Acquisitions Inc. switching to Daggerheart

[Maxperson]

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.

In my office cabinet I have 3 boxes of monster cards, 1 box of magic item cards, one tarokka deck of cards, and one box of spell cards. They may not be skill cards, but any given spell or monster isn't much more complex than a skill.

Some folks really like card representations for things.

 

[Seramus]

This is a Level 1 skill:

“WALL WALK
Level 1 Arcana Spell
Recall Cost: 1

Spend a Hope to allow a creature you can touch to climb on walls and ceilings as easily as walking on the ground. This lasts until the end of the scene or you cast Wall Walk again.”

This is another Level 1 skill:

“GET BACK UP
Level 1 Blade Ability
Recall Cost: 1
When you take Severe damage, you can mark a Stress to reduce the severity by one threshold.”

This is a 3rd level 1 ability, from the most complex domain (Codex, Wizards/Bards):

“BOOK OF AVA
Level 1 Codex Grimoire
Recall Cost: 2

Power Push: Make a Spellcast Roll against a target within Melee range.
On a success, they’re knocked back to Far range and take d10+2 magic damage using your Proficiency.

Tava’s Armor: Spend a Hope to give a target you can touch a +1 bonus to their Armor Score until their next rest or you cast Tava’s Armor again.

Ice Spike: Make a Spellcast Roll (12) to summon a large ice spike within Far range. If you use it as a weapon, make the Spellcast Roll against the target’s Difficulty instead. On a success, deal d6 physical damage using your Proficiency.”

I'm very appreciative DH uses longer durations like scenes in its spells and powers. Using concrete measurements like minutes when D&D is usually played in taffy time has always been weird.

Like, I don't know anyone who runs Detect Thoughts RAW. Many people say they do, but the actual length of time is wildly different from one table to the next, or even one cast to the next.

 

[Teemu]

Yeah, it just doesn't appeal, and ad I said I would prefer a more upstream solution to character abilities.

The Cosmere RPG doesn't handle abilities any different than Daggerheart really. You literally have the equivalent of domain cards in Cosmere in the various abilities you pick up from the paths. Daggerheart resolves abilities in almost the exact same way as Cosmere: you make a roll against a DC set by the GM using a unified mechanic for resolving rolls. Both games have weapons with individual traits, with different damage dice. In both games as you gain levels you gain new discrete abilities, sometimes passive sometimes active (using the action economy of the game).

 

[Parmandur]

In my office cabinet I have 3 boxes of monster cards, 1 box of magic item cards, one tarokka deck of cards, and one box of spell cards. They may not be skill cards, but any given spell or monster isn't much more complex than a skill.

Some folks really like card representations for things.

Would you buy a set of "Skill cards"...? Would you use them?

 

[Parmandur]

The Cosmere RPG doesn't handle abilities any different than Daggerheart really. You literally have the equivalent of domain cards in Cosmere in the various abilities you pick up from the paths. Daggerheart resolves abilities in almost the exact same way as Cosmere: you make a roll against a DC set by the GM using a unified mechanic for resolving rolls. Both games have weapons with individual traits, with different damage dice. In both games as you gain levels you gain new discrete abilities, sometimes passive sometimes active (using the action economy of the game).

Fair. Still though, the resolution doesn't seem to necessitate "power cards"

 

[Teemu]

Fair. Still though, the resolution doesn't seem to necessitate "power cards"

They're not necessary in DH either. When you play DH digitally, you don't actually use cards. You just have a list of abilities like in other RPGs.

 

[Reynard]

I'm very appreciative DH uses longer durations like scenes in its spells and powers. Using concrete measurements like minutes when D&D is usually played in taffy time has always been weird.

There is a LOT about Daggerheart that reads as "this is how people play D&D in real life, so let's just make that the rule" to me.

 

[kermit4karate]

There is a LOT about Daggerheart that reads as "this is how people play D&D in real life, so let's just make that the rule" to me.

Noticing that.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Noticing that.

