Dispatch

Vol 16: Publishers & Pistoliers

A publisher-palooza, Encounter manager, and dyslexic-friendly SRD. We spotlight GM tips for modular prep, exploration, and boss encounters. Then—World of Warcraft, Pistol Heart, and a map-making soothsayer. Plus: a Discord dice bot, Dispatch character sheets, and Talespire Sablewood assets.

SPOTLIGHT

Yes, Hope & Fear is the big news. But the spotlight goes to Love & Magic, the forthcoming romantsy adventure that will see a digital-first release, according to Darrington Senior Producer Elise Rezendes: "We're going to be doing experiments with adventure content [to] gets things into people's hands way faster."

NEWS

A Feted Feast

You know the deal: Darrington announced Hope & Fear, an expansion book slated for next summer that adds six Ancestries, six Communities, four Classes and six Transformation cards from The Void, the Dread domain, over 130 adversaries, and four campaign frames. PS: Here's the art of Hope & Fear if you missed it.

PAXU Packages

The news also included a forthcoming Adversary Pack (GM cards featuring the baddies in the CRB), a GM screen w/built-in Fear tokens, a dice tray, and mention of The Dying Spire, a new Level 2 adventure for Free RPG Day.

Dream Stream

The crew hosted a 2-hr livestream from PAXU to celebrate everything, including that Acquisitions Incorporated has moved to Daggerheart, and Viva La Dirt League will start a 30-episode campaign starting in January.

Kenreck & Company

True to form, the crew sat for interviews with Todd Kenreck, who posted one with the whole team, one with just Mercer, and then a deep dive with Crawford and Perkins.

Adventuring Enneagrams, Redux

Easily lost amidst all the noise was Part II of What Your Daggerheart Class Says About You, in which Rowan Hall proves she is both VVitch and canny therapist.

RELEASE NOTES

Rapid Reposte

Matthew Borja’s Heart of Daggers is on tear, following up its recent Homebrew Vault with an integrated Encounter Manager that includes just about every feature of FreshCutGrass—and doubles as a GM screen with native Countdowns, Fear tracker, 3D dice roller and loot generator. And there’s more to come. They’re currently working on an Adventure Builder for shareable (and sellable, likely) one shots and adventures where you can add chapters and acts that link to Encounters, core and homebrew adversaries, maps, and images. It’s part World Anvil, Obsidian, FCG, and DriveThru and it’s either going to be a mess or a defining tool of the Daggerheart community.

G'old Gus

The OG-DHSRD now sports a beautifully designed and easy to use fillable PDF character sheet that can accommodate domain card text. Gus also made the site accessible to dyslexic readers.

Torutu Part II

Torutu has updated their Obsidian plugin Daggerforge with an edit feature, tags, and the addition of more adversaries and environments. With v1 in the rear view mirror, they hinted at not just more Obsidian updates, but a new app altogether.

Duelists

Duality Codex, who after an early lead challenging Demiplane’s character sheet dominance before going quiet, re-emerged on the sub this week to announce a slate of updates, including Campaign Frames, token support, custom counters, new themes, and a Spanish translation.

DISCUSSIONS

Spawn Con

Solid advice on the Discord after a GM worried about a big Fear pool disrupting their encounter planning math. Responding to “should I decrease the encounter size or hold back on Fear spend?”, @OWHL suggested they use Environments and Leaders with Spawn features to give the GM an elastic scenario that can adapt based on how the PCs perform. Read their full reply.

Prayers and Thoughts

The question “can a Prayer Dice be used on a Potion roll?” arrived at a general consensus that, yes it can—but shouldn’t top the Potion’s maximum (ie. a 4PD + 2PR tops out at a Minor Health Potion’s maximum of clearing 4 HP). There was also some consternation about inconsistencies in how v1 of the CRB explains this and other related affects.

Stressed Out

An OP asked Can you mark more than one Stress per spell to get more than one improvement, and can it be the same several times? Old Gus had an answer, and an intriguing tweak:

“You can't spend Hope or mark Stress multiple times on the same feature to increase or repeat its effects on the same roll. So, I think gaining the +2 bonus more than once seems out. However, whether your GM allows you to spend multiple stress to diversify how many different choices from the same feature you can apply at once is a different matter, and one, I think, that's left open to interpretation.”

VIBE CHECK

*A player-made Fear tracker* *for PlayfullBear's Drylands campaign.*

*The progression of Gabriella "Ria" Hickey,* *an Elemental Origin Sorcerer from Britters.*

🎯 GM TIPS

A trio of videos this week, with a beginner/intermediate/advanced progression.

GM Exploration Moves

“Mister Rogers explains Daggerheart” (aka Rob Jon’s Lair) is back with another tutorial, this time exploring GM moves for Exploration. Excellent, as always.

Modular Prep

Edariad examines Brennan Lee Mulligan’s “modular prep” style and explains how it can reduce your cognitive load and boost your ability to quickly react to unexpected player decisions.

