I agree, the statements are not mutually exclusive or contradictory in my opinion.
Let's Read Daggerheart +
- Thread starter Reynard
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TheAlkaizer
Game Designer
I had zero interest in Daggerheart. But I've read a bit about it in the past days and there's interesting ideas. My interest is growing.
I think the issues I see most raised are with the metacurrencies and the narrative that's more freeform than in more rigid designs. Having been brought up on D&D, I do admit that the one thing that's the most difficult to adapt to when I change game is not the rules, dice mechanics, etc; but the flow the game, what habits and reflexes are built-in from D&D and maybe do not fit the dynamics of this new game.
I think that might be part of the issue, ton of people approach Daggerheart like an alternative to D&D, which it is, but it's also quite different.
I think the issues I see most raised are with the metacurrencies and the narrative that's more freeform than in more rigid designs. Having been brought up on D&D, I do admit that the one thing that's the most difficult to adapt to when I change game is not the rules, dice mechanics, etc; but the flow the game, what habits and reflexes are built-in from D&D and maybe do not fit the dynamics of this new game.
I think that might be part of the issue, ton of people approach Daggerheart like an alternative to D&D, which it is, but it's also quite different.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
It's not necessarily a problem though, because you don't have to instantly snap to an entirely new paradigm like you really do kind of need to with say, Blades in the Dark or even good old Apocalypse World. Instead you can actually just run this very much like D&D and get away with it. Will it be perfectly utilizing all the new systems and approaches and so on? No, but it'll work and you can then gradually shift or gradually integrate new ways of doing things.
This is also partly why Dungeon World saw both much greater acceptance from people who didn't play PtbA stuff than other PtbA games, and much greater hostility from PtbA purists who essentially saw it as dangerous heresy. Dungeon World explicitly suggested to start out by just running old D&D modules but with DW used as the rules (the bestiary was good enough to work for most older AD&D adventures, especially if you were a little creative), before working your way to going sort of "full PtbA". DH doesn't even go that far - it essentially never actually suggests going beyond what you might call "partial PtbA", with the players being responsible for a fairly limited amount of the fiction and they're not required to be responsible for any, really.
TheAlkaizer
Game Designer
I agree. But I do think it's a cause for much friction. I'm sure it'll ease over a few months.
I mean the core expectation is GM crafted narrative arcs! It’s very much written to be “situation not plot” story play.
You can easily move it towards something more “play to find out-ish” by bringing in Fronts and such; but the starting default seems to be “5e CR style narrative/“RP” focused play culture with an emphasis on saying cool stuff and figuring out a roll, and inviting players to Paint the Scene style worldbuild.”
aramis erak
Legend
One of the five settings is a clark-tech sci-fi/cyberpunk dystopia.I saw the pages on programming a CPU. It was fun, and whimsical ...but... since I don't watch CR.... um.... why is that there?
It's is more of a post-post-apocalyptic science fantasy in the vein of Horizon Zero Dawn.
On Hope: Looking at page 18, it strikes me that there is no real indication that rolling with Hope creates any sort of benefit beyond gaining a Hope. Neither players nor GMs are told to "narrate Hope" here. This is reiterated on page 90. On page 150, it does suggest letting the player describe how they succeeded with Hope. Does this count as a "narrative"?
All that to say that I feel like DH should play pretty "normally" for people that aren't especially interested in, or are worried about, "improv."
Yeah, “you get what you set out to do how you said it” is probably enough. Might ask “what does this look like?” to set up the next fictional beat, but then again that should be asked on everything imo
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Given that you always generate hope or fear on an action roll, there is no ‘vanilla’ success to contrast against. So success / failure with hope seem to function as base pass / fail while ‘with fear’ seems to be ‘yes but’ and ‘no and’ respectively.
A critical success is the ‘enhanced’ success result and that also can be seen as a purely mechanical benefit (gain a hope, remove a stress). p94 suggests the result of a crit success is intended to be narrated as more impactful, achieving more than just what the character originally aimed for.
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