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]

Probably just to keep the list as short as possible so that players and DMs aren't forced to remember them. Daggerheart in general seems to have made the conscious choice to take a simpler route when available. It occasionally annoys me ... the fact that they don't specify which weapons are ranged and which are melee, for example, is a minor hurdle for my attempt to build a Ranged Attack Domain, like Marksman or Precision.

Im inclined to lean towards this explanation. They've simplified it but it also has vestiges that make you scratch your head... like why not just have damage be damage and rely only on riders to differentiate... or have no conditions and leave them up to the fiction to determine vs. having a few but not others that might be common in a fantasy game. Just musing on the design here.

 

[zakael19]

It occasionally annoys me ... the fact that they don't specify which weapons are ranged and which are melee, for example,

Weapons ranges exist? Wouldn’t you just say “weapons with a range of Close or Far?”

Edit: you could also define within your framework or any Class / Subclass "For the purposes of the Marksman domain, treat weapons with the range of Close and Far as having the ranged keyword."

Ricochet
Level 2 Sharpshooter ability
Recall Cost 1
When you make a successful weapon attack against a target beyond Very Close range, mark a Stress to roll your damage a second time against another target within Very Close the original attack would have hit.

 

[zakael19]

Im inclined to lean towards this explanation. They've simplified it but it also has vestiges that make you scratch your head... like why not just have damage be damage and rely only on riders to differentiate... or have no conditions and leave them up to the fiction to determine vs. having a few but not others that might be common in a fantasy game. Just musing on the design here.

Monsters and gear have some interesting interactions with the existing two damage types without breaking it into an entire tag heavy system. It’s very similar to the way that a lot of the heroic fantasy PBTAS I play handle damage, and leaves a lot more space open for flavor not affecting mechanics.

 

[Imaro]

Monsters and gear have some interesting interactions with the existing two damage types without breaking it into an entire tag heavy system. It’s very similar to the way that a lot of the heroic fantasy PBTAS I play handle damage, and leaves a lot more space open for flavor not affecting mechanics.

Yeah it seems like they are choosing exception based design... which I get and even like but it just feels a little all over the place to me. That said my group and I are enjoying our campaign and the complexity has hit a sweet spot for us that was much harder to hit using 5e.

 

[Vael]

Weapons ranges exist? Wouldn’t you just say “weapons with a range of Close or Far?”

Edit: you could also define within your framework or any Class / Subclass "For the purposes of the Marksman domain, treat weapons with the range of Close and Far as having the ranged keyword."

Yes, these are all feasible, but it still makes all these powers look clunkier and wordier. To compare it to MTG, the other card based game I love to play, it's the difference between having cards say "enters" over "enters the battlefield" or "Mill 2 cards" over "Put 2 cards from your library into your graveyard". Yes, the other examples work, but it's just less aesthetically pleasing and the more words one has to reuse on each card, the less space for the actual effect of the domain card.

 

[zakael19]

Yes, these are all feasible, but it still makes all these powers look clunkier and wordier. To compare it to MTG, the other card based game I love to play, it's the difference between having cards say "enters" over "enters the battlefield" or "Mill 2 cards" over "Put 2 cards from your library into your graveyard". Yes, the other examples work, but it's just less aesthetically pleasing and the more words one has to reuse on each card, the less space for the actual effect of the domain card.

Yeah, I do like how in a PBTA you have explicit "moves with a ranged weapon" type thing and so you can just stack on "when you do that move, you may..."