Daggerheart Release Date Revealed

Daggerheart will be coming out on May 20th. Today, Darrington Press, the games publishing arm of Critical Role, announced that its upcoming TTRPG would come out on May 20th. The game will first release at local game stores, followed by a wider release at all stores that games are sold (i.e. book stores) on June 3rd.

Daggerheart is built around a Duality Dice system that uses 2d12 (one designated as the Hope die, and the other designated as the Fear die). On checks, players roll both dice and add the results to determine the ultimate success or failure of a roll, with the higher die result representing either a positive or negative narrative twist both in and out of combat. The game also uses a character sheet that includes overlays and cards to show character abilities.

While Daggerheart is a high fantasy TTRPG, the game also includes campaign frames that provide specific worlds to encounter and adds additional rules based on the type of story being told. The core rulebook will include six campaign frames, including Beast Feast, a "cozy cooking and dungeoneering campaign frame" clearly inspired by Delicious in Dungeon and a post-apocalyptic world of technological wonders called Motherboard.

 

[EthanSental]

Seems like the same type of thread for Wotc 5e stuff, people excited, people come in and give differing opinions other than excited, people complain about why they came to post in the first place place….apparently no different for a CR developed product and a wotc product thread I’ll wait and see what it looks like when it comes out as well as I haven’t been keeping up with its development that much.

 

[Umbran]

I know reading can be hard... But oh well...

Mod Note:
You just failed on the "no hostility" bit.

Look, if you don't want to answer, you don't have to. But if you are going to answer, don't be snide or vaguely insulting at people in the process.

 

[Faolyn]

I wouldn't say it went badly. I just didn't enjoy the overall playtest experience. Some of it was because of the game itself, and some of it was because of on-line discourse.

For the game itself, we enjoyed the what I think of as the "soft rules" (e.g. collaborative world building, guidelines for creating backstory, rolling only when it matters). The character creation felt pretty smooth, though we weren't too keen on the ancestry choices. This part of the game was great. It never came up during actual play, but we also thought the death mechanic was cool.

But then the more we engaged with the mechanics, the less fun we had. First, we didn't like that a single roll involved so many moving parts. It wasn't too bad outside the combat because rolls were far and few between. But during combat, it really got in the way and it was not fun. We didn't like the having all the meta-currencies—the action tokens were by far the most annoying, though we weren't fans of armor slots either. And speaking of armor, damage resolution mechanic was a huge miss for us. Finally, we didn't like that GM rolled a different die than the players—it felt "unfair" and kind made us feel like the GM was not one of the players.

Individually, I personally disliked the weapons table—the choices were overwhelming and the damage resolution mechanic made it feel like weapon choices were arbitrary. I also have some gripes about the way money and distance is handled. Overall, I felt like there was so much jargon (e.g. "minor damage" instead of just "lose 1 hp," different words to describe different denominations of money, etc.)

Finally, this last bit doesn't reflect on the game itself but it really soured my playtest experience—there were some unpleasant experiences with other playtesters on-line. I was gaslighted for preferring to have a turn order, talked down for pointing out the complexity in mathematically modeling weapon damage, and was essentially told to shut up about weird edge cases because "they will work it out" or whoever is running the game can figure it out or "it'll never happen."

Anyway, I do hope that the final version of the game is well received. I'd be curious to see how different the final version is compared to the version I played.

Hmm. Thanks for the answer. Out of curiosity, do you have issues with PbtA-style games, or games where only the players roll, or things like that? Because then a lot of these might "just" be a gamestyle preference. (Which is absolutely fine; nobody likes every type of game, after all.)

The action tokens sounds like it's supposed to be optional. At least that was my read on it. When my group plays PbtA games the GM typically decides on turn order ahead of time (meaning, outside of game), just so not everyone tries to go at once. If/when we play Daggerheart, we may end up doing the same thing. I can't imagine my group will use the action tokens, if only because we play via discord and don't use a VTT or something like that that would make it easy for tokens to be used. It'd be easier for me, at least, to simply remember to make moves in response to player moves.

I kinda agree on the armor and weapon slots--that felt very video game-like and at odds with the more narrative flow of the system. I haven't played it yet so I don't know how I'd feel about it actually in-game.

 

[UnplayedRanger]

The action tokens are no longer default in the final rules, but they haven't really explained what, if anything, will be replacing them.
Armor slots and have also been simplified to only being able to be use 1 slot per attack (if i understood it right).
DM rolling a d20 is just a personal preference I guess. I liked it. Also keeps the hope/fear economy in the hands of the players.

 

[definiteFreakyFishGuy]

Hmm. Thanks for the answer. Out of curiosity, do you have issues with PbtA-style games, or games where only the players roll, or things like that? Because then a lot of these might "just" be a gamestyle preference. (Which is absolutely fine; nobody likes every type of game, after all.)

The action tokens sounds like it's supposed to be optional. At least that was my read on it. When my group plays PbtA games the GM typically decides on turn order ahead of time (meaning, outside of game), just so not everyone tries to go at once. If/when we play Daggerheart, we may end up doing the same thing. I can't imagine my group will use the action tokens, if only because we play via discord and don't use a VTT or something like that that would make it easy for tokens to be used. It'd be easier for me, at least, to simply remember to make moves in response to player moves.

