Daggerheart, the latest tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) from Darrington Press and Critical Role, released on May 20th to much fanfare. In less than a week, the game sold out on the company’s website, with many waiting to order the game on Amazon or trying to find copies at a local gaming store.

I waited a couple of weeks to do this review for a few reasons. First, I wanted to try to read the core rulebook (or most of it at least – I’m a bit of a slow reader). Second, I wanted to run a few games to get a feel for how the game played. I ran a few Learn To Play events at my local gaming store, Valkyrie’s Vault, as well as online through StartPlaying.Games. In addition, I ran a one-shot for my kid’s Dungeons & Dragons table that I run weekly (they loved the game so much that they asked to switch our D&D campaign to using Daggerheart).

Disclaimer: Yes, I’m A Critter.

I don’t hide the fact that I am a fan of Critical Role. They are the reason why I got tuned into the TTRPG hobby a few years ago and I attribute a lot of my passion to them. My kid and I have bonded deeply with our love for roleplaying games and Critical Role, so they have a special meaning for us.

That said, I can share that my review of Daggerheart is as objective as possible, especially given the fact that I felt like I didn’t have the best experience with the game when I played it during Open Beta so I was still a bit on the fence about it.

So now that the game is out, what do I think of it?

WATCH: “My (un)Biased Thoughts About Daggerheart”

If you rather watch the review than read it, check out the video below.

WHAT IS DAGGERHEART

If you’re not familiar with the new game, Daggerheart is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game that uses a combination of elements from various TTRPGs as well as brand new ones. Here are some of the core features of the game:

Duality System. Unlike most fantasy TTRPGs, Daggerheart uses a 2d12 Hope/Fear system. When you make an action roll, you roll 2d12s, each die being a different color (or something that makes them distinct from one another). One of the d12s will represent your Hope die and the other represents Fear. When you roll, you would add both d12s together (plus any additional modifiers) to see if you meet or exceed the Difficulty level of the action you’re trying to accomplish. In addition, you look and see which die is higher. If the Hope die is higher, then you gain a Hope, which is a resource you can use to activate certain abilities and actions that you have. If the Fear die is higher, then the GM gains a Fear, which is their resource they can use to activate certain adversaries, environments, or actions. If both d12s results in the same number (e.g. both dice land on a 5), then that’s considered a Critical Success (no matter what the numbers add up to).

Initiative-less System. This game does not use any form of Initiative when it comes to encounters. Players can decide what their characters do at any point during the game or encounter. They still take “turns” in the sense that only one thing is happening at a time, but there isn’t a determined order. If at anytime the player rolls a failure or rolls with Fear, the GM can use that to make a move immediately after resolving the character’s turn.

Narrative-Forward Mechanics. Daggerheart focuses more on giving you tools to create and tell exciting stories without having mechanics limit your ability to do so. Where many TTRPGs have the mechanics drive the story, Daggerheart is designed where the mechanics supports the story. It’s not a mechanics light system by any means, but it provides a framework of rules for you to use as a foundation that gives you the ability to flavor the story and adapt the rules accordingly.

Collaborative Storytelling. In many TTRPGs, the Game Master is mostly responsible for the world building and storytelling aspects of the game. Daggerheart creates a space where the players have a more active role in the world building and storytelling, encouraging GMs to build the world with their players and giving them the opportunity to add to the lore during the game.

The Strongest Traits Of Daggerheart

When I was creating my video version of this article, I had to re-record and design it a few different times because I had so many examples of the greatest strengths of this game that this section alone was going to be almost an hour long. So instead of sharing every single element that I find to be a strength of the game, here are my most notable ones.

Universal Gaming Principles For Players And Game Masters. Daggerheart‘s Core Rules not only includes principles for Players and Game Masters to use, they make it a core component of the game, designing the layout to put it front and center to highlight its importance. Although not all of these principles are unique to Daggerheart, the fact that these are clearly marked as an important part of the social contract to play this game helps prepare the table better. But what I love about this even more is that these principles can be easily ported and applied to other TTRPGs (with some caveat since a few of the principles are specific to Daggerheart). Using these principles in any TTRPG you play will make your game that much better.

Accessible For Players Of All Levels. Daggerheart is ideal for players of any level, but in my opinion is especially ideal for someone who wants to either player or game master a TTRPG for the first time. The game gives you enough mechanics to work with to get a feel for how a system can impact play while at the same time give you tools to support your narrative play. Given its nature for you to bend the rules as much as you need to for your table, it’s a very forgiving game that doesn’t break itself if you don’t follow it 100%.

Exciting And Empowering Mechanics. There are some mechanics in Daggerheart that, simply put, are just so cool and empowering. One mechanic that I keep hearing from people that they love (including my own kid) is the Tag Team mechanic, where two players can spend their Hope resource to work together to come up with an epic attack action. Then they both roll their decide and decide which result they will take. Then if it succeeds, they both get to roll damage and apply it to a single adversary. Another mechanic I absolutely love is their Death Moves, where players have more agency and choice if and how their character goes out if they mark their last Hit Point. When this happens, they can make one of three moves: Blaze Of Glory, where the player can decide to have their character take one last action to make an epic move that automatically critically succeeds before they die; Avoid Death which allows the player to have their character continue in the game but they take a scar (both narratively as well as mechanically by eliminating a Hope slot) and the character falls unconscious; and Risk It All where the player can make a straight roll with their Hope and Fear dice. If Hope is higher, then the character continues in the game, getting back up and clearing a number of Hit Points and Stress equal to the value on the Hope die (they can divide it among the two). If the Fear die is higher, then the character dies. If you critically succeed, then your character gets back up and regains all of their Hit Points and Stress slots. (Stress is another mechanic resource that has an effect on your character). This is a great mechanic that I am currently thinking about incorporating into my other games that I run.

