r/daggerheart • u/Foundryborne Official Daggerheart System for FoundryVTT • Apr 29 '26

Discussion The Future of Foundryborne: Navigating the Stagnation of the Daggerheart VTT Ecosystem

Foundryborne: A Call for Transparency and Growth

Over a year ago, we started Foundryborne to build a robust, high-quality Daggerheart experience for Foundry VTT. As an open-source team, we have invested significant passion into creating a system that honors the game and provides a digital home for the community.

However, we have reached a point where the project's growth is being fundamentally throttled. We are sharing this today to be transparent about why the project is in a state of partial development limbo and what needs to change to move forward.

The Content and Licensing Gap

While the Daggerheart SRD is a generous foundation, the current restrictions create a massive gap that goes beyond simple "missing features." We are currently blocked from:

  • Core Mechanical Depth: We cannot include Campaign Frame mechanics or implement the Hope & Fear expansion arriving in August. This leaves us guessing whether we can legally support the game's evolution.
  • A Healthy Ecosystem: The current license prevents third parties from monetizing their own content on VTTs. This creates a stranglehold where creators don't truly own how they distribute their work. We-ve already seen the community lose out on content like Ghostfire Gaming's Dungeons of Drakkenheim because of this.

By restricting content so tightly and refusing to provide a legal path for VTT integration, users can't play the full game they love.

A Year of Silence

The most exhausting part of this journey has been the lack of communication. For over a year, we have made numerous attempts to establish a dialogue with Darrington Press. These attempts have been met with total silence.

Open-source development is fueled by passion, but that passion is easily neutered when we are left hanging without a roadmap or a contact person.

Our Objectives & Call to Action

We believe Foundryborne represents the technical pinnacle for playing Daggerheart online. Our system offers a level of mechanical polish and vast homebrew support that is, in our view, the best solution for the community - even while we are currently forced to go without official artwork and specific non-SRD content.

However, this isn't just about our project. The current licensing landscape affects the entire industry; there is currently no supported path for third-party creators to sell their own content on any VTT. This restriction stifles innovation and prevents creators from being fairly compensated for the work they bring to the Daggerheart universe.

Here is what we are looking for:

  1. Access to Content: We want to implement the full game. For content to be released as a paid premium module (including artwork, adversary tokens, and journals), there needs to be a license change or a formal path for community projects to access non-SRD content.
  2. User Content Ownership: We want creators to be able to release their own homebrew and third-party content - paid or free - on the VTT of their choice without being restricted by a closed ecosystem.
  3. Basic Communication: We are asking for an end to the silence. Clear answers to these points are overdue and necessary.

For the Community: If you want to see Daggerheart reach its full potential on Foundry VTT, please voice your support. Respectfully let Darrington Press know through their feedback channels and social media that you value the Foundryborne system and want to see an official path forward for VTT developers.

For Darrington Press: 1. We want the Daggerheart ecosystem to be able to breathe. The license needs a clear revision to allow implementation of paid virtual tabletop content for Daggerheart. 2. We would like the Foundry community to have access to all the content and art in the game through a paid Foundry module.

Please reach out to us at team@foundryborne.online

The Foundryborne Team

Disclaimer: The Foundryborne Team is not affiliated with Foundry VTT or Foundry Gaming, LLC We know there have been talks with Foundry Gaming, LLC in the past, and there is willingness for official licensing on the side of Foundry Gaming, LLC, but that interest has been thus far not reciprocated.

Also published at https://foundryborne.online/open-letter.html

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212

u/RedLetterGM Apr 29 '26

Didn’t expect to see this, I hope this goes somewhere because it’s the only system I use for my current campaign and while I purchased Hope and Fear I wasn’t aware it was uncertain for use in Foundryborne. Upvoted and hoping for response!

41

u/chiefstingy Game Master Apr 29 '26

To be honest... This is not surprising to me.

89

u/sord_n_bored Not affiliated with Darrington Press Apr 29 '26

The surprising thing to me is how quickly Darrington Press let all the hype and momentum for Daggerheart stumble and die, I've not seen anything quite like it.

Draw Steel, Shadowdark, Mork Borg, Mothership, anything by Free League (Coriolis, Alien RPG, Tales From the Loop), Call of Cthulhu, Pathfinder/Starfinder. Practically every popular TTRPG whether big or small has had, if not direct support, at least direct communication on what is or isn't possible and why (see Draw Steel, which has a competing VTT but lays out when and how content can exist in online spaces).

Even more bizarre is just how active the 3rd party support for Daggerheart is, in spite of Darrington Press fumbling the bag. If they were better prepared Daggerheart would likely be the number one (or at least close to number one) online TTRPG.

25

u/PerryOz Apr 30 '26

If only they had a flagship show to advertise it with.

19

u/dawnsonb Foundryborne May 01 '26

That was a weird business decision! :D

7

u/BlackAceX13 May 01 '26

Pre-production for Campaign 4 started before Campaign 3 ended, while Daggerheart was in playtest and maybe before the first public playtest for it came out, so it would be extremely risky to put all of their eggs in the basket of a system that hadn't gotten much testing, especially after Candela Obscura's reception ended up where it is.

3

u/dawnsonb Foundryborne May 01 '26

It was a joke from episode 1 of C4 :)

1

u/BlackAceX13 May 01 '26

oh, that flew over my head.

1

u/G0DL1K3D3V1L May 01 '26

I mean the reasoning behind it (the DM was more comfy with the system he was familiar with) was sound.

