What do YOU plan on doing with Daggerheart?

[zakael19]

The rules are pretty clear, at least to me: only a roll with fear gives the GM a free spotlight for the roll.

Ok, the following is a) me thinking through how I understand the guidance of Daggerheart around the GM and Player "turns" and b) coming from the perspective of somebody who mostly runs games where the GM never rolls and everything comes from the player actions:

DH has the concept of a Player(s) Turn and GM's Turn. During the Player's Turn, one or more Characters are being spotlighted and acting. If at any time during that Turn, they meet any of the criteria previously noted (Roll with fear/Fail/Do something with stated consequences/provide a golden opportunity/look to the GM); the GM feels it's appropriate to make a Move; or the GM wants to actively intervene with a Fear action, they can do so.

One GM move is to Spotlight an Adversary. This allows for the standard array of Actions (Close move + act). The GM may also make a wide variety of other moves which, in the fiction, come from an Adversary. For instance, on a Failure with Hope, a couple brief examples given are "make them mark a stress from the adversary they're engaged with, or make an attack with them." The intent per p.100 is that in a situation involving battling adversaries, so long as the player characters are succeeding with Hope or Criting, those characters retain the spotlight, and the GM sticks to showing how the world and fictional situation is responding to their momentum (rolls should never leave the fiction the same). However in combat "someone fails a roll or rolls with Fear, or ... the GM spends a Fear to interrupt the players’ turns" is the trigger for the GM to take a full Turn, with includes "make[ing] a move to spotlight an adversary—and, if they wish, can spend any number of Fear to spotlight that many additional adversaries."

I'll note that on page 89 appears the single use of "the GM has the spotlight" I can find. I think that this should really be "on the GM's turn," because at least for me the intent is that characters (inclusive of adversaries) are spotlighted - not roles. Many things the GM is going to do will not involve spotlighting an NPC, but they'll absolutely be make moves and then spotlighting a PC by asking "what do you do?"

 

[jian]

Having read the SRD, I basically think this:

1) It’s a nicely more narrative take on the D&D space with some interesting mechanics. It reminds me both of 13th Age and Dungeon World in that it hangs on quite deliberately to lots of D&D tropes such as bardic inspiration, rogue’s sneak attack, short and long rests, and sorcerer’s metamagic, which honestly I’m less of a fan of them doing but I can see why they did.

2) That said, very clearly you don’t have to just do D&D with it - you could do techno fantasy, urban fantasy, or even mecha (see the AEGIS frame) as long as you kludge it a bit (your stats are your mecha’s stats, for instance. It’s definitely leaning more towards the Fabula Ultima or Tiny Dungeons (some of the suggested settings for the latter are pretty wild) space.

3) I like the look of many of the mechanics (Hope and Fear, spending Stress on powers) and am interested to see how they work in play. But I do think there are quite a lot of overlapping moving parts (another inheritance from various forms of D&D, especially 5th) and I’d probably try and streamline it a bit if I ran it. I also wouldn’t use the cards since we mostly play online.

So what I’d do with Daggerheart first is run a game in the Witherwild frame but streamline some of the character generation options. Probably remove classes and allow players to pick from a list of powers from both classes and domains. Maybe collapse the domains to just six - Codex (Kno), Grace (Agi), Midnight (Fin), Sage (Ins), Splendour (Pre), and Valour (Str), pooling powers from the remaining domains and classes into them. So the 1st level powers for each might look like:

• Codex: Book of Ava, Book of Illiat, Book of Tyfa
• Grace: Deft Manoeuvres, I See It Coming, Whirlwind
• Midnight: Cloaked, Shadow Stepper, Uncanny Disguise
• Sage: Beastform, Nature’s Tongue, Unleash Chaos
• Splendour: Inspirational Words, Mending Touch, Rally
• Valour: Forceful Push, I Am Your Shield, Unstoppable

Still working off the six attributes, I might make more traditional versions of the ancestries, such as:

• Clank: +1 Kno, don’t need to eat/drink/breathe
• Elf: +1 Pre, night vision
• Gnome: +1 Fin, Danger Sense
• Human: +1 to one attribute of choice
• Katari: +1 Ins, night vision
• Orc: +1 Str, night vision
• Simiah: +1 Agi, Natural Climber

 

[Reynard]

The rules are pretty clear, at least to me: only a roll with fear gives the GM a free spotlight for the roll.

This is blatantly wrong. A failed action roll also hands the spotlight to GM.

People really need to RTFM.

 

[aramis erak]

This is blatantly wrong. A failed action roll also hands the spotlight to GM.

People really need to RTFM.

Page ref? (No offense, but I want proof. And I don't trust your understandings of terms based upon prior history.)

 

[zakael19]

Page ref? (No offense, but I want proof. And I don't trust your understandings of terms based upon prior history.)

Page 100, as I noted above, under the heading “Battling Adversaries.”

However in combat when "someone fails a roll or rolls with Fear, or ... the GM spends a Fear to interrupt the players’ turns" is the trigger for the GM to take a full Turn, which includes "make[ing] a move to spotlight an adversary—and, if they wish, can spend any number of Fear to spotlight that many additional adversaries."

 

[aramis erak]

Page 100, as I noted above, under the heading “Battling Adversaries.”

which doesn't jive with the examples a few pages later.

 

[zakael19]

which doesn't jive with the examples a few pages later.

Sure it does, those are guidelines across all aspects of the game of a general gist of how you should consider picking moves based on Action Roll outcomes. Activating an adversary to make a return attack is right there under Failure with Hope, on that page, as I've said like 4 times now. You just don't get a free Fear to spend, so if you're tapped out you can't use a Fear ability.

Unfortunately I think this is one of the downsides of DH trying to have its cake and eat it too, in terms of trying to cast everything as Moves but still bring in some elements of traditional RPG play. It's a lot clearer in something like a PBTA, where the GM only spotlights players, and makes moves in response to their roll outcomes; with no concept of "players keeping the spotlight" or "turns."

 

[Reynard]

Page ref?

Page 37 of the SRD.

(No offense, but I want proof. And I don't trust your understandings of terms based upon prior history.)

Well then.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I would point out that the default assumption is that the GM should get as many turns as the PCs in combat and probably slightly more. If the GM only got the spotlight when the player rolled with fear then they would have roughly 90% of the actions of PCs (rolls with fear being two GM turns; one for the spotlight and one for spending a fear) or fewer if they spend the Fear for active abilities. The single action for a roll with hope (a not that common outcome as PCs tend to hit) pushes it near the even mark.

 

[John R Davis]

The game went like this:.
I spend cool pc tokens for bonus, I rolled dross, GM gained fear

GM spends fear, several adversaries roll very well as he spends fear etc .

Another player uses cool stuff, rolls dross.
Rinse and repeat.

Whether physical combat, social etc
Can't recall another game being so brutal for bad PC rolls

Hopefully one off nightmare session.