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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9319747" data-attributes="member: 82106">So, I read through a good hunk of the Daggerheart 1.3 PT manuscript this AM. My impression is that the game is trying to have its cake and eat it too, in a manner somewhat reminding me of how 4e has all the elements needed to play a Story Now Narrativist style D&D game, but doesn't actually ever tell you outright to do that. In 4e's case I think it kind of relies on the fact that most experienced GMs/Players won't actually read much beyond the mechanical parts of the rules before playing. In the case of Daggerheart it is more relying on just equivocating.Like, on P 95, the last paragraph is literally this very ambiguous statement about the nature and source of the fiction. It talks about how the GM 'could' make stuff up on the fly, or maybe they use a map and key, etc. It then tries to state that either way the story should be generated such that "each player should feel free to affect a story that doesn't exist yet" but what exactly entirely 'affect' means, in concrete terms is pretty slippery.The text almost feels a bit odd at times, totally avoiding topics like what would be a good scene to frame, or what the level and nature of prep is in scenes. There are a lot of admonishments about 'player driven', but at the 'rubber meets road' level the game seems quite shy about committing to the reality of this. You can kind of 'read between the lines', like sort of interpolating Dungeon World here and imagine how play could go, but I think the intent is you could simply imagine B2 Keep on the Borderlands as well, and interpret all the 'player input' stuff as simply pertaining to 'color' and 'setting'. Its an odd text, for sure. It's very earnest and bubbling with advice, but I feel like the core, just straight up "what do you do when you play?" is shied away from. Chapter Five seems to jibe well with a type of 'Low Myth' or even 'Zero Myth' play, akin to DW, though. Well, the text IS pretty rough still, particularly in this area, but I sort of feel like some mechanisms and processes/techniques a bit like AW/DW/BitD might not be out of place here in terms of kind of solidifying the GM's relationship to the fiction and providing a more concrete approach to generating it.In terms of the question asked by the OP... I think Daggerheart is aiming to be usable as a substitute for games like Dungeon World. It COULD play pretty similarly if approached in that way. It COULD also play quite a bit more like a standard Trad RPG, though even then you will have the 'narrative elements' of FEAR/HOPE being accumulated and spent. One thing that is a bit of a flag in terms of how easy/hard this game is likely to be to run comes up in the discussion of when and how many checks to ask for. More checks will generate more currency! This might make a useful dial for tone, but a miscue by the GM in this area could also lead to a poor result. I don't get the impression that the designers really have a good handle on this! They advise being sparing in terms of checks, only employing them where they're really needed. That seems like good advice.It doesn't sound like a bad game. A little odd in its tentativeness in embracing PbtA-esque play, but I think you could employ this game in place of, say, Dungeon World, and it will work. I'm not sure I'd personally choose it OVER Dungeon World, which is a simpler game to run IMHO, but choosing a game is in many ways a matter of taste.</blockquote>

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