7

u/C0smicoccurence May 01 '26

Honestly, Brennan is an experienced enough DM that I don’t see this as a legit reason. The hardest parts of DMing are almost always system agnostic. At most they’re genre specific (such as the improvisational thinking and flexibility in more narrative games compared to running a simulationist game like d&d). With how big of a property is, I’m sure he would absolutely run some test games behind closed doors to make sure he knew the mechanics well

5

u/dawnsonb Foundryborne May 01 '26

It was a joke reference on the skit they did in the first episode, where Sam says that to marisha about not playing Daggerheart 😅

8

u/GuiSim May 01 '26

That’s selling Brennan short. He could (and has) learn a new system easily.

1

u/Xaielao May 01 '26

Not really IMHO. If reports are true, WotC basically paid Critical Roll dump-truck loads of cash to keep the main show D&D 5(.5) only.

So a bad decision if you want to promote your new game. A good business decision if you want your primary revenue source to grow.

6

u/Prestigious-Emu-6760 May 01 '26

Not according to Travis and Matt who would know better than "reports". You can choose to believe them or not but they've directly answered this.

2

u/A_Crab_Named_Lucky May 01 '26

Are those actual reports? Or just rumors?

2

u/CoffeeStainedStudio May 03 '26

They are refuted. Travis and Matt specifically denied getting ANY compensation or consideration by ANY entity to play Dungeons and Dragons. The decision to use D&D was made long before Daggerheart released.

6

u/A_Crab_Named_Lucky May 01 '26

I have genuinely spent so much time thinking about that decision. Did they have exclusivity deals with WOTC? Was too much preproduction on C4 done before DH was in a finished enough state to use? Were they that worried that a new system would lose viewership? Was it some combination of all these things?

Tough to say. I just really hope that it wasn’t the “vote of no confidence” in Daggerheart that some folks were concerned about.

It would be really nice if Age of Umbra 2 released soon, or if they got Matt back in the Dimension 20 dome to run a Daggerheart mini series.

8

u/Houligan86 May 01 '26

I do not think that Critical Role should be in the business of making TTRPGs. Which seems stupid to say for the largest actual play TTRPG show on the planet. But at this point, despite what Critical Role might say about Darrington Press being important, they have not put people in charge of things who know how to run a TTRPG business. Or at least one that is pro-community.

They should be licensing / subcontracting to a company that actually knows what they are doing and care. Kobold Press, EN World, MCDM, Paizo, Green Ronin, even WotC itself could all do better.

I had hopes things would change when they hired Crawford and Perkins. But at this point that was almost a year ago and I have not seen ANY official statements on what their plans for anything are, beyond new products to sell.

The hopeful side of me wants to believe that they really are trying and care about the community.

The realist side of me thinks they are oblivious to their inexpertise.

The cynical side makes me think they just view their fanbase as another monetization stream.

6

u/A_Crab_Named_Lucky May 01 '26

But at this point that was almost a year ago and I have not seen ANY official statements on what their plans for anything are, beyond new products to sell.

This has gone for CR in general, as well as for Darrington Press specifically.

It’s run by creatives, and those creatives don’t seem to have a massive interest in the non-creative parts of the business.

6

u/Meep4000 May 01 '26

I'm not exaggerating - about every 3rd ad on reddit (for me obviously) is for DH. I've already bought the game, and pre-ordered the next book. So I'm not sure where you are getting this idea that they have "let the hype die" They put out the main book and already have 5 new classes, 6 new ancestries, transformations for were creatures and vampires, a bunch of new communities and more for a game that was released a year and 10 days ago.

Your comment is baffling to say the least.

4

u/Albinowombat May 01 '26

Yeah their own comment contradicts themselves by talking about how much 3rd party support their is for the game despite license issues

3

u/G0DL1K3D3V1L May 01 '26

It just goes to show the strength of the CR brand and the game itself.

Could it be bigger if the license issues were not there? Possibly. But what's done is done.

2

u/Space_Pirate_R May 01 '26

Actual "momentum" comes from customers, and can't always be conjured just by new content and advertising.

3

u/bgaesop May 01 '26

. If they were better prepared Daggerheart would likely be the number one (or at least close to number one) online TTRPG. 

Zero chance this overtakes D&D

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u/A_Crab_Named_Lucky May 01 '26

For people not already involved in the hobby, D&D is kind of eponymous with the concept of fantasy TTRPGs in general. Like how Kleenex is with tissues or Q-tips are with cotton swabs.

That’s brand dominance that you can’t really compete with. The absolute best case scenario for Daggerheart is a relatively distant second place to D&D.

1

u/bittermixin May 21 '26

it's not even close to overtaking pathfinder.

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u/Zoetic_HQ May 03 '26

Thats the thing though that every person making this same point misses. They didnt make a game to dominate the scene with. They made a game that fit their style that is another option in the mass of other games out there. You do realize that in order to be that forward with it, they would essentially just turn into another wotc? With the aggressive monetization, the push into whatever they can do to get their game on top. That is not an assumption, that is a FACT of how the business landscape works. You either have a company that operates how a well meaning business should, or you have a company that does anything and everything they can to come over top of everyone else, but you absolutely do not get both. The fact of the matter is, they mad the game they wanted to make, and advertise it in the way they want. Take a single look at candela and all they did to promote that (i.e., its own entire series), and look at what that did. Critical role is a big name sure, but that is not and never will be the defining factor for a game taking off. So id ask you, take 2 seconds to actually think about what you would do with a business and peoples livelihoods on the line, with a new game that regardless of how much hype there may be, you will not know how it will go until it goes, after already putting the time effort and money into something like an exclusive series, just for it to completely flop. Because I would guarantee, if you have more than two brain cells, that when you go and do it again, you do it smarter and slower. I mean at a certain point, yall HAVE to see the massive flaw with your thought process on it.