D&D (2024) Is There A New Sheriff in Town?

[Yaarel]

Speculation time.

1. I believe it's in the same demographic space. It's style is the same, it's expressing the same values.

2. It seems (have not played it, read the SRD, read the threads here) to be much more intentional in it's design. It knows what it is, and what it wants to be. I don't believe D&D has this.

3. It's community is coherent. I don't believe D&D has this.

That said?

4. It's a drop in the bucket compared to the monolith that is D&D.

In 5 to 10 years could it supplant D&D? Sure.

I think D&D and Daggerheart lack conflict. As far as I can tell, anything D&D innovates, Daggerheart can also incorporate, and viceversa.

Mechanically, they both look like normal D&D. Daggerheart could easily be a new edition of D&D core rules. It makes the "personality" section more central, emphasizing the narrative aspects of roleplay. 2014 experimented lightly with personality, including quirk, ideal, flaw, and bond. 2025 seems to shy away from formalizing the personality section. But all of this narrative stuff is within the scope of D&D. Whatever Daggerheart does that succeeds, D&D can learn from it. Regards the six abilities, D&D can benefit from disambiguating and balancing them. They are ripe for revision, and Daggerheart looks an interesting way forward.

D&D and Daggerheart dont conflict economically. I assume Darrington Press will continue to publish for both the Daggerheart system and for the D&D 5e system. In the context of 5e, these products are likely to continue to be a distinctive "setting". Note, D&D at large lacks a cohesive community, but each D&D setting such as Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Dark Sun, and so on, tends to have its cohesive community.

D&D players will continue to buy Darrington products. No doubt DnDBeyond will continue to sell and profit from Darrington products. Meanwhile, D&D will continue to incorporate inspirations from any successful experiments from Darrington, and viceversa.

There are reasons why D&D and Darrington have been friendly, especially among the creatives, and will continue to be.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Mechanically, they both look like normal D&D. Daggerheart could easily be a new edition of D&D core rules.

From what I've seen of Daggerheart it looks more dissimilar from D&D 5E than D&D 4E does, and we know how that went...

 

[Yaarel]

For example, movement in Daggerheart looks kinda weird to me coming from D&D. If I understand correctly, the distance a character can move is only defined by the battle map and is not defined outside of battle, and in battle a character can either move up to 30 feet while taking an action or, if they only want to move, can move anywhere on the map if they make an Agility roll.

What you describe here seems the "Dash action" might mean a "Run" which might be more than twice the base speed.

 

[Yaarel]

From what I've seen of Daggerheart it looks more dissimilar from D&D 5E than D&D 4E does, and we know how that went...

5e looks dissimilar to 1e. All of it is D&D, including Pathfinder and Daggerheart.

To the degree that 5e intentionally represents the mechanics that sell to the widest audiences, deriving from extensive surveys, I doubt that Daggerheart will stray too far from it.

 

[mamba]

They seem like different enough games that the only way I see Daggerheart eclipsing D&D is if it turns out more people prefer a game like Daggerheart to D&D.

that seems like the only way any TTRPG could ever eclipse D&D...

 

[Shiroiken]

There's tons of really good, if niche, TTRPGs out there. While I love 5E, and feel it's the best version of D&D, I still don't think it's the best overall. However, I'm playing a weekly 5E game and haven't played any of those other games in years. D&D is a monolith, and no matter how well Daggerheart does (and I hope it does really, really well), D&D is the staple TTRPG.

 

[Scribe]

D&D and Daggerheart dont conflict economically.

Perhaps. As I said they would have some meaningful overlap, but if Daggerheart can be picked up easily, but still scratch that crunchy itch (and it seems to) why stick with 5e?

Full Disclosure: 5e lost me some time ago, and the settings can easily be done in other systems once you file off some serial numbers.

 

[cbwjm]

Judging from the groups that I'm involved in, many of whom love critical role, there doesn't seem to be much interest in Daggerheart, we're keeping with 5e and various dnd adjacent games (Pirate Borg this Sunday). Daggerheart has already done great and I expect that it's going to continue to grow since Critical Roll have a huge fanbase, but probably not to the heights of DnD, although that's just a gut feeling on my part.

 

[Yaarel]

Perhaps. As I said they would have some meaningful overlap, but if Daggerheart can be picked up easily, but still scratch that crunchy itch (and it seems to) why stick with 5e?

Full Disclosure: 5e lost me some time ago, and the settings can easily be done in other systems once you file off some serial numbers.

It comes down to which settings are available and which mechanical nuances one prefers.

I expect both WotC D&D and Darrington Press Daggerheart to follow any significant trends among any customer community.

 

[Deset Gled]

Wargaming was way before my time, but I'm curious: how big was it at its height?

I wasn't around for it's heyday, either. But I want to say it was pretty darn big. It had in-person clubs across the US. It was also big in Europe. As a business, it had a lot more manufacturing involved than TTRPGs, and had a lot more successful mid-sized companies in its market. There's also a gray area where it crossed into the world of board games.

I expect both WotC D&D and Darrington Press Daggerheart to follow any significant trends among any customer community.

I can imagine a possible future where the market is highly split. D&D is the big name in the world of VTT and digital space, and Daggerheart (or something else) is the big name in "narrative" play and media (streaming gameplay, etc). In this future, we as hobbyists all spend way too much time arguing over what the term "TTRPG" means in the year 20XX.