Vol 19: Prompts & Pugilists
Creator Crowns, bandits and boars, and sky-high fantasy. We look into experiences, armor, and dice dilemmas, while keeping an eye on player prompts and social engineering. Plus: Motherboard Adversaries, a Dispatch adventure, and delightful design resources.
SPOTLIGHT
If Jack Panic and Carlos Cisco are the Daring Designers of the nascent Daggerheart scene, Rob Jon's Lair takes the Creator Crown—a TTRPG YouTuber who brings an unprecedented level of craft and imagination to the task of explaining the system to GMs and players. His joyous videos are so utterly unique it feels like Rowan, Spenser, Matt, and Elise ritualistically conjured him into existence from their burrow in Burbank. (Incidentally, RJL is working on a book of example GM moves for common player actions.)
NEWS & RELEASES
Aftershow Acknowledgements
Viva La Dirt League’s loony Daggerheart adventure Azerim premiered on Beacon and starts streaming on YouTube this Tuesday. At the premiere aftershow on Discord, GM Rob Hartley noted many of the things we’ve heard since the game’s launch: the design is ideal for narrative-first play, the lack of turn order can be tricky with chaos goblins, the dice math takes time to master, and Environment stat blocks are a genuine innovation.
High Rollers
Rigamaroll is a new AP featuring actors from Arcane, Blood of Zeus, and Brooklyn 99—which might explain why their first episode popped on the sub and drew 15k+ views on YouTube, dwarfing most of the amateur APs that have launched and fizzled. For those still learning the game, the production includes on-screen explainers during some sequences.
Game Day Play
Critical Role took the upcoming Hope & Fear expansion set for a whirl during their Staff Game Day. Someone caught it on video. (PS. Final shot is the other side of Elise's desk. You know what to do.)
Platform Pugilists
Is there an Environment stat block for platform wars? It would surely feature Passives like “About Time” for Daggerheart Nexus, who finally launched Campaigns and SRD integration; “Rapid Release” for Heart of Daggers, with a redesigned Encounter experience for players; and “Crafty Capybaras” for Foundryborne, who added several toggles, effects, and macros to their growing feature set.
Knowing the Unknown
The Sci-Fi scientists behind The New Unknown expansion book dropped some tantalizing layouts from the book, along with details of new Classes and Domains. The more we see, the more the scale resembles the reveal in that scene.
Bon Jovial
♫ Shot through the heart / Cisco's to blame / He made Pistolheart a cool game ♫ (aka: Colossus of the Drylands writer and designer Carlos Cisco, who blew everyone out of the desert with Pistolheart Vol 1, dropped a sneak peek at the art of Vol 2 and dude, it’s bandits-on-boars.)
Magyar Mages
The Budapest barbarians have joined the party as Daggerheart’s global localization continues. Leading the Hungarian promotion is @Adika88, who seems perfect for the job. Előre!
CROWDFUNDING
Cozy Catnip
Cats? Cafes? Magic? That’s the pitch behind the upcoming Toe Beans Kickstarter, a cozy drop-in/one-shot from Steph and Logan at Fistful of Crits, artists and designers from the UK’s northern reaches. The upcoming module promises a scholarly cafe owner, a herd of magical cats, social encounters—and IRL recipes for your group. Add adorable artwork and you’re set for a rainy day.
Sky High Fantasy
The creator of the Incredible Creatures Kickstarter (2,000% oversubscribed) is back with Fractus, a setting and adventure series set in the sky after an earth-shattering event changes gravity and the world’s weather. The module is promising three adventures, multiples Frames, modular locations, new Ancestries, airships…you get the idea. Skyward ho!
Shipped, Shop
Wondrous Environments, another oversubscribed Kickstarter, is now available for purchase. So too is Mike Underwood’s Menagerie of Mayhem, which boasts 35 new Adversaries from one of Daggerheart’s most influential designers.
Crowdfund Counsel
Thinking of crowdfunding your module? The Dragon Dowser team are offering free, hour-long coaching sessions to help you avoid rolling with Fear.
DISCUSSIONS
XP For Thee
Experiences can be fuzzy for players and GMs, so this thread about how to apply them—and make them central to the narrative—is worth spelunking. I personally liked how this player and GM collaborated to grant an Experience after a character levelled up.
Sheet Metal
Answering “What is the best argument to refute "Armor slots are just extra hp?”, @borfknuckles knocked it out of the park with a listicle that hit 300+ upvotes on a post with only 80. (Also, can we just agree that armor slots are simply a narrative layer and maybe not overthink it? Sometimes, skin. Sometimes, metal. Mix and match. Have fun.)
Dice Dilemas
The only answer to the question “how do I get my players to stop asking for dice rolls?” is to remind them they don’t ask—you do. But even when you do, things can get messy. Duality Dice create five outcomes you have to improv. Other players—seeing a failed role—jump in and say they want to try and pick the lock. Where does it end, and how do you respond?
Bloater
After guiding their party to Level 5, @PrinceOfNowhereee dropped a hefty pro/con list on the sub (mostly pros), noting how DH’s onboarding, thresholds, Duality Dice, Fear, Environments, and countdowns are bangers that improve the game. But I was drawn, pedant that I am, to their con about dice bloat and how, the higher you go, the more dice hit the table and, well...it all starts to feel D&D again.
