Daggerheart Sold Out in Two Weeks, Has Three-Year Plan in Place

A recent interview with Business Insider revealed just how well Daggerheart did for Critical Role's Darrington Press when it first launched earlier this year. Ed Lopez, Critical Role's chief operating officer, revealed that Daggerheart sold out in two weeks. According to Lopez, Critical Role anticipated that their stock would last a year, but the game was forced to go into reprints in a hurry. "The amount of units that we ordered we thought was going to last us a year, and it lasted us literally two weeks," Lopez said. "It's a great problem, it's a Champagne problem, but it's now changing our view in terms of what this product can be."

Lopez also revealed that Darrington Press has a three-year plan in place for Daggerheart, which includes the already announced Hope & Fear expansion, which adds a new domain and several new classes and backgrounds to the game.

Lopez also spoke about the hires of Jeremy Crawford and Chris Perkins, stating that the two would be working on both Daggerheart and D&D material for Darrington Press. "We really want their creative juices brought to the world of 'Daggerheart.' That being said, we're also doing a bunch of 'D&D' stuff, and who better to bring in than the guys who used to do it?" Lopez said.

 

[zakael19]

Is it an unfair impression to say that 5E is a "Trad" game that is fairly conducive to "Narrative" play, whereas Daggerheart is a "Narrative" game that can be played "Trad" ...?

I try not to use those terms, but I’d say that DH is squarely straddling the continuum between games like PBTA and FITD on one end and highly crunchy conventional stuff on the other, one foot on either side in design but more pressure on the narrative side.

 

[zakael19]

So DH is no different from DnD in its expected collaboration and improv? That seems off to me but if thats what you came away with from reading it I cant say your interpretation is wrong.

Collaboration takes many forms. Most of what DH pushes is in the vibe around the table, advocating for your character, GMs being player centric, building a feeling of collaboration from session 0 forward.

I don’t remember 5.14 having any instructions in any of the materials to do that. 5.24 has a bit, and many folks around this board seem to loathe that.

 

[Imaro]

Here’s a simple way it’s less complex: the majority of play you simply roll one of 5 actions and add your stat bonus. If you want to spend a hope to add an Experience, you can. But otherwise it’s just the same 2d12+ stat regardless of trying to vault a gap, find a face in a crowd, or cut a foe’s head off.

But powers can change, help or hinder various actions as can class abilities...

Edit: Isnt this the same for 5e... 1d20 + skill mod?

 

[Aldarc]

Yes you can ask soft questions and I can use my own ideas...no one's arguing against that.. and some players will still be uncomfortable with it. Im honestly not sure what the argument here is.

Then let's flip this around: what exactly is your argument?

Do you desire to make a much bigger deal out of the banal point that not everyone will be equally comfortable with the GM asking them questions regarding input into the fiction? Thanks for that contribution, I guess. Are you here to frame Daggerheart as being "scary" for shy players based on your claim that it "demands improv"? What is your point with your argument?

So DH is no different from DnD in its expected collaboration and improv? That seems off to me but if thats what you came away with from reading it I cant say your interpretation is wrong.

The GM in Daggerheart is meant to be more open to player input and shared GM/player authority than D&D historically has been, though I do think the GM culture is shifting. That is different from demanding improv. My point is that you are presenting a much harder and less nuanced argument about the game somehow demanding improv than what is actually present in the book's text.

 

[Neonchameleon]

well, you are the first I see that says DH is considerably less crunchy, most reviews / comparisons pegged it at basically 5e levels

Not sure the number of values on a sheet make all that much difference in the complexity of play, ie DH is not 25% as complex as 5e just because it has 8 values rather than 35… I’d mostly base this on player complexity, so I’d like examples from that side.

There was almost certainly a huge unaccounted for familiarity penalty there.

The thing about Daggerheart is that character complexity can more or less be measured in terms of cards; Daggerheart characters have a base character sheet of which you only use the mechanics on the first page in play (the second contains stuff for character creation and levelling up). The basic rules cover three quarters of the first page with the class specific mechanics covering the class covering at most a quarter of the page (the line or two under Hope and the mechanics in the bottom left of the sheet under Class Feature).

So every class has about three paragraphs of mechanics. In addition to that everything is on cards - which mean that you always have the mechanics to hand in face to face play and there's never a need to consult a rulebook to look up what you can do. The top half of every single card is (very nice) artwork that looks great and hopefully inspires.

