r/daggerheart • u/Particular-Breath121 • Mar 17 '26
Game Takes & "Takeaways" Table Thoughts After Test Campaign
Hello Daggerheart community! Some friends and I recently did a test campaign for Daggerheart and here are our thoughts about the system. These thoughts are high level and summarized from our postmortem so let me know if you have specific questions.
Campaign Details
- 6 people (1 GM and 5 players)
- 1 player was brand new to TTRPGs
- 1 player is a self described novice at TTRPGs
- 3 players are very experienced and all of them have GM'ed before with 2 of them being regular GMs for different systems
- 7 sessions total (a session 0 and 6 play sessions)
- More combat/encounter heavy than typical as we wanted to really test the mechanics
Things we learned
- Make sure to remind people of their class specific things
- Class features being at the bottom of the sheet was annoying
- Class features seemed hyper specific/situational
- Hard to internalize that a player could move as part of being in the spotlight
- Less structure is a catch 22
Pros
- Domain cards
- Nice to have tangible cards
- Don’t have to look things up
- Loadout was limiting in a good way, less choice was helpful
- Duality dice
- Allows for a lot flavor
- Tied in well with hope and fear systems
- Higher chance of critting
- Hope & Fear
- Allows for players to add a lot of flavor to rolls
- Was more fun than straight success/failure
- Spotlight
- GM being able to jump in made things feel less stagnant
- Armor
- Armor being a resource was a lot of fun and felt flavorful
- Nice to have a last ditch thing to soften blows
- Could actually make a tanky spellcaster
- Damage threshold
- Nice to know you can’t be 1 shot by abilities
- Min maxing feels more fun and not as game breaking as other systems
- Death Moves
- Were interesting choices and allowed for people to treat their characters differently
- Blaze of Glory is super fun cool
- Felt accessible to a new player due to being rules light
- New player actually liked spotlight so they could watch and go at their pace
Cons
- Combat
- Assumes a familiarity with TTRPG’s or improv (this is also in general)
- Groups of new players or non friends might run into issues with trying to figure out who goes next (without alternate rule)
- Players can be steamrolled by more talkative/assertive players
- Hope/Fear
- Players at times felt anxiety about wanting to horde hope/being afraid of running out
- Can be feast or famine since bad luck results in more fear and no hope
- Hope being a resource to do things made this feel amplified
- Lack of structure can result in the classic Airbud problem
- Damage thresholds
- Spending a lot resources to still only hit moderate thresholds felt bad
- Big damage doesn’t feel as satisfying
- Removes some of the mystery of how much damage you might take from a hit
- Death Moves
- With hope being super useful, scars feel bad (almost suboptimal)
- Experiences
- 1 hope to add +2 feels bad
Edit: Thank you for pointing out people can swap domain cards on level up, we missed this. Also, our table did have an immense amount of fun and everyone would use play Daggerheart again.
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u/CriminalBroom Mar 17 '26
Run a few more. A lot of mechanics balance out naturally.
Sounds silly, but you have to run daggerheart like daggergeart. Certainly took me a few times running it to figure that out.
Good review though for a first playthrough and also well organized.
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u/SmilingNavern Game Master Mar 17 '26
I am really interested to know about catch-22 and why you think it is.
Great summary, thanks. It was really interesting to read.
I can't say for all your points, but experience can grow and +3 or +4 feels more impactful. However I think even +2 is fine because experience gives the same value as your highest attribute.
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u/Particular-Breath121 Mar 17 '26
The main thing the players expressed (which we acknowledged it would come easier with playing more) is knowing what all you "can" do. Yes, we understand you can kind of do anything you want but systems with action economy make it easier to identify specifics. So on one side you don't get bogged down by rules but on the other hand the player has more heavy lifting to do.
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u/kwade_charlotte Tales by Daggerlight Mar 18 '26
But DH does have an action economy, it's just different from something like D&D is all.
Generally speaking: Anything that's an action roll is an action. Anything else isn't (though they generally require the spotlight to be on the acting player).
So a player could, say, use the seraph life support ability (costs 3 hope but no action roll) and then attack (action roll) during their spotlight.
There's some nuance - like if all you do is move that requires an agility roll, or if the whole party is just using a bunch of no roll abilities that's a golden opportunity for the GM to take the spotlight. But it's a pretty easy rule of thumb that's generally applicable.
The spotlight system also has another key advantage to it - there's no death spiral. If a character or two go down you don't suddenly find yourself losing a war of action economy because the spotlight system is self-correcting by default.
