Dispatch

Vol 22: Sinners & Saints

Sinful Adversaries, waggish Dodos, and colossal capers. Then, using pre-game maps and timelines, pointcrawl dungeons, and node-based design. There's a Wolverine and golden retriever, and executive appointments and industry accolades. Finally, lore casts and blocks.

SPOTLIGHT

Colossi are on my mind as I wrap up an interview with Drylands writer Carlos Cisco and finish Game Room’s excellent oral history of Shadow of the Colossus (which features this stunning cover illustration from Takeshi Oga). More than any other Daggerheart Adversary, the Drylands colossi push the community to create some of the most artful, bizarre, and adorable props for their table. A testament to GMs, yes—but also the admirable irreverence of the deft and daffy designers who included the Frame in their signature publication.

NEWS & RELEASES

Om Nom Nom

The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design has named Daggerheart as an Origins Award Finalist. Kudos to everyone at Darrington for the nom, including the many freelance designers, writers, artists, and support members who’ve added to the game’s heft and swagger. Winners will be announced in June.

Detect Magic

Critical Role nabbed ex-WSJ and Hallmark exec Alyssa Zeisler to head up Beacon, which roughly translates to “make our streaming service as successful as Dropout.” Remember last year when CR’s biz dev team mentioned looking out for the next great players to join the fold? This is how it connects. Zeisler needs programming, and programming needs Zeisler.

Murmurations

Closing out a successful second season, the waggish Dodoborne cast took to the sub for an AMA about their characters, quirks, and campaigns. When asked if they have an arc in mind, Rowan mentioned Issac-the-GM has nine seasons planned, one for each of the DH Domains. Apple fritter fans rejoice!

More Forgery

Heartforge, the “GM and player companion” app, pushed a v1.5 that includes music and sound effects; German, Italian, and French localization; and several UI fixes and enhancements. It’s a solo effort across iOS, MacOS, and Android, and Lauri has crafted a beautiful little ecosystem worth exploring.

Mad-simple Maps

The simple premise of WikidMaps: upload a map, drop details on it (lore, locations, NPCs, etc) and share a no-sign-in link with your players. Web-based, free of charge. Now they’re back with smart upscaling so your low res maps won’t look like crap, and a better import function with Azgaar Fantasy Map Generator.

The go-to Discord bot for Daggerheart dice rolls now rolls in your browser.
Daggerheart.org redesigned the Domains, Class, and Weapons pages, plus overhauled My Daggerheart.
Every single adversary has its own token art on Heart of Daggers, including the QuickStart adventure.
To promote Pistolheart Volume 2, Carlos Cisco and HoD are running a Colossus campaign: upload your colossi photo for a chance to win PH2 and the Hope & Fear expansion book.

DISCUSSIONS

Inconsequential or Intentional?

How do you dole out consequences during improvisational combat? That question led to several “don’t overthink it” replies, but I was drawn to Prestigious Emu, who mentioned intent:

“I find that if the players tell me both what they are doing and their intent it makes it much easier to adjudicate the outcome/consequences. Get players used to informing you of their intent - there's a difference between pushing an enemy into a wall and pushing them towards the blade of your ally. Intent matters.”

No Bore Lore

How can you get your players immediately invested in your world? Map it together using The Quiet Year or Microscope, RPG games that act as a session -1 mini-game. That’s the thrust of this convo that explored how mapping or timeline games supercharge a group’s creativity and engagement prior to the main campaign. Look for Darrington’s Elise Rezendes among the commentariat.

Low Fidelity

“Literally nobody I know in the blog-freak-backwoods is excited about Daggerheart. We’re excited for it to injure D&D of course, but Daggerheart itself feels like that friend of a friend you were introduced to at the function because you share interests on paper, but who you actually don’t vibe with in any way. He’s not, like, a bad guy or anything, he’s just not your speed y’know? Kinda vanilla. A little cringe. So you only half pay attention to what he’s talking about while trying to slip come-hither glances at Mork Borg so she can rescue you from the conversation.”

Thus begins Valeria Loves Daggerheart review, a post that preens like Barry Judd, Jack Black’s sneering High Fidelity character with tastes so evolved you could never, but is mostly Winona Ryder’s Lelaina Pierce from Reality Bites—cute, lost, and a bit self absorbed.

VIBE CHECK

Maria's Wizard Leila, a commission by MartiMadrid

DizzyCrab's kitbashed Hope cards. He shared the full set.

🎯 GM TIPS

Colossal Combat Advice

The Aardman of Advice is back with a Level 2 Colossus of the Drylands battle tutorial. Watch and learn as our adventurers attempt to topple the mountainous Daktadae the Cleaver.

