Acquisitions Inc. switching to Daggerheart

[zakael19]

My point was that it was interesting to hear from somebody who had a similar distaste to me who has reluctantly enjoyed it in practice.

It does seem to me that are more elegant solutions further upstream in the design process: never heard of anyone making "Skill cards" for games such as 5E, Call of Cthulu, Traveller, etc. Might be a better design basis than Gygaxian Spells/Powers.

They (WOTC) literally make spell cards for 5e? Big fat decks of them for each spell caster? And NPC & creature cards, and tons of 3pp items.

DH just bundles it all in the physical copies + has PDFs of everything for free.

Edit: Again, part of the genuine use of these for DH is the Recall Cost and swapping between active & vault. You can only have 5 Domain abilities active at a time, but can Recall for a stress cost (or swap on rest); and some abilities have special stuff that happens on a vault or recall.

 

[Aldarc]

They don't have to appeal to you. It isn't like they cost extra. My point is people that use "ew cards" as a point against DH are wrong.

If someone doesn't like cards for TTRPGs, then they don't like them. However, I certainly do think that there is an odd aversion within a segment of the TTRPG hobby to anything that can be perceived as "board gamey," whether that's the use of cards, tokens, other physical elements, game procedures, or even rarely the use of minis and squares. At times it is a sort of "character sheet" only mentality to the hobby. I just think it would be a mistake for TTRPGs to learn no lessons from the success of the board game renaissance that happened over the past 15-20 years.

 

[Parmandur]

They (WOTC) literally make spell cards for 5e? Big fat decks of them for each spell caster? And NPC & creature cards, and tons of 3pp items.

DH just bundles it all in the physical copies + has PDFs of everything for free.

Yeah, and that might be a flaw in 5E that those are attractive, and I still find them...unaesthetic.

But note what I said: I never heard of anybody needing "Skill cards" for 5E that do stuff like explain how to use Skills like Athletics or Psrformance: Spells people felt the need to have them on a card rather than memorize their details. Didn't come up with Intimidation or Perception.

 

[zakael19]

Yeah, and that might be a flaw in 5E that those are attractive, and I still find them...unaesthetic.

But note what I said: I never heard of anybody needing "Skill cards" for 5E that do stuff like explain how to use Skills like Athletics or Psrformance: Spells people felt the need to have them on a card rather than memorize their details. Didn't come up with Intimidation or Perception.

…do you think DH has that? It has a Quick Reference Sheet of rules like most TTRPGs, and Cards that cover all your selectable Domain/Ancestry/Community/Subclass abilities.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Yeah, and that might be a flaw in 5E that those are attractive, and I still find them...unaesthetic.

But note what I said: I never heard of anybody needing "Skill cards" for 5E that do stuff like explain how to use Skills like Athletics or Psrformance: Spells people felt the need to have them on a card rather than memorize their details. Didn't come up with Intimidation or Perception.

I haven't seen it either, though even Daggerheart doesn't do that. Daggerheart cards are for the spell equivalents (mostly class features though also ancestry abilities). Daggerheart uses a freeform skill system so cards wouldn't really work.

 

[Vael]

Hmmm, interesting to hear your experience from that: the cards did not appeal to me in abstract.

I'll be honest, I also wasn't initially interested in cards. A value add, for sure, but I wasn't thinking they'd be that useful.

But there's more benefits than I had thought.

First, as I mentioned, passing cards around made character gen and leveling way easier. Sure, an app can do the same thing, I wouldn't dare touch Pathfinder2 without app support. But we've been playing old school without digital aids or just a tablet for the DM (I only use it for combat). But I also got the distinct impression that the players all really preferred having the cards to read and weight their choices. We just hit level 3, but I also showed them their level 4 cards, because they're starting to think about builds and whether to take an level up slot to get an additional domain card.

Second, because all the material has to fit on a card, it encourages brevity in design. Can't put all the text for Wish on a card. Domain powers are concise and evocatively designed because they have limited space. That old saw about restrictions breeding creativity ... well the dimensions of a card are certainly a restriction.

Third, sure, I like the aesthetics of cards, I play MTG, but having an art piece with each element of the game does have value. I lauded the 2024 new Core books for the increase in art. Every ancestry, community and domain card has unique art (subclasses share art), and that meant a lot of art, while still keeping the core book (singular!) less of a textbook size.

I'll be honest, I wasn't going to buy the book, but I found out about a pre-order sale. All the game content is free *(yes, only one of the six campaign frames, but all the core player material and adversaries/environments for the GM are there), the full SRD is out there. And I do think the cards are enough of a value add without the other stuff in the Daggerheart book to have made this a great purchase.

 

[kermit4karate]

Yeah, and that might be a flaw in 5E that those are attractive, and I still find them...unaesthetic.

But note what I said: I never heard of anybody needing "Skill cards" for 5E that do stuff like explain how to use Skills like Athletics or Psrformance: Spells people felt the need to have them on a card rather than memorize their details. Didn't come up with Intimidation or Perception.

At least from this DM's perspective, if a few books within reach, a notepad, dice, a DM screen and maybe a few loose-leaf sheets of 8-1/2 x 11" paper are insufficient for me to run a TTRPG session, something feels wrong. If it requires more than that, or even if more than that could be said to be helpful, I'll pass.

Pacing is paramount for me. Anything I have to pause for, even if it's to locate and read the description on a card in front of a player, or about which someone says, "I know it's around here somewhere..." slows me down. * Too much of a good thing is still too much of a good thing.

* Bathroom and snack breaks excepted.

 

[Parmandur]

I haven't seen it either, though even Daggerheart doesn't do that. Daggerheart cards are for the spell equivalents (mostly class features though also ancestry abilities). Daggerheart uses a freeform skill system so cards wouldn't really work.

Right, that's my point: that sort of Spell design that makes cards a utilitarian tool can be solved further upstream by making the abilities more intuitive. It's a Band-Aid solution.

 

[zakael19]

Right, that's my point: that sort of Spell design that makes cards a utilitarian tool can be solved further upstream by making the abilities more intuitive. It's a Band-Aid solution.

I feel like you’re tilting at windmills here, since you keep referencing things that aren’t actually part of DH’s design. @Vael ‘s post is a good walkthrough of the value add of designing card-forward, and I keep repeating that the DH designers included a play feature that genuinely works optimally with a card-style load out system in a way that say 4e’s card-design never did.

 

[Parmandur]

I feel like you’re tilting at windmills here, since you keep referencing things that aren’t actually part of DH’s design. @Vael ‘s post is a good walkthrough of the value add of designing card-forward, and I keep repeating that the DH designers included a play feature that genuinely works optimally with a card-style load out system in a way that say 4e’s card-design never did.

That the cards actually help the game design makes it a little bit worse for me, since they had the freedom to design something that would have worked for people without the cards. I am objecting to that design, which seems to be a holdover from D&D and Vancian casting. I hardly feel it is tilting at windmills, because games have been designed that solved for that.