(Author’s Note: this post was written based on the Daggerheart Open Beta v1.5)
Daggerheart seems to be the TTRPG that Critical Role wants to play: the system leans towards a narrative focus, but it stays surprisingly close to 5e. Given that, it’s very helpful to see what they do with the system.
At this time, they have played three sessions and announced a fourth. This post is based on watching all three sessions through Menagerie a Trois.
Note that my observations also are just some notes on the system as a whole.
You don’t need to watch character creation or leveling
If you like watching the cast banter, absolutely watch the other videos. They’re having a good time, and you can see character concepts crystallize.
But you don’t have to. The backstories are relevant but reasonably well-contextualized in the games. The rules and character creation options are reasonably well-explained elsewhere.
Turn-taking works smoothly
In systems without rigid turn-taking, I typically have reverted to something like popcorn initiative, where the previous player nominates the next player to go, which often is influenced by request. There’s some manner of tracking each round, and then it resets when everyone has gone.
I was curious how Critical Role managed turn-taking, and it seemed fluid. Sometimes, Matt called someone out to go. Sometimes, a player just jumped in. Sometimes, a player checked with the table before acting. However, the last was least frequent, and there was little negotiation.
I suspect it wouldn’t be so smooth for most groups. Critical Role has played together for thousands of hours, and they obviously have a great table dynamic. However, it’s reassuring to know that it can just work.
Monsters act enough
On the flip side, I also wondered whether Matt would get his opportunity to show off his creations in-between player actions. In Critical Role, he has homebrewed plenty of surprising and powerful enemies, but I guess if he’s making the monsters for Daggerheart, maybe those are all canonical?
(Trying to avoid spoilers) In the very final fight of Menagerie a Trois, I felt like the push and pull of damaging and healing wasn’t quite working well mechanically. Perhaps in a situation of attrition, the rules and math matter a lot. That being said, it narratively worked just fine, which maybe is the point of Daggerheart.
Tag teams are fun
On paper, tag teams don’t seem that special: two players roll together and add up their results. It’s a different flavor of helping or doing a group check.
In practice, though, every tag team felt awesome. The first few brought in creative narration and lots of laughs. After a few uses, the novelty did wear off some, and the default setup was the Fastball Special. However, the huge damage totals still felt one.
No tokens on rolls
Perhaps I didn’t notice, but I didn’t notice the players adding tokens as part of their rolls to keep track of modifiers. That was one interesting suggestion in the rules that I actually like quite a bit. It is maybe over-prescriptive on how things happen at the table, but I enjoy when rolls feel punchy. I find it less fun when players roll, get a number, then look at their character sheet, do some mental math, then report a number. I think it feels better when players roll and can look at the dice and immediately feel the success (or failure).
It’s just Critical Role
Despite being a new system, the game mostly feels like classic Critical Role. In fact, one can almost forget that they’re playing a different system.
The least charitable take is that in TTRPGs, the real game is created at the table, so Matt’s style and the prevailing table dynamic shine through any differences in systems.
The most charitable take is that Daggerheart is exactly the system that Critical Role wants to play with. Thanks to the flexibility of most TTRPGs, pretty much any system can do anything: the real question is whether the rules are supporting the sort of game that that table wants to play.
In this case, Daggerheart really just works for them. The spells are nicely balanced between specificity to feel useful while general enough to feel unconstrained that the players were finding novel, interesting ways to use them. Hope and fear keep the action moving forward. Grid-based combat felt crunchy enough to require strategic thinking while also flexible to make every move consequential (if not cool).
Based on the banter, it sounds like everyone but Matt only had maybe one playtest before they filmed the first episode. And yet, they picked things up pretty well and had a good time. It really just works for them.
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