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]

I think this touches on that something. I said earlier I feel is missing when I'm running DH. As a very simple example there's only 2 types of damage in DH... its either physical or magical, while that simplifies things (and for certain players in my group thats a godsend) it can also feel too simple and limiting from a mechanical standpoint for me as GM...

So this is a "yes, but" type thing. For instance, if you want to, say, make Fire a serious part of your narrative (demonic troops, red dragons and their minions, whatever); you can add in effects like Burning and magic that explicitly prevents it or reduces Fire damage or whatever, and handle it in the narrative window.

So what you're really missing is the sort of inter-locking option space around ability design (eg: this ability does Corruption damage, but I resist 10 corruption so it does 2, ha ha!) I think?

I think most of DH's damage side complexity is around armor, thresholds, and entirely PC centric. Normal / Direct / "mark an armor slot without gaining its effect" / "Mark Severe Damage" / etc.

 

[Imaro]

So this is a "yes, but" type thing. For instance, if you want to, say, make Fire a serious part of your narrative (demonic troops, red dragons and their minions, whatever); you can add in effects like Burning and magic that explicitly prevents it or reduces Fire damage or whatever, and handle it in the narrative window.

Yep... but that burning effect is not represented mechanically unless I create the rule for it... spend a fear to inflict 1d8 (physical) dmg... this dmg is rolled again whenever you activate an enemy until the PC spends a stress to extinguish the fire?? (Note this is just an off the top of my head example to illustrate my point). It's on me as a GM to create what burning even means in the game mechanically...

So what you're really missing is the sort of inter-locking option space around ability design (eg: this ability does Corruption damage, but I resist 10 corruption so it does 2, ha ha!) I think?

I think most of DH's damage side complexity is around armor, thresholds, and entirely PC centric. Normal / Direct / "mark an armor slot without gaining its effect" / "Mark Severe Damage" / etc.

I agree with this as well. I create what burning is but it doesn't really interact with anything else in DH mechanically unless I make up those rules as well. The thing is Thresholds/Stress and Armor really don't feel like they allow for much nuance, differentiation or complexity...whether that's good or bad I think is a personal thing.