Almost a year ago, we announced that we’ve been working hard behind-the-scenes on Daggerheart, our contribution to the world of high-fantasy tabletop roleplaying games.

Daggerheart is a 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, 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.

And now, dear reader, we’re excited to let you know that our Daggerheart Open Beta Playtest will launch globally on our 9th anniversary, Tuesday, March 12th!

We want anyone and everyone (over the age of 18, please) to help us make Daggerheart as wonderful as possible, which means…helping us break the game. Seriously! The game is not finished or polished yet, which is why it’s critical (ha!) to gather all of your feedback ahead of Daggerheart’s public release in 2025.

Here’s exactly how you can participate in our open beta playtest, which is completely free!

PLAY

When the Daggerheart Open Beta launches, you’ll find everything you need to know about the playtest on daggerheart.com. We’ll have a few different ways for you to enjoy and play:

  • On the Daggerheart website, we’ll provide PDF materials for you to use, which can be printed in case you prefer tangible materials.
  • Our platform partners for the open beta include Demiplane (character creator and Nexus) and DriveThruRPG (playtest material PDFs).

REPORT BACK

Please play often and bring that feedback to us via our surveys! Surveys will be located on daggerheart.com. While we enjoy seeing your feedback anywhere we can, our surveys are the best way for us to efficiently manage and incorporate all your thoughts in one streamlined process. Your feedback is a crucial part of this open beta and we cannot wait to see what you think of the game so far.

STREAM AND SHARE

You are welcome to review, stream, and share content from the open beta playtest as long as you adhere to the Darrington Press Community Gaming License. All that we ask is that you link back to daggerheart.com so that others can join our playtest easily.

JOIN US ON MARCH 12

Throughout the day on March 12th, we’ll share a few videos that we created to help you create your own character and better understand the basics of playing Daggerheart. Be sure to keep your eye on the Critical Role YouTube channel.

And, that’s not all! To celebrate the launch of our open beta playtest, the cast of Critical Role will livestream (YES, LIVE LIVE) a special Daggerheart one-shot on Tuesday, March 12th at 7pm Pacific on our Twitch and YouTube channels. VOD will be available the following day on YouTube and the audio will be available through your favorite podcasting services the following day as well.

Last but certainly not least, we wanted to take a moment to thank everyone that was able to participate in our closed beta playtest. You have set the bar high for providing so much invaluable feedback through our surveys. We hope that you continue to play Daggerheart through our next exciting playtesting phase.