Dispatch

Vol 35: Strahd & Strategy

The Bloodthirsty Baron and a festival of fear. Ritual casts, deathless duels, and a colossal dragon. Then, Stephen King on skills, Aaron Sorkin on conflict, and the mechanic behind panic. Plus: a VTT for Obsidian, Blade Runner textures, and how to map and use a fortress.

SPOTLIGHT

A good map tells you where you are and where you can go. But darthmongoose reminds us that a great map tells a story. By expertly colouring the b&w map for The Dark Heart of Andaluria, they imbue its lines with love and life, magic and wonder. The lush terraced fields, dappled lakes, towering peaks, winding rivers, remote outposts, sailing vessels… everything comes to life, and we whisper like Liz Lemon: I want to go to there.

NEWS & RELEASES

New Character Sheets

D&D expats Perkins and Crawford sat with Polygon to talk making the jump to Daggerheart, including their work on Hope & Fear and Reign of the Weredragon. Mostly rehashed material, but there's a brief mention of Perkin's anthology series (separate from One-Shot Wonders), a nod to DP's adventure pipeline plans.

Con Artists

Mark Mercer donned his Cassidy hat at BlizzCon to run Questwatch, an Overwatch Daggerheart actual play with the game’s voice actors playing their characters playing their characters. Equally fun: the show included audience voting on key moments in the narrative.

Drakkendowner

The Dungeon Dudes downer details on Drakkenheim (it’s late, soz, we’re getting our act together), was followed by a perkier post earlier this week: the manuscript is with Darrington! It’s out of our hands! Hot potato passed, they included some BTS with Mike Underwood you might enjoy.

Stealing Strahd

With banger after banger, Carlos Cisco calls Jack Panic the "Beyoncé of Daggerheart." I'd call him a savage IP lawyer. Dude just ripped an artery clean out of WoTC's veins and is soaking his horror frame with their blood.

Fright Club

While we're on the topic of blood—Fear Fest is live on Heart of Daggers. The month-long celebration of the sinister will culminate with two new publications—one made by the mentees of Cisco and Underwood, the other made through the contributions of 20 creators across writing, design, illustration, and layout.

Mike Underwood and Infinite Citadel's Hope Dies Last funded in a day and kept marching through stretch goals, turning its three-frame triptych of epic fantasy, cyberpunk, and space opera into an increasingly chunky pile of zines. Since then, the team has run an AMA, shared art in progress, added the Fear Lives First zine, and joined Talk of the Table for a Daggerheart double-feature.

Crowd Control

Also climbing the charts: Brazilian collective Jack of All Tracks funded Tales & Twists in just 12 hours, bringing together five campaign frames and new mechanics for rebellion, dungeon crawling, corruption, and other healthy hobbies. Meanwhile, Many Worlds Tavern's Wayward Wonders Year One has cleared its $20k base goal on BackerKit and is now chasing the $50k stretch that unlocks a full Daggerheart edition of its 200+ page, 300-illustration sourcebook.

DISCUSSIONS

Rites & Rolls

A conversation about ritual casting, countdowns, and a general “how do you handle the magic process?” led to this great checklist from DMRawlings:

How powerful is this ritual → Sets the difficulty
How complex is this ritual → Determines countdown amount
Determine core reagents → What do they need to even do this ritual
Determine minor reagents → What can they add to improve ritual results (gain advantage/longer duration/etc)
Characters take actions to reduce the countdown

"On a roll with Fear, give players choices about what goes wrong (disadvantage on next roll/shorter duration/more powerful than expected/interrupted/mark Stress/etc)."

Friendly Fire

Some handy tips in this conversation about managing allied NPCs. The OP uses an Ally Card they hand to players to manage. Others chimed in with their own.

Horizon Lines

A couple of useful posts bubbled up for tackling Journey to Horizon: What exists outside the sanctuaries? (I like LittleCaptainNemo’s take); and How to manage resting, where PrestigiousEmu advises on the difference between rest and sleep.

Dramaturgy

Some theatrics for the thirsty: Is Daggerheart actually narrative-forward? (ie. do the system mechanics actually generate story?). Then, a lukewarm hot take: Campaign Frames are misunderstood and/or under-appreciated. Finally, Reaction Roll’s entry in this month’s Betteridge Headline Competition: “did Daggerheart fall off?”

VIBE CHECK

*Chickaburra's Divine Clank**, out scavenging the bones of angels.*

*Illustrative art goes 3D* *thanks to Maleficent Detail*

🎯 GM TIPS

Show Your Work

An ever thoughtful Vince Gilligan on Stephen King’s observation about skill and proficiency:

“Process is interesting to people. I truly believe that. Stephen King wrote a book about the writing process called On Writing. And I remember he says that people like to read about or watch other people doing their jobs. Don’t disregard that as a writer. If the goal is dramatic, you can watch that kind of stuff all day."

Describing how a PC actually does the thing they’re good at can be both fascinating for the party and add drama to the story. Sure, hand wave from time to time. But also set an expectation that players understand their skills and how they manifest during the game. Same for you and your NPCs.

Duel Purpose

Rob Jon illustrates how to run combat without damage dice or HP and focus solely on the narrative. A helpful tutorial for GMs who may want to alternate how a scene runs while still retaining duality dice rolls.

🍺 HOMEBREW

The Artist

Reno Reizakki, the creator of the Wonder Domain and the Stargazer and Enchanter Classes, is back with another Class: Artist. Like all their work, this new bit of design is as clever as it is colourful. To whit:

The Artist is a Wonder & Grace class focused on versatility and adapting to different situations. Their main mechanic, Color Palette, rewards them for using cards from different domains, while True Colors gives them Color to fuel their subclass features. Instead of following the normal subclass progression, Artists collect different Shades of Color, with nine Foundation subclasses to choose from, allowing you to combine different colors and build your own playstyle.

