#because daggerheart exists

[natp20]

in my personal opinion, a large part of what has coloured the narrative tone of campaign 3 is the behind-the-scenes stuff going on at Critical Role. and i don't mean politics or personal stuff or anything like that. i mean copyright and trademark protection stuff.

there was a time when matt could call each and every god in exandria's pantheon by the names used in the source material he was pulling from. the dawnfather was pelor, the everlight was sarenrae, the whispered one was vecna. it didn't matter that that he was pulling from another source material for his homebrew, until it did. it probably started to matter in or around 2018, when Critical Role moved away from Geek and Sundry and opened its own studio.

this is most likely why daggerheart as a new world-setting disconnected from the primary sources of DnD lore exists to some degree. so that Critical Role, as an independent company, can continue without having to worry about stepping on other, much larger companies' toes and invoking their wrath. campaign 3 wasn't just about playing DnD anymore, narrative consequences and all. it was about getting the world of exandria to a state where it could transition to CR's own intellectual property.

[toughtink]

i have a ttrpg opinion that feels gauche to share on bsky and like hitting an angry hornets nest if i share it on reddit, so instead i’ll say it here:

there’s a bunch of folks bent out of shape over critical role/darrington press’s new game, daggerheart, because they’re convinced that CR is about to abandon D&D in favor of it for campaign 4. if it were up to me i’d say DO IT because i’m sick of hasbro’s shit specifically even as WotC tries really hard to clean up the messes it and its parent company create. realistically, though?? i doubt they’ll jump into that until they can prove that daggerheart has a bit more staying power. also, remember that these people like d&d! a lot! legally it kinda sucks to have your brand so heavily built in someone else’s sandbox, but they’re ultimately still having fun there!

putting the speculation aside, i just hate this attitude of “ugh i watch for dnd! why would i watch if they’re playing something i’m not even familiar with?!!” you are weak like little baby. do you have any idea how many people watch CR who have never played dnd and have no idea about the rules beyond what they mention on stream? the real reason you watch CR, i’d venture, has a lot more to do with the cast and the types of stories they tell—2 things that are not at all dependent on a single game system! dimension 20 gets that which is why they aren’t afraid to shake things up from season to season with different systems including heavy use of modifying existing systems for their own genre! CR moving to a similar model wouldn’t suddenly shatter everything about their brand or stories!

thus, those people complaining are stupid and should feel bad and embarrassed about their opinions. if CR did make the switch, their viewership might take a hit, but not because daggerheart is worse than dnd. it’s just that the ttrpg world and especially the CR fandom is full of petty, self-righteous babies who want to complain.

[cr-aspec-fest]

CR Aspec Fest - Info & FAQs!

The Critical Role Aspec Fest is a month-long fanwork fest (with a prompt for each week) celebrating aromantic-spectrum and asexual-spectrum experiences!

Schedule and Prompts

WEEK 1 (Feb 1st-7th): Aro-spec

WEEK 2 (Feb 8th-14th): Ace-spec

WEEK 3 (Feb 15th-21st): Unconventional relationships

WEEK 4 (Feb 22nd-28th): Free week! Whatever your heart desires.

FAQs

(if something isn't answered here, please feel free to send an ask or message!)

Can I make something about a character being demisexual or demiromantic or (insert other label)? Can I make something about a character who's straight?

Absolutely - please do! Aspec is a very broad umbrella term, and this event is all about celebrating a variety of experiences that aren't well-represented in media. If it feels right to you, go for it. I'm not going to exclude any works from the fest just because they aren't relatable to me.

What types of fanworks can I make for the fest?

Anything! Be that fanfiction, fanart, meta, gifsets, edits etc. - everything is welcome! If you're writing fanfiction, you're encouraged to post to the AO3 collection here.

Which Critical Role characters can I make fanworks about?

Do I have to make a fanwork for every week to take part?

Nope! The more the merrier, but we're doing this for fun, not to stress!

Anyone in anything they've streamed - so the main campaigns, EXUs, Candela Obscura, Daggerheart or other oneshots!

Do I need to be aspec to join?

Definitely not, as long as you're coming in with the mindset of being respectful of our experiences. For one, I'm aromantic but not ace-spec - so making works about ace-spec experiences is naturally going to be more difficult for me, but entirely doable with a little bit of research! I think it's a great way to learn about others.

Why February? Why a whole month?

Yes, there are plenty of aspec weeks hosted in other fandoms, which are great and the inspiration for this event! But personally, I am both slow and busy, so making just one thing per week is much more achievable for me. I chose February because Aromantic Awareness Week is the week after Valentine's day, and this fest was originally going to take place during that time. I'm also unaware of any other fandom events happening in February (although please let me know otherwise, just for my own interest!). The fact that February splits so nicely into 4 whole weeks is an added bonus!

Edit: There is another CR fandom event this month - @vexlethuary!

Would you like people to share around the existence of this fest?

(Okay, maybe this one's a bit of a cheat.) Yes please! Even if you don't plan on taking part, getting eyes on the existence of this event would be wonderful. This is the first fandom event I've ever hosted, and I don't have a huge platform among fic writers, who are likely the largest contingent of nerds (lovingly) who'd be interested in taking part in an event like this.

Other Rules

Please don't bash any ships or headcanons you don't like! Part of the fun of fandom is seeing the broad range of possible interpretations, and I'd always rather foster a sense of community rather than opposition.

Suggestive, NSFW and whump content is fully allowed, but must be tagged correctly for whatever platform you're posting on. When reblogging suggestive or NSFW content, I'll use the tag #CRAspecFestNSFW, so filter that if you'd like.

