Daggerheart Discussion

[zakael19]

You do a lot of asserting personal perspective and subjective opinion as fact without supporting it with any sort of argument.

 

[Neonchameleon]

13th age is definitly tactical, given its constraint that it has only abstract movement. There is only so much you can do (without adding tons of complicated mechanics on top). Cinematic for me is something like Feng Shui 2. In 13th age you need to consider how to use your ressources best over a whole adventuring day. When to best use your abilities (and thanks to the escalation dice its not always turn 1 like other games).

13th age is not "definitely tactical". Its constraint goes a long way to minimise how tactical it can be - and even within the bounds of TotM its "roll to see what you actually did" fighters go a long way to making it even less tactical than it could be.

No. Not everyone has the tendency to overestimate things just because they made them themselves. I definitly know enough people who dont value things higher just because they made them themselves, and can openly say when other things are better.

No. The measure of a painting is not "how good were the brush strokes?"; the art you get out of that is technically proficient but soulless. The measure of art is did it make the audience feel something. And the feeling of "we did that" and "that is ours" are both strong feelings and lead to more feelings and deeper investigations of facets of the character. You are simply wrong about what makes for good art for most people, favouring what is "objective" and irrelevant over what is actually genuinely good and engaging.

No, it may be for you, but you value things made by yourself higher than other things, but this is just not the case for everyone. I like things where I do NOT need to do the work. Thats why I buy things. When I buy a game or adventure, then I want the gamedesigners to have created something for me, not me needing to do half the work.

Making our stories is the core part of the RPG hobby; films have objectively better acting and tighter storytelling and better special effects. If I didn't want to make things and put in the effort I wouldn't play RPGs at all. The only thing they are good at is being responsive so we can make our own thing. If you don't want to make and don't value audience engagement I don't understand why you are part of the hobby at all other than to hang out with your friends.

You're right in some ways however. One of the things I value in the games I pick is rules that support me and empower me. Which is why I go hard for PbtA influenced games; I find they empower me. What I'm buying is not a prefabricated object but a set of power tools.

Also because this has the chance tobe something new, where when its something which I had partially created, then it cannot be completely new because its based of my existing knowledge, so I learn less from the experience.

If you buy and run something prefabricated it does not have much chance to be something new; someone wrote that and what we get is your interpretation of their work. Meanwhile if I'm running a decent PbtA style game for five players there are seven people contributing; myself, the five players, and the author of the game that we are using. And we are going to create something unique rather than playing through just one person's ideas. Those seven people have not come together in that way before (and unless we use the same playbooks never will again); this will be unique rather than pre-fabricated and much more different than two people running the same pre-written campaign.

I guess you are a GM? (as in maybe you also play as a player but you do GM). GMs just have normally a quite different view from pure players.

I'm on ENWorld. It's a solid guess.

 

[zakael19]

FWIW, my players who are just players and don't like GMing all find the stories we create together (in DH and other systems I run) to be far more engaging and interesting then when they've played through pre-written adventures. Sample size of small & anecdata is not data & all that, but hey, if we're going to toss around anecdotes as if they're statements of fact and not subjective opinion, I'm gonna say that said experience emphatically refutes everything @Tigris said!

 

[Tigris]

FWIW, my players who are just players and don't like GMing all find the stories we create together (in DH and other systems I run) to be far more engaging and interesting then when they've played through pre-written adventures. Sample size of small & anecdata is not data & all that, but hey, if we're going to toss around anecdotes as if they're statements of fact and not subjective opinion, I'm gonna say that said experience emphatically refutes everything @Tigris said!

I really really dont like it when GMs speak for their players, as if they know what is in their heads...

You are not these players, please dont speak for them.

What they tell you and what they really feel can be different. Many GMs do not react well to critique, so its quite common to tell a GM how great their things are even if you might feel different. (And you give this exact impression now by how you react to others oppinions. I would for sure never tell you the truth, if you were my GM).

This always reminds me about when a teacher says "oh all my children like how I teach"...


There is a huge difference between "I do like X" and "I think that person X does like X". There is a reason why in some countries hearsay is not accepted when it comes to law.

13th age is not "definitely tactical". Its constraint goes a long way to minimise how tactical it can be - and even within the bounds of TotM its "roll to see what you actually did" fighters go a long way to making it even less tactical than it could be.

There is a 2nd edition of 13th age... And you were never forced to play a fighter. 13th Age does specifically allow you the choice between how complex you want your character to be. Which Daggerheart does not really, all characters have the exact same progression.

 

[zakael19]

I really really dont like it when GMs speak for their players, as if they know what is in their heads...

You are not these players, please dont speak for them.

What they tell you and what they really feel can be different. Many GMs do not react well to critique, so its quite common to tell a GM how great their things are even if you might feel different. (And you give this exact impression now by how you react to others oppinions. I would for sure never tell you the truth, if you were my GM).

This always reminds me about when a teacher says "oh all my children like how I teach"...


There is a huge difference between "I do like X" and "I think that person X does like X". There is a reason why in some countries hearsay is not accepted when it comes to law.

Thanks for assuming that the adults I’ve played hundreds of hours with, had long freewheeling discussions about what we don’t and do like out of games including mine, know they can work with me to adjust things and speak out about what feels good and bad and get immediate results (because we’ve done that and come to table consensus!) don’t do any of that.

