Daggerheart General Thread [+]

[overgeeked]

Yeah, those could all work for supplies. I am leaning more towards a countdown linked to long rests, failures, and GM moves. I don’t want to add much in the way of bespoke mechanics. I’d rather use what’s already there as much as possible. Countdowns can cover a lot of ground.

 

[Faolyn]

Party supplies could be a countdown that ticks down when the GM spends Fear to do so or when you rest. Something like that. Once you’re out of supplies you can no longer rest or maybe all the downtime actions give less. So something like only Tier number of Stress or HP with the corresponding short rest action, or 1d4 with a long rest. Many options to pursue. Daggerheart definitely does have resource attrition.

Maybe something like you only get one downtime move if you don't have Supply. Or if you want to get mathy for it, you one move for a number of long rests equal to your Tier, then no moves after that; at higher Tiers, you're better at scavenging just enough stuff to count as starvation rations, but not enough to properly live on.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Daggerheart screams for an Eberron conversion.

I don't know if this was said upthread but: Ravenloft is a perfect campaign frame.

 

[overgeeked]

I don't know if this was said upthread but: Ravenloft is a perfect campaign frame.

What do you think you’d need/want besides what’s in the core rules and the Age of Umbra frame?

 

[jmartkdr2]

What do you think you’d need/want besides what’s in the core rules and the Age of Umbra frame?

Not much, but campaign frames don't need extra rules. But the frame also sets things like, themes, touchpoints, limitation and so on that are rather helpful to making Ravenloft work. You gotta go in knowing it's a Hammer-horror game.

I might add some details about character fears to work with just to make sure they don't react stoically to the whole thing. That's a lot less fun.

I'm not familiar with the AoU frame so I can't comment on that.

 

[Faolyn]

What do you think you’d need/want besides what’s in the core rules and the Age of Umbra frame?

While maybe not necessary, an undead-type ancestry and some new or expanded monsters would be useful. The main monster types in Ravenloft--going by the Van Richten Guides--are ghosts, vampires, liches, mummies/ancient dead, werebeasts, (shadow) fey, hags, golems/constructs, and lesser undead. All of those are either missing or very under-represented in the monster section. And with them, the idea of monsters being weak to certain types of materials. Obviously not a biggie--monster has resistance to physical and/or magic damage unless the weapon is made out of that material.

Of course, new domain spells, abilities, and codexes with a more horror bent to them would be useful. The Dread domain is a good start, but the other domains could use some nastier things as well.

 

[Aldarc]

I don't know if this was said upthread but: Ravenloft is a perfect campaign frame.

I would probably prefer going more for an Innistrad frame. But that's just me.

 

[Reynard]

I don't know if this was said upthread but: Ravenloft is a perfect campaign frame.

Ravenloft -- meaning the domains of dread -- are a giant pile of potential frames, given how frames are focused.

This brings up an interesting question: how would one do a traditional campaign world for DH? Would you have a gazetteer of all the lands (etc) and then a section on Campaign Frames you could run within that world? I can see that being a good way to present Eberron.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Jumping in late on the OSR vibe...

Personally, I don’t think it’s useful to try and measure Daggerheart against the “OSR gold standard” of attrition-based, room-by-room exploration. I think most of us agree that DH just isn’t built for that. It doesn’t mean you can’t hack it to approximate that feel, but the system as written clearly leans toward scene-framed play, narrative pacing, and emotional storytelling, not procedural movement and resource counting.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t do a satisfying dungeon crawl. You just need to reframe what that means in Daggerheart terms.

If you think of a “dungeon” as a pressure-cooker of danger, mystery, and resource tension, then the system already gives you a lot to work with:

• Countdowns are built in and can handle everything from wandering monsters to torchlight, awareness, spiritual contamination, etc.
• Fear tokens can trigger surprises, twists, and environmental hazards (traps, darkness, reinforcements).
• Rest limits and Stress mechanics already model a form of attrition—just less granular.
• You can even use downtime access as a soft measure of dwindling supply. No Supply? Downtime becomes less useful, more costly, or unavailable.
  

The beauty is, you don’t need to bolt on tons of systems. Just lean into what’s already there, and design your dungeon to highlight:

• escalating consequences
• difficult trade-offs
• limited recovery options
• moments where Fear and Stress shape the flow of exploration

If you want procedural rigor, yeah, you’ll probably be happier with another system. But if you want emergent tension with a strong narrative spine, Daggerheart can totally do that—as long as you let it be itself. I'm confident that there can be a sweet spot between OSR vibes and Daggerheart’s design.

 

[Faolyn]

Ravenloft -- meaning the domains of dread -- are a giant pile of potential frames, given how frames are focused.

This brings up an interesting question: how would one do a traditional campaign world for DH? Would you have a gazetteer of all the lands (etc) and then a section on Campaign Frames you could run within that world? I can see that being a good way to present Eberron.

For me, I'd probably pick a cluster of related lands, whether geographically (using older RL) or thematically (using newer), and then just stick to that area in-game.