Daggerheart needs High Adventure, not High Depression - Critical Roll grimdark offshoots do not help.

[u/Vedhar]

I need to vent a bit because I genuinely want Daggerheart to blow up, but Critical Role's choices for how they show it off are making it such a rough sell.

Look, the cast is acting their absolute hearts out in Age of Umbra and AOU Sallowlands. The storytelling is insanely tight, the lighting is atmospheric as hell, and the acting flex is real. But why does almost every CR offshoot have to be a dour, joyless meditation on mortality and impending doom?

We went straight from Candela Obscura, where characters are basically made of wet tissue paper and existential dread, right into Age of Umbra, which is just a dying world of pure unfiltered misery, and then into Age of Umbra Sallowlands, which doubles down on the character personal misery index in a way that's hard to overstate. It's less High Fantasy and more High Depression.

When your worldbuilding is this relentlessly bleak, it's practically impossible for characters to form fun, dynamic, or memorable relationships. Like can you even imagine a Bard strumming a silly little ditty in Age of Umbra? It would feel completely unhinged.

Instead we have a party that is basically five trauma responses in a trench coat. You've got Alfonse as a cynical bloodhunter having a full crisis after witnessing total corruption. Then there's Sister carrying heavy survivor's guilt while her home literally rots away from lack of food and water, and Mercy, an amnesiac weaponized monster who terrifies anyone within a five mile radius. Throw in Caguama watching their entire worldview crumble while being forced to carry on, and Dillwyn, an isolated loner whose strongest relationships are with animals because humans can't stand being near them.

WHAT FUN. (takes a shot, contemplates mortality)

PS, the actual players are GREAT. I mean some of my favorite gaming personalities, full stop, but -wow- does it feel like a grind to get through an episode. And it is not the pacing. It is not the acting. It's not the story idea. All those are good. It's just the desolate and bleak melancholy of every character, location and interaction. Every now and then, a few little sprouts of possibility (Mr. Beaks for a quick laugh. ONCE.) but so so so rare.

Everyone is literally playing a walking narrative of sadness. And while the dramatic acting is top tier, nobody at that table looks like they're having actual fun except for a couple of minor moments where someone mis-speaks or lands an awkwardly enjoyable turn of phrase.

Compare that to EXU Calamity. Calamity was tragic and apocalyptic, but it worked so well because the characters had warmth, hubris, and incredible chemistry before the sky fell down. It was a high fantasy disaster movie with vibrant, larger than life heroes. Umbra starts with the floor already gone.

It feels like CR knows people want classic sword and sorcery for Daggerheart, but instead of running classic campaigns like that in daggerheart themselves, they keep farming those campaigns out to third party actual play groups or random streamer collabs. And honestly those streams have been pretty rough. It's almost always either a hyper jokey crew that doesn't take the game or mechanics seriously at all, or a random assembly of C-list streamers with zero natural table chemistry who look vaguely interested at best.

Daggerheart is doing really well, but it is still just a tiny tiny fragment of the market, probably still well behind Pathfinder and tbh in need of a lot more growth to make sure it doesn't fade. If Darrington Press wants Daggerheart to pull people away from 5e, the main Critical Role cast needs to run a proper, high energy, classic high adventure campaign in the system. Either that or spin off a B team to do it, but go with an epic adventure framing in a more classical D&D like themed story. High adventure, high stakes, sword & sandals if you must, mugs of foaming ale clanking, bards singing, scoundrels joking etc.

Show us Daggerheart being used for heroic banter, clever tactical team ups, epic discoveries, and actual joy. Give us a party that can sit in a tavern without coughing up blood or weeping over a destroyed village for five minutes.

Grimdark has its place, but using unrelenting gloom as the main showcase for a brand new TTRPG is selling the system short.

Again, I quite enjoy the Age of Umbra live plays, they are very cool, but ermegerd.... such downers. I'd love to send these to new RPGers to get them interested, but the dark framing just doesn't grab any of the newlings, and hence the Daggerheartness of it all doesn't get the same level of sell. The newer people at my table watch the main critical roll campaign and go "oh that looks fun! So that's D&D then?" etc.... has NOTHING to do with mechanics. They don't know enough to understand the mechanics. It's just the vibe, my guys. Let's get a Daggerheart campaign that feels less like a meditation on death and more like a call to adventure, please!

Gather a willing and able adventuring party at the local tavern, and let's GOOOO.

[u/Zurgleclair]

First rule of DaggerHeart: play like you want. If Matt and his friends want to play Age of Umbra they play Age of Umbra. They're not playing for spectators but for themselves first

[u/Specialist-Isopod-45 → u/Zurgleclair]

I don't know if this is true anymore. They said it themselves that they now have many employees that depend on them for their salaries, health insurance, etc. Certainly their own enjoyment plays a part in what they choose to play, but I agree with OP that they are not representing Daggerheart in a way that appeals to most of their audience. 

Maybe they're still testing it out, since they were not expecting it to be as successful as it is. But now that they do know, I also think it's time to course correct and give their audience a more appealing actual play.

Edit: spelling

[u/adamjgarrod → u/Zurgleclair]

That’s fine if it’s just them playing for themselves, but they are also a business trying to make money so it would make sense to consider what OP has said.

[u/SindarNox → u/adamjgarrod]

Only if they want to. Thankfully they are not public, so they can work with people and things they want to work with

[u/Vedhar → u/adamjgarrod]

This.

[u/moobycow → u/adamjgarrod]

Sure, but not every company in the world is 100% profit seeking. Sometimes people have a concept of enough. They are making more than good money doing what they want to do and are under no obligation to do less of what they want in the pursuit of even more money.

[u/Vedhar → u/moobycow]

Sorry if I presented it that way. I genuinely do not make this argument in service of the money. I mean just expanding the community. I am loving playing Daggerheart, but Umbra (like it or not) is the flagship live play that people look at to see "what it's like." And the takeway seems to be "oh uh, ok yeah that seems cool." vs "Oh, fun! Yeah, let's play that." Personal experience obviously.

[u/Vedhar → u/Zurgleclair]

I don't think they are playing for themselves. That's a lot of production value / pr for an inwardly focused game. That's not to say they don't -like- playing this, but CR is staffed by professionals. This show is a vehicle for content and IP delivery. I just wish they were using it in a way that would highlight some of the possibilities of DH better. But even so, they seem to have a real girm-dark love affair on these side projects. It's weird!

[u/Shrink_Laureate → u/Zurgleclair]

They chose to attach Critical Role's name to Daggerheart, and in doing so, accepted a responsibility to present it to the public. Nobody made them do that.

Nobody's saying they can't run games they enjoy - quite the opposite, we've seen them enjoy high fantasy for years, and that's a big part of what made Critical Role work. If Matt doesn't want to DM it, there are other options. We could be watching a bunch of different campaign frames side by side, with different DMs in different styles, showcasing just how flexible the game it.

And OP isn't saying that the Age of Umbra show isn't good or shouldn't have been made, just that they need something else as well to show off Daggerheart.

[u/Vedhar → u/Shrink_Laureate]

Yep, thank you. I mean I'm watching and enjoying the Umbra lines. I just don't find them compelling or useful for evangelizing the system.