“Hope Dies Last” – New Details on Cyberpunk and Space Opera

Hope, Fear, and Gold disappear, characters can literally sell themselves to the system, and alien planets are created collaboratively at the table: New details about Hope Dies Last reveal that its announced Campaign Frames will make far more substantial changes to Daggerheart’s rules than previously apparent.

We already reported on the unusual project by Infinite Citadel and Michael R. Underwood here at Daggerhome on August 6. Hope Dies Last includes three Campaign Frames spanning Heroic Fantasy, Cyberpunk, and Space Opera, as well as The Mechanical Nexus, an additional book containing rules and tools designed for use across different settings. A detailed designer Q&A with Matt Best now reveals more about just how differently these worlds are intended to play.

One of the most intriguing is This Time, Nobody Dies. The Cyberpunk Frame reworks three of Daggerheart’s core resources at once: Hope, Fear, and Gold are replaced by a shared resource called CRED. Alongside it is FAME, which also serves as the upper limit for CRED.

The system takes its Cyberpunk premise all the way to a character’s potential end. Through a so-called Cashout Move, a character can ultimately leave the player’s control and become a GM-controlled NPC. Social success, power, and dependence on the system are therefore not merely narrative themes, but become a direct part of the game mechanics.

Shine Your Last also comes with its own dedicated tools. The Space Opera Frame will feature a Planet Builder, allowing the group to collaboratively create new planets and the conflicts taking place there. A mechanically supported Final Confrontation is also intended to give the genre’s climactic showdowns a framework of their own.

The three Campaign Frames are complemented by The Mechanical Nexus. This fourth book is intended to contain rules, Adversaries, and additional tools that can also be used beyond the individual settings.

It is becoming increasingly clear, then, that Hope Dies Last is not simply delivering three new settings for Daggerheart. The Cyberpunk and Space Opera Frames, at least, are designed to deliberately rework core elements of the system in order to represent their respective genres mechanically as well as narratively. That makes the project considerably more interesting than a straightforward collection of new Campaign Frames.

Hope Dies Last is currently in pre-launch on Gamefound. The crowdfunding campaign is scheduled to launch in fall 2026.

Source: Gamefound / Infinite Citadel – Designer Q&A with Matt Best
Project page: Hope Dies Last on Gamefound
Daggerhome: “Hope Dies Last” – Daggerheart Between Fantasy, Cyberpunk, and Space Opera