Daggerheart celebrates 1-year anniversary with new miniseries, free adventure

Darrington Press made several Daggerheart-related announcements to celebrate its 1-year anniversary this week, including a new Age of Umbra miniseries featuring Matthew Mercer as the GM and a new free adventure. Headlining the slate of announcements was confirmation of a new Age of Umbra miniseries titled Sallowlands. This new Actual Play series is set in the Halycon dominion (home of the first Age of Umbra miniseries) and brings back Mercer and Laura Bailey for a 6-part adventure that begins on July 9th. Joining Mercer and Bailey are Jennifer English, Abubakar Salim, Vico Ortiz, and Zachery Renauldo. The new miniseries is billed as a standalone adventure independent of the first Age of Umbra series.

Also announced was a new free Tier 1 adventure titled The Wish Thief that is set (appropriately) during a royal birthday festival. The adventure is available for free on Critical Role’s website. Additionally, more free adventures are planned for 2026 and 2027, with a goal of releasing adventures for all four tiers of play by the end of 2026. Some adventures will be longform adventures like The Wish Thief while others will be short adventures designed to be inserted into any game.

Darrington Press also confirmed that content from the upcoming expansion Daggerheart: Hope & Fear will be added to the Daggerheart SRD. More detail about what content will be added will come closer to the book’s launch.

Finally, a German version of Daggerheart is due for release on July 6th, with Spanish and Hungarian translations in development.

 

[aramis erak]

Not that wild. Though the production value doesn't look it, DP was a very small team until recently. The additional members that have come on this past year will help push more stuff out in the next year.

Small teams can do great work. Or they can be prolific. Usually not both. (GDW being a clear counter-case with
And the budget for printing wasn't huge... they totally misjudged the turnout. But it wasn't just the OGL issue.

For me, the OGL issue had me leary of supporting WotC... but then some other minor bits of information, and the early responses to DH convinced me to give it a shot. I wasn't disappointed by DH.

Is it my favorite game? No. But top 10.
There's plenty of new monsters written up by 3PPs...
there is a lack of 3pp adventures because the game as written isn't well suited to adventures of the 3pp-written type.
Hope & Fear should help a lot, tho'. And hopefully, the next one won't be a further year on.

 

[Reynard]

there is a lack of 3pp adventures because the game as written isn't well suited to adventures of the 3pp-written type.

I disagree with this. If DH wasn't suited to pre-written adventures, why would Darrington use pre-written adventures to market then support the game?

 

[aramis erak]

I disagree with this. If DH wasn't suited to pre-written adventures, why would Darrington use pre-written adventures to market then support the game?

Demand, not suitability.

 

[Reynard]

Demand, not suitability.

What makes you think DH is not suited to pre-designed adventures? As long as they leave room for player action and input, I can't see why they would not work.

 

[aramis erak]

What makes you think DH is not suited to pre-designed adventures? As long as they leave room for player action and input, I can't see why they would not work.

If your going to quote me, be accurate. I said "not well suited"... not "not suited"...
The game RAW specifies a player-contribution dominant model, and the constant flow of hope triggered and good and fear triggered and bad.
Writing a high player input publishable adventure is a doable thing, but it's not easy; writing one suited to the designer-intended style for DH is harder still.

 

[Reynard]

If your going to quote me, be accurate. I said "not well suited"... not "not suited"...

Fair enough

The game RAW specifies a player-contribution dominant model, and the constant flow of hope triggered and good and fear triggered and bad.

I am not sure that is true. I think a lot of folk bring their experiences and assumptions from other games to Daggerheart and think it says things it doesn't. Daggerheart cautions everyone to hang on loosely, but it doesn't actually describe a "player contribution dominant model." I mean, it includes significant advice for running the game in an essentially neo-trad way, including planning adventures and one shots. The PCs are supposed to be the center of the story, and players are encouraged to add color and help determine what hope looks like.

Writing a high player input publishable adventure is a doable thing, but it's not easy; writing one suited to the designer-intended style for DH is harder still.

I do think that you have to write adventures differently than you might for a game like D&D, but that doesn't mean harder. it means defining situations instead of pre-written plots, and establishing what's true versus what is mutable. It means giving advice to the GM about how to navigate those things. Stuff adventures for ANY game would benefit from.

 

[Agamon]

Small teams can do great work. Or they can be prolific. Usually not both. (GDW being a clear counter-case with
And the budget for printing wasn't huge... they totally misjudged the turnout. But it wasn't just the OGL issue.

For me, the OGL issue had me leary of supporting WotC... but then some other minor bits of information, and the early responses to DH convinced me to give it a shot. I wasn't disappointed by DH.

Is it my favorite game? No. But top 10.
There's plenty of new monsters written up by 3PPs...
there is a lack of 3pp adventures because the game as written isn't well suited to adventures of the 3pp-written type.
Hope & Fear should help a lot, tho'. And hopefully, the next one won't be a further year on.

There's nothing in the vault, so I don't expect another "options" book for a while. A lot of the H&F book is things they didn't have room for in the core book. The stuff they announced so far should come out over the year, though.

 

[zedturtle]

There's nothing in the vault, so I don't expect another "options" book for a while. A lot of the H&F book is things they didn't have room for in the core book. The stuff they announced so far should come out over the year, though.

Lack of Void content was explained during the stream, at least to my satisfaction. It's a game of diminishing returns, so there's no point until they're at N-1 or N-2 draft stage (where N is 'final').

I do very much hope that the rest of the teased stuff comes soonish, and the coy bit about revisiting legal stuff when H&F hits the SRD means a major change-up to the CGL or a move to a more industry-standard license.

Of course, it's their game. They don't owe anyone anything. But riding tides and all that.

 

[aramis erak]

Lack of Void content was explained during the stream, at least to my satisfaction. It's a game of diminishing returns, so there's no point until they're at N-1 or N-2 draft stage (where N is 'final').

I do very much hope that the rest of the teased stuff comes soonish, and the coy bit about revisiting legal stuff when H&F hits the SRD means a major change-up to the CGL or a move to a more industry-standard license.

Of course, it's their game. They don't owe anyone anything. But riding tides and all that.

They do owe H&F in a dead tree and PDF to a bunch of preorders...

 

[zedturtle]

They do owe H&F in a dead tree and PDF to a bunch of preorders...

Okay, sure, and one of them is me.

But they are not obligated to put stuff into the SRD.

That was the context for that bit of my post.