Daggerheart Early Info (Patreon)

I'm not at GenCon, and not at ArmadilloCon. I'd planned on attending the latter but had called off my trip due to the COVID spike happening right now. 

So far, one of the biggest things I'm bummed about because of missing these cons is that people are, right now, playing demos of Daggerheart, the upcoming fantasy ttrpg by Darrington Press (the publishing arm of Critical Role). 

I've been very interested in the latest wave of games iterating on or diverging from Dungeons & Dragons, from Kobold Press' Tales of the Valiant to MCDM's untitled Heroic Cinematic Tactical Fantasy game. And, of course, Daggerheart. 

I've run some games of Candela Obscura (the other forthcoming ttrpg by Darrington) and really like it as an on-road to narrative-focused ttrpgs, and when I learned that Spenser Starke, co-lead designer on Candela Obscura, is also a (lead?) designer on Daggerheart, I was very excited to see Darrington's take on the fantasy adventure genre of ttrpgs.

Which has meant that for the last two days, I've been scouring Twitter and Reddit and YouTube for information about the game from players' accounts of their experiences in demos.

The images above are from a few different players across games at the con, and now there's also a writeup and video from Comicbook.com.

I won't try to encyclopedically document every bit of info and every ability - though that might be fun for Input-focused dopamine-mining. :)

What I'm going to do is talk about some major elements and unpack my thoughts, plus some speculation/hopes from the system. It's important to note that this game is still in active playtesting and what was shown is being called a 'very early' version of the game. Think Early Access for a video game, and not in the 'we're still polishing but want to start making money' way of doing things.

Core Resolution - Hope & Fear

Big thing first: Daggerheart is not a d20 game. The core resolution uses 2d12. One die is the Hope die, the other is the Fear dice - you need two different d12s. You roll, add the d12 results together (plus an ability and/or skill?) and compare that to a target number. AND, when you give your result, you say which of the dice rolled higher, so a 6 on the Hope die and 4 on the Fear die with no other modifiers would be a result of a "10, with Hope" because the Hope die rolled higher.

Whether Hope or Fear is higher then informs the results of the roll, giving the game a two-axis resolutions system - you can succeed with Hope, Succeed with Fear, Fail with Hope, and Fail with Fear. This potentially gives the game Yes And, Yes But, No But, and No And results. I've become very fond of mixed success/non-binary result state systems in ttrpgs (by which I mean systems where there's a greater spread of result types than just 'succeed' and 'fail -- and especially systems where that spread is also greater than 'Big success/Normal Success/Failure/Big Failure.)

Succeeding with Hope awards the player the Hope resource, which can be used for bonuses on your rolls, assisting other player's roles, and other abilities.

Interestingly, the game has several resource pools that combine and interact. Hope, Stress, HP, Armor, and Wealth (which appears to be abstracted into Handfuls, Bags, Chests, Hoards, and Fortunes. I'm guessing it's 5 Handfuls to the Bag, 4 Bags to the Chest, 3 Chests to the Hoard, and 2 Hoards to a Fortune).

Damage and Health

Characters have HP, but rather than HP being a large pool of health, HP starts at 6 for all characters. And damage is not measured in HP as in D&D and many other games. Damage is damage, and then you compare that damage to your damage thresholds (see the top-right of image #3 - the Guardian sheet).

If the damage received is < your Minor damage threshold, you mark 1 stress
If it is is > your Minor damage threshold but < your Major damage threshold, you lose 1 HP
If it is > your Major damage threshold but < your Severe damage threshold, you lose 2 HP
And if it's > your Severe damage threshold, you lose 3 HP.

This theoretically means that it always takes at a minimum 2 hits to down your PC, and that's if you're facing an enemy doing huge damage. You can gain HP, increase your damage thresholds, and gain armor slots

Stress is a resource that also seems to fuel special abilities. I imagine Stress replenishes more easily than HP. Characters get to start with a minor health potion or a minor stamina potion, and I imagine the stamina potion refreshes stress (but that's just a guess!)

Characters also have an armor value, and you can soak some of a hit by spending a use of Armor. So if you have an Armor Value of 5, and Thresholds like (Minor 7, Major 10, Severe 15) and take a hit for 11 damage, you could mark Armor and reduce that 11 by 5, leaving you with 6 damage, which means you lose a stress rather than 1 HP.

So we have a game where Armor reduces damage rather than helping you not get hit. Hurray! I do wonder what that means for dodge-focused characters. Does their dodging ability get counted in the to-hit part of resolution or does the dodging get deducted from damage like/as Armor?

Classes & Moves

The classes in Daggerheart seen in these demos are a mix of familiar D&D names for classes (Rogue, Wizard, Druid, Warrior) and distinct names like Seraph (seemingly a Paladin analogue) and Guardian (tank). The seeming choice to split Fighter into a Tank Class (Guardian) and DPS Class (Warrior) may help players get the kind of experience they're looking for from the game. 

Player expressivity and choice seems to be a core element of the game in what I've seen so far, from character creation to play at the table. More on that later.

Classes have options for "Foundations" which seem to operate like Subclasses, and each class has a Starting Move that's written on the character sheet. But characters also select abilities from Domains/Domain decks. Each class appears to have 2 domains, and I'm guessing that no two classes have the same combination of domains BUT different classes can overlap in domains. Guardians have Valor & Blade while Seraphs have Splendor & Valor. Reports say you can only have 5 abilities active at once, which I think means Domain abilities, but I'm not sure. It seems starting characters at the demo have a Starting Ability from their Class, an ability from their Foundation, and then 2 more abilities.

