Daggerheart Post-Mortem

[Retreater]

Boardgames has a lot more innovation than RPGs in general and way way broader set of mechanics. And gamedesigners in boardgames manages to do that even when coming up with completely new mechanics, so this does not mean one needs to do clones.

Of course, there is also more money and thus more time for better gamedesigne in average in boardgames, ans making things more smooth and simpler is hard.

RPG players and designers just often overestimate "how different" their mechanics are while in the end its still mostly just dice resolution.

I have a hard time learning board games. Even though my wife is a big fan, we rarely play them.

I just don't have a brain for those mechanics. By the time I learn a play pattern and the objective, I'm already too far behind and I look like an idiot. I hate the experience. And then every time I play board games, someone wants to play a different board game, so I can never learn them. It's a perpetual, nerve-wracking, terrible experience.

With RPGs, I can see similarities in resolution mechanics. "Oh, this one is d20-based. Or this one is percentile, roll under. Or this one is a dice pool, looking for 6+ on a d10." I can grok most RPGs in a few minutes.

To me, board games just seem like a bunch of random stuff thrown together. Making matters worse, most of them use obscure iconography instead of text, so I don't know what anything means.

 

[Reynard]

Boardgames has a lot more innovation than RPGs in general and way way broader set of mechanics. And gamedesigners in boardgames manages to do that even when coming up with completely new mechanics, so this does not mean one needs to do clones.


Of course, there is also more money and thus more time for better gamedesigne in average in boardgames, ans making things more smooth and simpler is hard.



RPG players and designers just often overestimate "how different" their mechanics are while in the end its still mostly just dice resolution.

Board games have the benefit of focused design: you only need to make rules for a few specific things in most board games, whereas in RPGs you have to accommodate tactical infinity.

 

[Tigris]

I have a hard time learning board games. Even though my wife is a big fan, we rarely play them.

I just don't have a brain for those mechanics. By the time I learn a play pattern and the objective, I'm already too far behind and I look like an idiot. I hate the experience. And then every time I play board games, someone wants to play a different board game, so I can never learn them. It's a perpetual, nerve-wracking, terrible experience.

Playing good in Boardgames is in generally harder to learn than RPGs because they differ more from each other and need more tactical thinking even cooperative ones because its a lot more about winning or losing. And also because you most likely have not as much experience with them as you have with rpgs. And boardgame communities are a lot more about "new things" than RPG communities which often just want to experience old things slightly varied.

A friend of mine tracks exactly which board games she plays and we play often together, she played the last phew years each year 100+ NEW boardgames.

I personally play rarely a boardgame twice, because the fun part for me is figuring it out in the first play.

With RPGs, I can see similarities in resolution mechanics. "Oh, this one is d20-based. Or this one is percentile, roll under. Or this one is a dice pool, looking for 6+ on a d10." I can grok most RPGs in a few minutes.

Well this is because from boardgame terms all these "different mechanics" is just a variation of the same mechanics dice rolling: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamemechanic/2072/dice-rolling or stat check resolution: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamemechanic/2853/stat-check-resolution

And there are 150 or so common boardgame mechanics: https://boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgamemechanic

While in RPGs you normally only have maybe 10? Typical is dice rolling, grid movement, stat check resolution, turn order, action points. So its a lot easier to compare them with each other because they are a much smaller subset of the spectrum.

To me, board games just seem like a bunch of random stuff thrown together. Making matters worse, most of them use obscure iconography instead of text, so I don't know what anything means.

This is normal. You lack the preknowledge which your wife and other boardgamers did build up and upon which new boardgames are based.


My recommendation would be to play some boardgames (in an app) solo to get used to the mechanics and design language.


Once you have this its a lot easier to learn new boardgames. 100+ a year is then not hard.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'll keep this brief as it's a tangent to the main conversation. In a 13th Age 1e campaign I ran, I messed up encounter building once because I forgot that the foes were all large. And it was in challenging terrain already, flying foes split between the deck and "air bag" (floating air whale) of a skyship as they were exploring the Overworld.

Ooops!

The party managed it, though the rogue who went off the side of the air whale and was plummeting to his death was saved by the dwarfforged on the deck firing a barbed harpoon w/ chain into him. That was a tough fight. I love that they give you rules for making a fair fight, and then tell you to make it unfair in memorable ways.

Yeah, its unplanned things which can be really killer in that system. But of course the point was that 3 Level 5 Archers and 6 Level 5 Troops is a whole different beast than 3 Level 5 Spoilers and 6 Level 5 Wreckers, even though they have the same avowed value in the encounter build system, because those opponent types are assumed to be used as seasoning, not the whole meal.

 

[Arilyn]

I have a hard time learning board games. Even though my wife is a big fan, we rarely play them.

I just don't have a brain for those mechanics. By the time I learn a play pattern and the objective, I'm already too far behind and I look like an idiot. I hate the experience. And then every time I play board games, someone wants to play a different board game, so I can never learn them. It's a perpetual, nerve-wracking, terrible experience.

With RPGs, I can see similarities in resolution mechanics. "Oh, this one is d20-based. Or this one is percentile, roll under. Or this one is a dice pool, looking for 6+ on a d10." I can grok most RPGs in a few minutes.

To me, board games just seem like a bunch of random stuff thrown together. Making matters worse, most of them use obscure iconography instead of text, so I don't know what anything means.

I hear you and feel your pain. I can't keep track of the myriad point gathering. I slide into doing the one or two things, totally forgetting chunks of game play. It's mostly the Euro point gathering games, especially if the theme does not match the play. I don't feel at all like a rat catcher in 12th century Venice!

 

[SteveC]

On the "what do do with Hope and Fear when it's not obvious." I suggest taking a step back and just thinking about something generic you can apply when nothing better comes to mind.

I did training for a looooong time, and also trained people on how to train. One of the things I had to learn, and later teach was that you need some go-to statements when something comes up that's going to derail where you're going. Something that you just say by autopilot to give yourself a moment to figure out a better reply. It's different for everyone.

The approach I would use (and have) in DH is similar. I consider Hope and Fear to be real things that people understand exist in the world, so I lean into them. The easiest thing is to give or heal a Stress.

When I'm running a combat scene, I have certain things that I think would be cool to happen, but I'm not just going to have them occur by fiat. A Fear or Hope result is a great way to make them happen. It's "making a Move" and your players learn to expect it and think “oh, this is a thing that happened because Fear or Hope is intervening, it isn't just Steve doing it."

Non-combat scenes typically have Environments where something can happen, like an event or some positive or negative scene-changing thing. Okay, you rolled with Fear? What does the Environment suggest?

Running DH is different than a lot of other games (especially 5E, which tends to be the point of comparison) but comes as natural to PbtA GMs. If you're running a scene or combat in 5E you usually don't have any pre-prepared events that can happen, so having one of them come up seems like you're pulling it out of your butt. With DH, maybe you're doing that, but you have an expectation that you can do it baked into the rules.