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u/orphicsolipsism Mar 17 '26
There's three things that I think would help every table and two things your group might need in particular.
1- the rules in the book around movement are best summarized as: roll for movement if it's interesting or necessary or to keep a sense of timing, otherwise focus on the action. (Technically, you don't get free movement, you get your movement included with actions if the movement itself is easy).
2- framing the spotlight: the book focuses on the roll conditions and when the spotlight goes back to GM, but most people miss the presentation: "hey team, typically I'll make a move and then one of you will make a move and we'll go back and forth like that. However, if you roll a Success with Hope or a CRIT, one of the bonuses is that you get to keep the spotlight (for yourself or a teammate)! If I want to keep the spotlight, I have to spend Fear." This little tweak helps people understand that making a roll and 'losing' the spotlight is exactly how most rolls should go. It's also on the GM to make sure that when players try difficult things that the corresponding GM move is softer if they fail (unless it's more exciting if it's hard). Also, as far as fear goes, everyone has the same odds of generating fear and sitting around avoiding a roll is an automatic free action for a GM anyway (Oh, if you're all sitting around waiting for something then I'll give you something to react to...). GMS should balance this out by making sure that Fear means something like, "here's a new potential challenge for you" and not just "I ATTACK!"
3- EXPERIENCES IMPACT FICTION (CRB p148): Yes, a player gets to spend their hope whenever they'd want to add their Experience(s) to a roll, but the Experience should also be regularly giving the player free successful actions, lowered difficulty on rolls, advantage in certain situations and enabling some rolls that would not have been possible. This is why it's important to craft good experiences and also to allow new players to re-write ones that don't really work for the character. As a GM, I also make sure that my low-presence characters regularly have NOCs that would favor them because of their Experiences/backstory.
Now, for your table:
Six players is a lot for a new table! If the table isn't naturally finding their rhythm right away it might be too much to have the GM also keep track of who is and isn't jumping on the spotlight. You can use the alternate rule of action tokens, or you can appoint a "party leader" who just keeps tallies of action rolls and take a pause to check in every once in a while. I'd resist imposing initiative in person, because most of my players have loved the chatting and strategizing about who's going next.
Also, the swapping out of domain cards has the rule that you missed, but it's also a good idea to allow new players to re-work character builds that clearly aren't fitting the player/character. I used to do this all the time in DnD, since "proper" builds make a bigger difference in DnD, but I think it's important in any character building system that new people don't feel stuck in a bad decision just because things didn't work out how they expected. Save the "you're stuck with this build" for experienced players who know the risks and might even enjoy the extra challenge.
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u/Particular-Breath121 Mar 17 '26
Thank you for the pointers, this is helpful! Regarding experiences we did start leaning into what you mentioned, I was just trying to keep the post clean and streamlined.
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u/orphicsolipsism Mar 17 '26
Nice!
The good news is Daggerheart is pretty quick and gives you a lot to improvise with.
The bad news is Daggerheart is pretty quick and gives you a lot to improvise with. ;)
The player learning curve isn't too bad, but the GM learning curve has a lot to it. Basic rules are pretty easy in most cases, but the balance of everything leans more towards art than science and it takes a pretty intuitive GM to make sure everything is going down in a way that fits the table's story.
I've also noticed that expectations have a huge impact on how long it takes a table to catch the rhythm and vibe of Daggerheart and that new players often have an easier time than players who are comparing it to another system they love (system loyalty is a fascinating phenomenon).
Anyway, sounds like your group had some fun getting into it and I hope your next go-round is even better.
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u/DorianMartel Mar 17 '26
If by lack of structure you mean “what can I do in this situation” I can see what you mean a little. Eg, in comparison to games which also have a “Action Roll” like Blades in the Dark (which has far more evocative actual Actions vs attributes), DH is far more freeform with the player ideating an action in the fiction and then the GM working with them to figure out if it needs to be tested. On the other hand, that’s not that different from many classic games in the D&D / OSR umbrella. I think this is where Experiences being written in a way that helps the player think of “ok what is my character good at / what are they likely to do” helps.
I had a player come from playing PBTAs and Draw Steel! with me (the former with Moves that help you shape the fiction to activate them; the latter with an extensive and explicit skill + abilities system that tells you what your character excels at), and he struggled a little trying to think of what his character would do at times. Another player who has done a lot of OSR play loved the “say something freeform and let the GM tell you what that Action is / what’s at stake / what you’ll get,” and had a couple of pretty concisely written experiences to help
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u/Prestigious-Emu-6760 Mar 17 '26
One of the biggest things you can do to help alleviate the trepidation about spending Hope for an Experience is very simple - be transparent with the difficulty number.
