Dispatch

Vol 28: Shadowheart & Skarsgård

The Keep, a Round Table, and the Lists. Managing action, Andor exercise, and Headless Characters. Thoughts on social encounters, fighting hard, and spinning duelists. Then, how to run a negotiation, guess if the kid is haunted, and use body parts. Plus: free apps, art, and adventures.

SPOTLIGHT

While Jennifer English graces the spotlight for her appearance in the upcoming Age of Umbra sequel, our minds are on the engine that makes this possible. Critical Role, like their friends at Dropout, are steadily accumulating world-class talent to attract, retain, and—at the best of times—electrify their audiences. Where Dropout is, in Sam Reich's words, "comedy-as-a-service," Beacon is becoming "AP-as-a-service"—an always-on universe of actors, characters, and shows to keep us company while we do the dishes, tide us over until the next season of Vox Machina, or inspire shenanigans in our own campaigns.

NEWS & RELEASES

The Icing on the Cake

The candles are out and the cake eaten, but the Darrington gang left behind a trail of presents to commemorate Year One. The Wish Thief, a light-hearted Tier 1 adventure designed by Rob Hebert. An “adventure pipeline”—aka digital-only adventures between mammoth projects like Hope & Fear. H&F in the SRD, which means you can include things like Transformations in a commercial adventure. The aforementioned Age of Umbra: Sallowlands. And a new Adversary creator and theme song.

Bookborne

Pre-orders are back for the Deluxe Hope & Fear edition, but also The Art and Making of Daggerheart, a book teased last year but now in production and featuring the development chain that produces some of the industry’s best artwork, along with stories from behind-the-scenes.

*Concept layout from The Art and Making of Daggerheart*

Shadow of the Colossus

Carlos Cisco released a roadmap for his breakout hit Pistolheart, providing details for Part III while adding that work is underway on a T1 adventure module and Pistolheart Jam. If you become what you make, the colossus of the drylands is, indeed, Cisco. Bonus: if the thought of being mentored by Cisco appeals to you, check out Fear Fest.

Buckle Up, Backers

How’s My Driving Part II: Thank You For Shopping debuted to critical acclaim, and has been followed up with a Kickstarter for the engine that drives the action: Jack Panic’s Daggerheart hack. If you want some early aughts stranger danger at your table, go ring that bell.

Cult Calculus

Heart of Cthulhu 1912 topped out their Kickstarter with an astounding $140k haul, just beating out Demonheart which will land at ~$120k. In a private note, we observed that—brands aside—the outsized returns on these crowdfunds suggests not enough creators are using advertising to drive awareness of their projects, relying instead on community interest. We'll add: many customers will never join your community, and many community members will never buy your product. You need both to win.

Headless and Hassle Free

Alchemy VTT added two major improvements this week: Headless character creation, which allows players to control multiple PCs/NPCs, and GMs to create PCs that aren't assigned to a player (which means you can pre-fill your PC roster ahead of time); and Modifiers to all items. Swinging a longsword? The system will add your AGI mod. That dagger? FIN. Battle axe? STR. It’s all baked in.

Of Marketplace & Margins

RPG Trader is up and at 'em. Clean, creator focused (keep 80% of your sales), and ready to sell digital and print-on-demand. Just out of beta and there's already some Daggerheart goods on supply. Bonus: Chris Hutton interviews the founder.

Ciao dall'Italia!

We were charmed by this short video of Daggerheart Day in Bologna, Italy. From the upvotes, it seems many of you were too.

Minimasterpieces

Spanish artist Andrés de Mingo has a stunning array of Daggerheart miniatures on offer as part of his Kickstarter. While he’s occasionally shared images of them on the sub, to see the gallery is to witness a master at work.

DISCUSSIONS

To raise the tension in social encounters, Creative Sink Hole added an experimental rule: when a Vulnerable PC makes a Social action, the roll is automatically done with Fear. Good discussion on the outcome.

Prescription Description

Reflecting on the chase sequence in The Wish Thief, Patchwork Paladin wonders if “the adventures that are coming out of Burbank seem unnecessarily directive.”

Fiat for Framing

The more world building is shared among players and the GM, the more you run into problems of coherence. Over at Walking Hat, Rob Donoghue thinks this is where the GM’s ultimate power resides: not general assertion, but veto power so the unfolding story can be properly framed and editorialized.

The Difficulty Dial

“How do you manage combat?” is an evergreen question with as many answers as there are GMs. But for this OP’s query about making fights harder, Adversary Designer Chris Davidson chimed in with a reply worth adding to your GM screen: “Relentless + momentum. AoE attacks. Restrain, push, and otherwise separate the party. Use environments. Use alternative objectives. More bruisers, fewer standards. More fights, fewer rests.”

Limit/less?

Are player options and abilities limited in Daggerheart? Carlos Cisco doesn’t think so: “DH offers a lot less constraint on what the players can do in general. So you may have less of a laundry list of abilities, but the flexibility and use case of those abilities are much wider.”

VIBE CHECK

Meet Saspilin Daroga, an 8ft-tall prosthetics nurse Warlock with a patron by the name of Uranium-235.

JustMeLike's Fear tracker for their DaggerStrahd campaign.

🎯 GM TIPS

Spinning Attacks

Are we getting tired yet of watching tin-can men swing swords at each other in VistaVision? Until we do, here's Dequitem getting hammered by a spinning duelist.

