Daggerheart "Description on Demand" a GM DON'T

[Agamon]

I don't feel like having PC backstories help build the world is the same thing, from the "paint the scene" standpoint, as "You enter the tavern; what does it looks, feel and smell like?"

It's kind of part-and-parcel. In DH, you aren't supposed to come to the game with a long, thought-out backstory. One, to be more malleable during session zero world building, but also, two, so that when one "paints the scene", they can use it as an opportunity to tell the table more about their character.

 

[Kichwas]

I think this is an important point.

My gamist players want to compete against the dungeon.

I think with the narrativist players they are wanting to collaboratively craft a story.

I think it's good that the hobby now has solid offerings in both of these extreme ends of the play spectrum, and several good examples in the middle.

While running and playing PF2E I encountered a number of players who absolutely struggled with the gamist angle and kept finding themselves cycling through characters or approaches because they were looking for a different kind of experience and just hadn't figured out yet how to articulate it. I could sit at a table and see one portion of the players thriving, and the other struggling - and very clear personality differences between them. Pathfinder vacuums up a lot of narrative players because of it's rich lore that can appeal to BOTH narrative and gamist players - but the narrative players then go on the 'not get it' when the game engine has a different aim.

Back in the 90s there was a brief 'Diceless RPG' movement that attempted to make games for narrative folks but to me they all felt flat in having no good way of resolving actions / challenges / etc other than "just wing it" - which felt like passing the buck.

Mist and Daggerheart now offer narrative approaches with actual resolution mechanics. Drawsteel rests on the far end of the other side with what looks to be extremely well made gamist mechanics. In the right mood I could see myself enjoying it because I can swing back and forth between gamism and narrative.

I think Daggerheart is more in the middle than it is truly narrative. But it oddly has better narrative advice than a more purely narrative game like Mist. I think Mist would be harder for me to handle if I had NOT first read the GMing advice in Daggerheart... The Mist game does not spend enough page count on what to do with roleplaying the tags - even at it has entire extra books on actions through the tags, it doesn't talk enough about putting the narrative glue in there that turns it from tedious to engaging.

Cosmere is another entry here that I "think" sits in the middle alongside Daggerheart. But I know almost nothing about the game engine other than that is does have a plot die you do "stuff" with. Then there's DC20 which I know only the name of, and that it "probably" uses a 20-sided die somewhere.

I think 2025 has ended up being a great year for tRPGs in terms of expanding our potential choices.

 

[Agamon]

Back in the 90s there was a brief 'Diceless RPG' movement that attempted to make games for narrative folks but to me they all felt flat in having no good way of resolving actions / challenges / etc other than "just wing it" - which felt like passing the buck.

Man, Amber drpg was such a cool idea that I had so much trouble wrapping my brain around lol

 

[Kichwas]

It feels unfair because you weren’t expecting it. Somewhat arbitrary.

I dunno.

(this is still about the example where the player was asked to describe how their attack killed an NPC and they came back with 'shredded'... right? Or am I responding to the wrong thing? My response below assumes it's about that.)

Tacking on an added penalty because of the narration is "almost" the same as something directly mentioned as a 'do not do this' in Daggerheart.

In Daggerheart they specifically call out NOT using a roll with fear to negate the outcome.

So if you roll 'success with fear' - the GM needs to remember that is a success. And not change the outcome.
If you roll 'fail with fear' - the GM needs to remember that is a fail, not a critical fail. And not change the outcome.

You apply that fear downstream or as a followup.
It's less obvious but the same applies to something like a fail with hope - don't turn it into a success. Let the player use the hope downstream.

Mist has the same advice with regards to applying a 'consequence'. Especially on a success with consequence. It CANNOT undo the 'power tags' a player obtains through the success. It can be applied to set the stage for the followup, but it cannot undo the success.

So here you have a player saying
"this is how my success worked - it did this to the enemy."

And the GM is now saying "as a result, you lose access to the result of your success."

On the one hand the GM did it right: they applied the penalty to the followup, not the direct moment.

