Vol 6: Masks & Motives
Why your social scenes should feel like showdowns, how to make gold matter without bookkeeping, and what veteran crowdfunders wish they knew before they launched. Plus: new tools, a Bardic breakdown, and a campaign frame where your walkie-talkie might be haunted.
SPOTLIGHT
UPDATES
An Affair to Remember
GenCon is over, but not the vibes. Enjoy some Darrington BTSfeaturing the CR crew, and a photo dump from Rowan Hall.
Three Amigos
Todd Kenrick is back with Crawford & Perkins, discussing why they joined Darrington and, possibly more importantly, how they feel about the changes in their personal lives. Lovely display of friendship, passion, and humanity throughout.
Mother Lode
Motherboard now joins Witherwild and Age of Umbra on Demiplane with a Daggerheart sheet overhaul: Clank restricted, custom Ikonis, Quantum currency, scrap tracking and rolls, and a crafting system to upgrade your Ikonis. Bonus: Nylo has a Roll20 API for a scrap generator, and u/siretu dropped an impressive KHOD editor.
Fresh Brewed Apps
FreshCutGrass just released an intriguing update: community. You can now browse brews from other members and add them to your library for encounter planning, plus assign tokens to adversaries mid-battle. Not to be outdone, DH Brewing added some handy upgrades of its own: cleaner Canvas controls, quick-reference tabs for creatures and environments, clickable dice rolls in statblocks, local storage, and support for reference images on the canvas.
Avrae Anyone?
Daggerbyte—a new Discord bot— is up and running and aims to be the Avrae of Daggerheart (ie. tools for playing the game over Discord like dice rolling, encounter management, etc). The devs are looking for beta players to build characters, run games, and help shape its future.
DISCUSSIONS
Countdown Conundrum
One GM ran twin timers for a puzzle encounter: Hope/Success to complete the ritual, Fear/Failure to summon enemies. The fear clock worked mechanically, but players admitted it spiked their anxiety to the point they stopped acting. After some discussion, the table compromised: keep “good” trackers visible, hide the “bad” ones behind the screen.
What caught my attention in the thread that followed was this comment from u/Borfknuckles, a reminder for all GMs experimenting with story and mechanics:
Player psychology is a strange and fickle thing. Sometimes what works in one system doesn’t work in another. Sometimes a mechanic that makes the game better doesn’t make the game funner, and introducing danger and complications feels like making your players eat their vegetables. I say don’t sweat nuances of mechanical intent and game design theory and just be glad you arrived at a good solution.
Bonus: For tables that relish anxiety, Captain Pike recommends a stack of poker chips for countdowns. Fittingly, the chips fall where they may.