Every single ability except Beastform (Wild Shape) and the ranger's animal companion fits onto a card or the base sheet - and only half the card is available for text. A level 1 character has:

• 1 Culture card with some flavour text and a single short special ability (e.g. Scoundrel: You have advantage on rolls to negotiate with criminals, detect lies, or find a safe place to hide.")
• 1 Ancestry card with two short special abilities; one active and one passive. (So simpler than almost any D&D race)
• 1 Subclass card with one to two abilities (some may have three tiny ones - generally bulet pointed).
• 2 Domain cards which are where your special abilities or spells come from. These range in complexity from purely passive ("Gain a bonus to your Evasion [AC] equal to half your Agility.") so you write on your main sheet and forget about it to effectively two short spells and a cantrip (each no more than a few sentences) from the Codex domain.

Remember that each of these cards has a maximum of half a card's worth of medium-large print text.

As you level up you gain a single domain card per level but you can never have more than five active domain cards - and it costs stress (a limited resource you recover by resting) to switch which of your cards is active. Outside your domain cards and ignoring multiclassing (only a minor can of worms) you can gain two more subclass spells (specialisation and mastery).

A first level Daggerheart character is probably as powerful as a third level D&D character and slightly more complex than a first level one (yes, there's a range; you can make a warrior simpler than a Champion fighter or a wizard to rival a wizard). But as you level up you don't get that much more complex. Even at maximum level you've only gained three domain cards in your loadout (and at least six in reserve) but they tend to be more powerful and two subclass cards. And your hit points don't balloon; they start at about six and hard cap at about twelve. (You get tougher but don't need to track large numbers in the same way).

 

[Imaro]

Then let's flip this around: what exactly is your argument?

Do you desire to make a much bigger deal out of the banal point that not everyone will be equally comfortable with the GM asking them questions regarding input into the fiction? Thanks for that contribution, I guess. Are you here to frame Daggerheart as being "scary" for shy players based on your claim that it "demands improv"? What is your point with your argument?

What's your problem... seriously. Im discussing a game and my experiences with it as a counterpoint to an argument put forth by another poster.. its called discussion. You come in all aggressive, attribute a stance to me I didn't take and now you come at me with more aggression because... I interpret what the game asks/demands of players differently than you do... chill out.

The GM in Daggerheart is meant to be more open to player input and shared GM/player authority than D&D historically has been, though I do think the GM culture is shifting. That is different from demanding improv. My point is that you are presenting a much harder and less nuanced argument about the game somehow demanding improv than what is actually present in the book's text.

You're putting too much emphasis on one word and the way youre choosing to read it instead of engaging with the actual discussion... again, chill out. Im pretty certain I didn't hurt DH's feelings.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Is it an unfair impression to say that 5E is a "Trad" game that is fairly conducive to "Narrative" play, whereas Daggerheart is a "Narrative" game that can be played "Trad" ...?

I'd consider it not unfair but not quite accurate; I'd call 5e a middle of the road trad game and Daggerheart a relatively light trad game that brings in as many narrative tools as it reasonably can and streamlines whatever it can while staying within trad boundaries.

 

[Imaro]

I'd consider it not unfair but not quite accurate; I'd call 5e a middle of the road trad game and Daggerheart a relatively light trad game that brings in as many narrative tools as it reasonably can and streamlines whatever it can while staying within trad boundaries.

This is an interesting take... why do you think it falls light trad vs. light narrative? When I think light trad with narrative tools the first game that pops in my head is 13th Age while DH seems to lean much more into the narrative space, its one of the reasons I like it more than 13th Age... In your oppinion what would be an example of a light narrative game?

 

[Aldarc]

I'd consider it not unfair but not quite accurate; I'd call 5e a middle of the road trad game and Daggerheart a relatively light trad game that brings in as many narrative tools as it reasonably can and streamlines whatever it can while staying within trad boundaries.

Not sure that I would call Daggerheart a trad game, light or otherwise, though I suspect this is how many people are running it.

 

[Neonchameleon]

This is an interesting take... why do you think it falls light trad vs. light narrative? When I think light trad with narrative tools the first game that pops in my head is 13th Age while DH seems to lean much more into the narrative space, its one of the reasons I like it more than 13th Age... In your oppinion what would be an example of a light narrative game?

Essentially there's nothing in Daggerheart that I'd expect a Storyteller from the 90s to not understand on a readthrough. (I absolutely consider V:tM a trad game) and there's nothing specific about character motivations or, in particular, character flaws as part of the engine of the game - and it uses traditional checks not moves. Like I say it's staying just inside trad boundaries having walked right up to the line.

Light narrative? Fate because compelling aspects is such a big part of the game. Apocalypse World for the moves rather than skills. Blades in the Dark.