But it very much feels against the "spirit" of the idea of encouraging narrative play.

 

[Kichwas]

You seem to have contemplated not inviting him to your games. What exactly is he doing that is spoiling your fun?

I think that was more me than them. I took their example and used it to make a hypothetical of a potential player who was way out of sync with their group. But the original example was more mild.

I just used it to launch a hypothetical in order to examine handling when groups have players that don't match each other well - something that easily happens in newly formed groups.

I guess I failed to be clear enough that my hypo was both mine and a hypo rather than the actual story I started from.

 

[TheSword]

I dunno.

(this is still about the example where the player was asked to describe how their attack killed an NPC and they came back with 'shredded'... right? Or am I responding to the wrong thing? My response below assumes it's about that.)

Tacking on an added penalty because of the narration is "almost" the same as something directly mentioned as a 'do not do this' in Daggerheart.

In Daggerheart they specifically call out NOT using a roll with fear to negate the outcome.

So if you roll 'success with fear' - the GM needs to remember that is a success. And not change the outcome.
If you roll 'fail with fear' - the GM needs to remember that is a fail, not a critical fail. And not change the outcome.

You apply that fear downstream or as a followup.
It's less obvious but the same applies to something like a fail with hope - don't turn it into a success. Let the player use the hope downstream.

Mist has the same advice with regards to applying a 'consequence'. Especially on a success with consequence. It CANNOT undo the 'power tags' a player obtains through the success. It can be applied to set the stage for the followup, but it cannot undo the success.

So here you have a player saying
"this is how my success worked - it did this to the enemy."

And the GM is now saying "as a result, you lose access to the result of your success."

On the one hand the GM did it right: they applied the penalty to the followup, not the direct moment.

But it very much feels against the "spirit" of the idea of encouraging narrative play.

I think you’ve over complicated it though.

The player was asked to describe how a successful Toll the Dead spell killed an NPC. And because they didn’t say it in the way the DM wanted he reduced their loot for it.

I don’t think it’s anymore complicated than that

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think that was more me than them. I took their example and used it to make a hypothetical of a potential player who was way out of sync with their group. But the original example was more mild.

I just used it to launch a hypothetical in order to examine handling when groups have players that don't match each other well - something that easily happens in newly formed groups.

I guess I failed to be clear enough that my hypo was both mine and a hypo rather than the actual story I started from.

So, then in practise, as long as they were not actively disrupting the dynamic of the more narrative players you would allow continued participation>

 

[A_Carrington]

The problem is everybody has their own definition for what it takes to get them immersed if anything at all works!

Yes, it's a subjective experience. Of course it will be different for each person. How could it be otherwise? It's not a problem, you just communicate with the people you're spending time with.

 

[aramis erak]

One thing I def wouldn’t make it a hard and fast NO.

Same.

I've run campaigns of games where facts of the setting are handled as:

1. player states desired truth
2. GM sets difficulty based upon likelihood (but never to unobtanium levels)
3. player rolls:
   • Success, it's truth.
   • Fail, it's not true, and the GM picks some alternate if it's immediately obvious.
4. ideally, truths get noted if have long term in nature.

Burning Wheel, per Luke's advice on the forums, allows for Wises to be used thusly.
John Wick's Blood and Honor and Houses of the Blooded both use player declarations extensively; this description on demand is essentially 75% to 95% of mechanical use.
Similar is allowed in some flavors of Fate... because it's just creating a setting or scene aspect, a standard action type. VSCA's Brad Murray called this use out in his hard-space-opera FATE game, Diaspora.
It's also present to a degree in Marvel Heroic Roleplay and Firefly... creating conditions... which is a small scale use of definition on demand.
This small scale use also applies to Traits in most 2d20 games, strongest in STA and Dune: Adventures in the Imperium.

And, of course, it's there in Daggerheart...

I've met a few players who can't handle being put on the spot; I've only met a few who can't stand that others might be contributing via that method.

 

[aramis erak]

Yeah, I have no practice with that and it feels awkward just reading it there. (With practice who knows, I might like it. But it isn't in my current wheelhouse.)

