Daggerheart General Thread [+]

[chuckdee]

Thinking about putting together some Environments for my modern urban fantasy just to braindump complications & descriptions.

Thinking like, City Streets; Nightclub; Silent Offices; Industrial / Warehouses?

Gotta have a Traversal challenge for the Goblin Ways through Faerie.

Anything else genre critical that comes to mind?

Rooftops are a good one, and Sewers. Construction site maybe? I think that would be different enough from Industrial/Warehouse. Parking garage? And the vertical nature of an open high rise apartment building, a la District B13 or the Raid would be a good one.

 

[zakael19]

Rooftops are a good one, and Sewers. Construction site maybe? I think that would be different enough from Industrial/Warehouse. Parking garage? And the vertical nature of an open high rise apartment building, a la District B13 or the Raid would be a good one.

Oo, rooftops are good - traversal complications. Had sewers in my head as pending (gotta do some gross stuff like fatberg elementals), good call.

Don't really need an Environment for every possibility, just containers to hold some Actions that I can grab (eg: Streets suburban or urban can have something around The Lights Go Out, Suspicious Passersby, Do Not Cross, etc).

Should note this is specifically Seattle, and very high but hidden magic (as suits Daggerheart). Touchstones are entirely books (I don't really watch TV): the Matthew Swift series; Alex Verus series; October Daye series; Twenty Palaces series; and Rivers of London.

 

[Zaukrie]

Oo, rooftops are good - traversal complications. Had sewers in my head as pending (gotta do some gross stuff like fatberg elementals), good call.

Don't really need an Environment for every possibility, just containers to hold some Actions that I can grab (eg: Streets suburban or urban can have something around The Lights Go Out, Suspicious Passersby, Do Not Cross, etc).

Should note this is specifically Seattle, and very high but hidden magic (as suits Daggerheart). Touchstones are entirely books (I don't really watch TV): the Matthew Swift series; Alex Verus series; October Daye series; Twenty Palaces series; and Rivers of London.

Seattle? Unfinished mass transit line?

 

[chuckdee]

Should note this is specifically Seattle, and very high but hidden magic (as suits Daggerheart). Touchstones are entirely books (I don't really watch TV): the Matthew Swift series; Alex Verus series; October Daye series; Twenty Palaces series; and Rivers of London.

Hadn't heard of these other than Rivers of London (which I love) so thanks for posting these!

 

[zakael19]

Hadn't heard of these other than Rivers of London (which I love) so thanks for posting these!

Matthew Swift is late 2000s London, and honestly more impactful to how I’ve crafted my setup then anything else. The author does things with melding magic and urbanity that nobody else does. (The words of bureaucratese turned into spells of binding? Ample use of gas mains and electricity and wires and so forth to replace classic spells, animating the signs of city life as powerful wards using spray paint to do it fast, urban dryads that live in streetlights - the trees of a city, golems of garbage and twisting flying flocking trashbags, trolls that live under the motorway bridges and scare speeding / reckless drivers, a deep love for the life and magic of a modern city).

Alex Verus is also England, but somewhat more typical Mages and Wizards slinging spells around (with some neat quirks). Still hidden from the Mundane world, with a wizarding world split between “Light and Dark” wizards (but that’s more about what magic you’ll use then altruism or anything).

October Daye is the protag of a fae-focused series in California. Great stuff, lots of fun ideas about faerieland and the modern world colliding.

Twenty Palaces veers a little more into horror / Lovecraft stuff but in a totally unique way. Really neat ideas, the author also has a lovely little novella of quiet magic in Seattle called “A Key, An Egg, an Unfortunate Remark” that has my favorite take on idiosyncratic vampires almost as an aside.

 

[Teemu]

So Critical Role is not using DH for their new campaign. I think it could definitely slow down the DH momentum since it does send a mixed message about the game from the main marketing force behind it.

 

[Aldarc]

 

[Seramus]

I misunderstood. Post retracted!

 

[Pulpfan1971]

While I would much prefer the next campaign to be Daggerheart, I think these initial takes are premature. And mostly coming from a place of passion. I love Daggerheart and want to use it almost exclusively for my “Not D&D” games (though Cosmere is good in a different and more fiddly way)

I think we, super fans, have to remember that there is a vast space between “successful RPG” and “Dead” that many games live in

Savage Worlds, Cypher, the gazillion Warhammer games, StoryPath, and more sell way less than Pathfinder but have a robust release schedule, support, and player network.

Outgunned, The One Ring, Dragonbane (and pretty much everything by Free League, Star Trek Adventures (and the Modiphius 2d20 family) all have slower release schedules but are living and successful games.

Even if Daggerheart remains the “break from the campaign” mini-series game for CR, it can still easily end up much bigger than all these games, even if it ultimately settles into the “3rd or 4th biggest choice for High Fantasy” that would be an accomplishment

 

[chuckdee]

So Critical Role is not using DH for their new campaign. I think it could definitely slow down the DH momentum since it does send a mixed message about the game from the main marketing force behind it.

I think they are wise not to pivot entirely so quickly, in all honesty. It helps to compare and contrast for one thing with the same groups. And depending on how they run it and how it goes, it could show people in a visual and visceral manner the differences, swaying more people.