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Daggerheart: Hope & Fear
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 6, 2026
I have gone back and forth between whether I should give this a 4 or 5 star rating. I gave the core rulebook a 5 even though it was closer to 4.5 because I liked the mixture of systems and the mechanics that were designed to help enhance storytelling while still giving decent crunch. I also wanted to (and still do) support the nascent stages of a promising TTRPG. Where the core rules truly tripped me up was the sheer amount of grammatical and type errors that were in it. One or two areas in particular read as if they hadn't been proofread at all. In that respect, I feel Hope and Fear was much better put together, edited, proofread, etc., and I dove into it with optimism.
There were several things I truly adored about this book. The new classes are interesting and I look forward to digging into them. I cannot wait to build my Brawler Juggernaut as a bald, handlebar-mustached bare-knuckle boxing giant with a heart of gold. I also think treating things like vampirism and lycanthropy and undeath as Transformations is a nice touch. I'm already yanking the Undead transformation for a Halloween one-shot that I'll be running for family this year. And, in general, I enjoyed the additional environments and additional equipment.
After this point I go into some decent details about specific Adversaries and Campaign Frames. Please only proceed if you don't mind being a little spoiled on the content.
The places where I felt most conflicted re: this book were in the Adversary and Campaign Frame sections. Let's address the Adversaries first. I love that we are getting more adversary options, and I really enjoy some of the fun development and twists on items. Designing the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as different types of Adversaries is good design. It allows all four of them to show up individually or in a combined fight and feel different because using different types changes their style. I also enjoy interesting design directions like what they've done with Redcaps. Different types of enemies (like with the Horsemen) gives a variety of flavors for building a plethora of encounters, but also the decision to incorporate candle wax into their hats gives a unique visual design and adds to their sense of depravity. And having additional adversaries, like what is essentially a candlewax golem, that fit in with that visual design incites all sorts of imaginative ideas for me.
What I am less enthused about with Adversaries is the apparent building of referential enemies for seemingly no reason but to be referential. There is an enemy that is essentially the white rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail in here. It's an obvious reference that's nailed harder by having a feature called "Run Away!". I don't know why it's there. It's not part of some suite of Monty Python themed enemies, nor is it clearly designed for one of the new Campaign Frames on offer. It's just there. There's another enemy that's clearly a Nazgul riding a Fell beast. Again, not part of some suite of themed enemies or for a new campaign frame. Just a Nazgul, but in Daggerheart.
There were several other enemies that were overt references (or carried overt references such as a feature called "Get Over Here!"; an homage to Mortal Kombat's Scorpion, though the Adversary was not), and I simply did not care for those that existed for the sake of being references. That being said, I do feel bad about them not being able to use some iconic D&D monsters due to IP reasons and whatnot. They essentially had to remake beholders, mimics, and displacer beasts for their own game, and I don't actually mind that. Some of the additional mechanics (such as spending a Fear to make another item in the room a mimic) are well-designed and I do like them.
Now to the Campaign Frames. I am stoked to toy with the hexcrawl rules of Journey to Horizon and live my own proto-LotR adventure. And my gosh am I ready to make the 2004 Van Helsing movie into a monster hunting campaign in Dark Heart of Andaluria. I am particularly fond of the design behind Dark Heart of Andaluria. I love the Castlevania vibes and the Spanish-bend also reminds me of the vibe behind the Blasphemous video game. It appears to be the logical follow-up to the Candela Obscura system, turning the investigators into full-on investigative monster hunters. And I am ready for it.
The other two Campaign Frames, however, I am less thrilled about. Castle High could be fun. Thinking about the islands in the sky and everything is very Skyward Sword / Tears of the Kingdom vibes. But so much of it is very clearly Harry Potter inspired. Wizard school, four houses each with a different headmaster/mistress, each house tends to draw people with certain characteristics or qualities, etc. Like, it's undeniable. Yet HP is not listed in the book as one of the touchstones for the Frame. I understand that there are problems surrounding the author and, by extension, the art, but I find it incredibly disingenuous to not credit what was an obvious influence in the design.
