I am surprised I am still excited for Daggerheart

[Elvish Lore]

I think, like @Kichwas, for a LOT of people, the advice here in Daggerheart is going to be the first time folks have seen great GM advice codified.

For all that apocalypse world and blades in the dark gets talked about on rpg discussion forums, 99% of D&D/casual gamers have never heard of either and have never encountered some of these player-facing, fiction-first ideas discussed so regularly by some of us.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If you sipped your latte in the same musky cafe as they did while listening to the same open-mic poetry, you got it. If not, you weren't cool enough.
- So I tended to bounce off most of those 90s 'look at how cool our idea is' games.

I've never felt so smug about essentially being called "cool" yet so insulted by the same in my life lol!

But I mean I sort of agree - I definitely got most of that advice back then, but even if you got it, a lot of the advice from back then just wasn't very good! There were a lot of bad ideas bouncing around, or poorly explained ones, or just tedious focus on dealing with (often imaginary) "problem players" and so on, some of which was so overdetailed it basically pathologized normal players.

And yeah, like both of what you're saying can be true - the advice in Daggerheart is generally excellent, even if a lot of it has been seen in PtbA/FitD-style games before (including Resistance-system games which are essentially the same thing). I think it's well-expressed here, and fundamentally it's pretty cool to see it outside of one of those games, because this isn't a PtbA game, it isn't player-driven to the extent those tend to be, even if it's more player-driven than D&D is by default. It's striking a new sort of balance that is a bit closer to trad than to PtbA-style, and I think will prove more accessible to trad-experienced players as a result (and to be clear, 5E is "trad" in this context).

 

[Kichwas]

For all that apocalypse world and blades in the dark gets talked about on rpg discussion forums, 99% of D&D/casual gamers have never heard of either and have never encountered some of these player-facing, fiction-first ideas discussed so regularly by some of us.

Just as long as Daggerheart doesn't end up in the '99% o' players ain't heard o' dat either' list in a few months.

It probably will... but it'd be nice if it didn't.

 

[Elvish Lore]

Just as long as Daggerheart doesn't end up in the '99% o' players ain't heard o' dat either' list in a few months.

It probably will... but it'd be nice if it didn't.

I agree and I'm not having any delusions here. Probably most people are going to read this game and reject it because it's so narrative forward and beyond the pale for them.

To be clear, my pessimism aside, I hope it's a hit, however people want to define that term.

But at least... at least... it'll sell well if only as critical role merchandise and more people will be exposed to the ideas.

I just hope it's not the Avatar Legends rpg where everyone bought because it was Last Airbender merch and no one actually plays the game. (I kid, I kid... there must be dozens who play... dozens...)

 

[Micah Sweet]

I agree and I'm not having any delusions here. Probably most people are going to read this game and reject it because it's so narrative forward and beyond the pale for them.

To be clear, my pessimism aside, I hope it's a hit, however people want to define that term.

But at least... at least... it'll sell well if only as critical role merchandise and more people will be exposed to the ideas.

I just hope it's not the Avatar Legends rpg where everyone bought because it was Last Airbender merch and no one actually plays the game. (I kid, I kid... there must be dozens who play... dozens...)

I admit I bought that game because I love AtLA and wanted more setting detail. Never had any intention of playing it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I just hope it's not the Avatar Legends rpg where everyone bought because it was Last Airbender merch and no one actually plays the game. (I kid, I kid... there must be dozens who play... dozens...)

It seems like most "Movie/TV IP merchandized" RPGs sell like absolute hot cakes then no-one actually plays them! Which I guess is kind of ideal for the people making them, because they can just keep churning them out! The only exception I can immediately think of is the Alien RPG, which seems to have a decent number of people playing it.

 

[Reynard]

It seems like most "Movie/TV IP merchandized" RPGs sell like absolute hot cakes then no-one actually plays them! Which I guess is kind of ideal for the people making them, because they can just keep churning them out! The only exception I can immediately think of is the Alien RPG, which seems to have a decent number of people playing it.

People play Star Wars games, too, in my experience. But I also think Star Wars is a better gaming universe than movie universe, so...

 

[overgeeked]

That's hard for me to answer because I've never read PbtA and only even heard of it in recent posts here.

Maybe the things I find so well stated and revolutionary are old news to many of you. I've been seeing some reviews that are making that point. In which case it's value is that this advice is still 'new advice' to people who are coming from either 'just D&D' or who like me come from independent games but put themselves in a circle a decade or so ago and are thus out of touch with the newest entries.

Gotcha. The GM Principles, GM Best Practices, Pitfalls to Avoid, hard and soft moves, GM Moves, Countdowns, and Thinking in Beats are all fairly standard in PbtA games...though some have different names in those systems.

Sorry. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. Finding a game that actually explains narrative structure to gamers is something of a holy grail for me. After reading a bit more of the GM section of Daggerheart I'm still on the lookout. There's a lot of great advice there, to be sure. Just not quite what I was looking for in that regard.

I took 20 years off from the hobby, and when I came back I went straight into Pathfinder 2E. If it came out after 2005, I missed it unless it was part of Pathfinder 1E's early books that I bought but didn't even read for 20 years.

They do cite a lot of inspirations and I've heard it stated that these take very heavily from some of the inspirations. Making the 'value add' here being that they mix them together well, and the added commentary they add which may or may not be of use to people who already know those inspirations.

I do know that back when I was active in exploring lots of small press games, in the 90s, none of them had good GMing or player advice even when they shifted into radically different kinds of play. Their phrasing was 'by and for the in crowd'. If you sipped your latte in the same musky cafe as they did while listening to the same open-mic poetry, you got it. If not, you weren't cool enough.

- So I tended to bounce off most of those 90s 'look at how cool our idea is' games.

Welcome back. Hope you're having fun.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

People play Star Wars games, too, in my experience. But I also think Star Wars is a better gaming universe than movie universe, so...

Yeah good point, though I will say, I don't think SW TTRPGs perform as well as one might expect them to given the practically 1:1 audience crossover and, as you say, the fact that the SW universe is one of the most "game-able" fictional universes, perhaps the most game-able one from a movie or TV show! I feel like both WotC and FFG kind of "fumbled the bag" as they say here, not that either did terribly, but I suspect that with more thoughtful and less grasping approaches, both could have done better.

As is, by far the best SW RPGs I've played remain WEG D6 (which not amazing-amazing but definitely a cut above WotC/FFG's approaches) and the surprisingly excellent Star Wars World PtbA hack (specifically a Dungeon World hack, as the title might indicate).

 

[Elvish Lore]

It seems like most "Movie/TV IP merchandized" RPGs sell like absolute hot cakes then no-one actually plays them! Which I guess is kind of ideal for the people making them, because they can just keep churning them out! The only exception I can immediately think of is the Alien RPG, which seems to have a decent number of people playing it.

I'm super curious if Sanderson's Cosmere rpg will be a mostly unplayed, merch-only purchase. I suspect it will be. But if it gets more people into the hobby, it's a win for all of us.