Fanworks should be focused on aspec experiences or characters, but other topics or characters can totally be included, and these experiences don't have to be super clear or well-labelled in-text (gods know that real-life experiences are often opaque and confusing) - it's your intention that matters. This is up to your discretion, really. As with the rule of thumb for AO3 tagging - if someone was viewing this for aspec content, would they be disappointed? If so, you can always rework it, or post it outside of this fest.

Please consider adding alt text to any images you post - here's a useful guide if you're not sure what to write.

This account will be reblogging every fanwork made for the fest - just remember to tag us, and use the #CRAspecFest tag! If you don't have a tumblr account and want a post about your work to be included, send a message.

There'll be more posts on this account with ideas for how to approach the prompts, plus reminders at the start of each week, tagged #CRAspecFestPosts. All submission reblogs will be tagged #CRAspecFestWorks (and #CRAspecFestNSFW if applicable).

[utilitycaster]

Daggerheart Character Build thoughts!

I am actually out at work and haven't checked the version that's since come out, but I did participate in the character build beta, and the NDA is officially lifted, so here's my thoughts from that! It's definitely limited since I just made a L1 character and didn't go through gameplay, though I surmise about some aspects of gameplay.

Overall, it clearly seems to be made by people who love a lot of things about D&D 5e but wanted both more flexibility and more simplicity, which is difficult. I think they succeed.

To that end, it takes away some of the crunchier aspects (precise positioning, exact amounts of gold) and I think for some people that will be a problem, and that's valid, but ultimately this game wants to both allow for interesting mechanics in and out of combat while also not being terribly math/map/resource management heavy. It is a hard line to walk; most systems either go hard crunch or go entirely gooey.

The dice mechanic (2d12, Hope and Fear system) is fantastic; look it up but I think it handles mixed successes more gracefully and interestingly than a lot of games.

The playtest was not super clear on armor and evasion choices (or indeed what evasion means; it seems to be sort of initiative but sort of dex save, or maybe more like the Pathfinder/old school D&D varying ACs by scenario?). It was much, MUCH clearer than D&D on weapon choices (part of why I play casters? Weapon rules in D&D are annoying and poorly explained and many people rightfully ignore them) so I'm hoping this becomes clear when there's a full guide rather than just the character creation info.

The character creation questions by class were fantastic and in general, and this is a theme, this feels like it guides people towards collaboration. FWIW I feel like D&D has that information, but the way it's presented is very much as flavor text rather than a thing you should be doing. Daggerheart makes this a much more core part of creation. The Experience mechanic is particularly clear: you better be working with your GM and really thinking about background, rather than slapping it on as a mechanic.

The other side of character creation questions is that it really encourages engagement with the class, which is something I've talked about. I think either subversion for the sake of subversion, or picking a class for the mechanics and aesthetic but not the fundamental concept, will be much harder to justify in Daggerheart, and I think that's a good thing because when people do that, their characters tend to be weaker.

The downtime is designed for you to write hurt/comfort fanfic about and this is a compliment. There are a number of mechanics that reward RP, particularly one of the healing mechanics under the Splendor track. I feel like a weakness of D&D is that when you try to reward RP it's really nebulous because there's not actually a ton of space to put that - you can give inspiration, but, for example, the empathy domain Matt homebrewed actually feels kind of off because it's based on such fuzzy concepts amid mechanics that are usually more rigid. Daggerheart comes off as much cleaner yet still RP-focused, and I'm excited to see it in action.

A judgement of Candela and I suppose Daggerheart might be that it's designed for actual play. I've mentioned before that I know people who are super into the crunch and combat and numbers of TTRPGs and are less story-oriented, and again, that's valid, but actual play is just storytelling using a ttrpg and so yes, a game that encourages RP while also having mechanics to support that and influence it is an extremely good goal. I am not an actual player, but I do like D&D games with a good plot and not just Go Kill Monsters, and I want to play this. (I also have some real salty thoughts about how if you modify an existing game for AP purposes that's staggering genius apparently, but if you make your own game how dare you but that's another post).

And now, the classes/subclasses. I am going to sort of use D&D language to describe them because that's a point of reference most people reading this will understand, but they are not one-to-one. A couple notes: everyone can use weapons and armor. HP is not totally clear to me but it seems to be threshold based - everyone has the same HP to start but people have different thresholds and armor, so the tank classes have the same amount of HP but are much harder to actually do damage to.

All classes are built on a combination of a subclass and two domains. There are 9 classes and 9 domains. This technically means that if you wanted to fuck around and homebrew you could make up to 36 classes (27 additional) by just grabbing two domains that weren't otherwise combined, which is fun to consider for the potential. Anyway I cover the classes and briefly describe domains within them. You can take any domain card within your domain, regardless of subclass.

There are six stats. Presence, Instinct, Knowledge, and Strength map roughly to Charisma, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Strength. Dex is split into Agility and Finesse; Agility covers gross motor skills (jumping, most ranged weapons, "maneuvering") and Finesse finer ones (lockpicking and tinkering, though also it does cover hiding). The really big wins are first, no CON score, so you don't need to sink stat points into something that grants no skills but keeps you alive. The second one is that the "hybrid" classes spellcast from their physical stat. This is fucking fantastic. The thing about ranger or paladin or the spellcasting subclasses of rogue and fighter in D&D is that if you don't roll pretty well you're locked into the core stats and CON and nothing else. (This also doesn't have rolling for stats: you assign +2 to one stat, presumably your main, and then distribute two +1s, two 0s, and one -1.)

Your HP, Evasion, and Thresholds are set by class, and there's a core ability; the rest is all from the cards you take for subclass and domain.