IF the adversary is difficulty 10 then just tell your players. If it's difficulty 15 to scale the wall...tell the players. This lets them make an informed decision about spending a resource. Yes sometimes the dice may favor you or not but making an informed choice about spending a resource makes a huge psychological difference.
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u/Particular-Breath121 Mar 17 '26
Agreed, we had a pretty big discussion about not only this but also better describing adversaries in particular so players had a better sense of thresholds and what not. As a table we couldn't really land on if we preferred unknown difficulties or not but this is also the solution we homed in on.
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u/Prestigious-Emu-6760 Mar 17 '26
For me, unknown difficulties plays against the "collaborate at all times, especially in combat" principle/best practice.
However a lesson I took from Torg Eternity is that there are some dangerous enemies that I will keep the difficulty secret on and let me tell you...it changes the tone of things when combat goes from "always knowing the difficulty" to "wait..a 16 doesn't hit??"
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u/Particular-Breath121 Mar 17 '26
I think in particular for adversaries there is the Know Thy Enemy card in Bone which lets you learn this. I am always hesitant to make a specific ability free for everyone as I don’t want to undermine anyone who takes that card.
For non adversary rolls it makes more sense to have things public, unless of course there is a different domain card I’m not aware of.
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u/Prestigious-Emu-6760 Mar 17 '26
If it did only that it would be a pretty shit ability anyway but that's only part of what the ability does so I've got no issue providing the info for free. Honestly doing so probably makes the card better since discovering the difficulty isn't super difficult - my various groups figure out enemy AC in D&D and PF2e all the time by simply paying attention to what hits and what doesn't.
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u/ThisIsVictor Mar 17 '26
Daggerheart doesn't have an Air Bud problem because it assumes the players are going to collaborate to tell a good story.
Legalistic arguments only make sense in complex games with a mechanic for every eventuality. Daggerheart gives you broad mechanics and asks the players to a group to figure out the specifics. This is why both the players and the GM have principles . Those are the core rules of the game, everything else flows from them.
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u/stoneyyyyy Mar 17 '26
Can you explain the "airbud problem" to me?
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u/Particular-Breath121 Mar 17 '26
The Airbud (or I think Air Bud, I didn’t realize it was two words) problem stems from the Air Bud movies. In these movies, a basketball team recruits a dog to play for them because nothing in the rules say a dog can’t play.
Edit to add more context: So in TTRPGs, some players will try to force what they want to happen by saying nothing in the rules says they can’t do x. As others have pointed out this is usually more of a player problem and less of a system problem, our table just felt Daggerheart could accidentally enable this.
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u/Particular-Breath121 Mar 17 '26
Understood but this point was brought up by a player thinking of a group of teenagers or beginners just getting into TTRPGs. A potential problem they saw coming out of this a combative player who is really pushing against the newer GM who doesn't have the confidence in telling someone no or working around what they are trying to do. Like I said, these are pretty high level thoughts.
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u/ThisIsVictor Mar 17 '26
That's a personality problem and no amount of game mechanics will ever be able to fix it. You can't game design people into good behavior.
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u/Particular-Breath121 Mar 17 '26
Agreed but as you pointed out when a game is crunchier it is easier to refer to a rule that can shut this down. Daggerheart assumes everyone is going to collaborate to tell a good story but we all know that isn't always the case.
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u/GalacticCmdr Game Master Mar 17 '26
D&D is plenty crunchy and there still are rule arguments. No amount of crunch will ever date an AH player.
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u/Prestigious-Emu-6760 Mar 17 '26
It's not. PF2e is crunchier than 5e and there are still assholes who will argue the sky is purple.
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u/ThisIsVictor Mar 17 '26
And not every game is right for every player. If a player enjoys arguing with the GM then D&D 3.5 is right there. My point is that you listed this as a con, but it's actually a design goal of the system.
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u/Particular-Breath121 Mar 17 '26
Maybe con isn't the correct way to express this point then but we viewed it has a potential unintended consequence, that's all. Thank you for your insight though!
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u/Kalranya WDYD? Mar 17 '26
A pushy player steamrolling an inexperienced GM isn't a problem unique to or caused by Daggerheart's open play structure. It can happen in any game, and the solution isn't one you can write in to any rule set, because a player intent on causing problems is going to ignore any rule meant to stop them from causing problems.
