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.

 

[Scribe]

No it did not! This was disproved YEARS ago. Why does this still come up?

Its come up half a dozen times at least this year on this very forum. If it did or didnt, will not change the narrative.

 

[aramis erak]

I have the PDF and skimmed through it, but have not actually played it so I am a bit ignorant here. Why do you think this?

Not Reynard... but having just finished up one 3-month (or is it 4? I'd have to check) of Daggerheart, running a second for a remote group, and about to kick off another campaign of DH for the group just ended...

Daggerheart's mechanics are, RAW,

• that the monsters/NPCs only get a turn when the PC's either fail or roll with Fear Results (about 43% of the time) on their action.
• There's no turn structure/action economy past the above (tho' an option is present for one)
• rolling with hope or rolling a critical are supposed to have a narrative side benefit, and with fear a negative side effect
• Asymmetric: NPCs roll 1d20 for actions, cannot generate hope/fear. PCs roll 2d12 and generate either hope, fear, or a critical success. PC Outcome space is thus CS, S+H, S+Fe, Fa+H, Fa+Fe...

This results in a lot of side effects, both good and bad. It's optimized for improv. An Adv Path would constrain quite a bit. For shooter-on-rails type play, it could work... but that's tossing its strengths in the bin.

It can be played in traditional adventure mode, but it's fighting the rules, even the sample Quick-play shows how different a pre-written is for DH vs D&D.

 

[John R Davis]

AP is adventure path so recorded play needs it's own acronym.

We have just finished a weekly run DH campaign, using the Sable Wood Frame. Lasted 20 sessions and they just made 6th and fulfilled each PCs long term goals.

The system is solid but we found Play to Find out really tiring, maybe exhausting towards the end. It's not a game easy to run on the fly, and so needs fresh prep between each session to fulfill " what do you want to do next week". At one point I converted a D&D module which was pretty easy and meant I didn't need to overthink for 3 weeks ( I wanted to test out how it handle a multi session dungeon).

I have also been a player in a 12 session weekly run and that was also quite tiring.

It's a good system, it's production values are great, the book is very easy on the eyes.

 

[aramis erak]

Again, i think you are overestimating the importance to the success of Dh a actual play campaign is. Has there ever been another game besides D&D that has explicitly benefited from an actual play show?

Wyvern's SG1... many of us who backed backed after seeing the playtest version on Dial the Gate. Note that the game was played by 5 assorted SG series cast members (David Blue {Eli, SGU}, David Hewlett {Rodney McKay, SG1, SGA, SGU}, Alexis Cruz (Scara, SG1), Rainbow Sun Franks (Ford, SGA), and Julie McNiven {Ginn, SGA}), and David the host of dial the gate, run by a Wyvern staffer. Except for Rainbow, they all seemed to be having a great time. Even, no, Especially, Dave Hewlett and Julie McNiven. All three Davids and Alexis are experienced players, Julie and Rainbow were first timers.
DTG keeps doing occasional further Actual Plays.

 

[aramis erak]

AP is adventure path so recorded play needs it's own acronym.

We have just finished a weekly run DH campaign, using the Sable Wood Frame. Lasted 20 sessions and they just made 6th and fulfilled each PCs long term goals.

The system is solid but we found Play to Find out really tiring, maybe exhausting towards the end. It's not a game easy to run on the fly, and so needs fresh prep between each session to fulfill " what do you want to do next week". At one point I converted a D&D module which was pretty easy and meant I didn't need to overthink for 3 weeks ( I wanted to test out how it handle a multi session dungeon).

I have also been a player in a 12 session weekly run and that was also quite tiring.

It's a good system, it's production values are great, the book is very easy on the eyes.

Actual Play is the older use.

 

[thatOneLinuxDM]

I look forward to seeing what comes of this system, I think it's generally accepted now that it's always going to be a bit niche, and that's fine, not everything needs to be a "D&D killer" of a system. I enjoyed it as much as any other TTRPG when I ran it, but I won't bother again; I hope all the people who bought it because they're fanatics get to play it one day instead of having it sat jauntily on their shelves.

 

[Tigris]

Well, no, that's not true, either. 5E had very strong sales prior to Stranger Things or Critical Role, stronger than 3E or 4E.

No it did not. I did provide a link where this is explained. Why repeat this wrong informarion when we know today that this is nor true? D&D only made 29 million in the first and second year of 5e release. Which is WAY weaker than 4e, 3e and 3.5E.


