Vol 27: Alchemy & Ambushes

SPOTLIGHT

If you were to measure Alchemy’s success in units of Tolkien, its recent exit from long beta as a free VTT was The Adventures of Tom Bombadil: curious and charming, but not shaking the foundations of Middle-earth. Their launch of Blades in the Dark? That was The Hobbit: a clean, confident outing that brought plenty of people to the door. Now, on the eve of Daggerheart, what will we get? The Lord of the Rings, with the beacons lit and the whole hobby turning its head? Or The Silmarillion: impressive and adored by the faithful, but not quite built for everyone wandering the Shire? One can only wait but a few sleeps, with second breakfast close at hand, for the next chapters of the adventure.

NEWS & RELEASES

Caked Up

Set your alarm, bake a cake (or buy some Pop-Tarts), and join the festivities on Daggerheart’s Birthday Livestream, this Wednesday, May 20th, at 4pmPT. It’s an all-hands celebration coupled with some new announcements. (Can’t wait until then? Here are some Hope & Fear spoilers, without context.) 

Rezendes Roundhouse

Already watched the spoilers? Want to see Elise muscle up? She comes out swinging on Luck of the Draw, pulling no punches as she swipes Rowan’s favourite Class.

Alchemical Magic

Alchemy VTT’s Daggerheart module goes live the day after Daggerheart's birthday, and they were kind enough to share with us a sneak peek of the Cards and Card Builder experience, along with the custom soundtrack from the Enhanced edition. Here’s Product Designer George Affonso on the overall project:

"I’ve been in love with Daggerheart since the open betas, so being asked to lead the design for this implementation was incredibly exciting for me. 

One of our biggest priorities was sitting down with the people behind it. Getting to chat with the game designers was invaluable in helping us shape the best experience we could for players. One of our biggest goals was making the digital experience feel as smooth and collaborative as the game does at the table, with tools that support the story without getting in the way of it. There’s a lot more coming, and we’re incredibly excited for players to see where we take it next."

Alchemy also released general in-game and out-of-game video tutorials to re/familiarize everyone with their ropes and pulleys—and the intense effort and craft that's gone into the platform over the last year. [Ed: We noticed the homebrew segments for custom and licensed material.]

Dagger Dividends

As part of the celebratory jam, Heart of Daggers announced that creators on the platform will retain 100% of earnings for the week. They’re also giving away a couple of Hope & Fear pre-orders.

Birthday Buffs

While “optimization” isn’t typically associated with birthdays, consider it a gift that Demiplane sheets load 90% faster and Owlbear Rodeo has added effortless map alignment.

Adversary Appraisal

Over on the sub, Hosidax and crew have added Monster Monday—celebrate and critique Adversaries like you’re a fashion vlogger at a Marc Jacobs runway.

Cons & Couture

If you’re stateside, Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio is looking for GMs to run Daggerheart at the upcoming con. If you go, wear one of these stylish windbreakers from Jack Panic.

CROWDFUNDING

Cash of Cthulhu

As the trades say—Woof! Call of Cthulhu 1912 hauled 2x their Kickstarter ask, landing close to $100k to bring Lovecraftion horror to Daggerheart. This is the biggest raise outside of Drakkenheim, and opens the Daggerheart doors to Cthulhu fans worldwide. 

Heart of Darkness

Hot on Cthulhu’s heels are the demons of Dudley, UK, who are readying Demonheart for launch this Tuesday, May 19. This is a big boi—450 pages, 7 Domains, 66 subclasses, and possibly a 12-ft wall-mounted tapestry. Crank some Sabbath or Slayer and start your prayer circle. 

Location, Location, Location

Also in the batting cage is Amazing Adversaries & Environments from CZRPG Publishing. The pitch: LOCATIONS. Eight of them to be precise, loaded with lore, history, and flavour. And all of them ready to rumble with 100 new Adversaries. 

Stretch Scrolls

Arcane Archive does not need your support—they’re already 22x their ask—but damn you’re gonna wanna throw some cash at these brilliant retractable scrolls that feel like literal magic. 

DISCUSSIONS

Fear Factor

What do you do when a player purposely limits their choices because they worry an action roll will generate Fear? A GM struggling with this got some just-in-time therapy, ranging from soft-touch—“There are a lot of sections in the book on embracing danger”—to tough love—“The key thing is to disabuse them of the notion that when they roll fear and lose the spotlight, the GM uses a GM move to hurt them.” Worth a scan if you’re encountered the same problem.

Clash of Casters

Wizard>Sorcerer? That’s the debate stoked by OP who, coming from Pathfinder and D&D, thinks Sorcs kinda suck compared to the Wiz. Great comments all around, with FearlessDust posting strong comps, but the one I noticed was Sax, also a Pathfinder convert, who gently reminded the GM that flavouring the fiction effectively has material benefits that can strengthen either class.