Leveling up is very much based on taking more domain cards (abilities) but has a certain degree of flexibility. It's by chunks: in leveling up anywhere levels 2-4, you can, for example, increase your proficiency by +1 once, so if you wanted to do that at level 2 but your fellow player wanted to wait until level 4 and take something else at level 2 instead, they could. It allows for more min-maxing, but also everyone has the same level up rules and differs only in the abilities on the cards, which is very cool.

Bard: Grace (enchantment spells) and Codex (learned spellcaster stuff; the spells available are definitely arcane in vibes) based, Presence is your main stat. The two subclasses map roughly to lore-style stuff and eloquence. Core class ability is sort of like inspiration but not entirely. It's a bard; I like bards a lot, and this is very similar vibes-wise to your D&D bards. If you like D&D bards you will like this.

Druid: Sage (nature spells) and Arcana (raw magical power spellcaster stuff), Instinct is your spellcasting/main stat. The two subclasses are elemental but frankly cooler than circle of the moon, and a more healing/tranquility of nature focused one. I really think Marisha probably gave feedback on this one, because the elemental version is really strong. You do get beastform; it is quite similar to a D&D druid under a different system, as the bard, but the beastform options are, frankly, better and easier to understand.

Guardian: Valor (melee tank/damager) and Blade (damage). Strength based for the most part (Valor mechanics assume strength) though you could go for like, +2 Agility +1 Strength to start. This is barbarian but like. 20 times better. It is, fundamentally, a tank class, and it is very good at it, with one even more tank-focused subclass and one that is more about retaliatory damage. You do have a damage-halving ability once per day, but really guardian's questions are incredible. I think Travis and Ashley likely gave feedback. Also rage doesn't render you incapable of concentration as that doesn't seem to be a thing, so multiclassing seems way more possible (you are, I think, only allowed to do one multiclass, and not until you reach level 5 minimum, which I am in favor of). Yes, you can be a Bardian.

Ranger: This is what I built! It is based on Sage and Bone (movement around the field/dodging stuff) and it is Agility-based, including for spellcasting, which is a MASSIVE help (as is, again, the fact that CON isn't a thing.) The subclasses are basically being really good at navigation, or animal companion. Most importantly to me you can be a ranger with a longsword and you are not penalized; Bone works with either ranged weapons or melee.

Rogue: Midnight (stealth/disguise/assassination spells and skills) and Grace-based. Yes, rogue is by default a spellcaster, which does help a LOT with the vibes for me. One subclass is basically about having lots of connections (as a spy or criminal might) and the other is about magical slinking about. Hiding/sneak attack are also streamlined. I will admit I'm still more interested in…almost everything else, but I think it evened out a lot of rogue weaknesses.

Seraph: Splendor (healing/divine magic) and Valor. This is your Paladin equivalent. It is strength-based for casting, again making hybrid classes way less stressful. Questions for this area also incredible; you do have something not unlike a lay on hands pool as well. Your subclasses are being able to fly and do extra damage; or being able to make your melee weapon do ranged attacks and also some extra healing stuff, the latter of which is my favorite. Yasha vibes from this, honestly. Single downside is this is the only class where they recommend you dump Knowledge. I will not, and I never will. Now that I don't have to make sure CON is high? I am for REAL never giving myself less than a +1 Knowledge in this game.

Sorcerer: Arcana (raw nature of magic/elemental vibes) and Midnight based. Yes, sorcerers and rogues now share a vibe, for your convenient….less enthused feelings. Instinct-based, which intrigues me, and the core features are in fact really good. The two subclasses are either one that focuses on metamagic abilities, or one that is elemental based. I would play this for a long-running game, though it's not my favorite, and I can't say that for D&D sorcerer (except divine soul).

Warrior: Blade and Bone, and the recommended build is Agility but you could do a strength build. Fighter! One subclass is about doing damage and one is about the hope/fear mechanics core to the game that I have NOT talked much about. I will admit, the hybrid martials and Guardian are more interesting to me but you do have good battle knowledge.

Wizard: Codex and Splendor. Wizards can heal in this system; farewell, I will be doing nothing else (jk). Knowledge-based, and you can either go hardcore expertise in knowledge, or be a battle wizard.

Other scattered thoughts: healing is not as big a deal here; there is no pure cleric class! There is also no monk, warlock, or artificer. There is not a way to do monk as a weaponless class really though you might be able to flavor the glowing rings as a monk weapon and play a warrior. Wizard, meanwhile, with the right experiences and high finesse, would allow for some artificer flavor. Cleric and Warlock are the two tough ones and I will admit those are tricky; I feel like you'd have to multiclass (which you cannot do until level 5) between perhaps seraph and a caster class and you're still going to come off very paladin.

[deramin2]

I'm sure there are a lot of technical game design reasons why the Daggerheart team chose to use (or could justify) a D12-based system for its randomness generation, but I also love that the 12-sided Beacons have become so iconic to Critical Role internally and externally that they're leaning into it for their own game system and streaming service.

Critical Role was already becoming closely associated with the D12, and it's a visually distinct polyhedron from the D20 WotC built their iconography around. Like Pride Flags carrying on the tradition of stripes to visually unify them as a distinct vexillology group with a meaningful lineage, while bringing their own style and meanings to each design.

For Critical Role, the symbol has become meaningful to them as people, and to their fans. Especially in a business trajectory that has been a series of lightening in a bottle critical successes that no one could predict or recreate because they were just incredibly good luck on strategic but huge gambles. They really did just bet it all many times over on hope vs. fear and a 12-sided shape of potentiality. A message of lived experience mechanics woven into the medium.

One day Matt Mercer stared into a place of pure concept with thought of time and space, and pulled universes into existence for his friends to play in with him while rotating it around to try figuring out what it all means. And one of those concepts took the shape of a D12.

Imagine what things we could all make if we allowed ourselves to just make them.

