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.

 

[Reynard]

I don’t know if you saw, but Mike Underwood has a new adversary collection out. Looks like it’s filling in some missing gaps for classic fantasy stuff, and some interesting new ability design.

Ooh. Cool. Thanks. FYI for everyone: it is also available on DriveThru.

 

[zakael19]

Ooh. Cool. Thanks. FYI for everyone: it is also available on DriveThru.

I’m probably going to grab it because I’m curious about the dragon, haha. I’m wondering if they took inspo from Draw Steel! since its lowest level dragon is the same theme (I’ve definitely been looking at DS! for some of my ability designs to try and lend a more dynamic feel to encounters).

 

[Neonchameleon]

You brought D&D up...not me. I stated both handled grimdark badly (after you decided a DH thread had to involve DnD vs. say an actual grimdark ttrpg for comparison).. in what world does that equate to D&D can do everything as well as DH?

You outright stated that you thought that D&D could handle GrimDark better than Daggerheart and listed optional rules that are mostly not fit for purpose for GrimDark.

Daggerheart is a good flexible game where the default mode of play is similar to D&D. But out of the box (and Daggerheart is both lighter and more modular than 5e with campaign frames) Daggerheart characters in any setting without adding a dark frame have to deal with:

• Potential permanent loss of capability due to Scars on a track that only goes down
• Any roll having a 45% chance of negative consequences whether they succeed or not
• Characters having to pace their stamina (Stress) lest they lose abilities and become Vulnerable
• Going down to 0hp always being bad (if you refuse death things get worse)
• Magic mostly being unreliable and needing rolls, with a 45% chance of Consequences.
• The GM having a fear pool that makes bad things happening feels a lot more reasonable
• The primary means of recovery from hurt is the short rest, which can be harried out, not the cleric wiggling their fingers
• Even a long rest doesn't fix everything; you have three tracks and two rest actions.

Daggerheart isn't a GrimDark system and isn't trying to be. It is however a flexible system only missing one serious thing (a damage/injury death spiral) that games like GURPS and Runequest have when they go GrimDark - and Fear gives them something serious in return.

Meanwhile D&D and especially D&D 5e is an out and out silver age superhero system after about level 2.

• Martials are almost untiring robots. They can be ground almost into hamburger and fight literally all day and as long as they have 1hp they are as competent and capable as when they started.
• Casters are superheroes whose magic is always predictable, always reliable, and always comes in discrete packages (and even the rare cases where this used not to be the case have been almost entirely cleaned up in the 2e-3.0 shift). The only price or risk for casting a spell is opportunity cost and maybe a little cash/diamonds.
• Thanks to spells and the healing rules anyone can go down to 0hp and yo-yo back up without consequences. (This is not the case in Daggerheart; you must always risk it all, go out in a blaze of glory, or have things get worse if you chose to take the "safe" option).
• Compounding this resurrection is easily accessible.
• There are no mechanics for endurance and exhaustion; even the Fatigue mechanic might as well be (and sometimes is) a magical effect that comes from a spell and gives no inherent opportunity for characters to pace themselves by not fully exerting themselves. But their presence means that it's harder to produce good house rules because there is already a default there. (As an aside this is why Daggerheart has a resurrection spell; having one there that's almost impossible to use makes it less likely "helpful" people will try adding one at much lower level).
• The "mental stress rules" are just psychic damage and thus can be handled by a generic Cure Light Wounds
• There's been almost nothing except very niche things that can't be solved by a long rest (gritty length) since the death of Level Drain; practical adventuring parties before 4e have the cleric just heal the missing hp on day 2. (Even old school level drain is basically Scars but fixable).
• The Madness Rules (LOLRandomEffect for a set amount of time) aren't as aggressively bad as some versions of LOLRandomEffect but are better suited to a beer and pretzels comedy game than anything trying to be serious. And they miss that what makes Call of Cthulhu work isn't the actual and irritating madness but trying to protect "sanity hit points" to encourage people to actually be afraid.

I mean this stuff is one step closer to grimdark than Toon or Honey Heist but not much more than that; D&D 5e more or less treats anything that might encourage grimdarkness as if it was radioactive.

All you're doing is stating your personsl dislike for D&D and your like for DH with vague criticisms of DnD and up till now vague praise of DH as opposed to actually discussing whether (and why you think) DH does grimdark well.

All you're doing is stating random objections in defence of a pretty inflexible system by offering bad rules. I know you like 5e but that's no reason to be blind to its faults.

 

[Imaro]

All you're doing is stating random objections in defence of a pretty inflexible system by offering bad rules. I know you like 5e but that's no reason to be blind to its faults.

Ok chief, whatever you say... anyway back to discussing Daggerheart...

 

[Imaro]

I’m probably going to grab it because I’m curious about the dragon, haha. I’m wondering if they took inspo from Draw Steel! since its lowest level dragon is the same theme (I’ve definitely been looking at DS! for some of my ability designs to try and lend a more dynamic feel to encounters).

If you do grab this I'd like to hear your thoughts on it, especially how you think it compares to the monsters in the corebook when it comes to difficulty and tone.

 

[zakael19]

If you do grab this I'd like to hear your thoughts on it, especially how you think it compares to the monsters in the corebook when it comes to difficulty and tone.

I did today! It does kinda emphasize that DH's adversary design can feel a little flat IMHO, but really does fill in the fiction of a bunch of "classic" d&d monsters (goblin wolf riders, Gelatinous cubes, beholder, aboleths, gibbering mouthers, etc). Im assuming they did some solid testing to ensure the profiles work out well, and I really like the set of wizard/mage profiles added in. Two multi-phase lower level solos.

Also a bunch of stuff have ramped up abilities I think, especially around Stress burn.

Edit: you've got all the stuff in here to make a real good "undead horde + necromancer" as T1/T2 villain, and a really inspired Skeleton "healer" Support.

 

[Imaro]

I did today! It does kinda emphasize that DH's adversary design can feel a little flat IMHO, but really does fill in the fiction of a bunch of "classic" d&d monsters (goblin wolf riders, Gelatinous cubes, beholder, aboleths, gibbering mouthers, etc). Im assuming they did some solid testing to ensure the profiles work out well, and I really like the set of wizard/mage profiles added in. Two multi-phase lower level solos.

Also a bunch of stuff have ramped up abilities I think, especially around Stress burn.

Edit: you've got all the stuff in here to make a real good "undead horde + necromancer" as T1/T2 villain, and a really inspired Skeleton "healer" Support.

Hmm... ok, trying to decide between this monster book and Incredible Creatures: Adversaries. One seems to offer alot more bag for your buck but I know Mike Underwood has actually done work on the DH corebook so this may be a higher quality monster book.

 

[zakael19]

Hmm... ok, trying to decide between this monster book and Incredible Creatures: Adversaries. One seems to offer alot more bag for your buck but I know Mike Underwood has actually done work on the DH corebook so this may be a higher quality monster book.

I'll say that compared to the profiles on the Incredible Creatures page, the ones in Mike's book are a lot "tighter" written. They definitely feel in line with the core book while adding some interesting new features, whereas what little I can see of IC looks like what I'd write (not as polished, lol).

Could be wrong!