Daggerheart is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game of brave heroics and vibrant worlds that are built together with your gaming group. Create a shared story with your adventuring party, and shape your world through rich, narrative-focused long-term campaign play. 

When it's time for the game mechanics to control fate, players roll one HOPE die and one FEAR die (both 12-sided dice), which will ultimately impact the outcome for your characters. This duality between the forces of hope and fear on every hero drives the unique character-focused narratives in Daggerheart. 

In addition to dice, Daggerheart’s card system makes it easy to get started and satisfying to grow your abilities by bringing your characters’ background and capabilities to your fingertips. Ancestry and Community cards describe where you come from and how your experience shapes your customs and values. Meanwhile, your Subclass and Domain cards grant your character plenty of tantalizing abilities to choose from as your character evolves. Craft your unique character through the cards you choose and the story you tell, and become the hero you want to be!

Absolutely! Daggerheart was specifically designed to be easy to pick up for anybody, regardless of your experience level with tabletop games. You can build your characters and world together as a group, which also makes things a little less intimidating for first-timers!

If you’ve ever heard of or played an early-access video game, that’s basically what we’ve got going on here, but for tabletop. You might stumble upon portions that are unpolished, broken, or in flux, and we totally expect that. This is a look into the development process and an opportunity for you to give us your feedback before the rules are finalized. Also, this manuscript is a living document, not yet put into any semblance of layout so that we can implement as many of your notes as possible and build this game together.

Open beta playtesting for Daggerheart began on March 12, 2024. PDF materials are available right here on daggerheart.com, and via DriveThruRPG. Our friends at Demiplane are hosting Daggerhart Nexus with playtest materials and a digital character creator, which is also available as part of the Open Beta. Play Daggerheart as often as you’d like and please share your feedback with us through our official surveys!

Open means open. All you have to do is play! From daggerheart.com you can download the open beta playtest materials and get started. Once you have played a session, use the survey links to give us your feedback.

The open beta surveys will close for feedback this summer, but keep your eyes open for more ways to play and share.

2025! We’ll keep everyone updated and expect to have more substantial updates after the open beta playtest concludes.

The final version of the game will feel largely the same as the playtest. Development has gone through several iterations to get to you. The goal of the public playtesting phase is to balance and refine the mechanics until it’s stone-cold delightful to users.

We will be releasing updates periodically during the open beta playtest cycle. When we do, we’ll note the changes in the Change Log so that you can update anything in your current campaign that might need it!

Use our surveys to make sure we receive your feedback via the correct channels! (So long as you’re over 18! While we invite anyone to play, we can only accept survey results from those 18+.)

If any information is confusing, missing, in an odd place, or doesn't seem to work as intended, please tell us! We want to fill those gaps and make the rulebook as user-friendly as possible. (But if you do spot a typo or grammatical error, please do not report this—these issues will be resolved in editing. We promise. Definitely. (We had to look up how to spell that.)

You’re going to need our rulebook manuscript, which you can download here. You can play on Demiplane's Daggerheart Nexus if you’d like to run the game entirely online. If you want to run Daggerheart in person, you’ll also need:
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- 2-5 Players and a Game Master
- Dice (Two d12 dice of different colors, a d6 of a distinct color, at least one full set of polyhedral die (or an online dice roller)
- Character tokens, which are small objects you can add to your rolls to represent extra counters and can be anything that you want for your character
- Our core set of game cards, which you can download and print, and come with Ancestry, Community, Foundation, and Domain Cards, as well as an Action Tracker and X-Card
- Character sheets and notes, also downloadable and printable, along with paper and writing utensils or digital equivalent
- Optionally, you can use maps and miniatures to enhance your experience

Once you’re ready to play, we’ve created a Quickstart Adventure to get you going! You can download it here, using the pre-generated character sheets in the Quickstart Adventure or creating your own. Daggerheart is based on collaborative worldbuilding and gameplay, so grab your friends and let your imagination run wild.

3-6 players total—that’s 2-5 players plus a Game Master.

