Daggerheart vs Dragonbane - which fantasy game fits your table?

Daggerheart hands you a stage. Dragonbane hands you a map. Both are fantasy games, both come in a box, both landed on shelves in the last few years and both are very good. But they want different things from your Friday night, and once you see that, the choice is not hard.

The short answer

Pick Daggerheart if you want a long, heroic campaign where your character grows from a nobody into a legend, where the story bends around the dice, and where the whole table shares in building the world. It is the game for groups who watch actual play and want that feeling at their own table.

Pick Dragonbane if you want to open a box on Friday and be playing by half past eight. It is fast, funny and dangerous, it comes with eleven adventures and a campaign already in it, and it never asks you to prepare more than you feel like preparing.

What these two games have in common

Both are fantasy with the familiar furniture: elves and dwarves, swords and spells, ruins with something living in them. Both come as a full box rather than a single book. Both were designed by people who clearly love Dungeons & Dragons and wanted something that ran faster at the table. And both reward a group that talks: neither game works well with players who only wake up when a fight starts.

Both also come from publishers with a story. Daggerheart is the first fully original roleplaying game from Darrington Press, the publishing arm of Critical Role, released in May 2025 with Spenser Starke as lead designer. Dragonbane is Free League's reimagining of Drakar och Demoner, the Swedish game that has been the country's Dungeons & Dragons since 1982; we told that story in From Drakar to Dragonbane.

Where they really differ

The dice. In Daggerheart you roll two twelve-sided dice at once, one for Hope and one for Fear, and add them together. Whether you succeed is only half the result. If the Hope die is higher, you gain a Hope token to power your abilities later; if the Fear die is higher, the game master gains Fear to make the world push back. Every roll moves the story, even the ones that succeed. Dragonbane goes the other way entirely: one d20, roll equal to or under your skill, done. A 1 is a dragon and something great happens; a 20 is a demon and something terrible does. Advantages and disadvantages are boons and banes, rolling two dice and keeping the better or the worse. It is the oldest trick in the hobby, and it still works.

The character. A Daggerheart character is built from cards: an ancestry card, a community card, a subclass card and a growing hand of domain cards with the abilities you have chosen. Levelling up means picking new cards, and your hand is, quite literally, who you are. Dragonbane gives you a kin, a profession and a sheet of skills rated one to eighteen. Ten professions, from fighter and mage to artisan and mariner. You improve by using skills and marking them, not by choosing from a menu. One character is a deck; the other is a list.

The fight. Daggerheart has no initiative. Play flows as a conversation, the game master acts when the dice hand them Fear or when the spotlight passes naturally, and combat feels like a scene rather than a turn order. Dragonbane uses initiative cards drawn from a deck, every round, and a fight is over quickly because damage is high and hit points are low. A dragon roll on an attack can end an enemy in one blow. So can a demon roll end you.

The world. Daggerheart does not ship a setting. It ships campaign frames: short outlines of a world and a premise, and the group fills in the rest together in session zero. That is a feature if your table likes building; it is a gap if you want to open the book and go. Dragonbane ships the Misty Vale, a map, standees, a battle mat, eleven adventures that chain into the Secret of the Dragon Emperor campaign, and a solo booklet for the evenings when nobody else can make it.

The tone. Daggerheart is earnest. It wants big emotions, character arcs, a hero who fails and stands up again. Dragonbane calls itself mirth and mayhem, and it means it: there are duck people on the cover, the humour is built in, and so is the body count. You can play Dragonbane seriously, but the game keeps winking.

What it feels like at the table

A Daggerheart evening has a rhythm of build and release. Hope piles up on the players' side, Fear on the game master's, and everyone can feel the pressure tilt before it breaks. Sessions run long and reward a group that comes back week after week, because the domain cards, the levels and the story all need room. If your group is four or five people who love talking in character, it sings.

A Dragonbane evening is quicker and rougher. You draw initiative, you roll under, someone rolls a demon at the worst moment and the table erupts. Adventures fit in one sitting. The rules stay out of the way, which means the game master's prep is mostly reading one short adventure and picking up the standees. It suits groups with irregular attendance, mixed experience, or a player who is twelve.

Neither game is hard to learn. Daggerheart takes a session to click because of the two-die logic and the cards; Dragonbane takes about twenty minutes.

What you actually need to buy

For Daggerheart, the Daggerheart Core Set is the whole game: the 366-page rulebook and the box of 279 cards. You will want two d12s in different colours; the official dice set is the easy answer, though any two distinguishable d12s work. The first expansion, Hope & Fear, arrived in August 2026 with four new classes, the Dread domain and four more campaign frames; nice to have, not needed to start.

For Dragonbane, the Dragonbane Core Set is the complete package: rulebook, adventures, solo booklet, map, cards, dice, standees, battle mat. If you would rather have a hardcover on the shelf, the Dragonbane Rulebook is the rules on their own, and the Bestiary adds monsters and new kin once you have played through the box. But the box is the place to begin.

Price is honest about the difference: Daggerheart costs more because there is more in it, and because it expects a longer commitment. Dragonbane is the cheaper night out.

Choose Daggerheart if ... Choose Dragonbane if ...

Choose Daggerheart if you play with the same group for months, you want characters with real arcs, you enjoy a session zero where the table invents the world, and you like a dice system that tells the story as much as it resolves it. It is also the right pick if your group came to the hobby through Critical Role and wants that texture without the weight of Dungeons & Dragons 5e; our Daggerheart vs Dungeons & Dragons 5e comparison covers that door.

Choose Dragonbane if your group is busy, changes from week to week, or includes someone new. Choose it if you like danger with a grin, if you want a campaign in the box rather than a blank page, if you play a lot of one-shots, or if you sometimes want to play alone. Choose it, too, if you are the game master and you are tired of preparing.

There is no third game hiding in this comparison. These two cover the ground between them: the long heroic story and the fast dangerous night. Decide which one your table is in the mood for.

Where to start at Netherbook

Read our Daggerheart starter guide or the Dragonbane starter guide before you buy; both walk through the first session. Our Daggerheart review goes deeper on the cards and the Duality Dice. All Free League titles, Dragonbane included, live in the Free League Publishing collection, and Daggerheart sits with the rest of Darrington Press in the Darrington Press & Critical Role collection.

And if you are still torn: buy Dragonbane for this Friday and Daggerheart for the winter. They are not competing for the same evening.