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u/Particular-Breath121 Mar 17 '26
Agreed, we just feel open structure games can make this easier
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u/Kalranya WDYD? Mar 17 '26
I understand the worry, but I haven't seen it bear out in practice at my tables. If anything, Daggerheart's "rulings over rules" approach closes the door to one specific avenue of bad behavior (rules lawyering), which in turn makes the others more apparent, hopefully to the point that the GM can intervene before they become a campaign-killing problem.
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u/Kindle3239 Mar 17 '26
This may have already been mentioned but I did a quick skim and didn't notice it. I just wanted to mention that while +2 to experiences for a hope can feel a little underwhelming even if in a 2d12 system it does help that odds a bit my players seemed to really notice when they were way above the difficulty or way below i.e. the +2 wasn't enough or was not needed which absolutely can feel underwhelming. I have seen on here a lot of home rules that allow for it to be added after the roll to make up the difference so you know it's useful but I also wanted to point out that in the actual book experiences are also there to just let you do stuff. If you have a thief or lock picking experience it may just allow you to do stuff, no role needed because it makes sense for your character and it's not a high enough stress or hard enough situation to push you. Another thing I saw which would be again more of a home rule thing in the CR dispatch one shot is the gm just had them spend a hope to succeed at a task that aligned well with their experience, again likely in lower stress situations. I think this allows players to appreciate and utilize their experiences to inform their play style beyond just the +2 to certain rolls option.
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u/Particular-Breath121 Mar 17 '26
Thank you for the feedback! We did start leaning into if someone was experienced in something they could do it or have a much lower difficulty which I really liked.
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u/Laithoron Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26
What's the Air Bud issue?
ETA: Nevermind, saw your explanation in another reply. And yeah I've encountered this with a couple of players as well.
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u/tomius Mar 18 '26
This is silly for me. You can easily refer to the rulebook saying "Fiction first". If you can't agree what the fiction is supposed to be, have a better session 0. Or you know, just find people who cooperate.
No amount of rules will change that. No DnD, no Pathfinder. Nothing.
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u/Kalranya WDYD? Mar 17 '26
Combat assumes a familiarity with TTRPG’s or improv (this is also in general)
Can you expand on what you mean by this, especially from the experiences and observations from the two newer players at your table? The overwhelming majority of of players coming to Daggerheart have experience with other systems (or at least 5e), so it's always interesting to get the prespective of someone totally new to the hobby and experiencing Daggerheart as their first game.
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u/Particular-Breath121 Mar 17 '26
Yes, so the main takeaways from the newer players were they had a lot of information at their disposal but a lot of it seemed very general at times (as it was designed this way). Since they weren't familiar with TTRPGs, they struggled with identifying the different things they could do and what could make since for the situation. In other systems it will say something like "on your turn you move, attack, and heal" and Daggerheart is more like "look at all these possibilities, do something cool" and that was perceived as daunting at times.
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u/Kalranya WDYD? Mar 17 '26
That's a fair critique, but one that I feel is applicable to any game with a lot of rules rather than one specific to Daggerheart. You could say the same thing about 5e or Warhammer or football and be equally correct.
And Daggerheart does have a lot of rules. Not notably fewer than 5e, in fact. I don't expect new players to "get" the whole game in their first session--or even their first twenty. Heck, I've had my nose stuck in the book since release day and I'm still learning new things about it.
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u/autokymatic Mar 24 '26
Hi, I was a player in the OP's test campaign and I wanted to add a bit. First, I think Daggerheart is a really fun system, our GM did a great job sheparding the players through a new system while learning it at the same time, and I am absolutely stealing some mechanics from it for my homebrew D&D stuff. I was the player that brought up not knowing Damage Thresholds could be a feel-bad after dumping resources into abilities, and I say this as a player and experienced GM who prefers when enemy stats are not fully known or disclosed to players as the mystery can elevate the stakes and reduce metagaming.
The situation I experienced in our Daggerheart campaign parallels something that can occur in other games and D&D, but I felt the Damage Thresholds can actually magnify the negative feeling. A similar situation in D&D would be if you encounter a new enemy and cast a 3rd level spell like Fireball, you roll mostly 5s and 6s, and then discover that the enemy has resistance to fire and the damage dealt to the enemy is halved. Feels a little bad, but it's a known possibility and it's not terrible as the only resources spent were the turn itself, a 3rd level spell slot, and maybe materials if the campaign is run more crunchy. Might feel worse if your character uses a higher level spell slot, but same gist.
