Daggerheart: A New Adventure Is Taking Shape

There are always rumors circulating around the Grand Adventurers Club.

A lost temple beyond the mountains.

A ship that arrived in port without a crew.

A map discovered in the false bottom of an old expedition trunk.

Lately, however, we've been hearing another name whispered around the gaming tables:

Daggerheart.

And this is one adventure we think is worth investigating.

So, What Exactly Is Daggerheart?

Daggerheart is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game from Darrington Press, the publishing company founded by the team behind Critical Role.

If you've played games like Dungeons & Dragons, the basic idea will feel familiar.

A group of players creates heroes. One player serves as the Game Master. Together, you embark on an adventure filled with strange places, dangerous enemies, difficult decisions, and the remarkable tendency of carefully prepared plans to go completely sideways.

But Daggerheart approaches that familiar formula from a somewhat different direction.

It's designed around collaborative storytelling, character-driven adventures, and campaign play, with mechanics intended to keep the story moving even when things don't go according to plan.

And one of the biggest differences becomes apparent the moment someone reaches for the dice.

Hope & Fear: How Daggerheart's Dice Work

Most fantasy roleplaying games ask a familiar question when the dice hit the table:

Did you succeed or fail?

Daggerheart asks another question alongside it:

What did that success—or failure—cost you?

Players make action rolls using two twelve-sided dice known as Duality Dice.

One represents Hope. The other represents Fear.

You roll both, add them together along with any applicable modifiers, and determine whether the action succeeds.

But then you look at which die rolled higher.

Roll with Hope, and your character may gain Hope that can later help allies or fuel certain abilities.

Roll with Fear, and the Game Master gains an opportunity to make the situation more complicated.

That means success isn't always completely good news.

And failure isn't necessarily the end of the story.

You might leap across the crumbling bridge...

and succeed with Fear.

You made it.

Wonderful!

Now let's discuss that rather ominous cracking sound coming from behind you.

That's the sort of storytelling Daggerheart is built to encourage.

Everyone Helps Build the Adventure

Daggerheart also puts considerable emphasis on collaborative worldbuilding.

The Game Master still creates situations, portrays characters, controls adversaries, and presents the party with challenges.

But the players aren't simply visitors in the GM's world.

They're encouraged to help create it.

A Game Master might ask a player what rumors their character has heard about the nearby forest, why they distrust the local noble family, or what happened the last time they visited a particular town.

The answer can become part of the world.

Instead of one person arriving at the table with every corner of a setting already mapped, the group gradually discovers and creates parts of that world together.

For players who love the storytelling side of roleplaying games, that's a very interesting proposition.

Building Your Daggerheart Character

Characters are assembled from several pieces representing not only what they can do, but who they are and where they came from.

You'll make choices involving ancestry, community, class, subclass, experiences, and abilities.

The Daggerheart Core Set includes nine classes:

Bard • Druid • Guardian • Ranger • Rogue • Seraph • Sorcerer • Warrior • Wizard

But choosing a class is only part of creating the character.

Ancestry and Community help establish your character's background and identity, while Subclass and Domain choices shape the abilities available to them as their adventures continue.

Characters also establish connections with the other members of their adventuring party.

For a game store called the Grand Adventurers Club, you can probably understand why that particular idea appeals to us.

After all, the best expedition stories are rarely just about the ruins someone discovered.

They're about who was standing beside you when you opened the door.

There's a Lot in That Box

Another thing we rather like about Daggerheart is how physical the game feels at the table.

The Core Set contains the hardcover rulebook along with 279 illustrated cards representing character options such as ancestries, communities, subclasses, and abilities.

Instead of every piece of your character existing only as a line written on a character sheet or buried somewhere in a rulebook, many of those abilities can sit directly in front of you.

As your adventurer grows, the collection of cards representing that character grows with them.

It's part RPG character sheet, part adventurer's field kit.

And we think that's rather neat.

Is Daggerheart Just for Critical Role Fans?

Not at all.

Knowing Critical Role may be what first puts Daggerheart on someone's radar, but you don't need to know anything about Critical Role to play it. Daggerheart is its own fantasy roleplaying system.

If your group enjoys creating characters, discovering worlds together, making consequential choices, and seeing where an unexpected roll of the dice takes the story, there's something here worth investigating.

