Vol 30: ENNIES & Enigmas
Awards, actual plays, and final days. An exclusive Environment, improvised encounters, and a vandal named Randall. Then, Summoners and sailors, Obsidian Adversaries, and the fundamentals of fear. Plus: a free map, Bloodborne weapons, and ocean adventures.
SPOTLIGHT
When you cover the output of artists—be they filmmakers, musicians, writers, or, in our case, game designers—one thing you track over time is their particular brand of energy. Spielberg is earnest. Swift is industrious. McCarthy is austere. And Darrington? This is the Darrington crew. Scrappy, inventive, and irreverent in a way that is kinetic. It's to that energy—and their many ENNIE noms—we tip our hats (and wiggle our moustaches).
NEWS & RELEASES
The Shining
The ENNIES—the Oscars of the TTRPG community—nominated Daggerheart for Product of the Year, Best Game, Best Rules, Best Free Game (Sablewood Messengers), and Best Streaming Content (Get Your Sheet Together). Voting is now open to the public.
Designated Drivers
How's My Driving, the Daggerheart horror hack that spawned the hit AP of 2026, is also nominated for an ENNIE. Not that Jack, Cameron, and Gina are trying to gin up votes—but Jack has promised to turn this mock-up into a real product should they win.
Sallowbrand
Age of Umbra: Sallowlands premiered on Thursday and with it, partnerships with Alchemy and DriveThruRPG & Demiplane that include S1 character pre-gens, S2 environmental artwork, and a hi-res map from cartographer Marco Bernardini. Alchemy has all these assets already integrated into their system, while Daggerheart's download site also includes S1 Adversaries.
[Ed: If you're curious about the mechanics of Age of Umbra and how Matt GM's Daggerheart, look for Adversary Designer Chris Davidson's special Deconstructed series starting this Wednesday.]
Heart of Darkness
If watching dark, ritualistic games isn't quite enough for you, why not play dark ritualistic games with the new Summoner or updated Blood Hunter Classes? Courtesy of Darrington's Depraved Designers™, you can boil the blood of your victims while summoning Death Knights to murder their allies. Bonus: The D3 sit with Mademoiselle Rezendes to explain their dark deeds.
(PS: While R&S couldn't be in Burbank for the stream, here they are speaking at a Designers Workshop in Germany.)
Adventuring Party
News broke this week that game designer Carlos Cisco has joined Mike Underwood on Dungeons of Drakkenheim, along with Daggerheart editors Scott Fitzgerald Gray, Sadie Lowry, and Sebastian Yūe. All five of these folks are also ENNIE nominated.
European Communion
Whatever crises have affected global shipping lanes—be it for raw materials or finished goods—it hasn't stopped the Germans and French from producing Daggerheart in their native tongue. Trotz allem! Vive la resistance! Bonus: Rounding out the EU is a Spanish and Portuguese FreshCutGrass-ish tool.
AP A-Z
Daggerheart dot org has added a roster of actual plays to their site, joining Heart of Daggers and Reddit to ensure no ear goes unturned.
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Guys are overrated, yeah? Spend some time with the ladies.
DISCUSSIONS
All the Right Moves
A player asked: “Can I move after attacking without spending action economy on it?” to which OrphicSolopsism replied “Moving after an action? No. Moving as part of an action? Yes.” KTheOneTrueKing added further context: “Moving and making an action roll are not, technically, separate actions. It’s all part of the spotlight. It’s not like D&D where you have a hard coded “action, bonus action, movement” economy.”
Ready, Steady, Stop!
Hot on the heels of “it’s not like D&D” comes a proposal for a catalogue of readied actions to replace standard action rolls, built largely on the misunderstanding that players will lose their ability to attack should an Adversary claim the spotlight. Worth visiting the comments if you occasionally struggle with “who should go next?”
