Daggerheart weighs itself down with a dragon-sized albatross
For many, the upcoming RPG’s juice will not be worth the squeeze.
The most significant issue facing Darrington Press’ upcoming RPG, Daggerheart, is one of delineation. Sporting high fantasy set dressing and a Critical Role pedigree, it will live alongside Dungeons & Dragons in the minds of prospective players, retailers, and journalists. Darrington Press knows this, as do co-designers Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall. They have made explicit (if not always successful) efforts to stake their own claim in the sword-and-story territory. They want Daggerheart to be so much more than a fantasy heartbreaker.
Which is a shame because it keeps breaking mine.
I sat down for a guided demo at GAMA 2025 hopeful that, two months before its May 20th release, Daggerheart would finally convince me it had addressed earlier wobbles. I was already impressed by the design of the character sheet sidecars, which compresses vital information at the table. Its card-based system for class and character abilities evokes the best ideas of D&D 4E. And it primarily uses twelve-sided dice, which are objectively the best.
