected ways. That is the purpose behind this scale beta testing.

Agreed that this is the best way to present the test.

Some excerpts from the introduction to give people idea of what they're trying to do with the game

What Kind of Roleplaying Game is Daggerheart?​

Daggerheart is a heroic narrative-focused experience with combat as a prominent aspect of play, facilitating emotionally engaging, player-driven campaigns that are punctuated by exciting battles and harrowing challenges. The game takes a more rules-light approach in its design, encouraging players and GMs to focus on the story they’re telling rather than the complexity of the mechanics.

...

Those who prefer a highly strategic, rules-heavy experience with more of a heritage from wargames may find Daggerheart doesn’t have all of the crunchy bits they’re used to. Those who come from very rules-light gameplay may find some mechanics engage in areas where they’re used to a more free-form approach. That’s okay! You should always play the types of games that make you and your table happy. That said, if you’re looking to tell heroic fantasy stories with a modern approach to mechanics that focus on both the epic battles and the emotional narrative of the characters who fight in them, you’ve come to the right place.

Daggerheart utilizes an asymmetrical design. That means that it plays very differently for the GM than it does for the players. Many TTRPGs have some asymmetry, with players each controlling one PC while the GM plays everyone else. But Daggerheart’s asymmetry goes deeper—players roll the 2d12 Duality Dice for their PCs’ standard actions, including their attacks. At the same time, the GM makes moves without rolling for most actions but rolls a d20 when making attacks for adversaries. Each PC gains Hope when they “roll with Hope,” while the GM gains Fear when any PC “rolls with Fear.” PCs and Adversaries both have a mechanic called Experiences, but they are used in different ways at different times. This asymmetrical design is intended to help all participants more effectively contribute to creating a memorable experience together at the table.

Touchstones​

Daggerheart gleans inspiration from a variety of sources. Below is an abridged list of media the design team drew from while crafting this game.

TTRPGs: 13th Age, Apocalypse Keys, Apocalypse World, Blades in the Dark, City of Mist, Cortex Prime, Cypher System, Dishonored, Dungeons & Dragons, Flee Mortals!, For The Queen, Genesys, Lady Blackbird, Masks: A New Generation, Pathfinder, Shadowrun, The Quiet Year, Wildsea, Slugblaster

Books: A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Wizard of Earthsea, Sabriel, The Wheel of Time, The Lord of the Rings series

Movies & Television: The Dragon Prince, The Lord of the Rings, The Witcher, The Legend of Vox Machina

Video Games: Borderlands, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Outriders, The Elder Scrolls series

Special Appreciations:

• The Genesys System was a major inspiration for the two-axis results of the duality dice.
• Cypher System’s GM Intrusions paved the way for spending Fear to interrupt a scene.
• Among many other things, Dungeons and Dragons’ advantage/disadvantage system was particularly inspirational in the dice mechanics of this game.
• 13th Age’s Backgrounds heavily inspired the Experience mechanic.
• Blades in the Dark and Apocalypse World helped shape the narrative game flow, and their playbooks inspired a lot of the character sheet development.
• The Wildsea’s phenomenal Reaches section provided the chassis for the Regions section of this book.
• Enemy types and ways of managing minions are informed by Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition and the monster design of Flee, Mortals!
• The Quiet Year inspired the map-building section of the campaign kit.
• The sample session zero structure is informed by Apocalypse Keys.

Heart of the Game​

...

The dice players use in Daggerheart generally come in two different categories—your Duality Dice and your Damage Dice. Your Duality Dice are two 12-sided dice, referred to as d12s, that are of different colors; one representing Hope and the other representing Fear. These embody the fate of the world around you, and its effect on your success. Your Damage Dice correspond to the weapon or spell you’re wielding, and expresses how deadly a successful attack you make might be.

Anytime you’re making a roll to see whether you succeed or fail at something, you’ll roll your Duality Dice and take the sum of their results, plus any modifiers you have that apply to the action. If that total is equal to or higher than the difficulty set by the GM, it’s a success. If it’s lower, it’s a failure. You’ll also tell the GM whether your Hope or Fear die rolled higher, and the situation around you changes based on that result. We’ll discuss this more in-depth in the “Core Mechanics” section of Part 2.

