People, if you can’t improv as much as you’d like then don’t overthink it or force it. If it’s a success with fear for example, just acknowledge the success and take your fear resource. Not having an abundance of RP is better than an abundance of forced/pointless RP. Just flavor things when they feel natural.
Just to be pedantic, that’s not what binomial distribution means. Two dice does not make a binomial distribution. It makes a normal distribution. Binomial distribution means a yes/no or true/false outcome. D&D has more of a binomial distribution because it is pass/fail. As Daggerheart has five outcomes it is not binomial.
The 5 outcomes is not what we are talking about with the distribution, but freak, you are right, two dice is not binomial, I misremembered my statistics. Thanks for the correction.
A suggestion: Outside combat, do not let the player roll unless there is a clearly defined penalty for failure other than a lack of success. If a person is picking a lock, they succeed (eventually) unless failing is going to result in alerting guards with the noise. Once you have a penalty for success, you then have a framework for succeeding with Fear or Failing with Hope. In this case, succeeding with Fear means you open the lock and alert the guards with the noise. Failing with Hope means that the door remains locked, but you don't alert the guards. In combat, put together a short list of extra effects based on the location or surroundings and pick one (or allow the players to) based on Hope or Fear. For instance, let's say you are fighting foes from outside the doorway of a room. The list could include: - a penalty to damage because your/their weapon hit the doorway on that swing - falling prone, so you/they cannot both move and act on your next activation - someone shuts the door - hitting an ally and inflicting a Stress - an item spills out of your/their pack - stuff spills onto the doorway, anyone passing through will take a Stress ...these would be in addition to allowing players to improv cosmetic or even mechanical effects based on the roll, such as called shots to limbs or disarming foes based on Hope. A GM of course can always improv effects on the situation decided by what is grim or hilarious during a specific fight. "I toss him a potion in the middle of the melee"... what could possibly go wrong?
Yea definitely a good idea for making a list, at the least it will help you get in that mindset. I said in the video that DH pushes for less rolls and sounds like you agree. I didn't have fear consequences during battle, but I could see them being used sparingly to keep the action going.
You can always just add a stress to the player as a cost. Maybe that persuasion attempt was just SUPER stressful. Maybe you jumped across that ledge, but you slipped for a tiny moment and thought you would die, your heart is racing from adrenaline and fear, you take a stress point. Maybe you're trying to find the right trail in the wilderness, but get lost for a moment as paths all seem like the correct and incorrect ones at the same time, you are uncertain and you panic for a moment thinking you're lost, but you pull through, rationalize the situation and find the direction you have to go, however the experience cost you some time and a stress point, etc etc there's so many examples you could make for this. One flavor I heard that I absolutely loved was a player using the Fungril ability to connect the hive and rolling a success with fear. He connected, got to talk to a person of interest, got some answers, but the conversation was interrupted suddenly as they heard the last thoughts of a dying fungril some distance away, their laments and regrets filled their minds and they were forced to end the connection and took a stress point. PS - Losing a hope point can also be a consequence. People lose hope after failures all the time in real life, I don't see why a GM wouldn't apply the same as a mechanic in the game.
What a well-articulated, well-balanced review. Speaking from experience gives it a lot more weight and I'm curious to know how the Daggerheart will evolve from here.
we have been playing 1.2 through 1.3, and we have yet to have an issue with the DM improving the results of the dice, what it does do (and ai agree with you here) it helps people improve their imrpov and narrativeability as they play.
Haha, I'm sure people will disagree with that, but I do think they are effective tools suggested in the ruleset to change it up when those problems appear. Thanks for the support!
@@DndUnoptimized I think it's telling that the designers know the rule will be enough of a problem that they needed to come up with optional rules to deal with it.
This is really fair and well thought out feedback. I still need to watch your first playthrough video but from this alone DH feels like it could be a fun
One thing I'm doing as an exercise for the one shot-two shot I'm running is writing down something true and something rumored about every important NPC, location, or event that would be relevant to the plot. When a PC rolls to determine if they know something about that, or wants to discover something I consult the truth and the rumor. A success with hope means the player knows something true, and knows it is true. A success with fear means they know something true and something rumored but aren't sure which is which. A failure with hope means they know something rumored, but know that it is false. A failure with fear means I flip a coin and tell them something true or rumored, and that they don't know which it is. These can be narratively improvised by confident gm storytellers but I like spending prep time to think about and explore truths and rumors ahead of time, that gives me stuff to work with when I'm already playing.
That's an awesome idea when dealing with a social heavy campaign! Kudos to you for that prep work. I would fail at improvising this, so maybe I'll steal this if I end up needing something similar!
