Daggerheart General Thread [+]

[aramis erak]

It isn't that you could not figure out a way to do OSR dungeon crawling in Daggerheart. It is that it is the wrong tool for the job, so why bother?

Because it's not the wrong tool. It's a tool that can hit the parts of dungeon crawling many of us care about.

See, the most important thing about a dungeon, both by my read, and by the advice in many rulebooks, is the forced sequencing, and limited choices of movement. This makes a dungeon a great environment for easy GMing. You can pace encounters. You can gate encounters.

The second most important element is the lack of ability to see... at least without special abilities.

A distant third is critters that don't want you in there, at least not unless you're spitted and over the fire (or their cultural equivalent)...

Oh, and many people have played node based adventures over the decades... look up Zork, Collossal Caves, Planetfall... or any other Infocom text adventures. They're node based. It's where I really learned that detailed maps are not needed for fun dungeon crawls.

A dungeon frame simply needs to note that players don't get to define new locations within a given dungeon. Sure, they can add new dungeons... but when they do, the GM gets time to develop them.

 

[Reynard]

Because it's not the wrong tool. It's a tool that can hit the parts of dungeon crawling many of us care about.

See, the most important thing about a dungeon, both by my read, and by the advice in many rulebooks, is the forced sequencing, and limited choices of movement. This makes a dungeon a great environment for easy GMing. You can pace encounters. You can gate encounters.

The second most important element is the lack of ability to see... at least without special abilities.

A distant third is critters that don't want you in there, at least not unless you're spitted and over the fire (or their cultural equivalent)...

Oh, and many people have played node based adventures over the decades... look up Zork, Collossal Caves, Planetfall... or any other Infocom text adventures. They're node based. It's where I really learned that detailed maps are not needed for fun dungeon crawls.

A dungeon frame simply needs to note that players don't get to define new locations within a given dungeon. Sure, they can add new dungeons... but when they do, the GM gets time to develop them.

The bolded part (my emphasis) is the exact reason why a narrative, player driven, play to find out game is exactly the wrong tool for the job.

 

[overgeeked]

The CR US shop has boxless copies available. Just the book and loose cards in a bag.

https://shop.critrole.com/products/boxless-daggerheart-standard-bundle

 

[Rainbow Scissors]

My group has had a little more experience with Daggerheart.

There are some good things about the system: character creation is easy; production values of the books are very good; there are innovative ideas.

However, one gripe that my group has is that there are a lot of extra steps involved in combat that often end up not actually doing much of anything. I believe there are a lot of good ideas contained within the game, but I am currently not sure that they are implemented in a wholly satisfying way.

For example, the idea of the wound points (or whatever they are called... I forget) and armor reducing damage is something that makes sense. One of the group members has run FFG Age of Rebellion in the past. But I don't quite grasp why there are so many additional steps to accomplish what other games do with "Soak" or "armor as DR." Even when that means other games also have a lot of steps, the steps at least seem to be meaningful. Currently, I am not sure that I understand having so many extra steps in Daggerheart for those extra steps to usually not matter in a meaningful way.

Similarly, sometimes combat feels a little bit like D&D 4th Edition, and I like that. At the same time, a lot of the extra paperwork involved in playing Daggerheart ends up being a bit hollow. Where D&D 4th Edition options mattered and produced results, it often feels that Daggerheart asks me to do a lot of extra work without giving me much payoff in the end.

On the other end of the spectrum, Hope & Fear appear to be a simplified version of the narrative system that Age of Rebellion used. While the damage mechanics add too many steps, I think this is an area that has too few. At first, narrating the passing around of metacurrency was cool, but it became somewhat repetitive due to the lack of variety. Part of them is due to players getting burned out and not wanting to narrate as much, but I also think part of it is that there's not much variety with only 2 dice involved. It's too binary to keep things interesting over the entirety of a campaign. It's still a very cool idea; I'm just not sure that Daggerheart's implementation of it will hold my group's attention for a longer campaign.

I enjoyed the experience, and I still think it could be a fine game to have on my shelf for shorter campaigns. There are a lot of Daggerheart ideas that are cool, and I did mostly enjoy the sessions of the game. It just feels a little off and made me wish that we were playing the games that inspired Daggerheart instead of playing Daggerheart.

Overall: A lot of cool ideas but feels slightly off. Daggerheart has a lot of potential. If it has a second edition, that might be a better time to buy in. In the meantime, you probably still will have fun with the game. Just don't expect combat to be much faster than D&D 5E.

 

[Reynard]

For example, the idea of the wound points (or whatever they are called... I forget) and armor reducing damage is something that makes sense. One of the group members has run FFG Age of Rebellion in the past. But I don't quite grasp why there are so many additional steps to accomplish what other games do with "Soak" or "armor as DR." Even when that means other games also have a lot of steps, the steps at least seem to be meaningful. Currently, I am not sure that I understand having so many extra steps in Daggerheart for those extra steps to usually not matter in a meaningful way.

I am not sure what "extra steps" you are talking about here.
Damage dealt.
Check Threshold.
Use Armor.
Mark HP.
Compared to a system with Soak (say, SWADE of Shadowrun) how is this extra steps?

