Daggerheart Fixed (Almost) Everything

Comments · 832

• BO

  @BobWorldBuilder · 1 year ago (edited) · pinned

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• BE

  @BerlinTrainStation1 · 1 year ago

  I do wonder how Mark Mercer is going to spend his days now that he&apos;s gone on the wildly successful Dimension 20: On a Bus. The newfound fame must be overwhelming.

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• JE

  @jefferycarter7169 · 1 year ago

  Until proven otherwise, I&apos;m going to assume I am Jeff from the comments. In which case, everyone should go play Outgunned Adventures, Mothership, and Tomorrow City! Give your indie creators some love, folks!

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• BE

  @bentorell · 1 year ago

  Regarding the &quot;coming up with a narrative twist on the fly&quot; part, my strategy for dealing with this was something I actually learned from the Mothership Warden&apos;s Guide. Basically, before you roll, tell your players what the consequences of failure for the action will be, and what they are risking. If you can&apos;t figure out what the consequence to failure is before the roll, then maybe they shouldn&apos;t be rolling at all because there isn&apos;t actually any risk!<br><br>For example, suppose a player wants to move a heavy stone door blocking the entrance to a dungeon. This sounds like it should be a Strength check, sure. But before the roll, consider what the player is actually risking, here. Are they trying to move it without getting hurt? Without alerting anyone inside? Without leaving traces of breaking in? Or maybe the consequence of failure is the inability to open the door at all, requiring the players to find another way in (assuming one exists)?<br><br>If you tell the players ahead of time &quot;Sure, you can open the door, but give me a Strength check to do so without alerting anyone inside,&quot; now you&apos;ve given yourself and your players a &quot;hook&quot; you can use to ply those Hope and Fear twists. A Success with Fear might mean they open the door successfully, but you tick one box on a progress countdown toward denizen awareness. A Failure with Hope might mean the denizens are aware of their entry, but the players can still get the jump on them. It becomes a lot easier to think of a twist specifically based on the element of the roll that was at risk, and it feels fair because it was properly forecast to the players.<br><br>Furthermore, pausing to consider the roll before the roll happens maintains the tension of the moment, avoiding the issue of halting the action of the game to improvise a twist. You&apos;re still taking a moment to improvise, but because that happens before the roll, the players are invested, wanting to know what might happen. And once you tell them the risk, players have an opportunity to modify their approach before the roll to mitigate that threat (&quot;I&apos;ll set my cloak on the ground behind the door to soften the fall in case we lose control of it!&quot;).<br><br>Anyway, the Mothership Warden Operations Manual is excellent, strong recommend!

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• KE

  @KeiganZ · 1 year ago

  I appreciate the fairness of saying a mechanic isn’t one you’re tempted to use but still see the value and intention of its design. It feels similar to most art rules, breaking them intentionally is a choice but just not using them without understanding their purpose can lead to something sloppy.

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• FE

  @felixrivera895 · 1 year ago (edited)

  Yeah honestly. The way you &quot;make&quot; the fear and hope mechanic non-disruptiven to the flow of play is the same as any other game. You have to establish the meaning of a roll before you roll.<br><br>Like. This applies to DnD:<br><br>&quot;Can I break open the door&quot;<br>&quot;You will have to roll athletics, but if you don&apos;t do well enough you will alert the guards.&quot;<br><br>This immediately creates 4 possibilities: You fail to open the door, loudly. You fail to open the door, quietly. You successfully open the door, loudly. You successfully open the door, quietly.<br><br>These four possible outcomes can be 1-5, 6-10,11-15, and the DC 16 to successfully open the door quietly.<br><br>Daggerheart just Codifies this, instead of it being something the DM has to figure out on their own as a stylistic growth.<br><br>Edit: Surprisingly, and perhaps intentionally this sytem maps to improv:<br><br>Fail with Fear: &quot;No, and&quot;<br>Fail with Hope: &quot;No, but&quot;<br>Succeed with Fear: &quot;Yes, but&quot;<br>Succeed with Hope: &quot;Yes, and&quot;

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• KY

  @Kyoj1n · 1 year ago (edited)

  You said you were &quot;ignoring&quot; the narrative hope/fear twists, but you also said you&apos;d throw them in when people had something on the tip of their tongue. Which sounds like you were playing the system perfectly!<br>You&apos;re not failing if you don&apos;t come up with something every roll.

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• PO

  @polthefirst · 1 year ago

  As some others said, the &quot;forced improv&quot; gets easier with time, but also, as my group eventually found out with other PbtA derived games, it also becomes easier when you realize you don&apos;t have to force it. There is a mechanical effect, there is no need to add fluff if nothing comes to mind. With time, it becomes easier to find things to say, and it also becomes easier to find when it is not needed. I guess the amount of added improv is extremely group dependant and over time the group find where it adds to story, where &quot;I stay in cover&quot; is enough and when nothing at all and take the *whatever bonus depending on the game*.<br><br>Now I have not played Daggerheart yet, I only read the rules, but I don&apos;t get why it would be any different.

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• IL

  @ilovethelegend · 1 year ago

  I know I&apos;ve said this before, but my main problem with &quot;No initiative order&quot; is partially &quot;The player with the biggest personality won&apos;t shut up&quot;, yes, but it&apos;s also much moreso &quot;The shyest player won&apos;t go unless someone prompts them to.&quot;

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• MI

  @michaelguth4007 · 1 year ago

  I glued a 3D-printed dial onto my GM screen that showcases the fear on both sides of the screen, representing a clock tower on the player-facing side.

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• WA

  @WadeAllen001 · 1 year ago (edited)

  With what you&apos;re saying around <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikuiLEbaVi8&amp;t=570">9:30</a> about the forced improv, honestly Critical Role themselves haven&apos;t really been doing that in Age of Umbra. Most of the time when the players succeed with fear or fail with hope, Matt just describes their success or failure normally and says &quot;take a hope&quot; or &quot;I get a fear.&quot; I haven&apos;t really noticed him coming up with a slight negative twist to a success with fear or a positive twist to a failure with hope the vast majority of the time it happens.<br><br>Also I think rather than just selling a standalone abacus, they should sell a DM screen with an attached or attachable abacus.

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• DU

  @duseylicious · 1 year ago

  I did a lot of PBTA games a while back, that all require the same improv based on role results. &nbsp;It was SO hard at first, but pressing through, and also asking the entire table for ideas, really improved my ability, and the shared narrative made it really fun while reducing stress on me.

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