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PAX Unplugged 2024 was all about the next wave of innovations in tabletop gaming, with TTRPGs at the front of the charge. Probably the most anticipated game showcased at PAX U this year was Daggerheart, in part because Critical Role's own Matthew Mercer not only helped design it, but actually introduced it to an assembled crowd in Philadelphia. Along with his fellow creators and a Critter or two, Mercer was loquacious on what excited him most about the upcoming fantasy TTRPG and, and in particular, the contributions he made to the game itself.

But first, Mercer had to talk about the dice.

"First off," Mercer began, "I love to see the d12 getting some love. It's my favorite die, the dodecahedron. Those who followed me for [Critical Role] campaign two know I am a fan of the shape. It's such a beautiful shape in geometry, and so I love that we are in the era of the d12."

Alright, we get it Matt, you like the flying-saucer-shaped dice. Who doesn't? We admit there's a certain magic to the the shape and numbering, but the crowd would like to hear about the Mercer DNA that's coursing through Daggerheart.

Which sounds a lot worse than I meant it.

"My personal joy," Mercer told the crowd after being asked what excited him most about creating the game, "was going through with this team and [crafting] all the various class abilities and spells and basically going, 'This is cool, how can I make it cooler?' Those were fun. But my favorite contribution was the recall capability, the ability to use cards that aren't in your loadout and you can spend a little stress to swap it."

Sounds interesting, tell us more.

"There's nothing more frustrating in a game," Mercer said, "than if you have a lot of abilities at your disposal but you didn't prepare the one that would have been really helpful right now. You've got this one spell six levels ago that would have been perfect, and you didn't prepare it. ‘Well, damn.’ I wanted to implement a version of a system within the game that allowed you to circumvent that when those types of situations occur, which was really exciting."

Really exciting indeed, but a TTRPG is more than just the mechanics you use to play the game. In particular, a TTRPG often hinges on the lore that's crafted behind it, conveyed to the player in a setting book, a tome that frequent Dungeons & Dragons players will know intimately. Setting books are an important, but often dense, piece of playing a fantasy TTRPG, and with Daggerheart, Mercer & Co. were looking to improve on them.

"I love setting books," Mercer explains. "I've read many setting books, I've written many setting books. And there's a lot to be gleaned from them. But the more that you study it, both from community feedback and just from the history of [them] existing, it's not easy for a lot of people to grasp and run an entire setting book, let alone an entire campaign story."

"So," he continues, "we wanted to find out what parts were used the most from all these books across many TTRPGs that exist out there and present that in a very diegetic way. In a way that empowers you the reader to find the things that you're inspired by and use the whole thing, or use the parts that you really like, and connect it to media that you’re already inspired by. [The players] create something that's inspired by the things you like but that's also yours to create wholecloth. We're looking to the most core aspects of what makes a specific story interesting, and then building a style that you can kind of tailor the rest of your story on to and incorporate mechanics that will make it feel very unique in how you play it."

A new way to approach spells and more digestible lore sounds like a GM's dream, probably made dreamier by the fact that both have the Mercer stamp of approval on them. But interested players are going to have to keep that enthusiasm in check for just a little while - Daggerheart doesn't hit shelves until spring of 2025, though you can pre-order it right here.

And in the meantime, maybe beef up your d12 collection.

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Want to know more about Matt Mercer's Daggerheart campaign, Age of Umrbra? he was all too happy to talk about it at PAX Unplugged 2024, but be warned, the details are depressing.