We did a one shot to test the system. My main impression is tied to the 2d12 fear and hope system. I like how combat flowed, but my issue was that it was too swingy; the player phases ends after someone rolls with fear for the first time, whether or not everyone has had a turn. This responds to theater kid energy, where your most outgoing players are fighting for the spotlight. As an experiment, I sat back and didn’t jockey for a turn. I didn’t get one for two rounds (which I consider to be unacceptable). For players who are Rule Players, this could be just as bad, as a first order optimal strategy might be to allow someone to go first to stack buffs or de buffs or whatever, so it means that if that person consistently misses, the same PCs are consistently missing their turns. I know that its unlikely, but its unacceptable that this is part of the range.
I really liked the fear and hope points specifically. A bad guy currency that the players generate is pretty sick. Imagine in a dnd alike, if a crit failure meant you just failed, and the DM got a fear point. All kinds of things you could do.
Did they announce a campaign using Daggerheart system? 3 months ago, there were no confirmed plans.
@tiberius @copacetic No, their main campaign still uses 2024 5e D&D. They have had mini-campaigns using the Daggerheart rules though.
Thanks. Hopefully, they will be able to do one.
Do you mean on their Critical Role channel? They’ve played some but their mainline campaign is still using DnD.
We did a 3-shot in dagger heart. It’s a decent system. Evasion is perhaps too strong, but overall we enjoyed it. Our beloved DM is going to run the next campaign in the system.
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As a part of group one, I moved to Pathfinder 2e during the ogl debacle and never looked back. Since then I’ve played a bunch of different systems and am really looking into playing MCDMs TTRPG [I’ve forgotten the name forgive me]
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MCDMs TTRPG
Draw Steel
Yes gosh ty
Presumably, they expected it to sell 0% more than their projections.
Good for them! Haven’t had a chance to play it yet (we made characters then it fell apart) but it’s nice to see other rpgs do well out there.
I skimmed over the srd ( https://www.daggerheart.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Daggerheart-SRD-9-09-25.pdf ) and it doesn’t look like a terrible system but I don’t think it’s for me. Class and level, tables, different shaped dice. Meh. Still too close to DND for me.
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You can watch the first minutes of this interview with Travis and Matt.
The short answer seems to be: The decision to use D&D was made months earlier and they were too committed to that already.
Based on interviews that I’ve seen, they didn’t go with daggerheart because campaign 4 has been in the works for over a year, prior to the daggerheart release. So they had to develop it around an existing system. Also, their campaigns are the main part of their brand. I would assume they wouldn’t want to go all in on using a system they weren’t sure was going to even be popular.