I noted in the last edition a conversation about how, by keeping the grid and relying on attrition, there’s a possible backslide towards 5e as the system grows. But now I wonder “who cares?” If Daggerheart became the next-best-substitute for the world’s biggest TTRGP, why fret?
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VIBE CHECK
🎯 GM TIPS
Player Prompts
Magic Mike is back with a stream about player prompts (asking players to contribute to the narrative) and how and why to employ/deploy them during the game.
His many examples fall into collaborative, player-to-player, and single-player prompts, all designed to enlist the table in fleshing out a reaction, outcome, or backstory. Some prompts can be prepped, others improv’d.
If you want to go deeper, in this conversation with The Welsh DM Mike includes prompts as one of the three key elements of encounter design: situation, conflict, and prompts.
Situation is, natch, the central conceit of the story. Conflict—especially scene to scene—is the dramatic engine. And prompts are the questions you want your players to be answering. What is that? Why is that? How does it matter?
Social Sparring
Social encounters and Environments are hard to come by in these early days of Daggerheart, so I was happy to stumble upon Adversary Designer Chris Davidson's clever mechanism for a Bridgerton-like setting where "you have x interactions to influence and convince someone of something."
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🍺 HOMEBREW
Motherboard Adversaries
The Motherboard campaign frame gets less love from the interwebs compared to, say, Age of Umbra or Beast Feast. So it's delightful to see a new Adversary Compendium drop with all things robotic, schematic, and metallic.
Creator @HideFromPewPew (delightful UN) has 12 free Motherboard Adversaries on offer, and another 19 as part of the full set on HoD. Go forth, soldiers and solders.
🌎 CAMPAIGN FRAME
Dispatch
"We know you weren't supposed to start until Monday, but we have an "All hands on deck" emergency! Several members of the Red Ring escaped police custody in L.A and are now using public transportation to get away. We have verification that Toxic is bound for Las Vegas and it's up to us to assist our SDN Torrence Branch make sure the reign of the Red Ring is over! "
Thus begins @Riksheare's campaign Frame Dispatch: Las Vegas, which finds our jaded, feral superheroes deployed to stop the big bad—without collateral damage or unapproved overtime.
While the campaign material doesn't include cameos from Laura Bailey or Aaron Paul, it does have a new Class, weapons and armor, and Death Moves. It's also found a niche with fans and, in rather short time, been downloaded a couple thousand times.
(PS: I would once again like to remind the CR/DP team: I named The Dispatch before the game was announced, and thank you for the SEO.)
🎨 CRAFTY
Ramona—aka Alderdoodle—is a UK artist specializing in lettering and ornate illustrations for games and books. Her fanciful flourishes are typically commissioned, but she also offers a dozen or so freebies via her ko-fi page. Borders, dividers, brackets, corners—all confer a tinge of history and a hint of luxury to your work.
CRB Layouts & Lockups
Natch, sometimes you don't want bespoke borders and brackets—you want the real Daggerheart deal. The Darrington design system that turns your mad, late-night scribbles into pages that look ripped from the CRB.
Thanks to @AeronDrake's recent update, the Daggerheart Homebrewery template now comes with cover page, credits, table of contents, and dozens of on-page blocks for Adversaries, Environments, tables, custom brew—even campaign Frames. Who needs Hope & Fear when you have Blood, Sweat & Tears?
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🛠️ TOOLS & RESOURCES
Over at Inkarnate, @7LegionArmy designed a handy reference to estimate travel time as your adventurers move from ship to shore to Shire. Here's the file.
The Roundup:
- HoneyRoll is offering free "Ally" cards to help you remember your NPC defensive abilities. For print and digital use.
- Nils has updated their illustrated, home-printable cards for Basic Supplies, Class, Beastform, and Homebrew. They're also planning a new website; here's hoping they add digital versions of these carefully-crafted concoctions.
- MAB Music is back with another score for Five Banners Burning.
- Peter Burgess is offering a Daggerheart solo-play guide. (I'm not so much recommending this as I am suggesting you poke around and see if it might work for you—and report back if you've used it or another guide to successfully play solo mode).
- Javan Wang made a lovely ambient weather generator for GMs who use visual aids in their sessions.
- Baba Yaga retired and opened a bar.
INSPO
Bulgarian illustrator Svetoslav Petrov's whimsical, folkloric art has a sprinkle of Faerie-artist Brian Froud's pixie dust. The gnarled shapes, earthy tones, anti-decorative styling—it's all calling from a dark forest where sunlight can only pry through a mossy canopy.
STORYTELLING
Explosion Explainer
“Villains endanger victims who are saved by heroes" is the logline of this tight explainer on how action movies tick—and well worth your time as you ponder the goodies and baddies in your campaign.
Much like Craig Mazin’s How to Write a Movie, the host deftly points out that the purpose of a villain is to create an artificial arena that forces the hero through a crucible of choices that ultimately doesn’t change them as much as reveal their true self.
Along the way, he drops some meme-worthy comments like “without explosions, no one remembers the emotions” and “villains sacrifice others for themselves, heroes sacrifice themselves for others.” I also enjoyed his observations that while actioners have a villain, victim, and hero, horror stories don’t have heroes—just villains and victims.
Anyway—it’s a tightly crafted short with lots of great movie clips that will only help sharpen your instincts about the blocking and tackling of the characters around your table. What are you waiting for? Time's ticking!
ETC
D&D Puts Top AI Models to the Test
Your Regular Reminder to Put Your RPG Character in a Hat. No. A BIGGER Hat.
