Dispatch

Vol 24: Wonders & Wilds

A forest fiend, Fantasy Grounds, and free illustrations. Then, nine optional rules, a monster design guide, and a tag team flowchart. Plus: knight time, a Severance starter, and resources without robots. Bonus: Map Prepper, a gambler's die, and building a local gaming community.

SPOTLIGHT

Reno Reizakki’s Wonder Domain was featured last summer in Volume 2. We described it, along with their Stargazer Class, as “shoegaze”—homebrew for hopeful players with dreamy characters. Nine months later they’re back with an official update to the Domain, now as StarRune Press, with cover art by Juan Salvador Almencion, the artist who helped bring the Blood Domain to life. We never tire of creators with imagination and tenacity who bring such joy to the community.

NEWS & RELEASES

Inquizative

If you haven’t already, take Darrington’s Daggerheart Survey. They’e trying to map community interest against their roadmap and need your input. (Comments in the sub are predictably asking for more Adversaries and Environments, but I’m with those wanting an update to the CGL so third-party publishers can sell their goods on VTTs.)

Mystical Listicle

Daggerheart made it into the Top 5 Best Selling TTRPGs last year, according to data from ICv2. Darrington’s baby was preceded by D&D, Cosmere, Starfinder, and Crooked Moon, and followed by Pathfinder, Vampire the Masquerade, Alien, Cyberpunk Red, and Mörk Borg. (These are retail receipts only, which excludes digital sales.)

Hi Fantasy

Fantasy Grounds VTT announced their Daggerheart integration. You may recall they swapped subscriptions for free-to-play last year, with the plan to make up the revenue difference through marketplace sales. This be one of them.

Aussie Upgrades

Heart of Daggers announced a series of quality-of-life improvements to Notes, Adventure details, and image uploads, along with the ability to share a private Adventure through magic links. Matt also mentioned HoD has passed 15k active subscribers.

Dragon Downer

Hatchling Games has pushed the Kickstarter for Dragon Dowsers to 2027 to focus on current commitments and build a bigger following. Indie publishing is nothing if not constant trade-offs and reprioritizations.

Spotlights

Acquisitions Incorporated, now with Daggerheart as part of their charter, played to a packed auditorium at PAX East with Chris Perkins presiding over the table. And as part of CR’s 2026 live tour, Bells Hells will peal over Atlanta on May 26.

DISCUSSIONS

Ebberight

A group discussion sorts out the relative ease of porting Eberron to Daggerheart, with a couple of GMs getting into the weeds.

Prime Time

The thread Letting Fiction Retroactively Determine Time Passed coughed up several great suggestions on how to triage the impact of time on the narrative. I was particularly drawn to Hahnsoo’s “it depends” comment, where they give specific examples of how and when to dilate time.

Fight Blight

I loved Tomius’s “Joys of Non-deadly Encounters” and their observation to a) Add narrative goals to your combat encounters, and b) Add adversaries to your narrative encounters. Kalranya went deeper, noting:

“There's a larger lesson in here for GMs adapting from D&D: "win or die" is boring, and how you avoid every encounter becoming "win or die" is by understanding the stakes. Everyone involved in a scene wants something. When you understand what everyone in the scene wants, and how those things align or conflict, you understand the stakes—the narrative question the scene is asking.”

Put in a Good Word

Over on Was It Likely?, Ms. Screwhead advocates for vivid, idiosyncratic writing rather than the mechanical statblocks that fill adventure pages:

“If I'm playing a game once a week, I'd much, much rather the world I'm exploring be a deliberate conversation between myself and the person who made it, rather than a conversation between me and a set of random tables with the writer as a kind of interpreter between us.”

VIBE CHECK

Theresa puts ink to parchment and the Sablewood comes to life.

Meet *Aster*, Vio's Firbolg/Faerie Seraph.

🎯 GM TIPS

Exploring DH's Nine Optional Rules

Phil evaluates Daggerheart's nine optional rules (gold, massive damage, PvP, underwater combat, etc), adding helpful context, and suggesting which tables they may be suitable for. Snappy and smart, from one of the few creators who maintains a dedicated DH channel.

Monster Design Guide

RJ is back, frequently switching between host and animator in this step-by-step homebrew monster design guide. He walks through everything from designing Adversaries with your story in mind and choosing the right Tiers and Types, to balancing stats, building encounters, and keeping things simple and fun. Artful as ever, and a must-watch for those dipping their toes in the monster pool.