Again this is just people falling for marketing /limited reports of "we sold out". WotC did wanted to create the narrarive of 5E being strong (to make Hasbro not kill D&D which was a real chance at the time. Remember they officially only had a single employee working on D&D ).

5es sales where only strong compared to the sales of 2013, the year where literally no new D&D book released.


And exactly because people believe marketing speak over data it is so efficient to release such statements...

 

[thatOneLinuxDM]

No it did not. I did provide a link where this is explained. Why repeat this wrong informarion when we know today that this is nor true? D&D only made 29 million in the first and second year of 5e release. Which is WAY weaker than 4e, 3e and 3.5E.


Again this is just people falling for marketing /limited reports of "we sold out". WotC did wanted to create the narrarive of 5E being strong (to make Hasbro not kill D&D which was a real chance at the time. Remember they officially only had a single employee working on D&D ).

5es sales where only strong compared to the sales of 2013, the year where literally no new D&D book released.


And exactly because people believe marketing speak over data it is so efficient to release such statements...

You're both arguing a nebulous term. 'Very strong' means whatever the author wants it to mean. By the metric of a successful product, 5E is a success, because it's continued to sell.

We also would be playing a fool's game to compare earlier and latter editions of D&D, there's 10~ year gaps between them, the world moves on, the industry changes, people change.

Daggerheart's metric for very strong sales is obviously going to be different to D&D's "very strong" sales.

The data, in this case, is amusing to look at, but practically meaningless.

 

[Tigris]

You're both arguing a nebulous term. 'Very strong' means whatever the author wants it to mean. By the metric of a successful product, 5E is a success, because it's continued to sell.

We also would be playing a fool's game to compare earlier and latter editions of D&D, there's 10~ year gaps between them, the world moves on, the industry changes, people change.

Daggerheart's metric for very strong sales is obviously going to be different to D&D's "very strong" sales.

The data, in this case, is amusing to look at, but practically meaningless.

Sorry but "very strong" may be nebulous, but "worse than any other D&D initial release" is not nebulous. Thsts just a fact. Or "in the year of the 5e release D&D only made 2 times as much money as in the year with no new book releases."


You are right "very strong" means nothing, thats why I use facts and actual numbers and say that this marketing speak means nothing.

Yes 5e continued to sell, thanks to critical roll and later stranger things. Which makes it so strange that the company which releases critical role does not use their one verry strong marketing tool for their own game.


Also everyone who knows a bit about kickstarters know that most big kickstarters with a lot of marketing do similar things.

Release a really low initial goal, with many additional goals, which they know they will succeed, just to post things like "1000% founded!"

 

[thatOneLinuxDM]

Sorry but "very strong" may be nebulous, but "worse than any other D&D initial release" is not nebulous. Thsts just a fact. Or "in the year of the 5e release D&D only made 2 times as much money as in the year with no new book releases."

"worse than any other D&D initial release" - relative and not really relevant over the timestamps we're talking about.

You are right "very strong" means nothing, thats why I use facts and actual numbers and say that this marketing speak means nothing.

Yes 5e continued to sell, thanks to critical roll and later stranger things. Which makes it so strange that the company which releases critical role does not use their one verry strong marketing tool for their own game.

", thanks to critical roll and later stranger things." - this is an opinion, it can be informed by the slight bumps in the sales graphs, but it's still just an inferred opinion. I know plenty of people who've never seen ST and who don't like CR who have been playing 5th edition for ages, that doesn't make them a data point, it makes them anecdotal.

"Which makes it so strange that the company which releases critical role does not use their one verry strong marketing tool for their own game." - It's strong within their own fanbase, there are CR fans who will literally buy anything with a quirky character design. To appeal to more than just fanatics, they need to keep their options open.

Also everyone who knows a bit about kickstarters know that most big kickstarters with a lot of marketing do similar things.

Release a really low initial goal, with many additional goals, which they know they will succeed, just to post things like "1000% founded!"

Yes, and I'm not disputing that they did this. "Selling out" is absolutely meaningless in this case if they had a small initial run. And as I've already said, it's compounded by the people who bought Daggerheart just to put it on the shelf next to the other CR products they've not read or played.

I think you have some valid points, I'm just saying it's not as cut and dry as 500 characters in a forum post can make it seem.