Character Creation

Some of the steps for character creation remind me of Powered by the Apocalypse games and their iconic pick lists (see image #4 - the 2nd/back of the Guardian sheet) describing the character physically and in terms of their attitude/bearing. Some entries are more literal, others more evocative, and I'm fairly sure players will be able to add their own options if they prefer.

Characters have an Ancestry and a Community. Ancestry seems to represent heritable traits/innate traits like the Feline Instincts of the Katari or some aspect of robotic nature for the Clanks, placing Daggerheart in-step with Pathfinder in the ongoing discussion of race, racism, and bio-essentialism in ttrpgs. Character's Community also imparts a special ability, a bonus to social interactions in some contexts, etc.

Experiences

Rather than skills, in Daggerheart characters can gain 'Experiences' which seem to cover a set of skills related to some life experience. So rather than the Pickpocket skill, you might have the Experience of 'Cutpurse' and then apply that Experience to any roll where having experience as a Cutpurse might apply. This system is one of the aspects of the game I understand the least well and am hoping to see more of soon. It seems like it could be quite flexible and fun with a table that can get on the same page about how broad experiences should be.

Connections

One of the parts of Daggerheart I am most excited by is the Connections system. Players have specific prompts (potentially tied to class?) they ask one another about their characters before a the first session begins to tie the characters to one another and avoid the challenges of 'You all meet in an inn and have to figure out why you trust one another with your lives instantly'. 

I've become a huge fan of this idea to establish character relationships in character/group creation, to the point where I added a Bonds system to Genrenauts, inspired by Court of Blades as well as Hx in Apocalypse World and similar systems in other games). I find that it makes a big difference for me as a player to have some initial outline of a relationship or a starting emotional beat to work with rather than striking up a character relationship from scratch.

Cards

The last character-focused thing I want to talk about is the Cards. In GenCon demos, players were given cards representing their Foundation, Community, Ancestry, and Domain Abilities, with spaces on or by the character sheet marked for those cards. This may be something only for these demos, but given that the cards look fully designed and seem to have custom art, I suspect that these cards will remain as play aids. Only being able to use 5 abilities at a time may mean you select your 'build' from your deck of abilities, all kept on-hand for easy reference. I appreciate the modularity, though I suspect the deck will be sold separately from the core book or perhaps together in a combined box set.

If I were Darrington Press, I would be thinking about what offering I'm developing to go into not just hobby stores but also big box stores like Target and Wal-Mart and Barnes & Noble as a starter set to reach a wider audience. I have to imagine this is something they're already working on, and the cards may be a part of trying to make the game as approachable as possible to people entering the ttrpg world or taking their first steps away from Dungeons & Dragons. I'm also expecting that Darrington will work with Roll20, Foundry, and other VTT companies to create a polished game module for online/digital play. D&D has greatly benefitted from robust VTT and online tools like D&D Beyond, whcih can help lower the barrier to entry by automating a good bit of the math and bookeeping. 

Additionally, the presentation on the Candela Obscura quickstart and their Actual Play series has been so strong that I have to imagine Critical Role/Darrington Press will be continuing that approach with all their RPGs, keeping performance and presentation front-of-mind throughout the process.

Collaborative Play

Something I took note of from Christian Hoffer's report for Comicbook.com about the Daggerheart demo discussed in the video/writeup is the focus on creative collaboration. Designer Spenser Starke GMed the game for Hoffer and is said to have frequently asked players for creative contributions in developing the setting and details in the world. This style of play is common in Powered by the Apocalypse games as well as many other narrative games but is not the default in D&D (not in the rulebooks, in my experience as a player, or my experience watching/listening to actual play). If this focus on creative collaboration is baked in to Daggerheart, it would (IMO) represent a more narrative-forward, "indie"-style game even than what we've seen so far from Candela Obscura.

The other pillar of design in Daggerheart, as I see it, appears to be player expressivity. Players get choices in detailing their character with pick lists, in determining Connections, in selecting their Ancestry, Community, Class, Foundation, and special abilities, in how to describe/detail their Experiences (I think) and their advancement choices when they level up, picking from options on another pick-list (reminiscent of advancement options in PbtA games among others) to further customize their character.

Players have identified a variety of touchstones/parallels in design seen from the Daggerheart material so far, with comparisons not just to D&D but also several different Powered by the Apocalypse games and others. I'd need to see more from Daggerheart, including a GMing section, to get a full sense of what I take to be its influences, but given Starke's involvement, I would not be surprised to see design philosophy and technology from a variety of games across the field informing Daggerheart.

So if I put this all together, keeping in mind what Darrington has already officially said about Daggerheart (there has not been a larger 'Now that you've seen the demos, here's more about the game press release' or the like, as of the time of this writing - but we're still in the middle of GenCon):

A fresh take on fantasy RPGs, designed for long-term campaign play and rich character progression.

We’ve teased a brand new RPG title Daggerheart in our inaugural State of the Press, and we’re eager to share more details in the future! For now we can simply say that it uses a new system designed for long-term fantasy campaign play, with rich options as your characters progress.

I would give my summary of Daggerheart as:

"A fantasy rpg focused on player choice and creative collaboration, designed for long-term campaign play and rich character progression."

Which sounds pretty great, IMO. I'm eager to learn more and hope to get to play it before the release in 2024. Perhaps at PAX Unplugged this December? There hasn't been word about demos at other events yet, but GenCon's not even over, so I can be patient. :)

Sources:

https://twitter.com/Darkroxas95/status/1687307261180346368?s=20
https://twitter.com/TheMikeBalles/status/1687798636497833986?s=20
https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/daggerheart-first-impressions-critical-role-gameplay/
https://youtu.be/1tDy9E_Oqi8