(You may also recall Reizakki as the creator behind Daggerkin, the Digimon-esque creature-companion framework.)

City of the Black Rose

City of the Black Rose, the horror noir campaign book from One-Shot Wonders publisher Roll & Play Press, gives you a 168-pg Blades-esque setting to confound and envelop your players.

Pyrexia, The Shackled Ember

Bard & Raven ask, if colossus, why not dragon?

🌎 CAMPAIGN BOOK

Vesper

Vesper: A Setting for Stories Yet Untold is an upcoming 200+ page setting book from Wither & Bloom Studios, written and illustrated by artist, professor, and longtime GM Todd Lambrix. It collects a world developed across years of drawing and play, with lore, ecologies, creatures and ancestries, campaign frames, an adventure, Adversaries, and other game-ready material.

But what first caught our eye were the illustrations. Vesper looks unlike the polished trade dress surrounding contemporary fantasy RPGs. Its dense b&w linework has one foot in OSR and another in the engravings of Gustave Doré. There’s even, to our eye at least, a little Labyrinth hiding in the undergrowth.

We wanted to know more about the art and reached out to Lambrix.

“My earliest art lessons, long before college, were with the fantasy illustrator Tim Hildebrandt,” he told us. Later came Renaissance painters, naturalist and scientific illustration, and time spent during graduate school at RISD’s Nature Lab, drawing from its collection of natural specimens.

That practice hasn't stopped. Lambrix still begins his daily drawing by walking the dog and bringing home something he finds along the way: “A stick, bone, rock, seed pod, or some other find is always brought home and studied. These objects sometimes transform into creatures, other times they are drawn for what they are.”

That may be why Vesper feels a bit less designed than discovered. “I make art in order to think, not the other way around. I will usually start off with a loose image in my mind and, as I work through drawing it, the stories or ideas begin to unfold.”

The book carries discovery into its structure. Alongside formal depictions of Vesper are pages from the journals of the Wayfarer, a wandering naturalist whose observations and sketches are scattered throughout the setting. They give the GM something similar to what Lambrix experienced at RISD: artifacts, rather than a sourcebook entry. Curious fragments to inspect, interpret, and turn into stories.

Lambrix describes wanting the heavy blacks and cross-hatching to give Vesper “a brooding gravity, like something hiding beneath the surface.” But the larger ambition goes back to leafing through RPG books as a kid in the ’70s, when the pictures arrived before the adventures did.

“The images were the impetus,” he says. “That is what I hope to evoke from those who page through Vesper. I want the art to spark the stories.” —CA

Vesper is currently waiting in the wings on Kickstarter.

🎨 CRAFTY

Adversary Index

Robert Hershey's stock art now has a helpful index. Need to visit the catacombs? Find a Necromancer? How about a Fungral Explorer? Over a thousand images and counting.

Campaign Confessional

If you’re considering a Kickstarter for your campaign book, spend time with Eric Lazure’s generous post on the highs and lows of making Hope Springs Eternal. The indie book was one of the first on the scene and, while it met funding goals, took heroic effort on Lazure’s part to make happen. Kudos to him for opening the kimono so fully: not only does he walk us through each stage of production and promotion, but shares the associated financials.

🛠️ TOOLS & RESOURCES

Annie Shi does a masterful job curating Czepuku maps for key Sablewood Messenger locations. Stunning art, as always.

The Roundup:

GhouliDraws brings us a coloured Age of Umbra: Halcyon Domain map, FriendlyMode joins and cleans up the map for Journey to Horizon, and SgtSnarf discovers The FOUND Mine of Phandelver.
If the clan is heading into the Umbral realms, RealInkPlasm charts the magic system underpinning the world.
Thijso translated their 5e loot generator to Daggerheart. CRB items for now, but awaiting an H&F update.
She's back! Tiguima has updated her kid-friendly character sheets to include H&F.
Use Obsidian? InfluenceAromatic built an open-source VTT that runs inside your Vault.
Dicemonger has a generator for all your naming needs: towns, districts, nations, Classes...
Original Blade Runner Textures are available from Wayne Haag, a Digital Domain artist who worked on The Fifth Element and inherited the patterns from colleagues who believe the materials were used on BR miniatures.
ImaginaryTaintItch illustrates how war Mages design defences.
Clayton reminds us of the Common Errors PCs Make Negotiating with Monsters.
Red Quills Mapmaking illustrates how to map and use a fortress.

INSPO

Vietnamese artists Pham Ngoc Diep (linework) and Tùng Nâm (colouring) collaborated for a Lord of the Rings calendar, conjuring a stunning set of illustrations that glow with the magic of Middle Earth. Vol 1 / Vol 2

STORYTELLING

Panic Mechanic

The Panic Table interview with Rowan and Spenser is refreshing break from the Darrington Duo’s press junkets of the last year.

Here, five geeks discuss a central thesis: game mechanics manufacture conflict, conflict is the driver of story, and genre is the tone you wrap around the story.

There’s other stuff, like using a live phone call during the filming of How’s My Driving, or fancy ideas about “the novelization of thoughts through gameplay.” But it’s all fun and fascinating and feels like eavesdropping on five friends talking trade. Highly recommend.

Four of a Kind

Speaking of conflict, Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, The West Wing, A Few Good Men, etc) dropped by Scriptnotes to talk story and shared advice from legendary stage and screen director Mike Nichols:

"Every scene has to be one of four things: a negotiation, a fight, a seduction, or a discovery."

Tape that to your GM screen. Hand that out to your players on stickies. There's no point in painting the scene unless the scene includes one of those four conflicts.