Now to something less political, but perhaps also controversial: Reign of the Weredragon. I read the brief for this and immediately thought "Oh, they made Curse of Strahd (CoS), but featuring a lycanthrope rather than a vampire." I didn't realize how right I would be. And this is also where we run headlong again into my earlier complaint of "oh they just made _____, but made it Daggerheart." Firstly, the art is so clearly a rip-off of Sleeping Beauty. Same purples and greens of the dragon Maleficent. The initial splash page even has the craggy, briar-covered environment where Phillip fights the dragon. Additionally, they made the villain a faun so that they could retain the tall, horned silhouette in illustrations.
And back to the CoS references. The Tarokka reading in CoS is iconic. And it involves revealing the location of 5 things. I'll spare the exact details, but suffice to say it's: an item carrying information about Strahd, an offensive weapon, a protective amulet, the location of an ally that will aid in the fight against Strahd, and where you can find Strahd (the final encounter location). Reign of the Weredragon talks a lot about the stars and reading constellations, and there is a star reading to reveal the heroes' destinies. And guess what it reveals: a Weredragon secret, an offensive weapon, a defensive item, an ally, and the final encounter location. It's literally a slightly different mechanic to do the same thing. But arguably worse. Not only is it ripped straight from CoS, it's also possible to NOT get the iconic weapon that is particularly effective against the Weredragon. There are options to just get another offensive weapon that is pretty darn good. The same goes for each of the other items revealed. It's a mechanic yanked wholesale from elsewhere, but somehow made worse.
I recognize I am rambling a bit at this point, but it just gets me heated. I will use many, many things in this book, but there are too many things of which you could say "Oh it's this, but for Daggerheart". I don't mind being inspired by things. Inspiration and borrowing/stealing of ideas is how things continue to get made and evolve. My homebrew setting has been described as "Narnia but Steampunk with a hint of The Wind in the Willows" and it's not wrong. But there is a fine line between saying "X is like Y" and "X is Y". Several items in this book tiptoed that line, and too many fell into that latter category.
There were several things I truly adored about this book. The new classes are interesting and I look forward to digging into them. I cannot wait to build my Brawler Juggernaut as a bald, handlebar-mustached bare-knuckle boxing giant with a heart of gold. I also think treating things like vampirism and lycanthropy and undeath as Transformations is a nice touch. I'm already yanking the Undead transformation for a Halloween one-shot that I'll be running for family this year. And, in general, I enjoyed the additional environments and additional equipment.
After this point I go into some decent details about specific Adversaries and Campaign Frames. Please only proceed if you don't mind being a little spoiled on the content.
The places where I felt most conflicted re: this book were in the Adversary and Campaign Frame sections. Let's address the Adversaries first. I love that we are getting more adversary options, and I really enjoy some of the fun development and twists on items. Designing the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as different types of Adversaries is good design. It allows all four of them to show up individually or in a combined fight and feel different because using different types changes their style. I also enjoy interesting design directions like what they've done with Redcaps. Different types of enemies (like with the Horsemen) gives a variety of flavors for building a plethora of encounters, but also the decision to incorporate candle wax into their hats gives a unique visual design and adds to their sense of depravity. And having additional adversaries, like what is essentially a candlewax golem, that fit in with that visual design incites all sorts of imaginative ideas for me.
What I am less enthused about with Adversaries is the apparent building of referential enemies for seemingly no reason but to be referential. There is an enemy that is essentially the white rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail in here. It's an obvious reference that's nailed harder by having a feature called "Run Away!". I don't know why it's there. It's not part of some suite of Monty Python themed enemies, nor is it clearly designed for one of the new Campaign Frames on offer. It's just there. There's another enemy that's clearly a Nazgul riding a Fell beast. Again, not part of some suite of themed enemies or for a new campaign frame. Just a Nazgul, but in Daggerheart.
