I am surprised I am still excited for Daggerheart

[Faolyn]

That's what I said, but the person who started this line of argument rejected that. They defined "support" as material published by the company that made the game. Full stop.

Other folks arguing that "support" includes fan engagement are absolutely right. But to be clear I am NOT the one arguing against that view. My only statement was that a game can be good and complete and successful in just one volume with no ongoing published support at all.

I agree. Additional "official" support is great but is rarely actually needed.

 

[Arilyn]

So my general feeling towards Dungeon Coach (and his DC20 project) tends to be "you dear sweet Summer Child."

A sweet Summer child who made 2 million on his Kickstarter and has a large following who want the game he's designing.

 

[Reynard]

A sweet Summer child who made 2 million on his Kickstarter and has a large following who want the game he's designing.

Right. DC doesn't have to do anything more than deliver to his backers. No one can beat WotC, but no one is trying. These influencers have enough fans to support what they are doing, and if it's good, they will earn more fans.

Maybe DC20 will break wide. It's not impossible. Shadowdark certainly has.

 

[Aldarc]

A sweet Summer child who made 2 million on his Kickstarter and has a large following who want the game he's designing.

I'm well aware of that fact but my opinion of him remains unchanged.

 

[UnplayedRanger]

Honestly, DC20 seemed fine to me. It's just my desire to leave the d20 system behind that made me skip out on it. Daggerheart seems much more interesting of the two, imo.

 

[Kichwas]

We arguing over minute definitions of what to argue about for a product that hasn't even come out yet.

Personally, I'm still in hype mode.

Lets have our dreams get shattered after we have it in hand outside of just Australia. At least it's not a video game where we can be almost certain the thing we receive on release day will be an unfinished broken mess. It's a tRPG - we're probably going to get an actual game in there.

We do know, from the presence of 'Campaign Frames' and from the interview with the actual authors (neither of whom is named Matt Mercer BTW) that they expect us to come up with our own homemade settings and hope to support us with the tools to do that.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Maybe DC20 will break wide. It's not impossible. Shadowdark certainly has.

I feel like visual design and game theme have a huge impact on whether things break wide. Shadowdark has strong, distinctive visual design and visual language, and has a fairly straightforward concept, which is to be a fast, modern, well-designed OSR-style game specifically for dungeoncrawling.

DC20 doesn't yet have either of these things. To distinguish itself as an RPG it makes 12 separate points, all of which rely on you coming from the starting point of knowing 5E and assuming that as the baseline. The art seems pretty strong, but doesn't seem like it has a specific visual style that makes you say "Aha, DC20" (even Pathfinder, whether 1E or 2E, even without WAR, does have this for example). And I would personally argue that the general styling of the game, with the modern-looking bright purple colour-block together with black/white/red looks like the styling you'd see on a modern team-based FPS or something, not an RPG at all, let alone a fantasy RPG.

I'm not saying this to be down on DC20. Reading the points they make, it sounds like they have good ideas and understand what they're doing mechanically, but I feel like, in the real world, a lot of mechanically very well-designed and conceptually-sound games have failed to find much traction because they didn't land the "visuals and vibes" part of the equation.

(Also, I would personally say the species they list and how DC20 is using them seem really quite... quaint and 3rd edition-y, rather than forward-looking or modern at all. Feels like 2005, not 2025.)

 

[Faolyn]

@Kichwas, according to reddit, Darrington mostly wants people to make their own settings, but have said that they'll put out more material later, or at least when it's popular enough. Probably more domains and creatures.

Plus, they were apparently always planning on putting in guidelines for homebrew, so at least there should be a lot of fan-made material.

 

[Kichwas]

I feel like visual design and game theme have a huge impact on whether things break wide.

I agree on this.

I got interested in Daggerheart for the most "shallow" of reasons after all: Playable Faun as a core ancestry, with good art for it.

They hooked me with the 'look' of the beta cards. They have halfway reeled me in with the beta rules. What I see in the final rules will determine if they make a catch or not.

 

[Faolyn]

I got interested in Daggerheart for the most "shallow" of reasons after all: Playable Faun as a core ancestry, with good art for it.

It was the fairies and goblins that did it for me.