I played a game using the new Daggerheart system recently, and this is my review. Totally subjective, but that’s me.

I don’t think Daggerheart was ever meant to ‘replace’ DnD. And it won’t. But it’s a lot of fun. I played a short game (two sessions) with a group of friends I’ve played with before. I wasn’t the DM so this is my review as a player. If you don’t know much about Daggerheart then you’re exactly like I was, before I played the game. Luckily it’s quite simple to learn, especially if you’re a DnD veteran.

Did I just call myself a veteran? Yikes.

The premise is the same as any DnD game – you choose a race and a class, and you go on a quest/adventure/whatever-you-call-it with a party. The races and classes are similar to DnD with a few tweaks. I played a faun bard, and in Daggerheart you choose between being a musical bard or a wordsmith bard. I chose wordsmith, because I’m a sucker for being the chopsy figurehead of the party. I’m a big ol’ show off.

In Daggerheart, you get cards for your character that detail your abilities, and for each class there are three ‘stages’ (not to be confused with the general levelling up system, which works in a similar way to DnD). You start off on the lower stage, and as you level up you can choose to progress up the class stages, which gives you access to more abilities.

Levelling up generally is much simpler and quicker in Daggerheart. You choose a few things to buff, and that’s it. You can easily do a party level-up mid session, which is handy.

One of the big differences with Daggerheart is that for checks, instead of rolling a d20 you roll two d12s. You roll two different dice – this is important. One is your designated ‘hope’ die, and the other your ‘fear’ die. The total of the two dice is your score, but whichever die had the higher score determines whether you take a hope point (you can use these to do cool stuff) or you give a fear point to the DM (they use these to do not so cool stuff, from a player point of view…) Rolling two d12s makes crit fails much less likely, and it means you get more good rolls. A crit is any roll where the two dice have the same number. If you hate rolling low, this is a system you might enjoy.

Another Daggerheart difference is combat. Instead of rolling initiative, when combat begins, players each jump in and say what they would like to do, without any order. The DM gets to play when a player has a fear roll or fails at an attack, or when they use one of their fear points. This can work very well, but it could also work very badly…

Combat in Daggerheart does rely massively on having a good group of players who let each other speak, take personal responsibility for not hogging the action, and work together (and a DM who can keep track and prompt the party to allow quieter players a fair shot at the action). There is a fun tag team action players can take if they spend some hope points, to work in tandem on something. For example, two players might plan a double attack with some sort of collaborative element, and this feature allows it to all happen together. In DnD there isn’t really any provision for this, and any tag-teaming needs to take into consideration the initiative order. Combat becomes much more of a collaborative storytelling exercise.

All that said, I did miss the theatre of a DM saying “everyone roll initiative!” and the inevitable murmur of excitement/dread around the table.

And I suppose that sums up my experience of Daggerheart. The simplicity is great, it’s a very fun game and I would definitely play it again. But it won’t replace DnD for me. 5e is still my problematic fave. The Daggerheart game system does seem to presume previous DnD experience (which is completely understandable) but I wonder how a group completely new to TTRPGs would find it. Perhaps they would like it more, who knows?

My recommendation: give it a go and have fun.