You can have many cards in your loadout, but you can only have a maximum of 5 Domain Cards active at any one time, along with your Subclass, Ancestry, and Community cards. At lower levels, you won’t have enough cards for this to be an issue, but once you reach level 5 and above, you’ll need to choose which five Domain Cards to keep in your loadout and which to store in your vault.

All the cards in your hand represent your loadout, but only your Domain Cards are capped at 5 (with some creative exceptions).

Only Domain Cards. If you want to switch a card from your vault into your loadout, you can do so immediately by marking Stress equal to that card’s Recall Cost. When you do, switch it for another domain card, placing the other card into your vault. If you’re adjusting your loadout during a short or long rest, you don’t need to pay the Recall Cost. Similarly, if your loadout is full when you level up and gain a new card, you can immediately move one of the previously active cards into your vault, and add the new card to your current loadout at no cost.

Generally, you use one of your weapons at a time, but you can use either active weapon when you make an attack. There are some secondary weapons that are “paired,” meaning you get to use both at once and deal extra damage! These add a bonus to your primary weapon’s damage roll when you’re in range.

Anytime the action tracker is on the table, a player adds a token to it when they make an action roll.

If both the success and failure of that action is interesting to the story, the GM will usually call for an action roll by the player to determine how that moment unfolds. However, if an action would either be impossible to perform, or it’s easy enough to pull off without complication, there is no need to roll—you already know the outcome!

It’s still in an exploratory phase! Up until this release, we’ve adjusted the combat system numerous times in an effort to make it as fast and cinematic as we can, while also making it feel familiar and fair. Combat is going to need significant playtesting to ensure we get the right balance on class power, leveling, adversaries, and beyond. We’d love your feedback when you feel like things aren’t working by submitting a survey.

Yes! Per our Community Gaming License, you can Livestream and Podcast CGL-compliant content for the game as long as you credit back to daggerheart.com! We only ask that you make it clear that your project is using the Daggerheart Open Beta Playtest materials, as the game’s mechanics will continue to evolve, and we don’t want confusion when the final game comes out.

As a reminder, to ensure you comply with the CGL, here is an example of the attribution and copyright you should display or read in its entirety on your stream before or after the stream (don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be up the entire time):
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This product was created using the Darrington Press Community Gaming License. The Daggerheart Open Beta Materials are owned and copyrighted by Darrington Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
This product is based on the following Public Game Content created and owned by Darrington Press: Daggerheart Open Beta Materials, Darrington Press, LLC, 2024, available at daggerheart.com

‍If you are using Adaptive Content (your own homebrew, settings, etc), also include:
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This product is Adaptive from or based on content created and owned by Darrington Press. Daggerheart Open Beta Materials, Darrington Press, LLC, 2024, available at daggerheart.com.

Our friends at Demiplane are hosting the Daggerheart Nexus online here, which includes a digital character creator and digital versions of all playtest material.

You can find our Community Gaming License at darringtonpress.com, and our Content Policy at critrole.com

No. Since the game is still in active development, any homebrew materials that would be created from the open beta materials are likely to get out of date before release. We are so excited to provide this framework for our community to build their own Daggerheart materials, but we don't want to encourage monetization of materials that are in active development. We do however, invite and encourage other developers interested in Daggerheart to go along this journey with us!

Here’s a full list of artists whose work you can find on the cards!

Some pieces are placeholders, others are closer to finalization, and some are just not done cooking quite yet. The Domain Cards all share one image per domain, and all subclass cards within a class currently have the same art. There will be more art in the final release!

No. Use of AI art is strictly prohibited by Darrington Press and Critical Role.

Use the survey on daggerheart.com to make sure we receive your feedback via the correct channels! (So long as you’re over 18! While we invite anyone to play, we can only accept survey results from those 18+.) If any information is confusing, missing, in an odd place, or doesn't seem to work as intended, please tell us! We want to fill those gaps and make the rulebook as user-friendly as possible. (But if you do spot a typo or grammatical error, please do not report this—these issues will be resolved in editing. We promise. Definitely. (We had to look up how to spell that.))