[ilthit]

Alternatives to Dungeons & Dragons (2024) now that they are going all-in on gacha:

Dungeons & Dragons 5e (previous) + any number of compatible indie produced modules (Obvious Mimic Press is the one I've played)

Pathfinder 2e (basically the same game, tons of adventure available)

DC20 (if you like rules improvements; not a lot of modules available yet)

Shadowdark (if you want to party like it's 1979)

Obviously Daggerheart if you're a Critical Role fan; the setting is familiar and rules easy and you can play a mushroom (or their version of tiefling, dragonborn, etc)

Literally any older version of Dungeons & Dragons that still has playable adventures out there.

Have you REALLY played all the existing DnD campaigns and modules yet? Until you have, you don't need to buy new ones.

Roll20.net has automatic DnD character sheets so you can cancel that DnDBeyond subscription if you use it just for that. It has also recently bought up Demiplane, another similar platform, which is prettier and has many of the games mentioned here.

If you want to get more adventurous with rules and setting but still like fantasy combat and skill lists, there's Runequest (bronze age fantasy for you ancient Mesopotamia nerds), which I have been reading recently.

Other genres:

Pathfinder is working on an update on Starfinder, so you can play DnD-like rules for a space adventure.

Teatime Adventures is aD20 rules game for a cozy rural furry stories about pies and being kind to each other.

Call of Cthulhu for horror (check out Chaosium Inc's Youtube channel for actual plays, love those guys) and Pulp Cthulhu for extra cheese on top; there's even Regency Cthulhu if you want to try balancing a monster hunt with a husband hunt.

This is a deep cut but A Ghastly Affair is a game set in the long 1700s and the character classes are stereotypes of gothic romance fiction, and I know I have followers who are into that shit, available on DriveThruRPG (I can't find their original website anymore so get it while you can).

I have to mention Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades, a wuxia roleplaying game from Osprey Publishing, considering @minutia-r and I have written 480K of adventuring for it.

Also I must mention Vampire: The Masquerade, which is the game that got me to take on gamemastering for the first time. The Storyteller System they use is still my favourite TTRPG system. Very gritty modern supernatural setting, and the Core Rulebook even has a caveat saying "yeah there's problematic stuff, because problematic stuff is part of the real world, fuck the Nazis though" (paraphrased). Caveat, the Core Rulebook is kind of unintuitive.

All of the above are games that have rules with skill lists and kind of the same logical approach to playing as DnD (broadly speaking).

I would not go directly from DnD to Powered by the Apocalypse games like Candela Obscura, Girl by Moonlight, or Blades in the Dark, because their logic is very different and they are less about rules and more about genre; or rather, the rules define things that the above games leave to role-playing, and very little for anything else.

For example, in Candela Obscura you would do the same roll for punching a person and breaking through a door, and in Girl by Moonlight you have to roll to confess your true feelings. Girl by Moonlight is absolutely perfect for playing a magical girl TV show though. That's what it's for.

[charonarp]

Here's a little sneak peak on what to expect on the page talking about the Tu'la region!

(Aka, basically most of the information out of what's likely going to be 2-paged section since there's not a lotta info on Tu'la lol)

Totally not sharing this because I made art I'm proud off .>. (Edit: I just realized there's some information I forgot to put into this, so the final version will have a few more words :p It's just the characteristics on cursed Meif'was - aka people who were cursed into being Meif'was)

I've said it before (somewhere), and I'll say it again. I want this pdf to be as beginner friendly as possible, whether it be for both new players and new DMs.

I won't be adding detailed stuff from specific sources, or be blatantly taking things from copyrighted material and directly placing them in here (I think the closest thing that might be iffy is stuff I've taken from Daggerheart that's intended to help players and DMs create custom societies/communities, but hopefully it's okay since I'm only taking the name and basic descriptions they give rather than the entire card). - This feature can also be applied to existing regions to flesh them out if you want to take things into your own hands and explore regions that have not been explored yet in MCD/DR.

Now, if you read it, I'm sure some people might be a bit upset that there's no homebrewed Meif'wa race made from scratch. Here's the thing...there's a lot or races in D&D 5e (2014), and there's even a "Lineage" rage from Tasha's, which essentially allows you to make your own race.

And to be honest...not much is known about the characteristics of Meif'was outside of them looking and occasionally acting like cats? Besides that, I couldn't really find anything that could help them stand out as their own race.

So, instead of making it a whole thing... I've instead put down a suggestion that, since the players are the creators of their characters, that they should be able to use any race (within reason) to define their character's appearance and function. This will also be applied to the Lu'pine/werewolf race, in some degree.

Personally, I'm someone who tends to view races, or "species" as they're now called since the 2024 version, as a guideline. Simply put, if I want my character to look a little strange or have a unique feature from the norm, I'll take a race that suits it best and change it up.

Take Tieflings for example. Tieflings are depicted to be devil/demon-like, but in most cases, even in D&D's Forgotten Realms, demons and devils can look like a lot of things, and there's even some anthropomorphic entities that are classified as demons/devils. What's stopping you from playing a fox-like character with an infernal heritage? Or someone who looks like a basic human but with infernal traits?

There's also the Owlin race, which is depicted to being an anthropomorphic owl that can be medium or small sized. I'm someone who likes to draw human faces, so what's stopping me from playing a human-looking guy with large bird-like wings?

I want this PDF to encourage creativity and out-of-the-box thinking. I've played with many players and GMs who are way too stiff with their creativity, mainly when it comes to character creation.

Sure, a human is meant to be generic, but what's stopping you from making them be more doll-like thematically? You're not changing the way they function, but you are changing the way they appear and behave. Systematically, this way of creativity is harmless.