 

[Seramus]

I find armor is just Temporary Hit Points with an element of choice. You can use your THP immediately, or save it to defend against attacks with bad effects.

 

[dbm]

Lots of people talk about the speed or otherwise of combat versus 5e. For me personally I don’t care whether combat takes the same time (or longer) if it’s more fun to play. Savage Worlds combats take a similar time to 5e but I find it much more enjoyable than 5e combat.

I haven’t tried DH yet, so the jury is out on that point for me at the moment.

The other factor is assumptions. D&D assumes many ‘speed bump’ combats to make the maths work in the medium to long term. Games which don’t assume this dynamic can focus on having a smaller number of more fun combats using the same overall table time or less than combat would use in 5e.

 

[Arilyn]

I believe the idea of the armour is the thresholds are soaking some damage, but when hp gets through, you can damage your armour a bit to soak up one point or take it all as hp damage. . It's a juicy decision of whether to damage your armour or take the hit. You don't want to totally run out of either one.

Players can narrate or not narrate, as they choose. We narrate if someone has cool idea, or just go with Hope and fear without narration. Takes the pressure off.

I'm really enjoying the game. It will never be my only game, as I like too many different styles of gaming.

I enjoy reading the non-hyperbolic thoughts here.

 

[Neonchameleon]

My group has had a little more experience with Daggerheart.

There are some good things about the system: character creation is easy; production values of the books are very good; there are innovative ideas.

However, one gripe that my group has is that there are a lot of extra steps involved in combat that often end up not actually doing much of anything. I believe there are a lot of good ideas contained within the game, but I am currently not sure that they are implemented in a wholly satisfying way.

For example, the idea of the wound points (or whatever they are called... I forget) and armor reducing damage is something that makes sense. One of the group members has run FFG Age of Rebellion in the past. But I don't quite grasp why there are so many additional steps to accomplish what other games do with "Soak" or "armor as DR." Even when that means other games also have a lot of steps, the steps at least seem to be meaningful. Currently, I am not sure that I understand having so many extra steps in Daggerheart for those extra steps to usually not matter in a meaningful way.

Daggerheart goes with a slightly complex armour system because it's trying to solve two complex problems at once:

• If you use a soak/DR model of armour then armour that provides non-trivial protection from a dragon's bite is going to make you effectively invulnerable to low level foes. Most games don't need to do this; if something on a non-human scale is attacking you just need to try not to be hit so you only need to go for low and medium.
• Daggerheart wants to have its cake and eat it with damage rolls that scale the way they do in D&D while having hit point totals that are low enough to be easy to track and scale slowly enough they can plausibly be considered "meat"

Which means that armour needs to do multiple things (as actual armour does; it's not one thing but a system in practice). The way I mentally picture it is armour gets damaged. When it's taken a certain amount of damage it doesn't protect as much because it's dented, torn, and out of alignment.

What I find is there are extra steps but they are very fast at least by D&D standards. You can often jump straight to "minor damage" just looking at the dice and then cross a box off rather than trying subtraction.

On the other end of the spectrum, Hope & Fear appear to be a simplified version of the narrative system that Age of Rebellion used.

Explicitly so.

While the damage mechanics add too many steps, I think this is an area that has too few. At first, narrating the passing around of metacurrency was cool, but it became somewhat repetitive due to the lack of variety.

Remember to spend your fear! (I have problems with this). And remind them to spend hope on things like experiences, helping each other, and tag team moves. And there's no shame on "Fail with hope. You miss. Take a hope." (Actually this last I find an improvement on both Genesis (Age of Rebellion) and PbtA - in both those systems you need to be always "on"; in Age of Empire in particular I sometimes struggled to work out what to do with the Boon/Threats while just banking the Fear/Hope feels less wasteful in Daggerheart)

Part of them is due to players getting burned out and not wanting to narrate as much, but I also think part of it is that there's not much variety with only 2 dice involved. It's too binary to keep things interesting over the entirety of a campaign. It's still a very cool idea; I'm just not sure that Daggerheart's implementation of it will hold my group's attention for a longer campaign.

I enjoyed the experience, and I still think it could be a fine game to have on my shelf for shorter campaigns.

Even the designer says it's intended for 25 session campaigns.

Overall: A lot of cool ideas but feels slightly off. Daggerheart has a lot of potential. If it has a second edition, that might be a better time to buy in. In the meantime, you probably still will have fun with the game. Just don't expect combat to be much faster than D&D 5E.

Here I can not agree. What Daggerheart has going for it on combat speed is that the only time I ever have a player going into a turn unprepared is when I point at them and say "the monster swings at you. What do you do?" And that's visceral enough they don't need to. Also there's less high level slowdown due to not having huge numbers of hp to track.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I am not sure what "extra steps" you are talking about here.
Damage dealt.
Check Threshold.
Use Armor.
Mark HP.
Compared to a system with Soak (say, SWADE of Shadowrun) how is this extra steps?

Check threshold/use armour are two steps.

Of course subtracting is normally slower than checking so it comes out in the wash unless you have very low damage numbers. I think it's mostly familiarity.