🍺 HOMEBREW

Umbral Herald

Backstory: the illustration on the left from The Age of Umbra Frame in the CRB inspired Andrés de Mingo to sculpt the (terrifying) 3D sculpture on the right.

After sharing it on the sub, he asked if the gruesome fiend had a name or statblock, to which Adversary Designer Chris Davidson replied, no—but I'll make you one.

Thus, in some form of Internet enabled CSI-meets-Monster-Mash incantation, you have a new Tier 2 Solo—a big bad to mess your party the fuck up if they stray from the path into the cursed woods you totally warned them about.

Also, this Davidson guy. Maybe he should do a regular column on Adversaries and Environments? Unpack how they operate, suggest how they might play. You know, a "Daggerheart Deconstructed" kinda thing. Hm.

Until you say stop or he stops making 'em, there's a place in our heart for Riksheare's "Iconic Adversaries," this time Kingpin & Bullseye, Klingons, and your favourite time travellers, the T-800 & T1000
Azu the Bard, true to his class, is rallying the sub with a weekly design challenge: he draws an Adversary, you pitch a statblock.
Speaking of pitches: a reminder that the sub now has The Friday Frame Pitch.

🌎 CAMPAIGN FRAME

New Employee Disorientation

Whether you're an innie or an outie, your journey from Severance has to start somewhere. In this case, it's the wood panelled walls of The Bureau of Chronological Affairs and the starter adventure New Employee Disorientation.

Here you'll find the telling signs of a vast bureaucracy—chiefly the acrid smell of coffee and a well trod Berber carpet, and—if you glance just the wrong way—a terrifying monster in the bathroom mirror.

Penned by horror master Jack Panic as an introduction to the time-bending world of The Bureau, NED is a 1-2 session adventure that helps you and your players come to terms with life, death, and calculators.

Get it today! Or yesterday. No one will know, and we won't tell.

🎨 CRAFTY

DURF Turf

Emiel Boven—writer, illustrator, the creator of DURF—maintains a small repository of free illustrations for non-commercial work. If you like his comical, quasi-Ligne Claire style of monsters and mayhem, there are even assets to make DIY game night flyers or posters.

Nic Picks

Another Internet riff: GM and creator Nico de Gallo assembled a Google doc filled with "Resources without AI" that was then turned into TTRPGResources by Matt and the team at Heart of Daggers (I still can't believe that domain was available.) Whichever tool you use, you'll find dozens of non-AI, free-or-Creative Commons icons, art, marketplaces, maps, writing prompts—everything and anything to help build a human-made campaign.

There's a month left to submit your map to Prismatic Wasteland's showcase.
Over on r/tabletopartists you can commission artists like Olga Jaworska.
Dude, Backstabber is here. A rad zine filled with gnarly beasts. Get in!

🛠️ TOOLS & RESOURCES

Maatlock—engineer, woodworker, TTRGP enthusiast—made Map Prepper. Upload and key a map. Add notes. Share.

The Roundup:

Naemi made a Tag Team Flowchart that, after a few iterations, is perfect.
JuliaIsAway shared her homebrew Adversaries, Environments, and traps in a fast, well-organized container.
I'm still trying to figure out Ian Walker's Obsidian Engine, but it looks cool and is possibly super helpful.
Lucanique's Gambler's Die is ideal for desperate players in stressful times.
Stoneward shared The Three Empires, a rather stunning 12-variant map pack. It's free, but you'll have to subscribe to their Patreon.
Maybe I've been listening to BLeeM go on about birds. Maybe I like a little morning song. Or maybe I just think this is a cool sound to play at your next game (although it's better suited to Star Wars than medieval shenanigans).

INSPO

Indonesian artist Arief Rachmad's pulpy illustrations are the platonic ideal of heavy metal blacklight posters or distressed underground zines. But the chaotic lines, liminal space, and saturated colours also feel existential, like a sudden realization that hell is real and you are now burdened with a dark knowledge that will be your inevitable ruin.

STORYTELLING

A Knight is Shining Armour

Dequitem, our favourite improvisational armoured fighter, picks up where A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (excellent, watch it if you can) left off, explaining how knights and medieval soldiers travelled: logistics, tents, horses, armour care, and supplies.

Do you really need to know this stuff? Not really. You can easily hand wave these details away during a session. But every now again—possibly to add texture, possibly to draw the moment with greater precision—you'll find yourself looking for features to illuminate a scene. That's where these videos help. With the details at the ready, you can focus on the character moment rather than stumbling over supply chains or bridles.