Daggerheart, the much-anticipated TTRPG from the team behind Critical Role, launches on May 20

Daggerheart has had a fairly extensive public playtest process — one which we participated in by playing our own game! — and the already-thorough rules have received several revisions over the last year. For fans of the deep-but-simple card-based character building, the Hope and Fear mechanics that blend narrative-first gameplay with that of more traditional tabletop RPGs, or just the fine folks over at Darrington Press — whatever your reason, if you’ve been waiting to get your hands on their fantasy tabletop RPG, then you’re in luck — Daggerheart is now available for preorder, with a release date of May 20.

The game comes in one of two editions, which you can order now and which will arrive this spring: the $59.99 USD Core Set, or the $149.99 USD Limited Edition Core Set. Both sets include the nearly-300-page rulebook (which I will note you can freely peruse in playtest form right now from Daggerheart Nexus on Demiplane) and a box containing the 279 cards for character customization. These cards aren’t just a nice add-on, they’re crucial to gameplay — nearly everything, from your ancestry and species to your actual class abilities, are represented by cards (and you build up a little stockpile of them that you can swap in and out so you’re flexible but not overwhelmed by choice as you start growing in power). If all you want is the digital toolset, though, you can pre-order the book on Demiplane for just $34.99 (or $44.98 when bundled with PDFs from DriveThruRPG) — and be aware, that while physical pre-orders come with a PDF version, if you want to use Demiplane for character creation it’s a separate purchase.

The limited edition includes more goodies — a GM screen, a notepad full of character sheets ready to be filled in and used, alternate cover art on everything, a full set of polyhedral dice (because as a dice goblin you know you can’t have enough of them — though importantly this one includes two differently colored d12s for the Hope and Fear mechanic), a storage box to hold everything, and a bag of 102 acrylic crystal tokens that you can use to track… everything! We found that Daggerheart was a very token-happy game, so having a freely-available source of them at hand is nice.

Darrington Press is taking pre-orders for Daggerheart right now, and will be available on May 20.

Originally published September 19, 2024; updated February 10, 2025.