I kinda agree on the armor and weapon slots--that felt very video game-like and at odds with the more narrative flow of the system. I haven't played it yet so I don't know how I'd feel about it actually in-game.

We haven't played many PbtA style games. I played a bit of Candela Obscura and have a copy of Monster of the Week sitting around. I think I am fascinated by the general game design philosophy of PbTA, but I haven't gotten to actually play much. I've dabbled with some Ironforged, but that's solo, so I don't think it really counts in the context of this discussion. Agreed that many things I listed are just preferences—if there are folks that like it, great!

Based on a video that was released a few months back, I believe the final version of Daggerheart will not use the action tracker or action tokens. There are a few other major changes that I am in favor of, like simplified armor mechanics and reducing the number of damage thresholds.

I probably won't get DH when it comes out since my current interests are in solo TTRPGs, but I'm still curious to see what other changes there will be.

 

[pemerton]

I think the rules are 'interesting', but I don't see me playing it or my group wanting to play it.

<snip>

I want to compare it to D&D 4e, it was mechanically very good, but it lacked something else because they tried to throw everything in, but the kitchen sink, while trying to follow the WoW hype. I wanted to play it, our group wanted to play it, because it was D&D and the rules looked 'interesting'. But we never did because it lacked 'something'. So you can create a mechnically strong game with a great name attached to it and still lose your first position in the market. People played 4e of course, but people also recently mentioned that in 2019 there were still sealed unsold copies of 4e stuff lying around in game stores...

Interesting mechanics tickels a part of my brain, but that's not enough to dive into it. It's a combination of multiple things, which includes mechanics, fluff, art, presentation, etc. And DH is, from what I've seen of it, and listened too, not what I find interesting. There are many such systems. The difference being that DH is made by DP, which is owned and promoted by CR. Which means that everyone is shoving it in my face, YouTubers, news posts, etc.

<snip>

And I don't want others to get dragged along in with the marketing/fan hype. Be objective about the product, and you can't really do that until there's a production model. The beta might get you very excited, if so, that's great! Others didn't get excited from the beta or the hype and why aren't they allowed to share their view?

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "production model" - won't this game be sold as a book, like most other RPGs?

I don't know much about DaggerHeart. I think I recall that, in the playtest, there were some questions asked about the relationship between the action economy and the token economy, especially in combat - I don't know if any of that has been resolved.

I don't see what's objectionable about a thread about the announcement of a release date. But your pre-emptive strike to tank the thread seems to have worked, as we're now 50 posts in and I still haven't been able to learn much about the game.

EDIT: there are two posts just upthread of this one that say a bit about the action/token economy issue.

 

[Faolyn]

I don't see what's objectionable about a thread about the announcement of a release date. But your pre-emptive strike to tank the thread seems to have worked, as we're now 50 posts in and I still haven't been able to learn much about the game.

Whatcha want to know? I do reviews of games for my friends to read and I'm working on one for DH right now--I have the feeling that one of them (who is running a D&D game for another group) really wants to move to a different system.

 

[pemerton]

Whatcha want to know? I do reviews of games for my friends to read and I'm working on one for DH right now--I have the feeling that one of them (who is running a D&D game for another group) really wants to move to a different system.

First, my curiosity is more an "out of interest" curiosity than an "intention to play" curiosity, so don't go too far out of your way on my account!

But I do recall that there were questions about how the token economy around GM fear interacted with a more general GM capacity to make soft and/or hard moves; and also how that token economy interacted with the action economy in melee.

Has this been further developed/clarified?

 

[Faolyn]

First, my curiosity is more an "out of interest" curiosity than an "intention to play" curiosity, so don't go too far out of your way on my account!

But I do recall that there were questions about how the token economy around GM fear interacted with a more general GM capacity to make soft and/or hard moves; and also how that token economy interacted with the action economy in melee.

Has this been further developed/clarified?

I can't tell you about how it's been developed, since I haven't been paying attention to the community or its discord or anything. Sorry.

As I understand it, the GM can make moves at any time in response to things the PCs do. But there are certain actions the GM can take only if they spend a fear token: introducing additional adversaries (like mooks or minions) to the encounter, using the fear feature of an adversary or the environment, or interrupting a PC's action as if they had rolled with fear. Or making more action tokens (and you can spend two action tokens to make 1 fear). The action tracker is only used combats and high-tension scenes that are expected to take more than a couple of rolls. If the combat is expected to be over in two seconds, like a full PC party and one or two minor bad guys, there's no need to pull it out.

However, and this is the main thing, there is no action economy. There are no set number of actions a PC can take on their turn--and for that matter, there aren't any turns. It's like PbtA in that way. People go when it makes sense and do what makes sense for them, their location, the conflict at hand, and so on. Basically, the rule is "don't be a spotlight hog."

 

[pemerton]

there is no action economy.

<snip>

It's like PbtA in that way.

I think I knew this . . . but then how does the action tracker fit in?

I think I recall a complaint about some players having an incentive not to declare actions because it would be likely to set back the players/PCs on the action tracker - or something like that?