Daggerheart General Thread [+]

[BruceWright]

If you lift one piece of that guidance out of its context, or treat a pacing tool as a fixed rule, you’re no longer engaging with the system as it’s presented. Daggerheart isn’t meant to be run piecemeal; it’s designed so that the principles laid out at the start carry through to every part of the game. Ignore those foundations, and of course the advice will feel mismatched — but that’s a result of losing the context, not of the advice itself.

Yeah, a frustrating thing is when people find one line from the SRD and treat it like it’s from a book of rules written in a legalese fashion.

Daggerheart is not written in that style, and so interpreting a portion as if it is, is to misunderstand the portion quoted.

 

[zakael19]

No, I think that listing actual amounts of fear was a bad move they should’ve avoided. The table is weird, and would been probably better off without hard numbers. Like, spending 4 fear in a standard battle will often leave things incredibly underwhelming.

The guidance in the paragraphs above the table is great.

 

[Imaro]

So im curious... if fear cap doesn't really affect anything... why have one... or maybe a better question is why 12 vs 20 or 6 or 3?

 

[zakael19]

So im curious... if fear cap doesn't really affect anything... why have one... or maybe a better question is why 12 vs 20 or 6 or 3?

12 because they try and do multiples of 6 wherever they can as a design conceit, and a cap around that much so that you can hold a max roll of d4 + 5 after a long rest and still either have a bit of space to accumulate or not overcap a bunch. Not much higher to remind you to spend fear to add interesting complications.

 

[overgeeked]

12 because they try and do multiples of 6 wherever they can as a design conceit, and a cap around that much so that you can hold a max roll of d4 + 5 after a long rest and still either have a bit of space to accumulate or not overcap a bunch. Not much higher to remind you to spend fear to add interesting complications.

For a large group like CR I'd imagine a cap of 18 would work better. I don't remember Matt hitting the cap in Age of Umbra. But then he just kept spending fear like mad.

 

[Seramus]

For something like a one-shot or a convention game, absolutely. For a campaign, I would say no. Daggerheart strikes me as a PCs front-and-center as protagonists style of game. In my view that means prepping situations that directly involve the PCs' goals and motivations rather than canned adventures. If you wanted to run a canned adventure, I'd suggest finding PC goals and motivations and pointing those towards the canned adventure. Like one PC wants to find their long-lost brother so plant rumors that the brother went to a relevant location near the start of the adventure. Just don't string the players along and actually pay off the goal and motivation.

Interestingly, this does seem to be what Perkins is specifically being assigned to do. It's really just speculation, but his interviews seem to point towards the idea that he's trying to build an "Iconic Adventure" for Daggerheart.

I'm a big fan of taking a game and doing what you feel comfortable with it, and I think DaggerHeart can do what you're looking for. All I'd say is that when some detail of the setting comes up and you'd typically use an oracle or some other die roll to determine, just ask the players for their input.

I agree strongly with this. The more I play Daggerheart, the more I feel like I can do darn near anything with the system. Certainly some people will point and say "You're not playing Daggerheart as intended, and ignoring X, Y, Z rule!" but... if I want to run this trad D&D, I totally can. If I want to run this more narrative heavy? I can do that to. I can do LOTS of different things. I can hack this game every bit as much as people try to hack D&D, and the game handles it easily.

 

[SteveC]

I agree strongly with this. The more I play Daggerheart, the more I feel like I can do darn near anything with the system. Certainly some people will point and say "You're not playing Daggerheart as intended, and ignoring X, Y, Z rule!" but... if I want to run this trad D&D, I totally can. If I want to run this more narrative heavy? I can do that to. I can do LOTS of different things. I can hack this game every bit as much as people try to hack D&D, and the game handles it easily.

