Wow, it’s been an exciting week in Daggerheart. We have a release date and a lot more details about what the final content will be! I honestly can’t wait because I have been played a hacked post-1.5 version of the rules and very much want to be on solid ground again.
Speaking of playing, I had a great time running The Sablewood Messengers at DunDraCon this past weekend. I had a table of four players with D&D 5e and various other TTRPG experience but all of whom were new to Daggerheart. It helped me to get more perspective on what makes sense and what doesn’t coming from 5e.
Daggerheart rules that work
Before I get to the hiccups, I want to highlight the things that went smoothly. I’ll skip most of the obvious stuff that has a direct one-to-one port from 5e.
Hope, fear, and the duality dice took one example, and the players were hooked.
The players totally understood not having fixed initiative. They were ready to jump in anytime to keep things moving.
Collaborative worldbuilding was also smooth. I suspect that experienced players would be more comfortable jumping in to add to the game.
The abilities on cards were also very intuitive to use. The players understood their abilities and were actively looking for opportunities to use them. In fact, the players praised the fluidity of combat and chaos it introduced.
Movement and actions
“Oh, so there are no opportunity attacks?”
I think the rules for distances and movement only seem odd if you’re familiar with 5e limitations on movement. Specifically, if you expect:
- opportunity attacks for moving out of range
- fixed speed for movement
- moving taking an action
Then it might not even occur to a 5e player that they should consider repositioning.
However, I think that a new TTRPG player wouldn’t have any expectations for constraints in their mind in the first place.
I did drop a 1-inch square grid mat on the table for my DunDraCon game. In the great argument of battlemaps versus theater of the mind, I’m definitely in favor of battlemaps, but that’s a whole blog post unto itself.
Forgetting to use experiences
I think Experiences are a clever way to incorporate mechanics with freeform character concepts. The problem is that it depends on players to have chosen a useful experience and to remember to use it.
I actually have thought a lot about how to solve this in the primary campaign that I’m running. Despite those players having much more Daggerheart experience than convention players in a one-shot, they also tend to infrequently use Experiences.
In my games, Experiences have typically come up when a player is grasping for any bonuses to a particularly risky roll. In that case, rather than the background having dictated the action, the player is then trying to rationalize a course of action as being motivated by one’s Experience.
Helping or group actions
There were a few times when the players were seemingly working together on an action, so it either could have been a Group Action or Help An Ally. Both situations came up, and I think the players kind of fumbled through that process.
Like minions versus hordes, I get why Daggerheart has distinct rules for both of these situations, but they do seem awfully close. If we only had Group Action or we only had Help An Ally, I think it would work just fine, but with both, the rules are just momentarily more confusing.
However, I suspect that this would work itself out relatively quickly in a campaign setting or with a little more experience. Similar rules exist elsewhere, and I’m sure that GMs have house-ruled something similar before as well.
Final Thoughts
After the game, all of the players were thrilled with how the rules worked. When I asked before the game, they all said that their familiarity and interest was just that it came from Critical Role.
And at least in one case, I do believe the enthusiasm because I later heard one player in the hallway talking up what a great system it was.
Overall, the hiccups were minor, and they didn’t detract from the experience of the game. They’re just a few things to pay attention to when you run Daggerheart for your existing groups.
Elsewhere in Daggerheart
As mentioned before, we have an official release date of May 20th! I hope we get a steady trickle of teasers and spoilers until release because I want the hype to keep building.
Matt mentioned that there’s going to be an Age of Umbra (an official, Soulsborne-style campaign frame) mini-series coming out soon! To be honest, Soulsborne isn’t my vibe, but I will support any Daggerheart content, especially from Critical Role.
And Roleplay Relay spoke to Spencer and Rowan about Daggerheart and the upcoming Charityheart stream! It’s a fun look into how the game was made with even more previews of the content.
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