I’ve had a chance recently to run the Daggerheart RPG quickstart a couple of times – the playtest rules are available at the link above, and contain far more than just the quickstart – and I thought I’d pick out a few things from it. For a first impression, to be clear, I think it’s really good – it does some things in a genuinely interesting way, and it’s a really good quickstart in terms of introducing both setting and system in a concentric way.
When this first landed, there were plenty of internet commentators giving their opinion of it – but as I’ve repeatedly said, we should judge games after playing them, not before – and for me Daggerheart is something I’ll definitely be picking up, and probably running a lot of. So, here’s four things I like about Daggerheart – specifically, the quickstart.
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- It’s good pregens
There’s a great selection of them, and they come with nifty slide-out guides to the sheet that really helped to teach the rules in play. My table for the first run through was 80% English second language speakers, but they managed to get their heads around it and track the resources and powers well. Having powers on cards will help in the real game (I just had the card sheet printed out, it was fine for our needs) – and once they realised how Hope & Fear worked, it sang.
- Hope and Fear really works
Let’s quickly talk mechanics. Players roll 2d12, with one Hope dice and one Fear dice. Your total (plus bonuses) tells you if you succeed, but the highest dice tells you if it’s “with Hope” or “with Fear”. Roll with Hope, your side gets to keep the initiative if you succeeded, and you get a Hope point. Roll with Fear, and the GM makes a move, and also gets a Fear point.
Two things shine about this – firstly, Hope and Fear accumulate and are spent quickly. They’re dynamic resources; there’s no way to hoard them, and lots of encouragement to spend them. For one, spending Hope is how you help another PC – and it’s much more effective than spending it on your own roll. There’s lots of thing the GM can spend Fear on, too – from bringing in reinforcements to activating enemies – and the player move / GM move thing solves one of the emergent problems some MCs have with PBTA – that if the players keep succeeding, it’s hard to raise the stakes. In Daggerheart, even if they pass every roll, 50% of the time they’ll roll with Fear and you’ll get to make your move.
- Ancestries are Boss
Look, if you’ve got a problem with frog-men (Ribbets), robots (Clanks), and cat-people (Katari) in your game, this isn’t for you. And why would you be so grumpy? The genre is very much cosy fantasy, and you can see the JRPG influence in it too, and so these options really add to the play of it. In my game the Ribbet used his prehensile tongue twice to take out wights! Lean into it, it’s great.
- The Village Scene Is A Nice Touch
The quickstart uses something really clever, which I’ve not seen before, in an interstitial roleplaying scene. As they approach the village, it introduces three NPCs that the PCs can talk to – each nicely detailed and with a question they’ll ask the PCs. After some discussion, they’ll point them to another of the three NPCs who will know the information they seek. It’s a great way to broaden out the town as lived-in and set the tone of where they are.
I fluffed / adapted it a bit – described all three NPCs and let the players pick which one to talk to first, but I think either works well. This is a model I will definitely steal for my own games.
So, if you haven’t already realised, I’m pretty pleased with Daggerheart – I’m looking forward to its release and just prepping to showcase a session on Unconventional GMs too – so watch out for that! Have you played it yet? What’s the worst take you saw on it on release? Let me know in the comments below!
Burn After Running: RPG One-Shots 
I presume this was written about version 1.2. Some comments stood out, particularly:
“Two aspects are particularly striking – firstly, Hope and Fear accumulate and are spent quickly,” and “There are numerous ways the GM can utilise Fear, too – from summoning reinforcements to activating enemies.”
Whilst Hope in version 1.3 still flows freely, Fear has now become a very slow trickle, at least in my experience. Also, in version 1.3, Fear has only four uses, and they do not include summoning reinforcements.
Under version 1.3, when players roll with fear, the GM has two options: make a move (which is essentially a PbtA move) or take a Fear token (now exclusively a combat resource used for Monster fear moves, Environment fear moves, or to trade for action tokens). The GM should seldom opt for the take a Fear token choice – this is generally for those moments when you can’t devise a hard or soft move. This works reaally well, as it ensures that the consequences of a roll occur at the time of the roll.
GMs still get to do all the stuff they used to do with fear tokens – they just do it as a move when players roll with fear.
I definitely prefer version 1.3, except for the changes to gold, which are “unfortunate”.
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