Daggerheart Review
For those unfamiliar, Daggerheart is the latest fantasy TTRPG from Darrington Press, the Critical Role people! It’s a merging of story games, with their degrees of success, and the D&D basics with the goal of replicating Critical Role’s house style.
We are going to handle this like a club crap sandwich: something nice, then something mean on an alternating basis to stop myself from saying too much of either. Hating on something without clarification is too common on the internet, as is the boundless, uncritical positivity of the opposite corner of the internet. For me the glass isn’t half full or half empty; just halfway to my next beer.
Let’s start with my overall thoughts: I ‘d be happy if this replaced 5e/2024 D&D. This game drips with the theatre-kid energy of the modern D&D player, whilst presenting beginner-friendly solutions to the mechanical bloat. The tip of this lance in 5e’s festering boil is the cards. Making every feature a reference card, and limiting the number of said cards in play, means new players can learn by reading the cards. Much better suited to the average modern attention span, saving many a GM headache. The only way they could cater more to the modern gamer is splitting the cards with Family Guy clips.
The other game piece Daggerheart adds is the meta-currency. In principle I like meta-currencies, like Cyberpunk Red’s LUCK, but this one is a pain in the ass. Even in the one-shot I ran, there were intense Hope droughts and floods. Nothing sours combat for a player like watching everyone else fire off a barrage of magic bullshit while you sit there useless. Then there was the Fear, both mechanical and emotional. It was a huge pain in the ass to remember to use effectively. Maybe this is a style issue, as I have drifted more into the OSR end of fantasy games, or maybe it is a skill issue, as I have spent very little time with story games. Either way I don’t quite like it.
For character creation, the class and race (here called ancestries) options are great. The classes cover all the classics, with the addition of a dedicated tank! It was such an enticing option that all but one of my one-shot players chose it. The races are where things get a little more spicy. You have all the Tolkien staples, as well as automatons, cat boys, and - my favourite - goofy little frog fellas. Again an option so enticing that all but one of my one-shot players picked it. Each race also has a bunch of sketch art showing off the variety of characters you could play, acting as great modelling for new players. Neat!
Look at this fella! Adorable.
Now for the part I loathe, the stat blocks. The numbers part is nice and slim, but every damn thing has a bunch of unique features and special moves. Not just the enemies either; GMs are encouraged to use a list of features and moves for every major NPC and environment too. Running this game RAW1 requires such an overwhelming amount of prep that I can hear the souls of millions of forever GMs cry out at once. Even then designing combat encounters by the book leads to such bloated over packed encounters that I gutted them on instinct. There are just too many mechanical levers to tweak.
The far more delightful part for GMs here are the settings - plural. You’ve got
- Basic high fantasy
- Game of Thrones political thriller fantasy
- Souls-like dark fantasy
- Weirdo cyberpunk-y science fantasy
- Red Dead Redemption/Shadow of the Colossus fantasy?
- Yassified Delicious in Dungeon2
Each comes with plot hooks, unique mechanics, and unlabelled maps. The unlabelled part is the cool bit. Instead of giving you a definitive map of the setting, you get a blank one and suggested place names. It is all just enough to give a new GM a good framework without lashing them to the sinking ship of someone else’s setting and story.
For legal purposes, this is not Delicious in Dungeon. We may be eating delicious monster food in a dungeon, but it is not Delicious in Dungeon.
Also I couldn’t find a proper place for this aside, but the Delicious in Dungeon setting has a really cool cooking mechanic that I simply must steal for other games in some form.
As for running the damn thing, the lack of a rigid combat structure was a problem. I know everyone thinks initiative systems are the devil, and sure they are time consuming, but there must be a middle ground. A combination of Discord lag, awkwardness and meta-currency shenanigans led to a lot of silences where I had to prod a player who hadn’t done anything in a while. It’s a cute idea keeping combat in the normal conversational flow of gameplay, but the execution here just doesn’t spark joy. I’m trying to say Mothership does it better.
Where this game does spark joy is the other parts of adventuring, travel and exploration. The use of Blades in the Dark progress tracks meant that during scenes that would typically be narration in a 5e game, there was opportunity for gameplay hijinks. Suddenly descending a cliff turned from a flat skill check to the highlight of the one-shot. Two of my players decided to shield surf Breath of the Wild style, while the other half used a series of ropes and pulleys, and everyone managed to be involved and engaged. It’s the perfect solution to the traversal problem for the 5e crowd - as opposed to something more old school like a hex crawl.
The art is pretty cool too. Nothing groundbreaking, but not everything needs to be.
I want this to kill modern D&D and take its place. Whilst Wizards of the Coast puppets around the bloated corpse of 5e, pretending that the 2024 facelift better targets its core audience, Daggerheart actually address that audience. I wouldn’t run it by choice, as I am a little OSR freak 3 and am too much of a judgemental prick to be a theatre kid, but I would run it if I was asked or even if I just found the right players. It’s a pleasant marriage of the D&D basics with modern story games, with just the right amount of aids for the new player. Just never force me to come up with my own stat blocks, I’d rather eat the book.
Rules As Written. Though in this case the double entendre might as well be intentional. ↩︎
Dungeon Meshi for the disgusting little weebs out there. ↩︎
I will have to write more on this particular quirk of mine later. To summarise I think the more loosey goosey approach of OSR rules sets better fits the loosey goosey magic of fantasy. ↩︎