My partner wants to learn DnD, but here’s why we’re playing Daggerheart instead

To an outsider, Dungeons and Dragons sounds like a boundless realm of imagination, a place where anyone can be anything they please. Veterans, however, know that there is one huge distinction between RPGs and playground make-believe: the rules. Spells and classes come with distinct descriptions that tend to place walls around a player’s ideas.

“In our first DnD game, can I play as a necromancer Wizard who conjures dinosaurs?” My partner, a complete newcomer to tabletop RPGs, asked me this one day in the kitchen. We’d been talking for a long time about introducing him to my favorite pastime, and he’d been mulling over ideas for his debut character. I didn’t know how to tell him that, technically, what he was asking for wasn’t possible.

We’re yet to see a dinosaur necromancer on the official list of DnD classes. There also aren’t any DnD spells that sell this ultra-specific dream. Even if I could craft this character build using first-party books, my partner would have to play at a level so high that it would fly right past the realm of ‘beginner-friendly’. In my experience, level-two characters don’t get many chances to summon a CR 8 Tyrannosaurus Rex.

I can already hear the die-hard D&Ders chanting “Homebrew! Homebrew! Homebrew!”. That’s a route I’m reluctant to take, though. When someone is learning how to play Dungeons and Dragons, it’s safer to stick to the tried-and-tested sourcebooks. The best first impression of D&D is a balanced one (and, let’s be honest, the game’s overall encounter balance already hangs by a thread).

D&D, like many RPGs, does encourage you to break the rules in the name of fun. What Wizards of the Coast means is actually ‘bending’ those rules – re-flavoring them or tweaking them a tiny bit to suit your needs. To make my partner’s Jurassic World fantasies come true, I’d need to push the game’s foundation to a true breaking point.

Or I’d need to play a different RPG entirely.

I know that my partner’s desire to play D&D is largely down to brand visibility. Dungeons and Dragons is the Adobe Photoshop of the RPG world. It’s a genericization of every other TTRPG out there. My other half wants to roleplay; he’s not all that fussy about the system we use. It just so happens that he’s heard of D&D.

Enter Daggerheart, the new kid on the block of heroic fantasy games. Darrington Press’ recent RPG takes a fiction-first approach to roleplaying. Early on, its rulebook introduces ‘The Golden Rule’, its most crucial mantra:

“The most important rule of Daggerheart is to make the game your own”, it says. “The rules should never get in the way of the story you want to tell, the characters you want to play, or the adventures you want to have. As long as your group agrees, everything can be adjusted to fit your play style.”

In Daggerheart, you’re invited to re-skin every aspect of the game, as long as it doesn’t give your character new, ridiculously overpowered abilities. This is possible in D&D, but Daggerheart is a system specifically built around that ethos. That means its rules, while similar to D&D’s in many ways, are far more flexible for this purpose.

For example, let’s say I want to reflavor the spell Chain Lightning. Rather than a lightning storm that hops from person to person, I want this spell to represent my partner’s Wizard sending an army of raptors into battle to chomp on multiple enemies.

In fifth edition, I have to worry about DnD damage types. My raptors don’t deal lightning damage, so will I make the spell more or less effective by swapping to something more logical? Will I need to increase or decrease the damage die to account for this? In Daggerheart, you only need to worry about whether damage is physical or magical – two far more adjustable labels. For Daggerheart’s version of Chain Lightning, all I need to change is the name.

With Daggerheart, my partner still gets to experience what he thinks D&D is – a heroic fantasy roleplaying game with no limitations. He’ll still get to choose from a roster of classes and customize his build with subclasses, species, and spells. He still has the chance to explore a fantasy setting, with combat and exploration sprinkled in. In Daggerheart he can play his necromancy dinosaur dreams out, and I don’t have to do heaps of homework to make it possible.

Want to share your own experiences with Daggerheart? We’d love to hear about them in the Wargamer Discord. Or, if you’re determined to make a necromancy dinosaur Wizard of your own work in 5e, here are the DnD races and DnD 2024 backgrounds you’ll need to complete your build.