Daggerheart General Thread [+]

[Ruin Explorer]

To me the weird or awkward one is "Risk It All"... and maybe that's because I don't think my players will ever use it.

I think you're going to be very surprised here. A lot of people like to let it ride, and that includes narratively. If you don't intervene and tell them how bad you think it is and/or house-rule it out, unless your players are very unusual, I pretty much guarantee you'll see it used within the first five times a PC hits the Death rules.

I mean, let's be real - there are some players who will never do anything but Avoid Death. And there will be players who are just looking for Blaze of Glory. But there are others who want to find out what happens, rather than a pre-decided idea of what should happen, and Risk It All is for them.

when do i want my character to either die randomly or suddenly out of nowhere rebound almost totally... with equal chances of both

See, I feel like this is your personal hang-up, and you are extending to first, all of your group, and just blithely assuming they all share it, and then you're sort of extending it further and kind of assuming everyone shares it and we all think this is weird to some greater or lesser extent in a "narrative" RPG.

Let me assure you - that is not the case.

I don't think you're even right about you own group - my guess would be you've never asked them about this, because it's not a common thing. If you do ask them, maybe try and do so neutrally, by asking about the death moves in general and what they think. I think even that might surprise you.

Your general thinking here seems to be about narrative RPGs essentially meaning predestination/control, that you'd only want PCs to die with it was something that dramatic circumstances supported. In reality most RPGs that kill PCs, most of the PCs who get killed, it's not really dramatically appropriate, it's just whoops the dice turned up that way and a lot of players are just fine with that. And they don't stop being fine with that just because they're in a more narrative-oriented RPG.

Even the more narratively-minded ones may not actually have a strong idea of whether they want their PC live or die at this precise moment - if they do have a strong idea, they have those options - they can choose for the PC to definitely live, or definitely die. But you shouldn't be assuming people don't like idea of seeing what the dice tell them happens just because "narrative". Narrative games are very frequently guided by dice - huge things happen in PtbA or FitD games because the dice said so - absolutely including deaths.

As an aside, I actually think Blaze of Glory is much, much, much more likely to cause a real narrative problem than Risk It All. Because Blaze of Glory is basically situated as being extremely powerful - i.e. they explain the power as sort of being enough to one-shot a boss but maybe not enough to smash the walls to Heaven, which is a pretty wide space! And a PC who dies in a dumb way could easily invoke Blaze of Glory (perhaps because they're bored of that PC and have an exciting idea for the replacement - I've seen that happen in other games!), and then you might be in a very tricky situation trying to figure how exactly the guy who got killed by a single goblin because he'd just completely forgotten/refused-for-dumb-reasons ("I'm saving them!") to use any healing pots is going to have some earthshattering "Blaze of Glory" moment. Cooperative players will solve a lot but that is the genuinely concerning death move for me.

EDIT - I would personally pick Risk It All in any narrative situation where either my PC dying OR my PC living could be narratively exciting, and where I didn't have a really strong opinion myself as to which was the way to go. That's definitely happened a few times over the years, but mostly in games where I didn't actually have a choice lol!

 

[Imaro]

Right but my perception is that you may be insisting that mechanics are the only determinative factor in how others play the game, and I'm pushing against that idea.

That's a good point, not what I was thinking but interesting and close... what I'm thinking is that the mechanics are the default or intended determinative factor in how the game is intended to play out by it's designers...

 

[BruceWright]

That's a good point, not what I was thinking but interesting and close... what I'm thinking is that the mechanics are the default or intended determinative factor in how the game is intended to play out by it's designers...

Then, I'd encourage a more generous reading of the core book. There are entire sections of it devoted to things other than mechanics. It's all intended for gameplay. How could it not be so?

 

[Vael]

One of the things Daggerheart unabashedly does is push GMs and players to customize and make it their own. One thing that really stood out for me was the example of play. One, it mixes combat and non-combat in the write-up, but what really made the section stand out was after the example of play, it asks a few questions of the reader, like "would you have done what the GM did here? Can you foresee consequences of the GM's choices?" which really kinda blew my mind. The SRD is good, but it's not just art in the main book, the bevy of examples and fleshing out game rules really does a lot for me.

 

[zakael19]

One of the things Daggerheart unabashedly does is push GMs and players to customize and make it their own. One thing that really stood out for me was the example of play. One, it mixes combat and non-combat in the write-up, but what really made the section stand out was after the example of play, it asks a few questions of the reader, like "would you have done what the GM did here? Can you foresee consequences of the GM's choices?" which really kinda blew my mind. The SRD is good, but it's not just art in the main book, the bevy of examples and fleshing out game rules really does a lot for me.

I’m glad to see this sort of post-example introspection making into a game with a lot of buzz. It’s been common in “indie” games for a while, and is absolutely helpful in illustrating all the bits of play that are judgement and table dependent and how different choices there can result in very different play.

 

[aramis erak]

Yes, Solos are misnamed. They are not worth enough points to ever be alone.

The Tier 1 Solo "Construct", 5 balance points, was major damage to the 3 PCs of Tier 1, last sunday. It didn't need backup, especially with 2 spotlights in a row as a 1 fear cost. It could have gone either way... save for the fact that I rolled a number of 1's for damage.

 

[zakael19]

The Tier 1 Solo "Construct", 5 balance points, was major damage to the 3 PCs of Tier 1, last sunday. It didn't need backup, especially with 2 spotlights in a row as a 1 fear cost. It could have gone either way... save for the fact that I rolled a number of 1's for damage.

I think this is going to be one of those things that's also dependent on your player count. A single solo vs 5 PCs is a different budget/setup then one vs 2-3. I've got an encounter with a 2phase solo set up for the kinda conclusion of the current arc if the Players pursue in a specific direction, and I'm going to have to rework it if we're dropped down to 3 again.

 

[Vael]

The Tier 1 Solo "Construct", 5 balance points, was major damage to the 3 PCs of Tier 1, last sunday. It didn't need backup, especially with 2 spotlights in a row as a 1 fear cost. It could have gone either way... save for the fact that I rolled a number of 1's for damage.

I threw two minor demons against a party of 5 PCs ... and definitely could have put a PC or two into death moves. The fear generation was pretty good.

 

[Aldarc]

I cannot see who everyone is arguing against, likely a result of the ignore function, but I get the sense that the argument being had is likely at odds to the spirit of the Plus Thread.

 

[aramis erak]

We had a fairly equal distribution between Success with Hope, Success with Fear, Failure with Hope and Failure with Fear. That distribution did not feel good to me. 3 out of every 4 rolls was some sort of GM Move. That felt like way too much, even with trying to do softer moves for like half of them. Adding Fear on top felt like overkill (I spent 4 over the course of the scene with 2 of those being spent to increase the countdown for the cave collapsing). I really felt like I had to actively pace stuff when the point of like the architecture should be to pace things for us.

I found it more like `11 of 12, most of which (7-8) were showing "how the world reacts".

It's likely just not for us anyway. Because the Hope/Fear resource economy was far from our only issues.

The way rolls worked in the beta where it was GM Move or bank a fear honestly felt better. I might go back to that if I ever try the game again.

An interesting idea - probably should have been an option...
But I've not had any shortage of things to spend fear on.