It's worth giving it a shot if you're GMing. Especially as a hook...

GM: Hey, A, which long lost love your character wants to reconnect with is across the market? And why are you glad she's shown up today?
A: Dahlia the Blademaster, who was once my fiancée... restriking that hoped for...
GM: Well, you see a fencer challenging her, and a guy sneaks up and chloroforms her... they're hauling her off...

This gets most players into "caring about the mystery" right off...

The advice is not vague. DH has some of the most complete and specific advice for running it that I have seen.

QFT.

Yeah, the name of the technique is very aggressive.

The Alexandrian tends to have a very aggressive stance on a lot of things. Anything they don't like gets redubbed by them to some, often hostile, term.

GM Requested Player Narration into Canon is a much more accurate description

There’s lots of games out there with mechanics that “cross the line” and let the players author fiction advantageous to them - Fabula Ultima and uh, FATE? have currencies that permit this.

Fate Core (and many tweaked Fate 2 and Fate 3 games), Most 2d20 games (but not Fallout), Fabula Ultima, Cortex Plus, Cortex Prime, Burning Wheel (Revised and Gold), Burning Empires (a BWR variant), Houses of the Blooded, Blood & Honor, 7th Sea 2e, Sentinel Comics¹, Mouse Guard (during the player phase)...

I think Diaspora by Brad Murray, released via VSCA, is probably the most player-contribution-demanded FATE 3 flavor. Players build the setting in session 0, including the worlds.

¹ Whether one counts it as PBTA or not varies, but it allows up to PBTA levels of contribution.

No.

I think me and Mr Alexander would be like oil and water on this topic.

You're far from the only one in that camp

I know, facepalm moment... But I would go over this repeatedly in session 0s and at the beginning and end of sessions, but never in mid session did I respond after they opened a door with "Ok, what do you see in the office?"

And the first time I saw it in play in a Daggerheart game was the exact moment I knew I needed to switch from what I was doing and playing to something else.

Sure I'd already bought Daggerheart by then, I'd already decided I liked it. I already knew I wanted to play it and run it.

But that was the moment I knew I couldn't go back.

I can't look at the section of my bookshelf with D&D, GURPS, Pathfinder, and Hero system books the same way now.

Ironically, Hero has plenty of room for adding new player defined elements other than what's on their character sheet since, oh, about the time the Champions Ⅱ was released... 1982... as it gives the player explicit reminder that the DNPC is theirs, and the DNPC also gets experience points... (Champions Ⅱ p 4)

ibid., p 53 notes that hunteds and DNPCs are great for "I need a plot"... it also tells you to ask players for what they spend their downtime doing.

One of the more interesting techniques for Hero, albeing much newer, is a player complaining that they can't afford new power X... GM offers "Add a hunted to pay for it... then write the hunter up." Same could be done in GURPS, CORPS, EABA, or several other universals.

Also fun is letting players design the villains.

Supers as a Genre is rife for GM requested Player Narrations of Canon. My best Supervillain was conceptualized by a player, from a vime about the "Watermellon Man"... she added his "Watermellon van" I added the related viney minions and melonhead vine lieutenants, and used the pick method... the mid-collection side track, Stretch, was a player's drawing of a popeye-like villain with his ropey arms tied in a knot... and then Ben and I working him up.

Sorry if this question has been already answered, but I am a bit confused about what seems to be a strong coupling between "Description on Demand" and Daggerheart. It seems like DoD is a GM technique that can be used in any TTRPG with a GM.

The GM best practices list for Daggerheart includes "ask questions and incorporate the answers".. which is the thing the Alexandrian went off about.

Are there any particular game mechanics in Daggerheart that makes DoD particularly effective or necessary?

Aside from that it's a core principle for the GM, not really, save for the random encounters during rests in the Age of Umbra setting... it specifically is "ask the player to..." in the various outcomes.

Is there any reason why DoD couldn't be used in DND?

None at all, other than D&D and the OSR both having a higher proportion of people prone to reject player additions to campaign canon during play.