There are subraces of all kinds, and all of them can't be covered entirely in official content. Another reason I'm not adding homebrew races or classes into this is not just because of balancing reasons, but because some DMs might not be open to homebrew, or some players might get nervous or uncomfortable with homebrew creations (like I am).

I do plan on making a page that'll be a kind of guide on how to "mix and match" certain things, though mainly in the terms of backgrounds. Did you know that, apparently, you can change your background feature to whatever feature you want if you're not happy with it? I DIDN'T UNTIL EARLIER THIS WEEK!

I'm also adding a few examples of homebrewed rules some games tend to have, since I'm sure some (or most) members of this community are not experienced in D&D 5e on a personal level. (Examples are bonus action healing potion, secret death saves, etc. I will be throwing in a personal rule I made for my games as an option.)

Anyways, enough of me rambling. Here's a closer shot of the Meif'wa guy I made! Was gonna make three to show range, but I got tired and I ended up liking him a lot -w- No name for him though... But I might just keep it that way for fun lol

Hydrate!

[infinitemachine]

Post-OGL Debacle D&D 5e Alternatives Round Up

After Wizards of the Coast screwed the pooch by trying to rescind the OGL several designers, youtubers, and TTRPG streamers decided to make their own D&D-adjacent games. Let's have a look at them! (These are not reviews, and I have not played or read many of these. Just an overview of the field for future reference. Please let me know if I've skipped any entries I should have included.)

Tales of the Valiant by Kobold Press is to D&D 5e as Pathfinder 1e was to D&D 3.5. It's basically the same experience as D&D, updated and tweaked, but recognizably still the same game. Like Paizo back in the day, Kobold Press is a highly rated third party D&D publisher, and this has a good chance of getting continued development and support. If you like 2014 5e but want some quality of life updates and don't want to support Wizards of the Coast, this is a great option for you. On the other hand, if you have the 2014 5e books and just want to keep playing them...no one's stopping you, and this may feel redundant. It's already available.

Draw Steel by MCDM is the RPG from Matthew Colville's company, announced very quickly after the OGL dooblydoo. This is not a 5e or D&D clone, but a new cinematic heroic fantasy RPG. While D&D is kind of locked into supporting several different directions and styles, Draw Steel purposefully eschews "zero-to-hero" character development and dungeon crawling. The characters start as powerful, competent heroes. If that's the style of play you want, this could be a good option! If you're interested in a steeper leveling experience or OSR rat-catching, maybe it's not the one? Draw Steel is still in development.

Daggerheart by Darrington Press is Critical Role's long-form fantasy RPG. Like Draw Steel, it is not a 5e clone, but an entirely new fantasy RPG system. Unlike Draw Steel (from what I've seen, correct me if I'm wrong) Daggerheart does not appear to require/support tactical miniature combat, so if that's your jam in D&D (and, honestly it kind of *is* for me) this may not scratch that itch. I wasn't really impressed with Candela Obscura, Darrington Press' previous RPG, but I'm still willing to give this a fair look when it's finished (if only to understand what's going on when the Critical Role team inevitably play it on stream). Daggerheart is still in development.

DC20 by The Dungeon Coach. Of the RPGs on this list this probably has my least favorite title, if only because it's based on a pun which itself requires knowledge of D&D mechanics to understand. I've heard the rules described as "5e and Pathfinder 2e's lovechild". The game itself seems to be a collection of often interesting homebrew rules; it's as if the author looked at each part of D&D, took it out, thought of something they liked better (maybe from PF2?), and replaced it with that. That means it could be a good game to try if you like D&D but want something a bit "more", or could be good resource for homebrew ideas to plug into your own "actual D&D" game. Available now.

Nimble by Nimble Co, like DC20, is an attempt to take the 5e rules and improve and streamline them, in a fairly modular way that would be easy to cross-pollinate into existing D&D games (according to the KS page, it's fully compatible with existing 5e adventure modules, monster books, and supplements). This one does seem a little more polished than DC20, at least in terms of production values. But ultimately, like DC20, whether you want to play the game as-is or how helpful as a resource it will be will depend on how much you like the adjustments to base-5e that they've made -- YMMV. Still in development.

Vagabond by Land of the Blind is an RPG by youtuber Indestructoboy (aka Taron Pounds). It appears to be more generally "D&D"-like rather than specifically 5e-like, if that makes sense. As such, it does advertise some compatibility with previous D&D editions, as well some more modern rules design ideas cross-pollinated from elsewhere (e.g., the monsters don't roll for attacks!). Like both DC20 and especially Nimble, it boasts a streamlined experience, particularly during combat. It's still in development.

[cringefaecompilation]

Okay ya know what I don’t get about this view I see all over is that a not insignificant amount of people (mostly reddit and twitter, etc.) are convinced Matt would engineer this campaign to end with the death of the gods to ‘stick it to Hasbro’ for the ogl.

This is a century old company that owns most of the most successful and enduring games and franchises that ever existed. It would not be sticking it to anyone for the WOTC specific gods to be gone from one actual play. And in fact, for several years BEFORE the ogl scandal they were using other monikers for them because the shows are now owned fully by Critical Role and I would imagine they haven’t wanted to owe them a fee for saying ‘Pelor’ on stream.

If they wanted to play Exandria in Daggerheart killing the pantheon would not be needed, there’s magic in that system that is not much different from DnD. It doesn’t require a rewrite.

Brennan Lee Mulligan and Aabria Iyengar played on an official Dungeons and Dragons VTT playtest. These people have been playing this game for decades before anything Wotc did was problematic and they’re not going to rage against the corporation that owns a game they love because fans want some kind of revolution that Hasbro would step over with their godzilla sized Monopoly man.

exactly!

and it’s also kind of scummy for another reason. it implies that the only reason that we’re getting any of this genuine debate is for the sake of spite, and that just feels intellectually dishonest to me.

