Critical Role Launches Daggerheart Playtest

Daggerheart, the fantasy tabletop RPG created by Critical Role’s Darrington Press, has launched its open playtest. Today, Darrington Press launched the playtest for Daggerheart, a new fantasy RPG designed by Spenser Starke with additional design by Rowan Hall, Matthew Mercer, Alex Teplitz, and Michael Underwood. The game was first announced last year and looks to be the flagship RPG for Darrington Press, with many expecting the game to be a viable alternative and possible competitor to Dungeons & Dragons when it launches in full next year. The playtest material includes a nearly 400-page handbook with rules on how to build a character and play a Daggerheart campaign, including rules on how to play the game. 

Daggerheart is built around a 2d12 system, with each player rolling a “Hope” die and a “Fear” die when they make a check. In addition to adding the two dice rolls together to determine the check result, the result is made “with Hope” or “with Fear” depending on which dice had the higher result. The game uses a modular character creation system, with a mix of unique abilities based on a character’s class, ancestry, and community of origin, and shared abilities pulled from a domain tied to multiple classes.

As part of the playtest, Demiplane has launched a new Daggerheart Nexus with a free character builder and full access to the playtest rules. You can check out a video showing off some of Demiplane’s Daggerheart Nexus features below: 

Daggerheart is an intriguing new tabletop RPG in part because of the influence of Critical Role, which helped to popularize D&D’s Fifth Edition when the streaming show launched nearly a decade ago. Critical Role has a large enough fanbase to support a game like Daggerheart, but many wonder if Critical Role would break away from D&D (Critical Role also has business ties with D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast) and create a full rival to the game.