Vol 12: Foxfire & Family
Ditching the dice, failure as a feature, and crushing the Kickstarter. We look at five NPC archetypes, alternates to attacking, and a Battle Points planner. PLUS: a saltier Sablewood starter, and deep-dives on how to publish your modules.
SPOTLIGHT
UPDATES
Riegel the Razor
No quote, context, or link. Just a shoutout to Sam Riegel for demolishing in a single quip all the armchair executives who clearlyunderstood that CR missed the moment not using DH for C4.
A Classy Kickstarter
Darrington’s Class Pack Kickstarter hit full funding in just 10 hours after their Tuesday launch. On a YouTube AMA, Senior Producer Elise Rezendes explained the packs are already designed and the campaign is mostly an inventory gauge—a cautious move after they underestimated demand for the Core Rulebook. As of writing, the campaign is 2x oversubscribed with 25 days still left to go.
All in the Family
The AMA—ostensibly about the Kickstarter—turned into a 90-minute visit with the Darrington team. Game designers Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall and producers Rezendes and Brooke Eyler were joined by Matt Mercer and Travis Willingham in an always festive, sometimes chaotic conversation that touched on new products, game design and philosophy, play styles, and cheese. More specifically, the Cheese Maker domain—coming soon to a hot dog near you.
Kenreck & Co.
Todd Kenreck returned with another sit-down segment with game designers Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford to discuss how the design of Daggerheart influences your role as GM. Always thoughtful, Crawford spoke candidly about his initial uncertainty about the system and how that gave way to a gameplay style he found more fluid and freeing. Bonus: Kenreck also dropped an interview with Perkins about live play and his critical role in the history of the form.
Ember Makes an Entrance
EmberScreen, the browser-based GM screen, has officially exited beta and launched their v1.
CharKuterie
Character sheet manager CharKeeper is now available on Android, iOS, Mac, and as a Telegram app. The developer also announced they’re working on a universal PDF rendering engine so all character sheets from any system will have similar controls.
Testing 1, 2, 3
Heartforge, the iOS GM toolkit app that recently launched their v1, is now looking for testers for their upcoming Android version.
'90s By the Numbers
The Critical Role Foundation announced that TGIT, the ‘90s themed Daggerheart one-shot, raised over $80k for their charity partner, NCWIT. Full House AND a royal flush.
DISCUSSIONS
A trio of D&D <> Daggerheart discussions
Drama, not Dice
A D&D GM new to Daggerheart noticed they kept prompting instinct or knowledge rolls because they worried players would miss things. They asked “am I prompting the players too much?” to which u/WoDStoryteller replied:
"I don’t think you’re doing anything “wrong” here. You’re just still shifting gears out of the D&D mindset. Daggerheart wants the GM to act less like a referee checking if something happens, and more like a storyteller deciding when the dice make the moment more dramatic."
The rest of his comment is worth reading.
