Daggerheart, the Critical Role publisher’s answer to D&D, feels indistinct

polygon.com:

Darrington Press owes its position in the tabletop industry to the ubiquitous popularity of Dungeons & Dragons, the tabletop role-playing game equivalent to delivery pizza — inoffensive, widely available, and reliable in a pinch. Of late, the company behind actual play phenomenon Critical Role has tried to move beyond slinging cheap pies by releasing a tidy range of board games and, most recently, the cinematic-minded, magical-noir tabletop role-playing game Candela Obscura.

Its latest venture, Spenser Starke’s high fantasy RPG Daggerheart, walks back this exploration to offer a RPG that tastes very familiar to D&D with your eyes closed. Polygon grabbed an early look at Gen Con last week, spying the fresh ingredients and techniques Starke employs to construct a very simple pitch: D&D players deserve better pizza.

If you’ll allow me to stretch this metaphor a bit further, Daggerheart is not a calzone. While Starke and his team of designers have changed some of the composite parts — using a pair 12-sided dice instead of the conventional 20-sided die to resolve contests, for example — the result is still a fantasy melange setting where parties of adventurers undertake risks, fight foes, collect rewards, and level up. He told Polygon that 75% of Daggerheart’s design should feel familiar to players, a comforting crust to support palate-expanding flavors.

“I want to show people that there’s a whole world of games. So, through both Candela [Obscura] and Daggerheart, the goal from the beginning has been to say, ‘You can play any game that you want to, but I want you to know the options that you have,’” Starke said.

Laid out in the near-empty dining hall of an Indianapolis co-op, Starke excitedly shows off Daggerheart’s clever