[ultraflavour]

Some people see Daggerheart and Draw Steel as each being "just another Fantasy TTRPG trying to pick up 5E's scraps" but what I see is the resumption of an evolutionary design philosophy that started in the early 2010's but got unceremoniously trampled by the rise of 5th Edition and Pathfinder.

These were games like Dungeon World, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, and 13th Age, games that tried to marry the "Fantasy adventure" style that was prevalent at the time with a more narrative bent.

Before that, there was 4th Edition and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition, both with very strong opinions about what the post-3rd Edition fantasy landscape could look like. 4th Edition saw each character as having a suite of cool abilities that they weren't afraid of using, rather than just swinging a sword or saving their spell slots for the boss. Meanwhile, Warhammer imagined combat as being much more cinematic, with ups and downs that were decided mostly by the dice, rather than by being deliberately planted there by the GM.

4th Edition would get perceptually pushed to the side by Pathfinder, while the "Fail Forward" dice mechanic would evolve into the Powered by the Apocalypse system and Star Wars: Edge of the Empire.

(By the way, I don't know if there is intentionality behind the crossover between WFRP 3 and Apocalypse World's dice mechanics, or if that is just an example of convergent evolution.)

Then 5th Edition would come along and, thanks to the rise of Actual Play and Stranger Things, would become the dominant force that it is now. But those pre-5E games had a point, including 4th Edition. There are a lot of D&D players out there who want something beyond just swinging a sword at a goblin and hoping for a Crit, and rolling Perception checks.

For some people, those games are OSR or indie games on itch.io, and I'm not ruling those out. But those have also been well represented in the wake of 5E, while the more narrative, character-first side of the spectrum has mostly been represented by some combination of 5E and Pathfinder. That, I think, does a disservice to a genre that I've taken to calling "Character Fantasy" that really got going with games like Lancer (on the more combat-heavy side) and Fabula Ultima (on the more narrative side) as well as the upcoming Daggerheart and Draw Steel.

Anyways this is a bit of a rambling post, but I woke up with these thoughts and I knew I'd be thinking about them all day at work if I didn't get them down. The "Character Fantasy Renaissance" is something that I've been thinking about a lot, because I think it exists in the public consciousness but is having trouble being expressed. Mainly because most people think of 5E as being the dominant "Character-first Fantasy" game, which I think is actually a mistake, because it's kind of a bad one.

The games that follow the design patterns of 4E, the Fantasy Flight Narrative Dice games, and Powered by the Apocalypse are the ones that I think much more of as being part of the "Character Fantasy Renaissance" (not sold on the name yet). That's why I'm much more bullish on games like Daggerheart, Draw Steel, and others that are following in the footsteps of those early-2010s games without totally throwing out any semblance of complex conflict resolution mechanics (Read: combat systems, but not necessarily).

[josephkeller]

I don't know what it is, but something about reading the final version of the Knowledge Wizard really turned me around on Daggerheart. Not completely, because I've always loved like, 2/3 of it. But I haven't really been sold on the system as a vehicle for particular character types, particularly the Wizard. But now that I've seen the final product, including final art for cards, I'm really excited to get into a game.

That being said, something I'd like to see in the not-to-distant future is a major expansion of the initial domains. I know they're in the midst of testing and tuning the Fighter, as well as the Warlock and its new Dread domain, but I'd love each existing domain to get at least two more abilities per level.

Why? More options equals more better.

[tehjleck]

Hello there! I hope you don't mind me popping into your ask box. I see that you like D&D and Critical Role. I also like those things (though, I've only watched up to the Mighty Nein, and I'm much more familiar with D&D 5e, then 2nd edition... I also like Daggerheart which is a game the Critical Role team developed, I think? Something like that). But the reason I popped in is because I was browsing the atheist tag, and well... I'll be honest I'm hoping to help you reconsider your point of view or maybe even consider points you haven't heard or thought of before! If you're at all amiable to the idea. I know you said religion is a scam, and I can see why you'd say that because there are a lot of scammers out there. But I think if you really thought about it, you'd see that Jesus isn't a scammer and offers so much more to you than the world offers. Let me know. If you're not inclined to discussion, I won't bother you anymore. Just know that I believe Jesus loves you.

are you fucking serious? You think I haven't "thought about it"? Here's what I think...

Your fictional deity doesn't exist to "love" anyone... and if it did, it sure as fuck doesn't love the children that it's priests rape every fucking day. But you'll excuse that because that's people with free will, right? It's the rapist priests that are bad, not the supposedly all-knowing and all-poweful deity that has done nothing about it for centuries

What about all the children dying of starvation in war zones right now?

One side is praying to their fake god to kill their enemies

and the other side is praying to their fake god to save their lives...

wanna know what they have in common? They're both talking to themselves!

... and you... checking out the atheist tag - people who decidedly do not believe in your toxic fairytales - in hopes of converting them, right? Kind of like this ask you sent me, mentioning a common interest to try and establish a connection? Yeah... pretty fucking transparent to anyone with a functioning brain.

Fuck you and your fake god

[mindovermuses]

It's definitely important to remember this when it comes to religion, but I hope no one gets upset if Critical Role does do away with the current gods- and not because of any of the valid points made above.

It is 100% in their best interest as a company to at least consider doing away with as much overt intellectual property belonging to DnD right now and not just because they are going to release their own system in Daggerheart.

Wizards of the Coast (WotC) and Hasbro, who own DnD, are making A LOT of major (and somewhat questionable) changes to their systems that have many people very upset of late (it's a whole thing right now that's actually bringing a lot of innovation into the TTRPG business space that has been fully dominated by WotC to the point of putting smaller publishers out of business for years).