There were several other enemies that were overt references (or carried overt references such as a feature called "Get Over Here!"; an homage to Mortal Kombat's Scorpion, though the Adversary was not), and I simply did not care for those that existed for the sake of being references. That being said, I do feel bad about them not being able to use some iconic D&D monsters due to IP reasons and whatnot. They essentially had to remake beholders, mimics, and displacer beasts for their own game, and I don't actually mind that. Some of the additional mechanics (such as spending a Fear to make another item in the room a mimic) are well-designed and I do like them.
Now to the Campaign Frames. I am stoked to toy with the hexcrawl rules of Journey to Horizon and live my own proto-LotR adventure. And my gosh am I ready to make the 2004 Van Helsing movie into a monster hunting campaign in Dark Heart of Andaluria. I am particularly fond of the design behind Dark Heart of Andaluria. I love the Castlevania vibes and the Spanish-bend also reminds me of the vibe behind the Blasphemous video game. It appears to be the logical follow-up to the Candela Obscura system, turning the investigators into full-on investigative monster hunters. And I am ready for it.
The other two Campaign Frames, however, I am less thrilled about. Castle High could be fun. Thinking about the islands in the sky and everything is very Skyward Sword / Tears of the Kingdom vibes. But so much of it is very clearly Harry Potter inspired. Wizard school, four houses each with a different headmaster/mistress, each house tends to draw people with certain characteristics or qualities, etc. Like, it's undeniable. Yet HP is not listed in the book as one of the touchstones for the Frame. I understand that there are problems surrounding the author and, by extension, the art, but I find it incredibly disingenuous to not credit what was an obvious influence in the design.
Now to something less political, but perhaps also controversial: Reign of the Weredragon. I read the brief for this and immediately thought "Oh, they made Curse of Strahd (CoS), but featuring a lycanthrope rather than a vampire." I didn't realize how right I would be. And this is also where we run headlong again into my earlier complaint of "oh they just made _____, but made it Daggerheart." Firstly, the art is so clearly a rip-off of Sleeping Beauty. Same purples and greens of the dragon Maleficent. The initial splash page even has the craggy, briar-covered environment where Phillip fights the dragon. Additionally, they made the villain a faun so that they could retain the tall, horned silhouette in illustrations.
And back to the CoS references. The Tarokka reading in CoS is iconic. And it involves revealing the location of 5 things. I'll spare the exact details, but suffice to say it's: an item carrying information about Strahd, an offensive weapon, a protective amulet, the location of an ally that will aid in the fight against Strahd, and where you can find Strahd (the final encounter location). Reign of the Weredragon talks a lot about the stars and reading constellations, and there is a star reading to reveal the heroes' destinies. And guess what it reveals: a Weredragon secret, an offensive weapon, a defensive item, an ally, and the final encounter location. It's literally a slightly different mechanic to do the same thing. But arguably worse. Not only is it ripped straight from CoS, it's also possible to NOT get the iconic weapon that is particularly effective against the Weredragon. There are options to just get another offensive weapon that is pretty darn good. The same goes for each of the other items revealed. It's a mechanic yanked wholesale from elsewhere, but somehow made worse.
I recognize I am rambling a bit at this point, but it just gets me heated. I will use many, many things in this book, but there are too many things of which you could say "Oh it's this, but for Daggerheart". I don't mind being inspired by things. Inspiration and borrowing/stealing of ideas is how things continue to get made and evolve. My homebrew setting has been described as "Narnia but Steampunk with a hint of The Wind in the Willows" and it's not wrong. But there is a fine line between saying "X is like Y" and "X is Y". Several items in this book tiptoed that line, and too many fell into that latter category.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Received my copy directly from the publisher through a preorder.
Pros:
- I really like the new transformation mechanics to change your characters in vampires, werewolves, and more.