Hook, Line, and Stinker

“Most hooks and most rumours aren’t very good. Hooks are just, to set up my analogy, bare hooks with no worm on them. Why would the players bite? What makes a juicy worm, then? And rumours, they’re Siri telling you to turn left in 300 meters, where they should be directions provided by locals, informed by local knowledge, that speak about how the locals perceive their locale. And, they should get to the point: People don’t speak in generalities, they’re specific, more often than they’re right.”

That’s the opening gambit from Playful Void’s post about how to bait meaty hooks for your players. Give it a read, but also consider Pistolheart Vol 2, which introduces an exceptional system for Rumours that's ideal for bait hooking.

VIBE CHECK

🎯 GM TIPS

Five Banners Burning Briefing

This is a treat: Rob ran Five Banners Burning and devotes a video to behind-the-scenes and post-game analysis. It’s an inside look at how a GM runs their table, and an exploration of craft and how to think about using/adapting material to suit your goals and preferences.

Sneak Attack

Teos Abadía goes deep on planning an ambush, with tips on how to avoid them feeling random, choose the location, give enemies unique visual markers, and use interactive objects and mechanics for rousing combat.

Crafting Capers

Patchwork Paladin has a brief post intended for players to help them run a heist. It’s part of an ongoing series to help your table engage faster and more deeply with a game—and also links to some other heist guides. (PS: great blog. Consider subscribing.)

🍺 HOMEBREW

Daggerkin

Daggerkin is Daggerheart for anyone who believed a small magical buddy could become a large magical buddy through the power of friendship, danger, and yelling their name at the right moment. 

Reno Reizakki’s starter ruleset bolts a full Digimon-esque creature-companion framework onto Daggerheart. Tamers bond with Daggerkin in their metaphysical Heart, command them in play, manage domain resonance, spend crystalline Daggers, and watch their companions hit Elation when the drama gets dramatic.

If you want Saturday-morning TV vibes in your Saturday game day, give Daggerkin a whirl. Hard to go wrong with prancing snow pups, cloud horses, and racoon gremlins.

MORE:

• Chris Davidson extends his Era of Shadows franchise with The Bloody Tree, a Tier 2 replayable adventure where the party must face the consequences of their actions in a world consumed by darkness.
• Tales of Untold Paths is a player expansion system that introduces nine new subclasses and 18 new Domain cards, united by a Canterbury Tales vibe and some savvy new mechanics.
• Jack Panic's DNGN DONUTS is trans-dimentional dungeon hopping donut shop where you can grab a pick me up—for a cost.
• Playtest Volume 2 of The New Unknown is now available.

🌎 CAMPAIGN FRAME

Still it Rises

You probably know the Elderbrain brand from their D&D or Pathfinder adventures, or as a recent C4 sponsor. They expanded their product line last year to include Daggerheart, and now publish DH one-shots through their Mindscape line, among them Still it Rises.

You may also know the designer who adapted their adventures: Mathew Reuther, an early sub advocate and Age of Umbra chronicler.

Mathew and I recently chatted about adapting material to Daggerheart and the challenges and tricks required to make them feel whole-cloth.

"For Still It Rises I had a good number of conversion challenges. One of them was how to deal with incorporating NPCs into combat. Daggerheart is very loose with NPCs but the adventure really calls for them to be a part of the action. So I devised an environment which allows the party to use tokens to power NPC actions. It keeps the NPCs involved, but allows the players to dictate how the encounters flow. [This is the To New Friends environment.]

Another one of the challenges was how to adapt a feat. The logical hook was as a domain card, but I had to make sure I designed it in a way that respected the power level of Daggerheart while maintaining the feat level placement of D&D. The recall cost was something I considered quite a bit during design. I wanted there to be some tactics to choosing the card and when to use it, since it lasts an entire rest. I also settled on Midnight as it was thematically the best domain for it. [This is the Rooftop Runner domain card.]

When I'm working to make an optimal conversion, a lot of what I am doing is deciding at what point something needs to become an environment. I have the philosophy that rolling to do things in Daggerheart is fine, though I have sometimes just cut a roll or added information in about experiences or other character traits. Many rolls get tweaked because of probabilities. Where I really make decisions is when it starts to get into multiple sustained rolls—you really need to be in an environment if you're doing that in my mind. The best example of this is actually in Revelry at Lotus Island where I changed the entire obstacle course from a mishmash of rolls into a series of environments. 

Another thing I consider is how resting and encounters (and dangerous environments) are likely to play out. I made a special kind of rest (with a statted out downtime move) for The Curator of Thallendar simply because the race-against-the-clock plot wouldn't allow for short or long rests. I look at the types of encounters in each one shot and just give it my best guess as to how things will work out without knowing the party composition people are going with! If there's one thing I hope GMs know about using premade adventures it's that they should always be flexible and not do everything the adventure says—the GM's job is to adapt to the situation as it unfolds, after all."