Maybe stick to talking about your own opinions as such instead of projecting your own bad experiences or biases on people who disagree with you?

Edit: anyway, we’re way off the topic of this thread now. I appreciate some of the points you bring up about the game, but you seem to shrug off most of the examples myself and others provide showing how the game isn’t quite how you assert or how other perspectives might differ.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Flavour is always free and not really part of the mechanics. There are many D&D articles (like in older dragon) how to reflavour things if you dont like it.

Flavour is not always free - although I will freely say that 5e blows e.g. 3.X out of the water in terms of how you can reflavour things because you no longer have to prepare specific spells into specific slots (something you couldn't just "flavour out"). But you are always always bound by slots, levels, and long rest refreshes.

The spell system in Daggerheart is also not that much free. You get 1 spell of your level every time you level up. You can replace a spell with an ability, which makes not that much of a difference, and you have max 6 spell slots.

Um... no. Look at e.g. Codex Domain; sometimes that's three spells per card. And that "max 6 spell slots" is nonsense. You don't have spell slots. You have a maximum of five active domain cards - but they aren't the same as spell slots because they don't all spend identically (some cost Hope, some cost Stress, some take spell rolls, and some can only be used 1/rest; it is only these that are the equivalent of spell slots). And then there's fishing cards out of your vault at a cost of stress - which you of course do on the 1/rest domain cards making them more valuable if you have cards to take their place.

You can get when leveling up a spell slot a bit earlier (but thats hardly worth it if you plan to leveling up to level 4+) .

Unless you know what you are doing. Manipulating your Loadout and Vault and deciding what to prepare and what to fish out of your vault is a Daggerheart skill and is different for different domains. And knowing how to focus your magical energy and how to prepare is a core caster skill in most systems.

You have a bigger selection of spells (especially cantrips) and subclasses in 5E than in daggerheart. You also have just more overall choices with origin feat, fighting styles, normal feats and more impactfull subclasses etc.

I couldn't disagree more. In D&D 5e you have a lot of choices at level 1 and a fair few at level 3. After that unless you are a charisma caster (or arguably an intelligence caster) or multiclass your choices are in almost all cases almost over; after level 3 you get a grand total of one feat to choose every four level. Two identical clerics at level 4 will, unless they multiclass or use house rules, have at most just a single mechanical difference at level 11 that isn't their gear or a choice that they made that day unless one goes weapon the other cantrip. (And both might have taken the same feat/ASI at level 8). In Daggerheart characters actually grow in response to their experiences rather than just on rails and thus don't turn out as cookie cutter and two characters that started off identical at level 1 might not share a single domain card by level 3.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Which Daggerheart does not really, all characters have the exact same progression.

This simply isn't true; there are some pretty huge differences in complexity if you want them between e.g. the passive abilities in Blade and the triple spells in Codex. And all characters have the same basic choices they can make for progression - but they don't have to pick the same things.

 

[Tigris]

Thanks for assuming that the adults I’ve played hundreds of hours with, had long freewheeling discussions about what we don’t and do like out of games including mine, know they can work with me to adjust things and speak out about what feels good and bad and get immediate results (because we’ve done that and come to table consensus!) don’t do any of that.

Maybe stick to talking about your own opinions as such instead of projecting your own bad experiences or biases on people who disagree with you?

Speaking as people from another perspective is just never right.

A doctor also has talked many hours with their patients and still cannot represent their oppinion.

Same for a teacher and the students an appartment owner for the people renting etc.


GMs oppinions are WAY oveprepresented anyway in online discussions, so there is really no need to also assume they can speak for the players as well. This is really disrespectfull.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Speaking as people from another perspective is just never right.

A doctor also has talked many hours with their patients and still cannot represent their oppinion.

Same for a teacher and the students an appartment owner for the people renting etc.


GMs oppinions are WAY oveprepresented anyway in online discussions, so there is really no need to also assume they can speak for the players as well. This is really disrespectfull.

Are you a GM? Because believe it or not as a GM I watch my players to see how they react to things and where they have the most fun. And while eliciting actual feedback can be challenging I also pitch games and see which of the options they respond to and what they actively want from a range of options. And I am also a player and can speak from that perspective too; I'm not a forever GM and have a good track record of developing other GMs.

 

[Thomas Shey]

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/508832/daggerheart-corebook?src=newest_recent

$30 US.

I think that's the cheapest way to get the full context.

That's the one I've got on my wishlist. $30 is still too much for a "buying it just to read" case. Its not alone there; I've got PDFs in the same cost range that have been sitting on my wishlist for years for the same reason. Sometimes these things hit a sale, sometimes they don't.

The lack of "flavor text" to explain how to play and run some games is why rules light games bounced off of me back in the 90s and 00s. Games like Tri-stat. I remember asking the author how to handle one power and he gave the extremely useless advice of "just make a ruling, use rule 0".

Given when we were playtesters there was one power in Silver Age Sentinels that did not seem like it should be completely lacking in any listed mechanics, but was, that does not surprise me.

I'm sure plenty of other games have covered this during the PBtA era of games, but I never got any of those as they came out in the 2 decades I was away from the hobby. And when I went and looked at one recently it's advice was kind of piecemeal anyway.

I only own a couple of them, but I will say at least Monster of the Week was halfway formalized in this fashion. I still don't think I'd run it for other reasons, but I think I at least could.