What Can Be Challenging

As much as I love Daggerheart, it does have its own set of challenges, just like any other TTRPGs. Some of these are my own challenges, while others are things that I think other people may find challenging.

Reliance On Ambiguity And Improvisation. The game emphasizes how the story should develop during play, to the point that they really hit hard on trying not to prep too much ahead of time. Additionally, the core rule book currently does not have a fleshed out adventure module that you can use to run the game as it appears to counter what it’s trying to provide as a game (the only exception being a single session Quick Start Adventure and their unique tool called Campaign Frames that gives you more like an open sandbox and set of tools for you to run a thematic campaign, but doesn’t give you specific plot points to follow). They give you some guidance on how to write a story, but they keep it general so that it doesn’t lock you into a single way to run a game and story. The challenge with this, however, is that you do need to be comfortable with improving story elements and having to come up with story plots on your own. This may be a struggle for people (like myself) who feel that they are not strong enough in these areas or may not have the time to creatively come up with story points like this. For me, I do not feel like I am quick enough on my feet to make interesting narrative decisions and I prefer having a prewritten module to use as a starting point then make changes to it to adapt to my characters and their stories and decisions. So if you’re someone that enjoys homebrewing and creating your own stories, then this won’t be a challenge; if you prefer having an establish adventure to follow, you may need to wait a while before that happens.

The Rules Framework May Be Too Vague And Ambiguous For You. Although I don’t find this to be a challenge for myself, I know for others it may be a challenge if you are wanting a mechanics system that is more concrete in how to rule things. Although the system does have hard rules to follow, it only provides enough for you to establish a foundational start and then the rest will be made by table rulings, which can look different from table to table. This is how the game is purposely structured so that people can tell the stories they want, but if you are someone that you want to have the rules be less reliant on you to make rulings, this may be a struggle for you. (Pro Tip: Daggerheart encourages you to talk to your players about how to rule things so that everyone can have buy in)

Battle Guide & “Make Your Own” Adversary. I found this part of the game to be lacking a bit. The Battle Guide is not terrible by any means. I’ve used it before and was able to create encounters using that system. But for a game that relies on at-the-table moments that you may need to come up with encounters on the spot, this part will take a little bit of time to create with the system they have. It gives you a straight forward formula to determine how many battle points you start off with in making your encounter, but then you need to refer to two tables to determine how many points you should actually use and what each adversary type costs (adversary being monsters or enemies). Another struggle that I had is that each adversary type in their book comes with a “Make Your Own” section, which seems like it’s designed to help guide you on how to make your own. However, the guidance they give is not really formulaic. Rather it seems almost a bit arbitrary as to why you may give an adversary type the number of hit points, types of actions, etc. for creating your own. It’s designed for you to use that character’s narrative to determine how their stat block should be created, but it’s too ambiguous and doesn’t have a prescription or concrete guidance on how to determine this.

My Recommendations

After running this game a few times, here are some recommendations I have about Daggerheart if you plan to run this at your table.

This is a great TTRPG for your first time GMing… if you are comfortable with improv and ambiguity. I think that this gives you enough to learn how to run a TTRPG, but you do need to be comfortable with some of those key traits about the game. If you feel like this is not a strong suit of yours, however, I do encourage you to try running a one-shot of the game, using their “One Shot Guide” that they have in the book. One thing to note about the guide is that it’s written so that you create the one shot with your players at the table and then run it immediately (it literally gives you only 15 minutes to come up with a story). If this isn’t a strength of yours, however, have your players help you fill it in about a week ahead of time so you can give yourself time to plan and prepare, then run the one-shot. But this game is great to work out those creative and improv skills that a GM should constantly work on.

Lean Into Giving Your Players With Storytelling. I can’t stress enough how much this should be utilize as it does a few things. It takes the pressure off of you, it creates more buy in from your players, and it gives you the best options possible for the story you’re telling. You do need to be mindful about how much input you’re giving your players at your table (e.g. I did this at my kids table and quickly learned that I need to limit their input to things that they all can contribute, rather than having them try to decide a single answer, such as what ancestry a NPC is). But this will only help strengthen your game.

Keep The Table Small. Daggerheart lists that an ideal table size is having a GM plus 2-5 players (unless you’re Critical Role, obviously), and I think that guidance is sound. If you have a bigger table then that, you can definitely run games with that size but it does mean that the game will take a bit longer, especially since the majority of people who will be showing up at your table are there for the storytelling aspect of the game. So naturally, they’ll want to describe everything that their character is doing and feeling and that will take some time.

Conclusion

Daggerheart is undoubtedly a strong and already popular fantasy tabletop roleplaying game for reasons that are well-deserved. I truly believe that there is a game for everyone and that we should all support each other in playing the games we want to play, no matter if the game that person is playing is a game we personally enjoy. Daggerheart does provide something unique and comfortable for so many people that it’ll easily be not only Game Of The Year but it’ll be a strong contender for many years to come for so many reasons.

Do I (and others) find some aspects of this game challenging? Yes. But that’s true of any game that anyone plays, especially since games are created for a certain audience for a certain style. But Daggerheart is a game, I believe, that is not only a fun game to play, but will improve how you play your other TTRPGs as well.