Vol 14: Blood Hunters & Brennan

SPOTLIGHT

UPDATES

First Blood

Your ritual offering succeeded: Darrington dropped the Blood Hunter on The Void and Demiplane Thursday night, introducing the master of the art of hemocraft with three subclasses designed by Mercer, Starke, Crawford, and Perkins: Ghost Slayer, Mutant, and Lycan. Here’s Matt with a short video, followed by a deep dive with the entire design team from the Halloween livestream.

Return to Office

“You cannot perceive The Void. The Void perceives you.” Thus began last week’s impromptu Office Hour with Rowan and Spenser (and an off-screen Brooke), following up on Darrington's mega-livestream earlier in the month, to answer community questions, discuss Daggerheart’s game design, and briefly dip into the problem with packaged taquitos. 

The Wizards in Oz

Dungeons & Daddies, the Freddiest of the Freddie Wong APs, released Con-Oz, their Daggerheart one-shot on Tuesday. Listen here.

Daggerheart Dispatch

To celebrate and promote the launch of Dispatch, the new Critical Role video game (and sadly not this publication), Jasmine Bhullar GM’d a superhero-themed Daggerheart one-shot that, among other things, featured the nerdiest Travis Willingham captured on-screen. Many giggles afoot.

Will Play for Food

Speaking of superheroes, Daggerheart contributing designer Mike Underwood took to the socials to offer his talents to anyone running one-shots to raise money for U.S food banks now that the kakistocracy current administration is cutting food stamps.

Forged in Obsidian

The trio of Daggerheart Obsidian plugins making their way to the start/finish line has an early winner: Daggerforge, which is now officially included in the tool’s directory. It currently provides inline Adversary statblocks as Torturo, the developer, readies Environments and HP/Stress trackers for release.

Do Androids Dream of Daggerheart?

HeartForge, the iOS GM toolkit that launched with an impressive v1, is back with the launch of the Android version and a notch on the “multi-platform” belt. Over on the Android-only side, Daggertrack—also a GM toolkit—is on offer.

Battle of the Bards

Pocket Bard, the feisty combatant for Syrinscape’s immersive audio crown, launched a full rebuild. Highlights include a new interface, better audio and soundscapes, independent ambience controls with haptic zones, 90 minutes of new fantasy music, expanded one-shots for combat and monsters, and new workflow tools.

In Character

Daggerheart.org (which desperately needs a new name) now allows you to upload character cards to their hosted character sheet. Their recent focus on toolsets has me wondering if they’re gunning for a spot alongside Duality Codex and Demiplane.

CAMPAIGNS

Rogue on the Range

Colossus of the Drylands writer (and Star Trek: Discovery alum) Carlos Cisco announced his next project, Pistol Heart—a western-themed campaign in four volumes. The first includes five new subclasses, expanded firearm options, and two western environments (including the train chase teased on the cover). Later volumes will add more subclasses, adversaries, and eventually a full Western horror campaign frame with locations, NPCs, factions, and items. Cisco plans to start small and build each release into a larger, highly polished setting for gunslingers and outlaws alike.

Xero to Hero

Xero Reynolds announced the launch of Skies of Calopa, an airship-focused adventure campaign. Similar to Cisco, Reynolds is forgoing the stress of Kickstarter and, instead, using his Patreon subs and Ko-fi tips to build the world and assets in a modular fashion. To whit, he's already released the first VTT maps.

Mad Money

Scorched Basin did not forgo Kickstarter, and closed their campaign 10x oversubscribed. This will see the system agnostic Mad Max/Dune desert adventure brought to Daggerheart, complete with, among other things, a 300-page guide, 3D vehicle plans, and new fantasy languages—an adapted American Sign Language among them.

DISCUSSIONS

Roll Call

A GM who stress-tested Daggerheart before writing a campaign worried that the Hope/Fear meta-currency was dragging down gameplay. There were too many rolls and a paralyzing amount of resources generated by them. u/Rusty-badger came to the rescue with the oft-repeated advice “stop rolling for everything, that’s not how the game is designed,” but then suggested something even more useful for D&D expats who want to roll the dice: use reaction rolls, but call out in advance that it won’t generate Hope or Fear. Full discussion.