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.

 

[WhatTheEyeSees]

Daggerheart was sold out at FLGS here in the states too.

Our local FLGS had a ton that first day. And then poof, all gone.

It has been sitting here in the FLGS not moving at all. I was a bit surprised to see the lack of interest considering the online hype.

 

[Parmandur]

It has been sitting here in the FLGS not moving at all. I was a bit surprised to see the lack of interest considering the online hype.

That can be deceiving. One of the interesting things my FLGS is list howany copies they have in stock for any given item on the website. A couple months ago, they had 32 copies of Daggerheart, now they have 18. So stuff is moving.

 

[Von Ether]

Ah. Now Critical Role has to avoid the classic "ttrpg lighting in the bottle" trap.

You keep selling out, so you keep printing, each print run being bigger or even bigger than the last one to meet demand - until the demand plateaus.

Then you are left with tons of stock in the huge warehouse and the overhead is nickel and diming you to death. And odds are you would have stayed with that original smaller warehouse if you had not gotten so popular.

 

[Imaro]

I think the orders for their second book are going to be much more indicative of whether Daggerheart has staying power or not. Im still enjoying running Daggerheart but there is definitely a feeling of the honeymoon phase wearing off and some of its problems (at least for my particular group) becoming more apparent. I've pre-ordered the second book but not sure if I'll be running DH when it actually releases. I'm finding myself much more enamored with Shadow of the Weird Wizard and actually missing running/playing 5e.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I really like Glass Cannon, I think it's their energy, something about the East Coast of the USA being a very different play on my psyche.

It's FM morning DJ energy, and their unspoken sponsor Massive Amounts of Caffeine.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Critical Role expected Daggerheart to do well, but they didn't expect it to do 2500% more than their projections

B-but random people over Internet said that not making Campaign Four in Daggerheart means the game is Dead on Arrival...

 

[Morrus]

It has been sitting here in the FLGS not moving at all. I was a bit surprised to see the lack of interest considering the online hype.

Never mistake where you happen to live to be representative of the world.

 

[Morrus]

CR just doesn't gel with me, but they're a bunch of millionaires and I'm responding to posts on a forum about TTRPGs, so who's the real winner.

I can promise you that many millionaires have posted on this forum.

 

[Morrus]

statements, which doesn't actually mean anything

Statements do mean things.

 

[Von Ether]

Never mistake where you happen to live to be representative of the world.

100% Local gaming metas are all over the place. "Dead" games are alive and well at one FLGS and one state/province/district over another store the line up of popular games is different.

Perfect example I've seen is that Battletech is having a renaissance in popularity and it's popping up at few local stores for the first time in the past couple of years.

Yet, my favorite store has had a bunch of old timers running it on Friday nights for decades at this point. In that store, BT never went out of style.