‘Daggerheart’ is a Game Designed For Your Longest-Running Campaign
Only available in beta testing so far, Daggerheart is a TTRPG for players who like to commit to their characters and adventures long term.
Daggerheart is a game that’s been getting a lot of buzz recently. And with the game’s background, that’s the farthest thing for surprising.
Daggerheart
If you’re not familiar with Daggerheart yet, you will be soon. And you are definitely familiar with some of the people involved in creating this game.
In April 2023 it was simultaneously first announced both in Darrington Press announcements and on the Critical Role website. From day one, this RPG system had some of the biggest fans of the TTRPG hobby interested. But what’s the connection to Critical Role exactly? Spearheading this project is lead game designer Spenser Starke, who has been a producer and game designer on Critical Role since 2021. But before that he worked as one of the lead game designers and writers for the Illuminated Worlds System. In fact, he’s acted as Game Master for Candela Obscura games and episodes of Critical Role which utilize Illuminated Worlds.
Right from the start this was pitched as a game for gamers. Players who have long-term characters who they care deeply for. Players who want to see long-term play, character growth, and deeply focused storytelling. This is an RPG system for people who are borderline too into the hobby in the best way.
Character Creation and Gameplay
While many games now are on the simpler side, Daggerheart is reminiscent of D&D in its crunchiness. Not absurdly or dauntingly crunchy. But a level that will feel right at home if you’re already familiar with the big name tabletop RPGs. Players pick a class and character traits. There are foundations, heritages, and hit points, and quantified hope. many aspects of character creation are made with cards. For example, there are domain cards, ancestry and community cards. And these help build bits of who you are playing. But most interesting to me, characters are asked to create connections between the other characters in the party and the world around them.
Classes in Daggerheart are pretty standard of fantasy tabletop RPGs. There are bards, druids, rangers, sorcerers, rogues, and warriors. But there are also a few you may not have played in other systems, like Seraph and Guardian.
Gameplay uses two d12s of different colors, one representing “hope” and the other “fear.” Like many other tabletop RPGs, you want to roll above the threshold number with your two dice in order to succeed. But if the number on the “hope” die is higher, your character succeeds or fails with hope. Similarly, a character can succeed, but do so fearfully. Rolling two d12s results in a critical success, and a roll with ‘advantage’ will add an additional d6 to the rolling pool.
Daggerheart was originally play tested at GenCon in summer 2023. But as of March 12th, 2024 beta playtesting is open to people who want to check out Daggerheart and maybe even help with the final tweaks before it becomes publicly available. As of right now, the game is scheduled for release sometime in 2025.
If you’d like to check out Daggerheart or even beta test it for yourself, you can learn more on the official Daggerheart website.
Have you playtested Daggerheart at all yet? Do you like the idea of a game meant for long-term campaigns and adventures? Let us know in the comments!
Happy adventuring!