And if you've always been curious about tabletop roleplaying but found some RPGs intimidating, Daggerheart places a strong emphasis on streamlined rules and helping new players get into the adventure.

You don't need decades of RPG experience.

You need some friends, a character, a couple of dice...

...and a willingness to find out what happens next.

And the World of Daggerheart Is Growing

Daggerheart is still a young RPG, but its world is already expanding.

Darrington Press has made the Daggerheart System Reference Document and Community Gaming License available to creators, allowing publishers and fans to develop their own Daggerheart Compatible adventures, supplements, and other material.

Independent creators can add their own expeditions to the map.

Official support is growing as well.

The game's first major expansion, Daggerheart: Hope & Fear, releases August 25, 2026 through Critical Role shops, Darrington Press Guild stores, and participating friendly local game stores, with wider availability beginning September 22.

The expansion adds four new classes—the Witch, Warlock, Brawler, and Assassin—along with new subclasses, ancestries, communities, equipment, environments, more than 130 adversaries, four new campaign frames, and a new Transformation mechanic.

Those transformations include such perfectly sensible career choices as becoming a vampire, werewolf, ghost, reanimated being, shapeshifter...

...or demigod.

Apparently someone looked at the existing map and decided it needed considerably more dangerous places marked:

HERE BE MONSTERS.

We approve!

We'd Like to See Where This Adventure Goes

This is perhaps the most important part.

At the Grand Adventurers Club, we're always looking for games capable of doing something more important than simply occupying space on a shelf.

We want games that bring people around a table.

Daggerheart is still young compared with the giants of tabletop roleplaying.

That's part of what makes it interesting.

We're getting to watch a new RPG find its adventurers, develop its worlds, and build its community.

And perhaps we can help a little piece of that community grow here.

, and we'd love to see those books become the beginnings of new adventuring parties here in Northern Colorado.

If our local adventurers embrace Daggerheart, we'd love to continue exploring the game alongside you—bringing in compatible adventures, accessories, and other interesting artifacts we discover along the trail.

We're already keeping an eye on what other creators are making for the system.

Because the real question isn't whether we can fill a shelf with Daggerheart products.

It's whether we can eventually fill a table with Daggerheart players.

That sounds considerably more interesting.

Perhaps one day there will even be Daggerheart expeditions departing from the Grand Adventurers Club itself.

But every campaign has to begin somewhere.

Usually with a few friends.

Some dice.

And one dangerous question:

“What happens if we open the door?”

Daggerheart FAQ

What is Daggerheart?

Daggerheart is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game published by Darrington Press. Players create adventurers and collaboratively tell an ongoing story while a Game Master presents the world, its inhabitants, challenges, and adversaries.

How does Hope and Fear work in Daggerheart?

Daggerheart's signature Duality Dice consist of two twelve-sided dice: one representing Hope and one representing Fear. Both are rolled during an action roll. In addition to helping determine success or failure, whichever die rolls higher determines whether the result is with Hope or with Fear, influencing what happens next in the story.

What classes are in the Daggerheart Core Set?

The Core Set includes nine classes: Bard, Druid, Guardian, Ranger, Rogue, Seraph, Sorcerer, Warrior, and Wizard. Each class has access to two Domains that help determine the abilities available to that character.

Do I need to watch Critical Role to play Daggerheart?

No. Daggerheart is a standalone tabletop roleplaying game. No knowledge of Critical Role's shows, characters, or campaigns is required to play.

Is Daggerheart good for people new to tabletop RPGs?

Daggerheart was designed with streamlined rules, onboarding resources, and collaborative storytelling in mind. New players can learn alongside their group without needing previous experience with Dungeons & Dragons or another tabletop RPG.

Where can I buy Daggerheart in Northern Colorado?

The Grand Adventurers Club carries the Daggerheart Core Set in Northern Colorado.

And we're interested in doing considerably more than simply putting it on a shelf.

We'd like to see a community of Daggerheart adventurers grow around it.

After all...

Adventure is better shared.

— The Grand Adventurers Club

Expedition Sources & Further Reading

Information in this article was checked against official Daggerheart resources from Darrington Press, including:

• Daggerheart Official Website — Game overview, Core Set and gameplay information

• Daggerheart System Reference Document (SRD) — Official rules reference and Daggerheart Compatible licensing information

• Daggerheart: Hope & Fear — Official expansion announcement and release information

  
  

Article updated August 2026.