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]

yeah, that makes it pretty comparable to 5e for me, I don't think I will ever go past level 14 or so anyway

I think it's absolutely the power scale of what so many of us identify as the "5e sweet spot." I know I've never run a campaign past 12 or 13.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think DH is slightly more complex at low level vs. 5e... about equal or a little less at mid and much simpler at high levels compared to 5e

I'd say DH level 1 is equal in power and theme to D&D level 3 - but somewhere between level 1 and level 3 in terms of complexity (two domain cards are never as complex as two entire spell levels).

One thing I think that DH has is very few if any assign and forget abilities...which means the players have to keep in mind what they can do in order to activate or use an ability or experience when the opportunity arises... vs. something like I always get a +x to this.

They are mostly in three domains; Bone, Blade, and Valour. But the thing here is that when you only have five domain abilities in your load out in total you only need a couple of passive or ubiquitous abilities (e.g. reroll 1s and 2s on your damage dice) from each domain to be simpler than the Barbarian or Champion Fighter.

And experiences are simple - the player decides the trigger.

There are also DH classes that have secondary resources (tokens) that are tracked in addition to hope... the sorcerer in our group has a power where they track tokens on a domain card and I believe the Brawler has something similar for stances. Finally just like magic in 5e there are also classes that have entire subsystems with their own rules that are part of a character at tier 1... two examples being the Druid's shapechanging and the Ranger's animal companion. I think the simplicity of DH is being overstated a little in these discussions even if I do think it is an overall simpler game than 5e, especially at mid to high levels.

Oh, I would never call Daggerheart "rules light" - but even the most complex class (druid) is far simpler than its 5e equivalent (beast form being massively simpler than as well as more flexible than wild shape and you not having oodles of spells).

The thing is that the comparison is being made to 5e - and that's a pretty rules heavy game by modern standards even if it's lighter than most D&D editions.

 

[Neonchameleon]

which 5e level does DH level 10 correspond to?

My rule of thumb: Daggerheart L1 = D&D level 3. Level 2 = Level 5 (moving from Proficiency 1 to 2 is huge as is moving from 2 to 3 cards in your loadout) and then about a level per level. So level 13

 

[aramis erak]

To be fair, Europe has had issues getting copies of MANY things in the rpg space. Especially initially. It’s not a good thing, but it’s been darn consistent.

Amazon ran out. Books-a-million ran out (and lied about it until after the money was collected). WalMart ran out. Barns and Noble ran out. Within days of release. Then, the second run came out, and within 2 weeks, was sold out again.

Let’s be honest. They printed what they thought was a reasonable amount of product. They based that number on previous sales.on older rpg products they sold, and they got hit with a wall of customers. Printing takes time. They couldn’t adjust on the fly.

CR has always tried to lean toward restraint in their expectations. That’s not a compliment or curse, it’s just my behavioral analysis. They are risk adverse.

Now, they have tons of the book out, and feel comfortable shifting more resources toward expanding the foothold. I wish them luck. The issue is, rpgs are notoriously “flavor of the week” aside from the few who have carved a loyal following. The CR crew may be able to leverage their media influence to shift the needle, but this is kind of unique for a rpg company. The closest was TSR back in the 80s, and that didn’t end well…

No, the closest was Paizo with Pathfinder.
A stable company with well known product for someone else's system, when their license model was getting shaky, developed their own core and continued to support both as long as they could... hasn't failed them yet.
The reason TSR is a poor example is because of outsiders to the industry buying in, realizing the money they thought it could make was a delusion, and then decided to F*** the company and extract as much out as they could. RPG publishing is not the same as novels, comics, nor informational texts. The string of low volume Buck Rogers products, the license costs went directly into the trust controlled by the chair of the board... Lorraine Williams. And she's a beneficiary of same said trust. She overpaid for TSR, and robbed TSR by forced licenses neither the staff nor customer base were enthusiastic about in order to recover what she could, and minimized her losses by selling.

Like Paizo, Darrington has a product line depending upon the D&D license. And their view of the fragility of that sent them to doing their own thing.
Like Paizo, the positive response was a surprise — not in quality of response, but in quantity of positive response.
Like Paizo, it's filling a niche unfilled by WotC.