Regarding rolls, a stress point is a very easy consequence for a bad roll that you can use in a flavorful way in many situations. Maybe you get some social anxiety as you try to convince a person, maybe you panic as you are looking for the right path in the wilderness, maybe you jump a ledge, but slip for a moment and almost die, leaving your heart racing. Alternatively you can take away a hope point too. Failure can make people lose their hope IRL, I don't see why you wouldn't use this as a mechanic from a GM standpoint. You can also use HP, but that's far more situational and is a lot more punishing. Like, climbing for example you could have a consequence be that the player slips, or a loose rock falls out, but they regain their grasp, however they pull their muscles hard and hit their hands into the stone with force as they regain their hold, leaving them slightly bruised. One flavor I heard that I absolutely loved was a player using the Fungril ability to connect the hive and rolling a success with fear. He connected, got to talk to a person of interest, got some answers, but the conversation was interrupted suddenly as they heard the last thoughts of a dying fungril some distance away, their laments and regrets filled their minds and they were forced to end the connection and took a stress point.
Yes, stress is the "default" bad thing, but I wouldn't use it too much. Using HP, hope, or armor slots are interesting ideas and I like them. I don't want players to be scared to interact with the world, so it all needs to be reasonable and fair depending on what's being attempted, and having narrative consequences feels less of a punishment than losing a resource. That example is fun narrative and mechanical punishment for sure! Definitely lots of interesting things you could do as a GM here and I look forward to how the community works with it!
For GMs worrying about being overwhelmed about the amount of improvising expected of them: 1) When a player rolls w Fear, it's not necessary to apply a complication right away. Just bank the Fear and use it later. 2) Think of the players succeeding as them getting momentary narrative imposition and rolling with Fear as the GM getting momentary narrative imposition. Succeeding with Fear means both the player and the GM get to impose something on the narrative, as long as they don't seek to cancel the other out. 3) When rolling with Fear, if you feel stuck, flip the choice of consequence back on the player (or another player). "What complication do you think would make sense in this situation?" Or present two options and have them pick their poison.
I think people will get used to "success with fear" pretty quickly as they see examples in other players ganes, the main thing is making sure the fear isn't so penalizing that it's worse than the success. I think utilizing Advantage and Disadvantage works really well. For example, a party member rolls SwF for climbing a rope, the fear frays the rope (or maybe makes it slick) so the next person to climb gets disadvantage, on SwH the next person can see the footholds the first player uses giving them advantage to climb.
That's a really good idea in those situations, I like it. Yes I imagine people will get used to it pretty quickly once they run a few sessions and are familiar with the ruleset.
The point to remember regarding "Success with fear" is that it shifts the narrative beyond the specific action that the player took, not diminishes that action. As long as you deliver the success of the character before shifting to the consequence of the fear roll, you provide the character with a sense of accomplishment and differentiate it from the consequence that happens next. The player succeeds with fear on a picklock attempt. Great, they opened the door, but now there are enemies inside the room. The player jumps between rooftops and rolls with fear? He made his way successfully to the other side but nearly missed, causing them to take 1 stress from the near fall. The player tried to get a discount from a merchant and succeeded with fear? Great, he got the discount, but not by the full amount he asked for. The player is asking an NPC to join them on a quest and rolled with fear? Great, the NPC joins but asks to be compensated in some way. As long as the consequence promotes the narrative in a way that compliments the success of the action, you are using this outcome to the best of its potential.
This is a bad idea … it will create massive swing and likely to come up nearly 50% (46)… Build a table d12 of things tha go against the player … dropped shield or weapon, armor strap tears giving -2 on armor until repaired, food soils or is lost, shoe laces rip, etc… just bad luck The issue won’t be someone not letting others go, it will be the change of momentum shifting against the players and DMs be to afraid of spending actions and fear to play the monsters in full. The action economy can be a bit unpredictable Have fun though, I do like the lack of initiative
@@kevoreilly6557 I agree. If the consequences don't match the task being attempted, or there is a mechanical punishment for each roll with fear then PCs will be afraid to interact with the world. This is why I think it's hard for GMs. Just giving them a stress each failure doesn't work, so it has to be a last resort fallback, and the regular "punishment" should be narrative.
The biggest challenge I keep seeing on live-plays is failing to find DaggerHeart's very different definition of "turn" and more importantly "action". Players (together) have a turn, not one turn per player. And within a turn, you do things that only become "actions" when you need to roll the duality dice. Now, I agree with many that several abilities need to be clarified (some very powerful stuff can be done without rolling!), but that's the concept. And it means, for example, that there isn't a lack of opportunity attacks at all... If you moved to attack and failed, then the GM can take over and take their turn *interrupting your movement* with an attack that prevented you from getting to your target and thus explaining failure. It also means you can drink a potion or give many kinds of aid without it being an action for you... an action is when you roll the duality dice and that is when you put a token onto the tracker. But note... moving without doing anything else that becomes an action is, itself, an action during combat (and just as interruptible as above). People wanting their move/action/bonus action economy as their turn will not find DH supports them at all... There are no individual player turns, just individual player narration, abilities, and actions during the Players Turn.
