If Daggerheart becomes the game that powers Critical Role instead of D&D 5e, you’re going to see a shift almost overnight. How many tables are out there of people who play D&D strictly because it’s the Critical Role game? I guarantee you the number is not zero.
Keep in mind what Critical Role did for 5th Edition: It not only served to promote 5e, it also taught 5e, and the importance of that second part can’t be overstated. To a newcomer, D&D is bigger and scarier to get into than, say, any arbitrary video game. There’s rulebooks to read, dice to buy, you have to find a table of people who aren’t absolute psychos to play with…
Critical Role took one of those impediments out of the equation, by teaching their viewers the 5e ruleset through play. After hours and hours and hours of listening to charismatic voice actors playing, you can start to get a comfort and a familiarity with the rules that you wouldn’t necessarily get otherwise. Critical Role teaches the rules and tropes of D&D to its audience.
Now suppose instead of teaching the audience how to Roll with Advantage, you’re teaching them how Success with Fear/Failure with Hope works. Instead of hearing about Paladins and Barbarians, now you’re talking about Seraphs and Guardians.
It might have made sense for them at one point to weld themselves to the D&D brand, but I think we’ve seen some pretty good evidence that it might not be the best play in the long run. If Critical Role is really getting into the publishing business by way of Darrington Press, then it is absolutely in their best interest to start using their own ruleset.
And it seems like Daggerheart is being built with Actual Play in mind. The fact that it’s being built for Theatre of the Mind style play with a “Yes-and” success/failure mechanic tells me that they want this to be a more narrative-forward “Swashbuckling” game than a “Kick in the door and kill goblins” game. Players are going to have interesting choices either way.
Daggerheart has the chance to fulfill the promise of Dungeon World: To be “recognizably D&D,” but to prioritize the narrative aspects of the game without throwing out the satisfying character customization and progression that D&D is known for. That last bit is where Dungeon World stumbled, in my opinion, but there’s definitely a big opportunity to improve on that style of game.
Critical Role shouldn’t be afraid of D&D because ultimately, their responsibility is to their fans and themselves. They have no obligation to continue to teach and promote 5th Edition. They have millions of subscribers on Youtube, Twitch, the various socials. If they start talking up their own thing, it creates a conversation that has been sorely needed for a long time: “What if D&D isn’t the best game for our table?”
Furthermore, they have a ready-made audience for their game. Critical Role fans are tabletop fans by definition. They’re here to watch a tabletop RPG featuring strong world-building, well-realized characters, and escalating tension and drama. It’s high time that they had a ruleset that prioritized those things, rather than fostering arguments about how the grappling rules work.
I say this not as a Critical Role fan, but as someone who just wishes that the conversation around D&D and tabletop in general was a bit more nuanced. Players should be able to ask for what they want, and not get shouted down because what they want isn’t D&D. Not only does it lead to better game design, it leads to more people at the table actually getting what they want, rather than settling for the “Safe” thing again.
This is a cool game, but definitely take note of the subtitle: “Armored by Grief.” It’s not just a cool tagline, it’s core to the experience.
This is not a game about customizing your cool powersuit to go fight crazy robots designed by Shinji Aramaki. It’s a game about a government-affiliated team of cybernetically-enhanced security officers overcoming their past trauma to unlock their suits’ most powerful abilities. It also happens to have customizable powersuits, but those are just one part of the bigger picture here.
This game should be regarded as a kit for telling a very particular type of story. It’s less of a universal tool for post-cyberpunk action storytelling, more of a “Do it yourself” kit to write and perform your own season of Heisei-era Kamen Rider at home.
Fishing enthusiasts will go to the fishing convention to make new friends and one of them will shout "Networking? Yeah, I sure hope so!" and everyone will laugh and high five him, one fisher is crying laughing slapping his knees
Guy arrives at the fishing convention with his robe rolled up to his knees and his boots curled and pointy at the tip, arcane symbols all over his rod and a pointy hat atop his head. Everyone's weirded out until he says he's here to "Work on his casting" and all the assembled fishers collapse laughing.
why are we kissing elves in dungeons? that seems like a very bad way to go about looking for elven lovers.
It's like goth girls, right? The elves you find outside of dungeons are nice and all, but I just find myself drawn to the ones who are into underground culture, (people boo and throw weapons and vegetables at me)
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