Unlike Paizo, it's got strong potential to be used in secondary streaming projects by its design team until it's mature enough to replace D&D in their lineup.

 

[aramis erak]

I've found that the Background and Connection questions have done a lot of heavy lifting to get players into improv-ing and thinking about their character. It was fun to see in our session 0, already seeing roleplaying and collaborating between the players as they answered those questions.

As have I. My least descriptive player is contributing more, making decisions based upon story more...

And most are mentioning that it's less work than D&D for as much or more fun.

As for the balance factor... it's as much dependent upon luck. I had one fight where no Fear was rolled. It was a total wipeout for the NPCs. and later, same session, another, easier, encounter, and so much fear was rolled I nearly TPK'd. Everyone was down to 1 left save the sorcerer.

 

[FoolishFrost]

Amazon ran out. Books-a-million ran out (and lied about it until after the money was collected). WalMart ran out. Barns and Noble ran out. Within days of release. Then, the second run came out, and within 2 weeks, was sold out again.

No, the closest was Paizo with Pathfinder.
A stable company with well known product for someone else's system, when their license model was getting shaky, developed their own core and continued to support both as long as they could... hasn't failed them yet.
The reason TSR is a poor example is because of outsiders to the industry buying in, realizing the money they thought it could make was a delusion, and then decided to F*** the company and extract as much out as they could. RPG publishing is not the same as novels, comics, nor informational texts. The string of low volume Buck Rogers products, the license costs went directly into the trust controlled by the chair of the board... Lorraine Williams. And she's a beneficiary of same said trust. She overpaid for TSR, and robbed TSR by forced licenses neither the staff nor customer base were enthusiastic about in order to recover what she could, and minimized her losses by selling.

Like Paizo, Darrington has a product line depending upon the D&D license. And their view of the fragility of that sent them to doing their own thing.
Like Paizo, the positive response was a surprise — not in quality of response, but in quantity of positive response.
Like Paizo, it's filling a niche unfilled by WotC.

Unlike Paizo, it's got strong potential to be used in secondary streaming projects by its design team until it's mature enough to replace D&D in their lineup.

When I said TSR, I meant it in the context of the rest of the paragraph:

"The CR crew may be able to leverage their media influence to shift the needle, but this is kind of unique for a rpg company."

Paizo, as far as I know, did not have a media branch at the time it took it's chances? I could be wrong, but I feel rather secure I never knew of one if they did. CR, on the other hand, had a media empire that is rather surprising in it's reach. Comics, novels, and cartoons, not to mention the CR brand itself.

TSR had something closer with the various media it controlled at the time. Yes, they failed for a wide specrum of reasons, but that was not my point. Not like was I was saying TSR did well with it. I was just saying being cautious might not be a bad idea.

As far as the comment that europe has issues getting RPG books at times? I'm not doing anything but listening to the complaints leveled by the buyers in those regions. I did NOT say CR didn't sell out in stores.

 

[Imaro]

I honestly think CR vastly underestimated the demand for DH (understandably) due to CO kind of flopping. Thats why I'd love to see some actual numbers. The statements about it selling faster than expected are great but I really want to know what their initial print run was.

 

[Parmandur]

I honestly think CR vastly underestimated the demand for DH (understandably) due to CO kind of flopping. Thats why I'd love to see some actual numbers. The statements about it selling faster than expected are great but I really want to know what their initial print run was.

I mean, I think they probably made some sober and serious business estimates, which turned out to be overly conservative. Much better to underestimate than overestimate.

 

[SkidAce]

Paizo, as far as I know, did not have a media branch at the time it took it's chances? I could be wrong, but I feel rather secure I never knew of one if they did. CR, on the other hand, had a media empire that is rather surprising in it's reach. Comics, novels, and cartoons, not to mention the CR brand itself.

Paizo were the publishers of Dragon Magazine, and had access to an entire database of subscribers.

 

[Parmandur]

Paizo were the publishers of Dragon Magazine, and had access to an entire database of subscribers.

Both had some pretty striking advantages, but also simply wildly different advantages.