I am surprised I am still excited for Daggerheart

[Micah Sweet]

If you don't find any reason to try out new stuff, than of course be happy with the usual. But there are people who complain about D&D, are not happy with it, homebrew it to death, but refuse to try out new systems because "they don't have time to learn them" and I don't understand that. I think its a fallacy.

Depends on what they complain about. Sometimes a different version of D&D will do the trick.

 

[Morrus]

I've never understood the need to find a new game all the time. For me it's about being with friends more than anything else .

You make it sound like it’s a binary choice beteeen friendship or game rules. You can do both at the same time!

 

[Zaukrie]

You make it sound like it’s a binary choice beteeen friendship or game rules. You can do both at the same time!

I literally am not. I said that's I play for friendship. I never said that rules get in the way. I said they aren't all that important to why I play. I literally did not say what you're stating.

 

[Kichwas]

There's a lot of good 'how to run this thing' advice which I feel will be critical since it has some major differences with modern tRPGs.

That advice by the way, is some of the best ever put in an RPG book.

We all probably skip the 'how to be a GM' chapter, but this is one book were you should read that stuff line by line, maybe even print out a page of your PDF and bring a highlighter.

Because the 'narrative format' is an actual thing baked into the rules and not just a 'coffee in a cafe with a goatee and beret on, so we're so cool' notation like it usually is... they actually had to break that down and explain how to do it.

Nobody's going to pretend to be 'cooler than you' with fancy claims, they actually try to teach "regular gamers" how to do this stuff, with detailed advice, mechanics, and examples.

So read the 'how to play' stuff, and walk yourself through the examples. It's different, but it's also very approachable once you read that stuff.

 

[Kichwas]

I literally am not. I said that's I play for friendship. I never said that rules get in the way. I said they aren't all that important to why I play. I literally did not say what you're stating.

Some folks like the 'shiny new', some don't. Sometimes being open to the shiny new can let you find a gem to hold on to.

I will say I think the narrative method would great in a circle of gamers that are friends beyond the table. It lets you just 'go' with the mood of your friendship when you're not locked to turns and when players are asked to be half-GMs.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Some folks like the 'shiny new', some don't. Sometimes being open to the shiny new can let you find a gem to hold on to.

I will say I think the narrative method would great in a circle of gamers that are friends beyond the table. It lets you just 'go' with the mood of your friendship when you're not locked to turns and when players are asked to be half-GMs.

Some people don't even just like "shiny new", they like variety and trying different things. Like, we've gone back to older RPGs before, plenty of times, as well as playing newer ones (though with most RPGs we have found the most recent edition is the best - particularly with ones that change relatively little, edition on edition, like CoC). And absolutely re: gems - occasionally shiny new isn't just pretty glass, it is something special! We spent years playing Dungeon World because of that.

That's actually what's conflicting me re: running Daggerheart and Outgunned Adventure - both seem like something actually special, I've seen so many RPGs over the last few years which were decent/solid/sensible but fundamentally unexciting to me then two I wasn't expecting essentially come along at once!

Agree re: the narrative approach Daggerheart is taking being easier with people who know each other out-of-game etc. I do think without knowing people I might be inclined to use the Spotlight Tracker optional rule, but I guess that's part of why that option is there!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That advice by the way, is some of the best ever put in an RPG book.

We all probably skip the 'how to be a GM' chapter, but this is one book were you should read that stuff line by line, maybe even print out a page of your PDF and bring a highlighter.

Because the 'narrative format' is an actual thing baked into the rules and not just a 'coffee in a cafe with a goatee and beret on, so we're so cool' notation like it usually is... they actually had to break that down and explain how to do it.

Nobody's going to pretend to be 'cooler than you' with fancy claims, they actually try to teach "regular gamers" how to do this stuff, with detailed advice, mechanics, and examples.

So read the 'how to play' stuff, and walk yourself through the examples. It's different, but it's also very approachable once you read that stuff.

The one thing that slightly confounded me was the Session Zero advice. That advice is perhaps... overcomplicated and over prescriptive (like, timing stuff down to the minute, different break lengths lol, come on who lives like that? This is more like a CPD* course than session zero! Though some DMs could definitely benefit from CPD now I think about it...), and not going to work for a lot of groups but even there, it has some really good "makes you think" kind of points, which like, are definitely worth considering even if you don't go with them! (Also they say they basically took it wholesale from a section of another RPG in the acknowledgements/influences section, which makes sense.)

One other thing I loved though was, after the Full Example Of Play section, they asked several questions about how you'd have run the scenes, and they're genuinely good questions, because I know I'd have run it differently and the questions help to make you think about why/how you would have - but they also don't undermine what you'd have done nor the original DM, instead they talk - correctly - about how different DMs have different styles.

* = Continuing Personal Development = i.e. continuing to learn once you already have a job.

 

[overgeeked]

That advice by the way, is some of the best ever put in an RPG book.

We all probably skip the 'how to be a GM' chapter, but this is one book were you should read that stuff line by line, maybe even print out a page of your PDF and bring a highlighter.

Maybe I'm weird but that's where I spend most of my time. I start with the referee section and read it multiple times as I slowly work my way through the other chapters. I normally save the player-facing stuff for last as I'm far more interested in running games than playing them. Especially new games with a decidedly different focus. I want a referee section to have a clear POV on how the game should be run. I'm definitely seeing that here so far.

Because the 'narrative format' is an actual thing baked into the rules and not just a 'coffee in a cafe with a goatee and beret on, so we're so cool' notation like it usually is... they actually had to break that down and explain how to do it.

Nobody's going to pretend to be 'cooler than you' with fancy claims, they actually try to teach "regular gamers" how to do this stuff, with detailed advice, mechanics, and examples.

So read the 'how to play' stuff, and walk yourself through the examples. It's different, but it's also very approachable once you read that stuff.

What parts are you specifically referring to here? I'm still working my way through the referee section, but what I've found so far is mostly generic PbtA stuff rather than what you seem to be describing.

 

[Kichwas]

What parts are you specifically referring to here? I'm still working my way through the referee section, but what I've found so far is mostly generic PbtA stuff rather than what you seem to be describing.

That's hard for me to answer because I've never read PbtA and only even heard of it in recent posts here.

Maybe the things I find so well stated and revolutionary are old news to many of you. I've been seeing some reviews that are making that point. In which case it's value is that this advice is still 'new advice' to people who are coming from either 'just D&D' or who like me come from independent games but put themselves in a circle a decade or so ago and are thus out of touch with the newest entries.

I took 20 years off from the hobby, and when I came back I went straight into Pathfinder 2E. If it came out after 2005, I missed it unless it was part of Pathfinder 1E's early books that I bought but didn't even read for 20 years.

They do cite a lot of inspirations and I've heard it stated that these take very heavily from some of the inspirations. Making the 'value add' here being that they mix them together well, and the added commentary they add which may or may not be of use to people who already know those inspirations.

I do know that back when I was active in exploring lots of small press games, in the 90s, none of them had good GMing or player advice even when they shifted into radically different kinds of play. Their phrasing was 'by and for the in crowd'. If you sipped your latte in the same musky cafe as they did while listening to the same open-mic poetry, you got it. If not, you weren't cool enough.
- So I tended to bounce off most of those 90s 'look at how cool our idea is' games.

 

[Elvish Lore]

I think, like @Kichwas, for a LOT of people, the advice here in Daggerheart is going to be the first time folks have seen great GM advice codified.

For all that apocalypse world and blades in the dark gets talked about on rpg discussion forums, 99% of D&D/casual gamers have never heard of either and have never encountered some of these player-facing, fiction-first ideas discussed so regularly by some of us.