Exactly! I think there's a strange pattern with DaggerHeart where people are coming up with very stringent ways to play or not play the game. Maybe this is people coming from more traditional games? If you want to put an OSR spin on it, great! Run it as if you were playing 5E? Awesome! Play as a narrative story-game? Fun! The game supports different play styles and the conversational nature of the GM parts shows this off. No one is going to say you're playing it wrong if you spend all your Fear as soon as possible. Except maybe your players, because I don't know how much fun that would be, but hey, it might be awesome! And gradually ramping up the difficulty as a session progresses is likewise. Just have fun. And the best part is you're using the rules as intended (at least in my opinion).

 

[zakael19]

Exactly! I think there's a strange pattern with DaggerHeart where people are coming up with very stringent ways to play or not play the game. Maybe this is people coming from more traditional games? If you want to put an OSR spin on it, great! Run it as if you were playing 5E? Awesome! Play as a narrative story-game? Fun! The game supports different play styles and the conversational nature of the GM parts shows this off. No one is going to say you're playing it wrong if you spend all your Fear as soon as possible. Except maybe your players, because I don't know how much fun that would be, but hey, it might be awesome! And gradually ramping up the difficulty as a session progresses is likewise. Just have fun. And the best part is you're using the rules as intended (at least in my opinion).

We can appreciate the general game and yet still provide some criticism of what's worded in there or presented (the Fear #s, the fact that Solos aren't, etc). Especially since this came about from questions regarding fear accumulation for a group larger then the optimal size as suggested by teh book in turn.

 

[SteveC]

We can appreciate the general game and yet still provide some criticism of what's worded in there or presented (the Fear #s, the fact that Solos aren't, etc). Especially since this came about from questions regarding fear accumulation for a group larger then the optimal size as suggested by teh book in turn.

Oh of course! As long as you're having fun, no complaints there. The issue I have is when someone says the suggestions for spending Fear for an encounter are bad, and that they're more than suggestions, I think they're making the assumption that the game wants to tell you how to run or play the game rather than suggestions. There are tons of rules in DaggerHeart, such as how the Duality dice rolls work, and I'd say those are rules you're expected to follow or be playing a very heavily house-ruled game.

GM advice on spending Fear? I think that's a very useful set of guidelines for people coming to the game from a traditional RPG perspective, but they're just guidelines to get you thinking.

Now your example of how Solos work (or that they aren't really solo encounters) I'll also agree with. Not sure if that's a change to the name or if they need additional mechanics behind them. I've played a fair bit, but only run the Quickstart. That ran fine, but it was very simple. I'll take the word of people who've run the game more than me about them.

So of course disagree, play how you want, and have fun. I'm just saying that some of the things people are assuming are rules fall into the realm of guidelines.

 

[overgeeked]

Interestingly, this does seem to be what Perkins is specifically being assigned to do. It's really just speculation, but his interviews seem to point towards the idea that he's trying to build an "Iconic Adventure" for Daggerheart.

That would be great. Though with the clear emphasis on PbtA-style play to find out, I'm not sure how well that will work. That said, as many have pointed out, bog-standard D&D is a fairly clear "fail state" of Daggerheart. If you ignore all the PbtA mechanics and advice you'll still get a bog-standard superheroic fantasy experience out of the game.

I agree strongly with this. The more I play Daggerheart, the more I feel like I can do darn near anything with the system. Certainly some people will point and say "You're not playing Daggerheart as intended, and ignoring X, Y, Z rule!" but... if I want to run this trad D&D, I totally can. If I want to run this more narrative heavy? I can do that to. I can do LOTS of different things. I can hack this game every bit as much as people try to hack D&D, and the game handles it easily.

Ish. The game is designed a certain way and will fight you if you try to push things too far out of whack, just like any game with a decent amount of rules. Yes, it's quite hackable, which is great. But those are two different questions. What is the game designed to do? Can you hack the game to do something it wasn't designed for?

Like with people who try to hack D&D into something else, there are hundreds of other games out there that already do exactly what you're after. It'll be easier to find and play those than push, shove, hack, and tweak this game to do something it wasn't designed for. You're absolutely free to do so, but it seems like a waste of time.