Daggerheart: New TTRPG From Critical Role Enters Open Beta
Earlier this week, the company behind the internet’s most popular Dungeons & Dragons show, Critical Role, launched the open beta for their own tabletop RPG: Daggerheart. Fans have been aware of Daggerheart since it was announced last year, but this open beta will be the first chance for anyone to try out the new ruleset. The rules, character sheets, and more are available to download for free right now through Daggerheart’s website and available digitally on Demiplane.
Art by Jessica Nguyen
From Darrington Press
For those unfamiliar with tabletop roleplaying games (or TTRPGs), Dungeons & Dragons is the biggest and most popular, though it is not the only one. The idea revolves around collaborative storytelling, where players create characters and interact with a game world facilitated by a game master who manages the world and other characters rather than making a character of their own. Daggerheart and Dungeons & Dragons have similar goals in classic heroic fantasy storytelling, but they differ in the rules of how it all works.
Dungeons & Dragons focuses on the iconic twenty-sided die for the majority of its dice rolls, but Daggerheart tries something new. Instead, players will roll two twelve-sided dice and add them together. But there is a distinction between the twelve-sided dice. One is the hope die while the other is the fear die. Whichever dice rolls higher further impacts gameplay. If the hope die is higher, that player gains one hope, a resource that can activate abilities or improve future dice rolls. On the other hand, if the fear die is higher, the game master gets a fear token that can make the player’s goals more challenging further down the road. If the fear die rolls higher it doesn’t necessarily mean failure, it just adds a resource to the game master’s toolbox.
As someone who has been the game master for many Dungeons & Dragons games, I hope to try this new game at some point to see how it compares. If I do, maybe I should write about my impressions. If that sounds interesting to you, feel free to leave a comment!
Also, let me know if you would like to read more about the tabletop RPG industry because it is something that interests me a lot, even though it’s not video games. It would be great to know that others have an interest too!