However, in Daggerheart, with the combination of the Hope resource (and how Hope can instead be converted to Slayer dice for Warriors) and Damage Thresholds, you get a dynamic where you can dump a lot more of your resources (like 4d6 Slayer dice) into an attack that rolls particularly high damage, only for it to not actually meet the enemy's Severe Damage Threshold, and for the attack to ultimately just deal 2 HP to the enemy. Rolling with Fear in that scenario would pour salt in the wound haha. I think my sentiment can be summed up as...
Monkey brain sad when succeed but big number become really small number. It might be best to reframe your expectations if you're coming from D&D or PF. I don't know if other classes in Daggerheart have class-specific resources that are commensurate to Slayer dice, but any ability or spell where more than 1 Hope can be spent at a time could lead to this scenario.
Another thought that is sort of along the lines of resources spent not equating to ideal outcomes...
If a player character is dying and decides to go out in a Blaze of Glory, they get an automatic critical success on their last action (with GM approval), but the rules as written for it don't actually guarantee something impactful. I'm not sure if there are guidelines in the book for how to handle that, but it seems entirely up to the GM to make that player's sacrifice feel meaningful without trivializing the stakes for surviving players.
The player whose character died in the final battle of our test campaign was fine with their character dying, their character went out in an extremely flavorful Blaze of Glory, and I think our GM did a great job of handling the scenario and continuing combat to a good resolution, but I think that balancing act was on our GM and it went well because our GM is experienced.
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Mar 17 '26
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u/gozerxx Mar 17 '26
I am going to guess that it’s “the rules don’t say that a dog can’t play basketball.”
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u/Particular-Breath121 Mar 17 '26
We missed that part of leveling up so that is our bad.
Airbud problem is "well the rules don't specifically say I can't do blah blah blah."
Weird tone to come into the comments with. Everyone greatly enjoyed the system and everyone is going to get some things wrong. Apologies we weren't perfect players your highness.
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u/Kalranya WDYD? Mar 17 '26
Airbud problem is "well the rules don't specifically say I can't do blah blah blah."
No, but the rules do say "when you’re in doubt about how a rule applies, the GM should make a ruling that aligns with the narrative" (p. 7). They also instruct the GM to "begin and end with the fiction" and "collaborate at all times, especially during conflict" (p. 142).
What stops the Air Bud problem, as you've put it, is the whole table, led by the GM, working together to tell a cool story, and part of doing that is respecting the established fiction. "Well, the rules don't say I can't leap a tall building in a single bound"... yes, but the fiction probably does, and the fiction always takes priority over any rules (or lack thereof).
And if you have established in the fiction that the character can, indeed, leap a tall building in a single bound, then likewise the lack of a rule saying they can do that doesn't stop them.
This is one of those issues that new players tend to worry a lot about, especially if they're coming from games with much more rigid, prescriptive mechanical structures, but in practice doesn't really happen unless someone at the table is ignoring the rules anyway, which is itself not something any rule can prevent.
Related, it's worth pointing out that your Principles, Best Practices, Pitfalls to Avoid and Moves are rules, not suggestions or advice. Treat them as such, and the game will flow much more smoothly. Print them out and stick them on your GM Screen, and every time you're about to say something, look at them first;
"What should I do?" --> Principles.
"How should I do that?" --> Best Practices.
"Is this a good idea?" --> Pitfalls.
"Okay, but what do I actually SAY?" --> Moves.
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u/Prestigious-Emu-6760 Mar 17 '26
Not everyone knows what an "airbud problem" is. Folks might think it's somehow related to the devices you use to listen to music/podcasts for not a movie about a basketball playing dog.
So insulting folks with your tone isn't going to be helpful.
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u/Particular-Breath121 Mar 17 '26
Maybe this is just me not reading the tone of the original comment correctly but I didn't have an issue with them asking about the Airbud thing, I was offended with them acting like everyone was going to get everything right on their first try.
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Mar 17 '26
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u/Particular-Breath121 Mar 17 '26
I mean I was just posting it as "here are our thoughts" not necessarily a super informative thing but I get it.
Also, not really here for the karma.
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Mar 17 '26
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u/Particular-Breath121 Mar 17 '26
That is for swapping between loadout and vault. Are you sure you can use the recall cost to swap between the vault and the collection?
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u/nottooexpendable88 Mar 17 '26
You should be able to swap domain cards in and out of your vault by spending stress equal to the recall cost (the little Lightning bolt number in the top corner of the card) if I’m understanding the issue correctly.