Don't Hex Your Hexcrawl

As more Daggerheart GMs explore hexcrawls, Ava's 2022 post hexcrawls ARE pathcrawls is worth resurfacing. Their point is simple and articulate: hexcrawls don't need to be replaced by pathcrawls or pointcrawls because the problem critics identify (aimless, arbitrary movement) is just bad hex map design, not a flaw in the hexcrawl format itself. A well-designed hex map with roads, rivers, landmarks, faction territories, and rumors already gives players the meaningful navigation choices that lead to satisfying gameplay. aka: Fix the map, not the format.

Alexandrian Advice

Justin Alexander explains how to GM on a time limit, and explores if node-based design is just prepping a plot (it isn’t, and he explains why).

🍺 HOMEBREW

Sinners

With Oscar season upon us, and Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan saturating our FYPs, it felt right to highlight yet another of Riksheare’s “let me translate all your favourite film and tv characters into Daggerheart Adversaries.” This time, Sinners.

If you’ve seen the film, here’s the stat block. If you haven’t, do so. It’s one of the best films of the year. Come back when you’re done.

Also, if you count yourself a fan, enjoy Gilded Nights, the Sinners-inspired one-shot Darrington produced last year after the launch of the CRB.

Luke Driscoll, GM and organizer of Daggerheart Singapore, brings us a techno-fantasy twist with USB: Universal Serial Blade.
Take to the skies for your daring heist in Vaultbreakers: Flight of Fortune from game developer Arcadev.
Wait. Before you go, Riksheare also wants you to have Wolverine in your adversary arsenal.

🌎 CAMPAIGN FRAME

The Golden Shore

When Sebastian, one of the two game designers at Grim Libram Studio, learned his dog Ava had untreatable lung cancer, he partially coped by writing The Golden Shore, a one-shot adventure about saying goodbye to the ones you love.

Here’s how he describes the premise:

“Deep in an ancient forest, a spirit hound named Ava guards a golden lake, waiting for a companion who will never return. The forest is rotting from the edges inward—not from some outside evil, but because Ava won't let go. The players aren't there to fight her. They're there to help her understand that her watch is over, that she was good, and that it's safe to rest.”

I was touched when I read this, and intrigued by the structure, but I kinda lost it with his parting words: "If you run it, I'd love to hear how it went. And if your table has a moment at the Golden Lake where the Mirror of Memory shows them something they've lost — that's the part I hope lands."

She was good. She was so good.

If you or your players have had to say goodbye to a loved one, consider adding this to your DIY therapy kit. As a reviewer noted: "It's short with a simple premise, but incredibly weighted in emotion and drama with an incredibly unique final encounter that you don't find in most adventures."

🎨 CRAFTY

Hershey's Kisses

Illustrator Rick Hershey has been at the fantasy game for over 20 years and now sells sweet sweet stock art to creators and publishers through his Patreon. Some fantastic work across genres is on supply, ready to adorn that module you're writing.

Choice Words

Claytone Noteskine’s deep dive on lore blocks—aka stat blocks without stats—is a reminder how a smart schema and artfully chosen words can instantly telegraph tone and intention to a busy GM.

Want to print lore cards? A tarot deck? This thread includes a few suppliers on both sides of the pond.
Winner of the Bloggies "Critique" award, How Jennell Jaquays Evolved Dungeon Design explores how the artist's approach to dungeon design forever changed the craft.
Fred Hicks of Evil Hat (Blades et al) shares their crowdfunding data going back to 2012. Extraordinary.

🛠️ TOOLS & RESOURCES

Jack Panic lives up to his DNGN CLUB moniker with a handy dungeon pointcrawl generator that treats the wandering monster element of a dungeon as a countdown.

The Roundup:

Juan Castro has two free art packs for the Sablewood Messengers adventure: portraits, tokens, locations, and battle maps.
Repeat contributor Ehud Kurzweil has some abstract scenery and encounter banners artwork on offer, inspired in part by Disco Elysium.
Midwest Magicians have some free Owlbear Rodeo condition rings on offer.
The Modern Knight explores the differences between real medieval cloaks and the ones in movies like Lord of the Rings.

INSPO

The dim orange hues fighting to survive against the deep teals, greens, and blacks in Parisian artist Mathieu Lauffray’s Long John Silver graphic novels underscore the sinister romance of a life lived on civilization's ragged edge. "I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky / And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by."

STORYTELLING

Hallowed Hall

Long before co-authoring Daggerheart, Rowan Hall co-hosted the podcast Willing & Fable with Tracey Harrison, a deep-dive into myths, folklore, and forgotten storytelling traditions. Each episode begins with a creative retelling (werewolves, goblins, the Greek Fates, urban legends, divine disasters) and then shifts to a conversational analysis—covering origins, hidden biases, cultural context, and meaning.

For designers and GMs, the show is a treasure trove of storytelling hooks: creature traits conjured from real-world symbolism, weird appropriation of folklore, unsung historical legacies. If you’re looking for inspo for an antagonist backstory, worldbuilding foundations, or just want to hear why goblins or werewolves still stick in our collective conscience, the archive is time well spent.

Among the shows: