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]

8) Im....wary of the HP system. Any time the game goes "ok ill give you number X and you'll compare it to this table to get Y" my first instinct is "couldnt you find a way to just give me Y?" Dont like ability scores for the same reason. Have to see how it is in actual play.

I'm actually cautiously optimistic about the damage system, while understanding the reservations you mention about derived values. The current system does several (to my mind) good things.

1) Keeps the popular "different weapons do different polyhedrals of damage".
2) Using higher weapon values (with dice) and armor values (both equipment and class features) allows for greater granularity within all these categories, an important nod to the more crunch-oriented fans.
3) Having fewer overall "Hit Points" gives them a stronger diegetic expression, as does breaking up Hit Points and Stress.

 

[Reynard]

Do we know if there is an Open component to the game, even if just a bespoke license. Given how fond critters are of making stuff for their passion, I would not be surprised if there was not at least a robust fan policy.

 

[TwoSix]

Still reading though this and finally coming to bits that are disappointing. Daggerheart falls into the same trap as D&D 5E in regards to casters vs martials. The plain martial classes are weak and boring compared to the strictly more powerful and flashier casters. They try to fix this somewhat by making more classes casters, the rogue for example is now a caster.

Sort of agree. There's only 3 non-magical domains (Blade, Bone, Valor), and only 2 classes that have two of them (Blade/Bone Warrior, and Blade/Valor Guardian). They need to make a few more non-magical domains to expand the number of non-magical classes available.

I do think the Warrior and Guardian do look pretty strong, though! Even though they aren't particularly flashy. I would bet they'll be popular to multiclass too; I'd much rather play a Warrior MCed to Wizard for Codex than a Wizard MCed to Warrior for Blade.

 

[Imaro]

I'm interested in Daggerheart but my first impression from glancing over it and watching the videos is that this game seems more fiddley and also puts more cognitive load on the players (as well as the GM) than 5e does... (or maybe it's that the cognitive load seems harder to transfer to the GM) which I'm not sure my more casual players will find appealing.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm interested in Daggerheart but my first impression from glancing over it and watching the videos is that this game seems more fiddley and also puts more cognitive load on the players (as well as the GM) than 5e does... (or maybe it's that the cognitive load seems harder to transfer to the GM) which I'm not sure my more casual players will find appealing.

I think Experiences are a good test for this. Imagine telling your players "OK, you need to come up with 2 short phrases that describe what your character is good at, here's some examples." If you can only imagine your players being befuddled or possibly kind of angered by these questions, it's not the game for them.

 

[Imaro]

I think Experiences are a good test for this. Imagine telling your players "OK, you need to come up with 2 short phrases that describe what your character is good at, here's some examples." If you can only imagine your players being befuddled or possibly kind of angered by these questions, it's not the game for them.

I think that would be fine for them... I'm more talking about things like tracking hope & fear (as well as what they can be used for), spending action tokens, using character tokens for bonuses, tracking amount of damage vs. threshold, hit points vs. stress, multiple cards... also things like deciding who goes first in combat as well as how many actions they should try to take (unless they roll fear I think) understanding both evasion and armor slots... etc.

A single exchange in combat just seems even at a basic level to have multiple things to track, convert and adjust but it might be smoother in action play than it reads.

 

[overgeeked]

It is really hilarious to me as a 4E fan that so many of these new D&D variants are all dipping into 4E for “new” mechanics and ideas.

 

[TwoSix]

It is really hilarious to me as a 4E fan that so many of these new D&D variants are all dipping into 4E for “new” mechanics and ideas.

"A small, discrete set of rules.....on a card? Will wonders never cease?"

 

[overgeeked]

Sort of agree. There's only 3 non-magical domains (Blade, Bone, Valor), and only 2 classes that have two of them (Blade/Bone Warrior, and Blade/Valor Guardian). They need to make a few more non-magical domains to expand the number of non-magical classes available.

I do think the Warrior and Guardian do look pretty strong, though! Even though they aren't particularly flashy. I would bet they'll be popular to multiclass too; I'd much rather play a Warrior MCed to Wizard for Codex than a Wizard MCed to Warrior for Blade.

Yes, they are strong choices. Trouble is, the casters are dramatically stronger. For example, most classes get one feature per card but some of the casters get three spells per card.

 

[Zehnseiter]

It is really hilarious to me as a 4E fan that so many of these new D&D variants are all dipping into 4E for “new” mechanics and ideas.

You are so not alone here. But this was always bound to happen. 4E did too many interesting things to not act as a treasure trove for RPG makers to plunder or take inspiration from. It only took some time for the pendulum to swing back.