Critical Role has partnered with WotC in the past and was allowed to use some of their IP in the content made with them, but they had to carefully re-name and reword nearly all of the gods in their other books. But, I could 100% see the profits-over-everything-driven team running DnD right now causing trouble in the future for them if their partnership hasn't been extended. And, given that they haven't been promoting DnD Beyond since WotC bought it, well... we'll see what happens.

There's a very real possibility that Matt has prepared this campaign with a sort of 'eject if necessary' button he can press if the company decides they aren't going to promote DnD anymore (even if they keep playing 5e, just with a fully homebrewed world and pantheon). It's not even anything he'd have to tell the cast ahead of time because their legal team has already cleared their adjusted names for their non WotC approved source books.

Whether all, some, or none of the existing pantheon survive this campaign, just remember there are business decisions that Matt has to consider as well as just storytelling ones.

Sources: - Gods names: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-DnddGY0BQ - An Exandria Without Gods: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjXyqrmNM9o Short, incomplete list of questionable actions/plans by WotC: Firing nearly all of the original DnD staff, liberal use of AI in their new Player's Handbook (PHB) and intentions to add a lot more as they shift to mostly supporting only online play, wanting to add microtransactions into DnD, having to rollback removing access to books and content players had purchased on DnD Beyond to try and force them to use their new 2024 PHB, etc... - This channel has multiple videos that include details of the WotC drama: https://www.youtube.com/@TheCharacterSheet/videos

I think a huge problem I’m seeing in some attempts at meta with C3 is that there is a subset of viewers who do not understand the place, value, and meaning of real world religion. It breeds takes like “well throw the gods out! Who needs them! They caused characters and the world pain! Free Vax from the Raven Queen!”

I throw that last one in there because it is the most ridiculous yet frequent and is really the crux of the issue. Vax’s story is very much about faith and the importance of faith and devotion. If you place no value on that you’ll end up grossly misunderstanding the character and the nature of his tragedy.

I’m going to out myself as an atheist, but I think the issue with a lot of these takes are that they come from internet atheists who are either resentful of and hostile toward religion because of personal experiences or do not know any devout people in their lives who they respect and can empathize with. And while I am not trying to downplay the very real phenomenon of religious trauma, when healing from it it is crucial to realize that all spiritual traditions are not synonymous with the one that harmed you. I would really implore more people to explore why many good people find spiritual traditions and religion to be a source of solace, community, and meaning before writing off the idea wholesale as something only functioning as a means of power and control that people can be educated out of believing. I encourage you to branch out and here are some examples of things I’ve done to challenge my own judgement over the last ten years: read the writings of gay Catholics exploring the queerness of Jesus. Read some beautiful poetry written by a trans man who specializes in Anglican theology. Explore religious observances different from the ones you experienced and attend a Seder. Go if a coworker invites you to a celebration of Ganesh. Learn the significance of solstice celebrations because your coworker is officiating one for a Wiccan event. Break fast at sundown during Ramadan with in solidarity with your roommate.

Deciding that all fictional religion must be an allegory for a specific kind of toxic nationalistic prosperity gospel Christian cult found in America will only limit how you engage with both fiction and the real world. It took me a long time to get to this place about it and I hope I’ve put the spark of curiosity and not judgment into at least one person reading this.

[utilitycaster]

@notstinglesstoo replied to your post “The thing is, and I haven't gotten a chance to...”:

I saw someone not long ago say cr has always felt like a product to them vs D20 feeling organic and I protected my peace but I did want to ask them if they were brain dead

​Oh man I wanted to address this at length because I feel this. My posts have been centered, again, specifically on published journalists picking Daggerheart aprt critically and applauding themselves for doing so despite it being within a couple of hours of its release and therefore any analysis is necessarily going to be based on at best, a skim, when they just as frequently will claim D20 seasons/Kollok are flawless works of genius based on only a partial read, but man D20's got a fandom problem too. (and all of the following comes with the caveat of "I really enjoy D20, and Dropout, and while we're at it WBN and NADDPod which both are half D20 Intrepid Heroes cast, and think Brennan is a particularly brilliant GM, and also it's obvious that the D20 and CR casts are on great terms, and wish the fandom for D20 were more welcoming and enjoyable because I feel it wasn't like this when I first started watching, as a CR fan, in late 2019 and has since curdled into something really weird and bad.")

The first point is the obvious one: technically speaking these are both products. These are performers doing an art form; it is also a portion of how they make their money with which they can buy goods and services. Believing that art is inauthentic when the artist gets paid and acknowledges that is a thing that happens is a fucking libertarian position at best. Like cool, you think only people who are independently wealthy by other means can make art, because it's not real labor, my kid could paint that, etc etc.

The second point is also pretty obvious. I have pushed back pretty hard on the "uwu CR is just watching friends! it's like we're in their living room" mentality among the fandom, which has decreased, thankfully, but like...it did in fact start organically as a private home game, and they decided, when invited, to make it A Show For An Audience. D20 was created on purpose as a show for an audience. This doesn't make it bad or fake - reread the previous paragraph - but in terms of "this is an group of people who really played D&D in this world together even before the cameras were rolling," Critical Role literally is that, and D20 is not.

