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.

 

[Imaro]

I'm ambivalent. Even if you run it essentially trad, the hope and fear mechanics make it a better game than 5E.

I'm torn on this one as while I like the applications of hope and fear I'm not sure I'm much of a fan of how hope and fear is acquired/generated...mainly through random process with a slight favoring towards PC's gaining hope. For a narrative game it can sometimes create wildly non-narrative situations because of disparities in resources.

EDIT: Thinking about it more, one thing I'd love to see discussed or addressed, maybe in the upcoming book, is how different amounts of Fear affect the difficulty of combats and/or how much Fear on average the GM should have/be using around encounters (combat and non-combat) to create differing difficulties.

 

[zakael19]

EDIT: Thinking about it more, one thing I'd love to see discussed or addressed, maybe in the upcoming book, is how different amounts of Fear affect the difficulty of combats and/or how much Fear on average the GM should have/be using around encounters (combat and non-combat) to create differing difficulties.

This is literally in the book, page 155.

 

[Imaro]

This is literally in the book, page 155.

D'ope. Thank you I'm not sure how I missed that... that is exactly what I was looking for. This is one of the reasons I love general discussions like this. I'm new to DH and I'm really trying to get it right.

One of the things I wonder though is whether this is affected by the number of players in your group...

 

[Reynard]

One of the things I wonder though is whether this is affected by the number of players in your group...

One thing I noticed running a 6 player con game of DH is that more players reduces the number of players that easily hit the 3 Hope threshold for their big class ability -- because for the same amount of fear and adversary turns, individual player go half again less often than if there are 4 players.

 

[Imaro]

One thing I noticed running a 6 player con game of DH is that more players reduces the number of players that easily hit the 3 Hope threshold for their big class ability -- because for the same amount of fear and adversary turns, individual player go half again less often than if there are 4 players.

For the record I have a 6 player group as well... I've noticed this and it helps but there are alot of abilities that don't need 3 hope and I also feel like I'm struggling to meaningfully set conflict for every player in the group... It feels like either I'm ganging up on some and others aren't in any danger or the attacks are so spread out it's hard for them to matter to the players without a crit or fluke taking place.

Now to be fair there are times where I get on a hot streak with Fear (or use some opps ability to gain a Fear) but my players also have their hot streaks with Hope, as well as abilities that let them gain Hope in specific circumstances. I've noticed that often it feels like I'm only really threatening at most 3/4ths of the party while 1/4th hasn't been threatened or faced conflict in a meaningful way...Wondering if the answer is more Fear... or something else.

 

[Vael]

D'ope. Thank you I'm not sure how I missed that... that is exactly what I was looking for. This is one of the reasons I love general discussions like this. I'm new to DH and I'm really trying to get it right.

One of the things I wonder though is whether this is affected by the number of players in your group...

Don't worry too much about "getting it right". I've been running a fairly trad Daggerheart campaign, because my experience is I've only DMed DnD, and a bit of FATE and (very briefly) 13th Age. So I'm aware I need to use Fear better outside of combat, and several other things that come from not GMing a lot of narrative systems, I've found PbtA games ... intimidating.

TBH, this is one of the things I like about Daggerheart, I feel the game has the tools for me to work on improving. I know I can think more about spending Fear, use Environments more (I know some dismissed them as "custom moves", but as someone who never ran Blades in the Dark, it was still a mindblowing experience).

 

[Vael]

One thing I noticed running a 6 player con game of DH is that more players reduces the number of players that easily hit the 3 Hope threshold for their big class ability -- because for the same amount of fear and adversary turns, individual player go half again less often than if there are 4 players.

We'll see how it affects my group, we're adding a PC, going from 5 to 6, but tbh, between a Halfling and a Seraph in the party, the party can generate a lot of Hope without even needing to roll.

 

[Reynard]

For the record I have a 6 player group as well... I've noticed this and it helps but there are alot of abilities that don't need 3 hope and I also feel like I'm struggling to meaningfully set conflict for every player in the group... It feels like either I'm ganging up on some and others aren't in any danger or the attacks are so spread out it's hard for them to matter to the players without a crit or fluke taking place.

Now to be fair there are times where I get on a hot streak with Fear (or use some opps ability to gain a Fear) but my players also have their hot streaks with Hope, as well as abilities that let them gain Hope in specific circumstances. I've noticed that often it feels like I'm only really threatening at most 3/4ths of the party while 1/4th hasn't been threatened or faced conflict in a meaningful way...Wondering if the answer is more Fear... or something else.

In my con game I made sure to use adversaries that generate Fear when PCs failed reaction rolls. That helped bolster my ability to use more adversaries.

 

[zakael19]

Don't worry too much about "getting it right". I've been running a fairly trad Daggerheart campaign, because my experience is I've only DMed DnD, and a bit of FATE and (very briefly) 13th Age. So I'm aware I need to use Fear better outside of combat, and several other things that come from not GMing a lot of narrative systems, I've found PbtA games ... intimidating.

TBH, this is one of the things I like about Daggerheart, I feel the game has the tools for me to work on improving. I know I can think more about spending Fear, use Environments more (I know some dismissed them as "custom moves", but as someone who never ran Blades in the Dark, it was still a mindblowing experience).

I think the game does a great job of introducing players like you to a different way to play and collaborate by baking it in to the text and mechanics, while still being very "familiar" and approachable. Ive said repeatedly that Environment Actions and the like are great ways of packaging things that might be custom or situational Moves in a PBTA down into something you only look at when you feel teh need. Like Trojan Horsing more and more fictional complexity and expanding the GM's repertoire without front loading it so much.

For the record I have a 6 player group as well

And of course the game says that when you go above 5 you're exceeding the core math assumptions and will need to work harder, hence all the custom adversaries for the CR game and such.