Managing Action

If the Discords and sub are indicators, many GMs struggle moving between social and combat encounters—or rather, they believe these are two separate things instead of just one scene with different dramatic moments. Here, Rob Jon makes use of his studio to demonstrate how a scene can move smoothly among different types of action—verbal, emotional, physical—without losing momentum or logic.

Body Parts

Judd Karlman shared this on BSKY and it was an instant unlock/save for me. We all need an evocative note to bring an NPC to life. Using a body part is simple and satisfying.

🍺 HOMEBREW

The Keep

I'm tired of clapping every time Jack drops another banger on Bluesky. Fuck his ingenious ideas and electric artwork. Download a free copy of The Keep just so you can burn it and curse his talents.

Did the picture of Jennifer English have you missing Shadowheart? Riksheare has you covered. Bonus: he also has a new campaign setting on offer.
Map-maker Domille is back with a couple of story environments: Lion Ascendant and Frosted Timber.
Ghosts! is a twisty T2 adventure that has you guessing if the kid is a haunted student or a nefarious necromancer.
ziemlichwunderlich have found their groove with thematic bundles featuring Adversaries, an Environment, cards, and tokens. This time around it's The Shadowmist.
Gaurelin reminded us how to run a negotiation.

🌎 CAMPAIGN FRAME

The Last Roundtable

Friend of the Dispatch (and our first interview) John Gronquist of Hack Shack Games is back with The Last Round Table, a whimsical T2 adventure about a pub, missing goat, and mysterious cave summoned by otherworldly spirits.

As part of the run-up to his Kickstarter, John and I chatted about the adventure and his preponderance for humour.

"It's just what I'm in the mood for right now. The world is really stressful, so I'm finding myself drawn to more satirical or humorist stuff to lighten the load. I also have noticed that a lot of that style of content already out there tends towards the purely gonzo, and wanted adventures and a world that was more a mix of traditional heroic saga stories and satire.

I've always been a massive fan of Terry Pratchett, Terry Brooks, and Craig Shaw Gardner, who thread that needle with utmost precision, and they are big inspirations for my current work. I've written more serious things, the Weathered Well is definitely that. I'm hoping with everything I do there's room for both humor and heavier subjects. There's a mix of that in Last Round, tucked in the corners here and there."

We also asked about the (adorable) Goat at the heart of the adventure:

"You mean Queen Crumplehoof, royal champion of the Sitizens of Barback? She's just a stubborn little lady who expects more out of life than eating hay, and will headbutt anything that stands in her way of a life of glory and adventure. Mechanically she serves as the traditional "rescue the puppy" hook, but being stubborn and willful, she wasn't happy sitting in that role.

The adventure starts with asking you to rescue a handful of missing adventurers, but I wanted a fluffier hook to create real incentive. During play she serves as one of the 'Wildcard' characters in the Last Round Table, a servant of chaos between ally and adversary."

Get notified when Queen Crumplehoof and her compatriots go live.

🎨 CRAFTY

DIY Zines

Why Kickstart when you can zine? Shouting Crow’s PWYW 24-page PDF walks you through project guidelines, includes a handy "where should I print this?” flowchart, and offers tips on how to make your mini-mag look magic on a shelf. Bonus: Clayton Notestine's Classic Explorer Template for InDesign and Affinity.

List Lowdown

Make items in the list structurally parallel.

Speaking of Clayton—he's back with a handy post on how to design lists in RPGs. In addition to clarifying types of lists—and whether you should use lists at all—he includes several examples of how to make them impeccable and unimpeachable.

🛠️ TOOLS & RESOURCES

Longing for the tilt? Look no further than Joust, Scott Malhouse's free mini-ruleset that'll have your Knight of the Seven Kingdoms campaign charging down the lists.

The Roundup:

Sean McCoy posted a handy "treasure encumbrance matrix."
This collection of additional background questions, customized for all 18 subclasses, can help your players weave better backstories.
Oxy949 redesigned the Foundry Adversary and Environment statblocks to be more compact and dense.
Want to add a Void class to Alchemy? Dawnblessed has simple instructions.
A fantasy worldbuilding app in a single, downloadable HTML file? TemporaryLeg built one to avoid paying for subscriptions. [Re-upped this from last edition due to interest.]
A thousand horror sounds/SFX for a buck? Scary good.
Samuel Taylor explains how to harness Mythic Bastionland's engine to improve your sandbox campaigns.

INSPO

Polish artist Piotr Jabłoński's use of a monochromatic gold palette for Destiny transforms traditional game concept art into a menacing vision of interplanetary war. The sepia-drenched tones also manage to bridge the future with the past, evoking medieval knights, weapons, and crypts alongside plasma guns and warp engines. If you're excited to head to the stars but don't want to fully leave the 1400s, maybe start a moodboard of Jabłoński's work for inspiration.

STORYTELLING

Just Breathe

Many actors will tell you there's really only four instructions they can work with: faster, slower, louder, softer.

That should comfort GMs who worry they have to channel some primordial skill in order to bring a fake King or Queen to life. Often, it just takes lowering your voice and slowing down your words (or vice versa) to bring colour to an otherwise vanilla NPC.

Nerdwriter further examines this idea, analyzing the amount—and distribution— of silence in Stellan Skarsgård's infamous Andor monologue. He also notes how Skarsgård punctuates moments by drifting his gaze away from the camera or suddenly swinging it back.

Taken together, these instructions—faster, slower, louder, softer/away, towards—can form a simple operating system that make your roleplay less about latent talent and more about following a basic ruleset.