- The new equipment section is excellent: so many new (literally hundreds) of items and consumables to give out as loot, plus many new weapons and armor.
- New monsters, so many new monsters! Sure, some are just kind of filler mundane animals, but most are quite interesting and creative. We get almost as many monsters here as we got in the core book - very generous, and of course gorgeously illustrated.
- New environments and encounters! Also so many of them! Some of them are a little over-written in my opinion, but most are really quite good. The ocean voyage and the dungeon environments in particular are a very interesting way to do these in a more narrative game like Daggerheart.
- Two of the new campaign frames are really quite good in my opinion: Dark Heart of Andaluria (think Witcher meets Bloodborne meets Van Helsing and Berserk) and Journey to Horizon (Fallout meets Zelda meets Wheel of Time or Malazan - trust me, it makes sense). The additional new mechanics for them (in appendices and elsewhere) are also neat.
- The new Dread Domain abilities are a really interesting way to engage with the Fear and Stress mechanics. The additional new mechanics for them (in appendices and elsewhere) are also neat.
- The art is gorgeous throughout and is fully made by human artists. There are also new nice maps and helpful handouts for players.
Cons:
- The new ancestries (races) are boring. They are reskins of D&D races like Aasimar, various Genasi, and Gnomes. That's it. Also some of them are markedly better in mechanical terms than others. I'm sorry but I find Daggerheart ancestries in the core book to be pretty boring too and Hope & Fear does not improve on them.
- New communities are also boring. There's one that lets you take aspects of communities of other party members - that one's neat. The rest I found were uninspiring.
- Two of the campaign frames were really not my cup of tea. One was a very Harry Potter-coded Castle High setting (only set in a fantasy world with both magic and modern technology) and the other was Reign of the Weredragon (very classic Disney cartoons and fairy tales coded). Neither were as interesting as they could be and neither had much in the ways of new mechanics or systems. Reign of the Weredragon at least has a neat way to randomly generate a bunch of important plot points for the campaign like you would do with the Tarokka Deck reading in the very popular Curse of Strahd campaign for D&D (no surprise since one of the authors of the Curse of Strahd is also the credit author for Reign of the Weredragon).
All in all though, I think we get a ton of new materials here for both players and GMs, plus the new cards (very pretty and handy), handouts, and tear-away pads for GMs to use for encounter building. This is great value for the money despite some deficiencies.
Pros:
- I really like the new transformation mechanics to change your characters in vampires, werewolves, and more.
- The new equipment section is excellent: so many new (literally hundreds) of items and consumables to give out as loot, plus many new weapons and armor.
- New monsters, so many new monsters! Sure, some are just kind of filler mundane animals, but most are quite interesting and creative. We get almost as many monsters here as we got in the core book - very generous, and of course gorgeously illustrated.
- New environments and encounters! Also so many of them! Some of them are a little over-written in my opinion, but most are really quite good. The ocean voyage and the dungeon environments in particular are a very interesting way to do these in a more narrative game like Daggerheart.
- Two of the new campaign frames are really quite good in my opinion: Dark Heart of Andaluria (think Witcher meets Bloodborne meets Van Helsing and Berserk) and Journey to Horizon (Fallout meets Zelda meets Wheel of Time or Malazan - trust me, it makes sense). The additional new mechanics for them (in appendices and elsewhere) are also neat.
- The new Dread Domain abilities are a really interesting way to engage with the Fear and Stress mechanics. The additional new mechanics for them (in appendices and elsewhere) are also neat.
- The art is gorgeous throughout and is fully made by human artists. There are also new nice maps and helpful handouts for players.
Cons:
- The new ancestries (races) are boring. They are reskins of D&D races like Aasimar, various Genasi, and Gnomes. That's it. Also some of them are markedly better in mechanical terms than others. I'm sorry but I find Daggerheart ancestries in the core book to be pretty boring too and Hope & Fear does not improve on them.
- New communities are also boring. There's one that lets you take aspects of communities of other party members - that one's neat. The rest I found were uninspiring.