That's a good point, and one that needs better explanation in the rule set probably. I still don't think there are opportunity attacks, but that's just me, it becomes more of a narrative thing.
Without initiative I'm less of a referee and more of a dictator and I think the fun at the table is hugely dependent on the DM being benevolent. When Brennan DMed for critical role he did some narrative gameplay and there's a point where he asks if the player wanted to lose their arm at the shoulder or elbow and that was the "good" outcome according to Brennan. Fun for a show but I don't think a lot of players would have loved it if that to happen to them just because the DM says so.
Interesting. I never felt like the initiative system made me feel like a dictator. You can force your turn sometimes, but it costs you a lot of resources, so it kind of works out for the players honestly. I do agree that DH has a bigger dependency on a benevolent GM than D&D. But maybe it's just more obvious if you have a combative GM in DH, which might be a good thing. It's sometimes harder to spot a problematic DM in D&D. I also agree that this system will excel in the story telling and performative game that CR plays, which makes a lot of sense.
The multiple results of hope and fear will be something GM coming from 5e and similar games might struggle with at first, but similar systems have been around for a while. You have something similar for PbtA games, Blades in the Dark, Quests, and a whole lot of other games. I do think its a great way to flex your gm muscles and will result in much more interesting results.
Honestly the various resources are a great way to add consequences in my opinion. Hope, stress, hp, armor points, you can all use them as a consequence for a bad roll. Like, say a persuasion check suceeds with fear, maybe they PC gets some social anxiety and panics a bit, gaining a stress. Or maybe a player is jumping across a chasm and they succeed with fear, so they slip for a bit and panic, their heart beats like a drum, adrenaline pumps through their body, they manage to regain their balance, but it leaves them with a stress point. Maybe they are trying to find their way in the wilderness and fail a roll entirely, they're lost and they panic, they don't know what to do, they lose a hope point as they feel discouraged. Maybe they are climbing a cliff and they succeed with fear, they grasp onto a rock that causes another to fall on their head, their helmet dents, but protects them, they lose an armor point. There's so many options to work with, it doesn't always have to be a big thing or something earthshattering, it can be something as minor as a point change.
Ive noticed that a number of mechanics have a 'countdown dice' type mechanic Perhaps player abilities could cause a condition at countdown 1d4, and then the GM can use fear to reduce a countdown by a set number to quicken the enemjes escape, but guarantee at least a short while under the effect. I like how Daggerhearts gameplay and mechanics codifies what GM's can do to introduce new threats or complications. Of course, there's the argument of 'I'm the GM I can do this anyway' but I feel like for new GM's its a lot of cognitive load, but it also helps build a GM mindset they could take to other systems in the future. 'Problem players' can also witness that its costing the GM something, so they can't argue about barriers being an asspull. Getting the players to describe scenes is also nice, give them the taste of the GM role for a little bit. Maybe it sparks them to run a game for themselves
Yea, that's a possibility and makes sense to me. I definitely like the GM fear mechanic to introduce things (fear in general really). It feels more fair for some reason and more collaborative too since it isn't an infinite resource for the GM.
In regards to how a dice roll affects the narrative: The way I see it, the only difference between the outcome of D&D's d20 and DH's 2d12 is the "Success with fear". the rest are pretty much the same: Critical in D&D has the same effect as critical in DH: "you pull it off well and get what you want." Success in D&D has the same effect as Success with hope in DH: "You get what you want" Failure in D&D has the same effect as Failure with hope in DH: "things don’t go to plan. You probably don’t get what you want and must face the consequences" Failure in D&D has the same effect as Failure with fear in DH: "things go very poorly. You probably don’t get what you want, and there is a major consequence or complication because of it." Success with fear is an alien concept for someone coming from D&D which they will need to get used to, but 4/5 results should be the same.
Agreed, it's success with fear that is the strange concept. Hopefully they will get used to it quickly, but it's stressful and difficult to make it up at first.
I disagree that players shouldn't be rolling lots of checks because player experiences are core to social challenges and require hope to use. If players are Incentivized to save hope for combat it will negatively impact their roleplay and exploration because they will not be using their character experiences. At the same time, GMs need to make sure that fear gained in non-combat situations is mostly spent in non-combat situations, otherwise a player will become shy about rolling for something unnecessary like a knowledge check with marginal upside if it means combat becomes more dangerous later. It requires a GM to have things in mind for fear rolls outside combat, and also that players feel encouraged to spend hope on non-combat rolls.
I totally agree. Social challenges and exploration challenges, etc should have rolls, but I find a lot of 5e DMs make their players roll excessively. Lie about something inconsequential, sneak around for no big purpose, even things like, "roll to see if you heard the explosion" or stupid things like that. I think DH discourages these superfluous rolls.