I think beyond that...my biggest issues with the D20 fandom are first, the level of discourse is abominable. The tag is almost always just shrieking praise and the most surface-level readings possible. I keep bringing up the "Capitalism is the BBEG" mug but it genuinely sums up so much of how I feel; people who want their existing beliefs fed to them as surface-level no-nuance takes. I mean capitalism is fucking terrible but I do not need every work I watch to have a character turn to the camera and say "capitalism is bad" to enjoy myself, and indeed it makes it harder due to the lack of subtlety and grace. For all D20 fans complain about how unhealthily parasocial CR fans can be (and some can be), I find that a lot of the most unhealthily parasocial "how dare they BETRAY my TRUST by having a ship I don't like or not speaking up about every single societal ill" ex-CR fans move over to D20 and then pull the exact same shit; it simply doesn't get called out. Every time D20 fans are like "we don't want to become the CR fandom" it's like "your toxic positivity and unhealthy parasocial behavior exceeds the HEIGHT of what I've seen in CR; the main difference is that CR started in 2015 when D&D was still shaking off the raging bigot dudebros and so in the early days it acquired more of those fans, whereas by the time D20 came around the landscape of who played D&D and watched Actual Play had shifted wildly, and you need to judge September 2018 D20 fans in parallel to September 2018 CR fans, not September 2015 CR fans."

I also feel, and I alluded to this in the post about journalism, and other people have said this better than I have, but the pedestal people have put D20 on does feel like a single...not even misstep, but just, difficult choice that doesn't capitulate to the loudest fans will bring a good chunk of that fandom crashing to the ground. And that includes the journalists. For all the fans of CR can still be obsessed with the cast to an unhealthy degree? The cast and company have put up pretty strong boundaries and have not budged. D20 hasn't, and I think the second they do - and I think it will be for their benefit as a company and a channel - a big chunk of their most vitriolic CR-hating portion of the fandom will viciously turn on them.

[utilitycaster]

(you don't need to publish this because a) it's not a question and b) I don't want that maybe you're getting attacked/vagueblogged over it) I just wanted to say, that I originally came to your blog because of your nuanced, deep and really really good Caleb meta and that Imogenfans are missing out big time. I think, if Im/odna fans wouldn't have acted the way they did and talented people hadn't stopped writing meta about them, at least I would have warmed up to the characters way more....

Hi anon,

I hope you don't mind me publishing it anyway just because it's a good opportunity to elaborate on a few rather fanwanky feelings in one brief-ish statement.

I don't really care if people vague me and I think people who don't like being vagued are valid, but people who don't like being vagued, whine about it, and then continue to vague others are, understandably, idiots making the situation worse. Most people who had issues with being vagued re: the above simply stopped writing meta, which is why there's not much of it. Also a lot of what people call vaguing is just meta that disagrees with theirs, to be honest. I mean I do vague, a lot, and I'm very good at it, but I've also written 100% good faith meta about things I was thinking about the narrative without consideration of other peoples' opinions and it was called vaguing because I used aggressive tactics like citing my sources.

I've covered the fact that Imogen was actually treated very similarly to Caleb with the key difference that people who wrote meta about Caleb were treated badly by his haters, whereas people who wrote meta about Imogen were treated badly by her then-supporters who are now mostly defending Ashton and Dorian because Imogen started saying things they don't like and don't want to address. I just want to reiterate that if someone ever says that The Male Characters Played By White Actors Never Receive Hate you should just block them and stop taking them seriously. The hate is obviously not motivated by bigotry against real people, typically (though some criticism of Veth was certainly misogynistic even though Sam is a man, for example) but they still did receive pretty intense hate. It is kind of telling, personally, re a certain lack of backbone that people will bring up the horrible things people said about Liam or Travis or Taliesin in their own defense and then turn around and willingly engage with the people making these accusations they clearly know to be false, but you know. Unsurprising.

I tried to write something longer that really dug into the outline of events but it really comes down to this: a lot of the direct harassment (not vagueing) of meta writers, especially with regards to Imogen or Laudna, occurred during episodes like...20-50 of this campaign, and I think those doing the harassment either thought this would somehow make meta writers go "oh my god you're so right about the thing that you said I should die for not agreeing with, I'm going to write meta for you now" or that this would shut them down but wouldn't make other meta writers say "oh this environment has become hostile", which obviously it would. Coupled with the fact that this is when a lot of meta writers realized the campaign pacing was fucked and the party wasn't clicking in the same way past ones had and it really turned into a case of high risk of unpleasantness for a not really worth it reward for many of the meta writers who were around in earlier campaigns, and that in TURN meant that it's harder to have a good conversation without having existing chats so it's a less pleasant place for new fans. Anyway uh. I think the lesson here is that those C2 meta writers ARE around for Midst and Candela Obscura so it's also kind of a waiting game in the event that there is a future campaign (and if not, they will still be here for Midst/Candela/Possibly Daggerheart or future EXUs); they're just not here to write about Imogen or Laudna because it's not worth the trouble.

[utilitycaster]

Do you think that D20 could run a Daggerheart campaign? Would the system work for the D20 format? Would you like to see some other actual play show/podcast try Daggerheart?

I don't see why they couldn't - Daggerheart is designed to exist in a similar space as D&D 5e and Pathfinder as a heroic fantasy game with a combat focus, skill checks, and class-based abilities. I would wait until it's out of open beta and published before going for it, but it's very much doable as either an Intrepid Heroes or Sidequest season.

I hope people use Daggerheart - it seems very promising and I've enjoyed watching The Menagerie - but I don't have strong feelings about D20 using it. I need to make the post I had been thinking about this morning before I had to leave as it will shed some more light on these thoughts. To put it briefly, I think journalists and people who don't get that people want to play heroic fantasy need to stop treating Darrington Press as some kind of juggernaut on par with Wizards of the Coast nor as some mind control world domination attempt by Critical Role; but at the same time Darrington Press does have a built-in group of people who will play it in actual play because it is Critical Role's publishing wing. I'd rather see D20 cast guest on CR for Daggerheart games and D20 use their channel to play lesser-known games, and smaller podcasts try out Daggerheart and perhaps get some name recognition/CR crossover.