We stopped playing Daggerheart

[Reynard]

If you feel you have to give DH that much support to make it a good experience for you and your players, what are you getting out of the core system that potentially makes it worth it? Why not use another system that suits your needs better?

Seriously: why are you spending so much effort fighting Daggerheart? Just ignore it. It is obviously not for you.

 

[Agamon]

Seriously: why are you spending so much effort fighting Daggerheart? Just ignore it. It is obviously not for you.

Awww....but internet!

 

[SteveC]

I find the discussion about what the different resources in DH mean really interesting because a lot of people who have issues with the game seem not to want them to tie into the fiction. For me, the fact that we have Fear and Hope, along with Stress and HP, is something I can use to make the world seem more real and distinct.

For me, Fear and Hope are real things that manifest themselves in the world as forces you can feel and, in certain circumstances, perceive directly. That's the same thing as Stress, although I make that more of an internal thing that the player gets to define.

I've run the Starter adventure a lot. One of the first things I talk about when the players enter the forest is how dense and off-putting it can be. I use the movie Predator as an example. Everything is going great for the characters, but as soon as the Predator starts to be a force, things get closer and more stifling. That's how I describe the forest in general. Now, I had a young player who had never seen the movie, so I had a little more work to do there, but we got there. And they got a movie to see.

When they roll with Fear, and I don't have something more detailed to say (and there aren't a lot of die rolls in the adventure, so it doesn't come up that much), I mention how the forest darkens and becomes actively menacing, with a feeling of ancient dread. One of the players was making jokes as they went along, so I had the forest whisper out one of them (like when the Predator says "anytime....") I then gave the whole group a Stress. Yeah, that was more than I would do normally, but there aren't that many die rolls, so I determined they weren't going to be hobbled too much.

When they roll with Hope, I leaned into Avatar, and I think Final Fantasy X, and had a shimmering group of butterfly-like creatures fly nearby and remind the group that there was life and light in this place, even if it was hiding much of the time. We did a monologue like Sam does at the end of The Two Towers in the final fight when there was a climactic roll with Hope. Even in the darkest parts of the world, Hope still exists.

And when you take Stress, that's an opportunity. I tell them about the negative emotions of the forest threaten to overwhelm them and ask how they react. My Dungeon Crawler Carl heart was happy when one player said, "You. Will. Not. Break. Me."

To me, making all those things real and present in the world makes the game more intense, and also makes it seem different than other games. I lean into the mechanic and use it to show how this is a different world or game than, say, 5E.

This is not for everyone, and I suspect some of y'all will think "That's not for me." If this isn't for you, it might be hokey, and that's okay. But I think it does explain why I think DH is something special.

 

[SkidAce]

...

There is more to RPG design than simulation and storytelling.

Wut?




j/k


.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Seriously: why are you spending so much effort fighting Daggerheart? Just ignore it. It is obviously not for you.

Is this not a legitimate question? They said they like it for the most part. That's good enough for me. I don't have to like a game system to respect what it does and does well. That's how I felt about 4e.

 

[djotaku]

they struggled to get their heads around the fact that this game wasn’t a GM vs Players thing but a ‘tell a good story’ type of game. I think that broke a lot of the immersive experience for them.

Isn't this also true for D&D 5e and Paizo 2nd edition games? At least that's what the Player and GM handbooks say - "you're telling a story; it's not GM vs players"

 

[Retreater]

Isn't this also true for D&D 5e and Paizo 2nd edition games? At least that's what the Player and GM handbooks say - "you're telling a story; it's not GM vs players"

D&D 5e and Pathfinder 2 may say that you're telling a story, but they're first and foremost gamist systems - not narrativist systems.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Isn't this also true for D&D 5e and Paizo 2nd edition games? At least that's what the Player and GM handbooks say - "you're telling a story; it's not GM vs players"

It depends on the edition and the playstyle. Collaborative storytelling is not the only or objectively best way to play D&D, no matter how popular it might be at the moment.

 

[Retreater]

Collaborative storytelling is not the only or objectively best way to play D&D, no matter how popular it might be at the moment.

I would argue that collaborative storytelling is actually the worst way to play D&D. I've beat my head against the wall for decades trying to make D&D do that.

 

[Whisper-Kitten]

Awww....but internet!