Daggerheart Discussion

[Agamon]

I’m a little confused on the argument that daggerheart can’t create adventures as it would limit the gm? They just sold us on drakennheim being converted to daggerheart from 5e
If daggerheart came out with its version of keep on the borderlands or if i converted it it’s not that difficult. The gm builds fear based on poor rolling etc. there isn’t any nuance to it

It's being converted by Mike Underwood, so I'll be incredibly surprised if it's a traditional adventure. I am very interested in seeing what they do with the setting though.

 

[Agamon]

I think it is important to remember that while "play to find out" is the state playstyle intended for Daggerheart, and advice is given to the GM to "hold on lightly" and all that, there aren't actually any mechanics in Daggerheart that enforce this. You could play DH as linearly as any 5E game, as far as the mechanics are concerned, and use Hope and Fear for results for the metacurrency alone and it would work fine. Now, I would not run it that way, but I also don't like running 5E or any RPG that way. But, again, DH does not actually enforce its stated preferred play style with mechanics.

Having mechanics tied to what is stated in the book doesn't really mean much. People play D&D totm, disregarding a lot of the tactical rules.

There's no problem playing DH as D&D with 2d12s, if everyone is having fun, that's what's important.

 

[Reynard]

Having mechanics tied to what is stated in the book doesn't really mean much. People play D&D totm, disregarding a lot of the tactical rules.

There's no problem playing DH as D&D with 2d12s, if everyone is having fun, that's what's important.

Did you read the post I was replying to. I was arguing against the idea that you can't run traditional adventures in DH. You can. It isn't optimal, but nothing in the way DH's rules work stop you from doing so and it would probably perfectly fun.

 

[zakael19]

Did you read the post I was replying to. I was arguing against the idea that you can't run traditional adventures in DH. You can. It isn't optimal, but nothing in the way DH's rules work stop you from doing so and it would probably perfectly fun.

And I wasn't arguing you can't just that it's giving up a lot of what's good about how the game was written and intended, specifically pushing back against Tigris' post suggesting that people would be better off playing pre-written adventures because improved play is usually bad.

 

[SteveC]

Having run a bunch of the Quickstart adventures, and played in a game that ended at level 3, I think the game absolutely can run a generic AP completely fine. As I've said (and I didn't invent this idea), if you run Daggerheart that way, you end up with a better 5E.

Running it much more free form is running it more as intended. The problem is that you have to be a pretty good GM to run games that way. Running a low-prep game that's truly reactive to the PCs is hard. I've played a lot of PbtA, and that's the playstyle it wants the GM to use, as does Blades in the Dark. Not all GMs can run a game that way. And (this is my opinion, of course) running a fully free-form game based on the players, and doing so largely off the cuff, is a terrible experience if you're not good at it. I've played enough PbtA at Cons to know that's true.

If you have the improv chops, go for it. Otherwise, running something more structured (such as a game where you get a setting, characters attempting things, and you interact with them) is something I expect most experienced GMs could do.

Whatever your skill level as a GM, and whatever your players want out of a game, I think Daggerheart can give you great sessions. You just need to pair them with your own skills.

 

[Reynard]

And I wasn't arguing you can't just that it's giving up a lot of what's good about how the game was written and intended, specifically pushing back against Tigris' post suggesting that people would be better off playing pre-written adventures because improved play is usually bad.

Sure. The assertion that improvised play is "usually bad" smcks of someone who has suffered some bad GMs.

I agree that DH is better when embracing its PTFO ethos. But you can enjoy it otherwise.

 

[Scribe]

Having run a bunch of the Quickstart adventures, and played in a game that ended at level 3, I think the game absolutely can run a generic AP completely fine. As I've said (and I didn't invent this idea), if you run Daggerheart that way, you end up with a better 5E.

Running it much more free form is running it more as intended. The problem is that you have to be a pretty good GM to run games that way. Running a low-prep game that's truly reactive to the PCs is hard. I've played a lot of PbtA, and that's the playstyle it wants the GM to use, as does Blades in the Dark. Not all GMs can run a game that way. And (this is my opinion, of course) running a fully free-form game based on the players, and doing so largely off the cuff, is a terrible experience if you're not good at it. I've played enough PbtA at Cons to know that's true.

If you have the improv chops, go for it. Otherwise, running something more structured (such as a game where you get a setting, characters attempting things, and you interact with them) is something I expect most experienced GMs could do.

Whatever your skill level as a GM, and whatever your players want out of a game, I think Daggerheart can give you great sessions. You just need to pair them with your own skills.

This exactly, I am not great at the improv bit, and need some kind of outline. Just free form completely doesn't work for me.

 

[zakael19]

I keep saying that it shines in "situation based play," which is structured in that you've got a written situation; probably NPCs to grab; some ideas of the threats at hand; etc. What you dont have is a pre-written ending or series of checkboxes the PCs need to hit to "make the story progress." This is also how most PBTA prep actually goes. You can do completely off-the-cuff as you sit down, but mostly you don't do that! Right from the start in old AW, the game gives the GM tons of stuff to prep to grab and deploy during play as the characters respond to a grabby situation that imposes the premise of play upon them.

That's how I prep my DH games, and I'm seeing some commercial products get highlighted on the DH Reddit that do the same. That's largely what the Drakkenheim setup does baseline (it's a set of set piece situations with open outcomes and faction collisions), if a bit more restrictive.

The more you constrict towards "the players must do X so that Y plot can happen" the more you drift from what DH has set the game up to facilitate and reinforce via Agenda and Practices.

 

[Reynard]

The more you constrict towards "the players must do X so that Y plot can happen" the more you drift from what DH has set the game up to facilitate and reinforce via Agenda and Practices.

Without having actually done it, my intuition is that DH would work well with a "linear plot" that was built around Acts with lots of freedom but had pretty narrow passways to the next Act (probably with a giant boss battle and/or major RP challenge as the gate).