Designing Boss Encounters

Daggerheart (and now Drakkenheim) designer Mike Underwood walks you through how to design boss encounters.

🍺 HOMEBREW

World of Warcraft

Over on the Discord, @Railery is toiling away converting World of Warcraft to Daggerheart Ancestries and Communities as a lead-up to a Campaign Frame.

It’s a work in progress, but there’s some fun re-skinning and mixology going on for folks looking for a crossover. Here’s a few cards for flavour:

A month or so ago we highlighted u/Gukusama who was hacking away at Final Fantasy characters, and back in the summer several folks shared unfinished variants of K-Pop Demon Hunters. I’d love to see a franchise fully adapted (Arcane, anyone?). Ping if you’ve finished one and looking to spread the love.

🌎 CAMPAIGN FRAME

Pistol Heart

Carlos Cisco’s much anticipated Pistol Heart module launched on Friday. The Colossus of the Drylands designer (and upcoming Dark Heart of Andaluria Frame) goes even more rootier tootier with five new gunsling’n subclasses, a chonky gun armoury, and two big set pieces: Rifle Canyon Run and Mounted Train Chase.

The five subclasses for the Guardian, Ranger, Rogue, Seraph, and Warrior each embodying a different Western archetype. As Cisco notes: "The Breacher Guardian is a shotgun-toting, dynamite-tossing hooligan who sings when surrounded by large groups of foes. The Longbarrel Ranger snipes their foes from afar, and assists their allies with focused precision. The Outlaw Rogue is always on the move, disappearing in a cloud of gun smoke after they strike. The Marshal Seraph metes out frontier justice, and lends their abilities to their posse. Finally, the Warrior who answers the Call of the Pistolero finds no equal in a quick draw and is known for their impossible shots."

Pistol Heart is being built in stages to avoid the stress of a Kickstarter, gauge interest, and adapt material based on feedback.

Volume 2 is in testing and planned for release early next year, and will contain the remaining subclasses (Snakeoil Bard, Warden of Herds Druid, Gravewalker Origin Sorcerer, and the School of Gambling Wizard), 20 Western adversaries across all 4 Tiers, and optional rules for uncovering and investigating rumors.
Volume 3 will add scaffolding for Western Campaigns with fully realized locations, landmarks, settlements, factions, NPCs, and equipment.
Volume 4 will culminate in a Western Campaign Frame that features everything previously created, and add rules for a point crawl.

Jack Panic has already updated his Severance-style campaign The Bureau of Chronological Affairs, expanding it into a 62-page book that now includes an Agent class and a reworked version of the Daggerheart SRD.

🎨 CRAFTY

All Over the Map

I’ve developed quite a crush on Ryan from The Red Quills Mapmaking channel, who blends a soothing Aussie voice, delicate map-making, and canny insights into videos that bring to life everything from pedestrian trading posts and city layouts to fantastical dragon hoards and Night Hag's lairs.

Here’s Ryan sketching a fortified outpost and dropping details about supply lines, retreat patterns, and how circular stairs favour the defenders. (Also: just me, or does he look like Brennan’s baby brother?)

Bonus: If you're in the mood for maps, u/BigMcLarge made a Shadowdark Westmarches style map that's free to use.

Daggerborne Designers

A couple of conversations go deep on Daggerheart design principles. First, there's Mike Underwood and The Welsh DM discussing adventure design. Then, spend an hour with Starke and Hall as they discuss the Hope & Fear expansion book, and how they think about the overall system.

🛠️ TOOLS & RESOURCES

Thanks to the kindness of aHealingFart (yes, I did enjoy writing that), you can bring the Sablewood Messenger to life in Talespire.

The Roundup

Here’s a handy Consequences, Complications and Costs chart to guide Success with Fear rolls.
A Discord dice bot for quick, reliable, in-session rolls and lookups.
Need loot? Generate some on the fly.
You didn't ask for 16 side-scrolling Inkarnate maps. But now you have them.
u/Crack3r02 designed these Dispatch character sheets for lovers of the game.
These form-fillable character sheets are more Victorian/Medieval than Art Deco, but lovely nonetheless.

INSPO

American artist Lilly Curtis brings a muscular style to her portraits, blending classic poses with soft undertones for a grounded, cinematic feel. It's no wonder she's illustrated for George R.R. Martin and A Game of Thrones.

THEATRE KIDS

Narrator Energy

Watch this League of Legends trailer. Try narrating what happens in the climax, out loud. Then do it again. And again. Find the many words to explain what’s happening and then shave them away to a fine point.

When you’re done, find another epic scene—or possibly a quiet one—and repeat the process.

I learned this tip from Justin Alexander. It's the GM’s equivalent of learning your lines. Want to be better at improv? Enchant your players? Build your vocabulary. Shape your descriptions. Narrate until you forget you're narrating.