....kind of.
Look, here's a snippet from Daggerheart that I think is helpful:
“The game takes a fiction-first approach, encouraging players and GMs to act in good faith with one another and focus on the story they’re telling rather than the complexity of the mechanics." (p. 4)

Personally, I think that is great! If X people play D&D, it is certainly true that there is a number of people (X-y) that play that way- in a fiction first manner, in good faith, focusing on telling a story together and not on the complexity of the mechanics.

On the other hand, I'd argue that there is some number of people that play D&D (that number is y) that do not play D&D in that way. One of the weird mysteries of D&D that we see play out repeatedly in these threads, often through people arguing, is that you have groups that are both (X-y) and playing the same game, but are playing it ... differently.

It gets back to one of the ... bigger debates ... that we see. How much does the system matter- and how much is playing really about second-order design (how individuals tables end up playing the game)? That's not a conversation I want to have, but it reminded me of an essay I wrote about the TTRPG Everway, and more specifically this quote in a review of the game:


...Everway is so far out of the mainstream, it's barely recognizable as an RPG. For starters, it has no dice. It has no tables or charts. A deck of cards directs the flow of the game. Monster bashing, treasure hunting, dungeon crawling bye-bye; Everway is pure narrative. We've seen these elements before: the Amber game pioneered diceless role-playing, White Wolf's Vampire: the Masquerade game championed storytelling over combat encounters, and TSR's 1988 BULLWINKLE AND ROCKY game used cards to help players improvise adventures. But they've never been integrated so faultlessly or presented so imaginatively. Everway will have veteran players and critics (like me, who tend to overreact to anything off the beaten path that's even halfway well-done) doing handsprings. Novices, however, should proceed with caution. This is hazardous territory.

...In my regular AD&D sessions, I never use dice or charts, nor do I allow my players to use them. The same goes at my convention appearances- no dice at my tables. In 10 years, I've yet to have a single player abandon ship. Everway codifies the freeform style favored by me and (I suspect) thousands of other referees. It makes for a brisk game, and Everway, to its credit, plays at blinding speed. But to an unprecedented extent, the success of an Everway adventure depends on the improvisational skills of the referee, his ability to come up with interesting plot twists, characters, and scenic details on the spur of the moment. And players must respond in kind, relying on their imaginations instead of die-rolls to forge their characters' destinies. I've spent many a painful afternoon watching would-be referees struggle to stage elementary AD&D encounters and exasperated novices trying to translate lists of numbers into three-dimensional personalities. It isn't easy, even with detailed rules and funny-sided dice to use as crutches.


The reason I am reminded of this is that fiction-first games were well-known, and run using AD&D (in this case, 2e), long before "fiction first" was a thing. I could pull quotes from the 1970s. It's a long-standing issue in the game- how much should be "fiction first," how much should be "emergent," how much should be "diceless,"* and so on.

*There have been long schisms about the divide between various "diced" and "diceless" areas in D&D, and as the quote above shows, some people just went diceless completely.

I think that Daggerheart will be a fascinating experiment from my P.O.V. Why? Because it is well-backed. It has celebrity (well, "TTRPG celebrity") backing. It has a platform (streaming) to "show people how to play" that didn't used to exist. It has publicity - a good amount of "mindshare" already. And it's trying to make formalize a fiction-first approach to the game in an atmosphere that might be more accepting of it in terms of the mass market- while still maintaining some "bones" of D&D that appeal to others (I did a brief survey and found some entertaining "optimization" arguments on Reddit).

Personally, there are a lot of reasons that it's not my bag, but I can't wait to see how it does over the next few years. Heck, maybe we will see more people start playing one pagers and truly experimental TTRPGs. Not that I'm holding my breath.

 

[Parmandur]

There is a LOT about Daggerheart that reads as "this is how people play D&D in real life, so let's just make that the rule" to me.

I mean, how some people play D&D in real life, absolutely. So is Draw Steel, so is Amber Diceless. In real life, there are a lot if different ways people play D&D.

I distinctly remember the delight in 2014, discovering that the new 5E rules played hiw we always played 3.x D&D in real life.