🎨 CRAFTY

The Mint of Moria

Artist Ash Butterscotch was asked if they could make a few dwarven coins for their party. A few months later, "what started as a few simple dwarven GP designs turned into a full obsession, and now I’ve designed almost 110 double-sided dwarven coins :)" Absolutely stunning work.

Daragon for Dragons

If you're tired of the bog-standard serifs or menacing slabs that litter the pages of fantasy publishing, you might peek at Daragon, a romantic, contemporary medieval face from French typographer Anne-Dauphine Borione. There's a lovely specimen page to inspire you, and this in-depth process post by Borione herself.

The Maker's Dilemma

Not sure if you should publish a frame, module, adventure, or book? Here's Mike Underwood, commenting on 3PP and the shape of what to make:

"It became clear to me pretty quickly after Daggerheart's release that there are people—all genuinely interested in using DH in good faith—across a wide range of positions in terms of what they want from/of adventure material. From people that are happy to make their own frames and never use written adventures to using frames alone, to frames plus some supplemental material, to wanting setting books with sandbox elements, to wanting adventure paths with flexibility in structure all the way to wanting fully-written 200+ adventure books with support for prompts and improvisation.

I have landed on the position that I don't think there is just one right way to design adventure material for DH. I think it's going to be a question of deciding what is right for you and then finding that material."

MORE:

• Module Writing Tips
• Elements of a Key 4: Rules for Key-Writing
• Designing Pamphlet Games (With Shitty Printers in Mind)

🛠️ TOOLS & RESOURCES

A rather stunning Dwarven bridge, built for TailSpire. Maybe for your Umbra campaign?

The Roundup:

• Phil from Reaction Roll reviews digital Daggerheart tools, including Heart of Daggers and Owlbear Rodeo.
• WebWeaver made a character sheet to help them remember their Class abilities.
• Daggervault is a filterable card index you may find handy.
• Here's a lowkey NPC, Loot, and Encounter generator from IntelligentGold.
• Need more? Kayfabed shared this helpful auto-roll table for dungeons, magic, food, NPCs, monsters...
• A fantasy worldbuilding app in a single, downloadable HTML file? TemporaryLeg built one to avoid paying for subscriptions. [Ed: This is a solid product with no network calls.]
• Mike Robertson drew our attention to a d100 Faction Features table.
• Here's everything you need to know about medieval travel.

INSPO

Like many concept artists displaying their wares, Max Bedulenko often shares his constructions with camera angles positioned somewhere between diorama and drama. The result is both awe-inspiring (look at the scale!) and informative (look at the layout!), a useful tool for a GM or creator considering how to excite their players with grand architecture while informing them how to move through the space.

STORYTELLING

Pay Attention to the Unit of Attention

Your party storms the gates, swords high, casters at the ready. How do you clock the scene? How do you punctuate moments to create clarity and dramatic heft for your players?

Find the beat.

Writing for Interesting (a Scriptnotes blog), Chris Csont uses a recent comment from Project Hail Mary and The Martian writer Drew Goddard on finding and framing a beat:

“Beats to me are just moments [...] I tend to just start with moments that I respond to. It could be big or it could be small. It could be just, "Oh, I like when he said that thing to her." It could be, "Oh my God, this giant story turn." I'll put them on a board, and I'll just start noting them. Then at a certain point, I'll go, "I have enough beats," and go, "Okay, let's start trying to put scenes together."

Csont goes on to note, “a beat doesn’t have to be “something happens” in the plot sense. It can be a unit of attention. It’s the thing the scene is asking us to notice, process, feel, or carry forward.”

For instance, a beat might be “an image, a line of dialogue, a reversal, a character making a choice, a hesitation, a look, a gesture, a silence, an interruption, an entrance, an exit, a discovery, a mistake, a misunderstanding, a realization, a confession, a lie, a joke, a threat, a promise, a question, an answer, a non-answer, a change in status, a shift in power, or a new piece of information revealed."

Understanding beats is important for Daggerheart GMs who not only want to create rousing moments, but have practical concerns about using Fear.

Hundreds of comments on the Discords and sub are from GMs with too much Fear and unsure how to use it. Should it always be an attack? No. Sometimes you’re using Fear to hit a beat, to deploy that unit of attention in ways that crank the intensity without devolving into the slog of “hit/miss/hit.”

Here’s a fight scene from Mad Max: Fury Road. 

Watch it, and then think about the beats. Call them out, consider how you might frame them at the table, how you might engage your players. Then compare your list to Csont’s. 

The goal is to be aware of these moments, match them with your Fear inventory, and frame the moment so it’s as legible, intense and rewarding as possible.

ETC

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