- Two of the campaign frames were really not my cup of tea. One was a very Harry Potter-coded Castle High setting (only set in a fantasy world with both magic and modern technology) and the other was Reign of the Weredragon (very classic Disney cartoons and fairy tales coded). Neither were as interesting as they could be and neither had much in the ways of new mechanics or systems. Reign of the Weredragon at least has a neat way to randomly generate a bunch of important plot points for the campaign like you would do with the Tarokka Deck reading in the very popular Curse of Strahd campaign for D&D (no surprise since one of the authors of the Curse of Strahd is also the credit author for Reign of the Weredragon).
All in all though, I think we get a ton of new materials here for both players and GMs, plus the new cards (very pretty and handy), handouts, and tear-away pads for GMs to use for encounter building. This is great value for the money despite some deficiencies.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Genial la primera expansión de Daggerheart, aunque uno se queda con ganas de más (de ahi el 4). A nivel práctico los Ambientes y Adversarios me parece que es la parte de más utilidad, porque no solo hay una variedad muy amplia, sino que te da muchísimos ejemplos de cómo usar las herramientas del juego para plantear conceptos interesantes.
Las clases nuevas y nuevas opciones de personaje expanden bastante las posibilidades de crear personajes, y me han dado unas cuantas ideas para algunas adaptaciones divertidas.
Pero la verdad es que la palma se la llevan los marcos de campaña. Todos me han sorprendido y me han dado ganas de jugarlos. Incluso un par que con la información previa no terminaban de llamarme al leerlos me han parecido que son un caldo de cultivos de historias muy divertidas.
Parte de la gracia del sistema de juego es que tienes la sensación de que no es muy complicado hacerlo tuyo y crear tus propios mundos de juego. Y todo lo que incluye este libro aumenta las posibles combinaciones y opciones una barbaridad.
Y aun así, te quedas con ganas de más. No es un libro muy extenso, y había margen para hincharlo un poquito más, tras un año de espera. Pero como parece que van a empezar a coger ritmo con las publicaciones tendremos material extra en el horizonte para una temporada.
Comentar que el libro lo adquirí en la preventa que hizo la editorial a primeros de año. Oficialmente parece que no sale hasta el día 20 pero yo ya hace varias semanas que lo recibí.(Me ha salido un mensaje de advertencia por reseñar antes de la fecha oficial de salida, me ha parecido curioso). La edición física es impresionante, y todo el contenido de la edición especial es una pasada. Dados, pantalla, cartas, el ábaco...
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
BIG fan of the dread domain so far. Adds a lot of grim and dark extra bits to the game which are my favourite! Vampires & werewolves wins me over every time.
One of the campaign settings is inspired by Bloodborne, Vampire Hunter D, Castlevania & The Witcher which is like… perfect…to me.
Added adversaries are so sick and the art is amazing as expected. Warlock and Witch getting added is also hype to me.
One of the campaign settings is inspired by Bloodborne, Vampire Hunter D, Castlevania & The Witcher which is like… perfect…to me.
Added adversaries are so sick and the art is amazing as expected. Warlock and Witch getting added is also hype to me.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Disappointingly thin, though that may very well be the norm for such extensions.
There are a few things I dislike and will certainly remove/alter in my own games, but the building blocks for some very interesting ideas are here, and you can't fault the additional items/armour/weapons that are provided.
Also the name sucks. 'Hope & Fear' is not a mechanic that is new or exceedingly relevant to this book in particular. The title should have had something to do with 'dread,' given that is the only new domain provided.
There are a few things I dislike and will certainly remove/alter in my own games, but the building blocks for some very interesting ideas are here, and you can't fault the additional items/armour/weapons that are provided.
Also the name sucks. 'Hope & Fear' is not a mechanic that is new or exceedingly relevant to this book in particular. The title should have had something to do with 'dread,' given that is the only new domain provided.
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