 

[wicked cool]

based on what I’ve seen really aimed for hardcore players who love crunch

If I had to predict the future it replaces critical role most likely by campaign 4 or you water down everything. Critical role doesn’t die and we get reunions etc and new books with wotc but I don’t see 3 shows and I don’t see the entire cast playing cr 1 day, daggerheart another day in separate universe and candela with a rotating cast on day 3

I wonder on potential crossover with the critical role universe and say the daggerheart universe. Could Matt use say the raven queen in daggerheart if he wanted daggerheart to take place in exandria. My guess is no

 

[SteveC]

I am just starting to look at this but so far it is textbook for how to do a playtest. It's really good. If you're thinking of making a product like this, you need to take a look at what they did.

 

[OB1]

based on what I’ve seen really aimed for hardcore players who love crunch

If I had to predict the future it replaces critical role most likely by campaign 4 or you water down everything. Critical role doesn’t die and we get reunions etc and new books with wotc but I don’t see 3 shows and I don’t see the entire cast playing cr 1 day, daggerheart another day in separate universe and candela with a rotating cast on day 3

I wonder on potential crossover with the critical role universe and say the daggerheart universe. Could Matt use say the raven queen in daggerheart if he wanted daggerheart to take place in exandria. My guess is no

Depends on if they decide to expand the core cast. Take the 8 now but add in another 3-4, and you could have two tables (I'm guessing Liam DMs Daggerheart while Mercer sticks with Exandria) of 5pcs playing two nights a week. Because the entire cast is 'full time' they can swap back and forth between the campaigns. Then keep Candella once a month and primarily with guests in both the GM and Players chairs, with 1 or 2 main cast members each cycle.

If successful, this would also lead to a way for the original cast to phase out, as they continue the brand with new talent on the show while they focus on the other aspects of the business.

 

[overgeeked]

based on what I’ve seen really aimed for hardcore players who love crunch

It's lighter than 5E, so I don't think it's aimed at people who like crunch.

If I had to predict the future it replaces critical role most likely by campaign 4 or you water down everything. Critical role doesn’t die and we get reunions etc and new books with wotc but I don’t see 3 shows and I don’t see the entire cast playing cr 1 day, daggerheart another day in separate universe and candela with a rotating cast on day 3

Exactly. Which is why most people assume they're going to switch the main show to Daggerheart for Campaign 4. If they keep a D&D game going, that will likely be the place you get some of the CR cast with lots of guests. They'll probably do 2 Daggerheart episodes a month, one Candela episode a month, and one Illuminated Worlds episode a month. IW is the core game Candela is built on, but it's supposed to be generic, so can be used for anything.

I wonder on potential crossover with the critical role universe and say the daggerheart universe. Could Matt use say the raven queen in daggerheart if he wanted daggerheart to take place in exandria. My guess is no

Over the current campaign they've been switching the names of things, gods, races, etc, to CR owned terms instead of WotC owned terms. In the Tal'Dorei Reborn book they renamed all the stuff. So it's Matron of Ravens instead of Raven Queen, for example. CR owns Exandria as a setting. The chances of them not playing in that setting using Daggerheart are incredibly low.

 

[overgeeked]

Enemy types and ways of managing minions are informed by Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition and the monster design of Flee, Mortals!

That's interesting, do tell.

 

[wicked cool]

It's lighter than 5E, so I don't think it's aimed at people who like crunch.

Exactly. Which is why most people assume they're going to switch the main show to Daggerheart for Campaign 4. If they keep a D&D game going, that will likely be the place you get some of the CR cast with lots of guests. They'll probably do 2 Daggerheart episodes a month, one Candela episode a month, and one Illuminated Worlds episode a month. IW is the core game Candela is built on, but it's supposed to be generic, so can be used for anything.

Over the current campaign they've been switching the names of things, gods, races, etc, to CR owned terms instead of WotC owned terms. In the Tal'Dorei Reborn book they renamed all the stuff. So it's Matron of Ravens instead of Raven Queen, for example. CR owns Exandria as a setting. The chances of them not playing in that setting using Daggerheart are incredibly low.

See I find it much more crunchier than 5e but it’s new so time will tell
Character creation, hp tracking and token tracking plus cards

 

[Reynard]

 

[CleverNickName]

Eh, I don't see them abandoning Dungeons & Dragons. To quote the man himself:

I don't think this was ever about wanting something different to play, or "beating them at their own game," or anything like that. They play D&D because they love it, not because there's a lack of better options.

 

[Matchstick]

To expand on Reynard's post of the video, there are more videos that have been released today as well on YouTube. There's a character creation one and a session zero one as well, and there could be more I haven't seen.