I run a table. One of the people at the table insisted that I checked out Daggerheart. So I did. And I was very pleasantly surprised.
Why? Well, I admit I had some prejudices against it. First, I sort of made up my mind when I saw the whole licensing issue, Daggerheart basically doing what Wizards of the Coast did with Dungeons and Dragons. But not only that, I also saw red flags in Daggerheart itself: minis.
I saw a video for Daggerheart where the thumbnail showed minis. I was out. I find minis so frustrating. They are in my list of things that I cannot care about. I care about dramatic stories, not combat simulation. I care about intrigue and character growth, not arithmetic. I saw that and assumed that Daggerheart was a combat simulator just like Dungeons and Dragons is. I didn’t even pay attention.
But then my friend insisted that I read about Daggerheart. And so I did.
I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that minis are optional. Even more importantly, I was shocked to find a game that effectively is Powered by the Apocalypse. I was especially relieved to not find rules for movement that require trigonometry or strange approximations (unlike Dungeons and Dragons, where there are grids and numbers everywhere).
I found a game that prioritized drama. Yes, it still simulates combat, but it does so in such a simple way that makes me happy to run it.
I’m excited! This would be the first game that I ever play when the game is just released. This would be the first game in which I don’t even have to pitch to the table; the table already wants to play it.
Of course, these are my first impressions. Maybe they’ll change. For now, I’m happy.
Games are games, I try not to yuck anyone’s yum.
I think that if you look at campaign 2 and 3 of Critical Role — there is a very clear decline in quality. This decline in quality has retroactively permeated things like Legend of Vox Machina (Pike, the cleric, suddenly deciding ‘Gods r bad’. Very clearly mimicking the poor narrative decisions Matt has made.).
Now, I don’t know if Daggerheart is bad — really it just sounds like it’s a platform for improv performance, which I don’t dislike! I also think you’re right on the money about the square peg in the round hole. I think what I need to see from Daggerheart is that it’s worth the amount of effort they put into it, considering how they’ve treated their DnD campaigns.
TL;DR — it’s hard for me to separate the lack of quality in CR’s recent campaigns from Daggerheart. I gave up on CR a long time ago, Daggerheart needs to prove itself to me, and can’t be through CR.