I agree, on the other hand though how scary would it be going into a dodgy situation that could turn into combat while the DM is sitting on a big pile of hope. It adds meaning to the role play and trying to get out of the combat. The build up of fear with the dm also mechanically and narratively is due to things going wrong for the party over a span of time so feels right that they would be on edge at that point. The opposite is true for collecting lots of hope.
One thing worth mentioning regarding removing a condition on a GM turn. You need to spend a full activation and lose a full fear if you decide to remove it. If you're familiar with how powerful a fear token is, the players would realize that the GM is losing a lot of resources
It's true, and depending on the fight and circumstances leading up to it, fear might be a big resource to lose. So maybe it's not a big problem, I'll have to run more games to see. Thanks!
I LOVE the fear mechanic. I can't quite put my finger on it but it adds something that 5e just doesn't have. Daggerheart makes it feel as if there's an actual... flow to the world, and it isn't just the DM making things up? It's hard to describe. The combat is great as well. However, I almost feel like they should make their weapon selection slightly more "crunchy" imo. Every weapon should be able to do something unique, and there should be different magic weapons (wands) as well. It would add a bit of that meta-gaming aspect people like but without overbearing the system. Nothing as expansive as PF2e but sort of similar
Yes! There is something about fear that makes some flow continue in the world and it's hard to describe. Honestly we didn't get into weapons too much, but maybe expanding that section might add some potential crunch for those who like it. I quite enjoyed the secondary weapon idea and switching weapons taking a stress.
Having the features part will allow people to create some really cool unique weapons in the future so getting a new weapon is not just adding +1 or +2 etc. I think parties can have a lot of fun with that.
I'll submit my thoughts to them for sure, and hopefully the next release will be more clear and concise. I don't think I have any big questions for them in terms of how the rules work, but it definitely takes some serious study of the book to figure it out.
Agreed with the "end an effect by spending a fear". For me to enjoy DMing combat in DH, they would need to have a mechanic to inform when to use fear to remove a condition. Maybe a global countdown on conditions based on player actions or something…
Yea, I mean it does use some DM resources so maybe it's not SO bad. If anything the player has prevented the GM from using a fear ability or from acting more. I do think it ends up relying on the GM being a good sport and wise arbiter more than 5e requires.
you end a condition when it feels right to the narrative. It's the DMs choice. If you want to end a burning condition, use an action token for the monster to pat out the fire and then use a fear to end the condition. Rulings. Not rules. It's a great ttrpg skill to develop.
@@MagiofAsuraI understand the concept. I don't like it. It feels meta-gamey to me as a DM to just "choose" when a player-activated effect ends, especially when if I choose to do it as soon as I can (which honestly would often make sense for the opponent), it makes the spells/abilities really bad for the players.
I believe what you said about this game lacking "crunch" really is a huge problem for daggerheart as a comercial product. I believe that the reason no other table top RPG ever beat d&d is not because they were worse products, but because marketing and publicity never caught up. D&D was always up there in the common knowledge of people since the 80s. And now the way to sell daggerheart is by marketing it through critical role livestreams and banking on the fact that they are all somewhat media related people with a fanbase, a large one at that. D&D as a product can grow a youtube based content in a big part because of it's crunch/more complex character building - there are many channels dedicated to just making characters and talking about rules. Daggerheart doesn't feel like it could fill this niche, so those people wouldn't feature daggerheart in their channels or wouldn't feature much, I guess. This could impact their internet presence, growth and the competition with other systems, since everyone decided that this is the year for new editions/new games. In my opinion they should just increase the number of classes, subclasses and probably domain cards for the official release. There could be up to 36 domain combination classes, but we only have 9, so there is up to 27 new classes with the existing domains, they could release with 18, 3 subclasses each, and improve the domain cards from the current 21 cards per domain with 2 per level except at first which has 3, for something like 32, with 3 per level except first with 5. It's a lot of extra work, but it would bring some crunch to daggerheart. Some multiclass builds would make for interesting videos.
That's an interesting idea, but I feel like PF would be way more popular if it was all about how crunchy the system is. I hope DH finds a place though, I think a lot of tables will have a load of fun playing it.
I dont see how roll results are that much different from DND. Critical fail: DND - Natural 1 | DH - fail with fear Critical Success: DND - Natural 20 | DH - matching numbers on each die Success without complications: DND - D20 >= DC | DH - Pass with hope Success with complications or non critical fail: DND - D20 > 1 and D20 < DC | DH - Pass with Fear
I don't agree that success with fear is equivalent to failing the roll. Maybe some GMs will rule it that way but it's not normal. In 5e critical success and failure doesn't exist for skill/ability checks so you usually just end up with two options. In combat, yea you have Crit fail and success for attacks, but hitting below the AC is definitely not equivalent to success with fear. All in all though, I agree with you, DMs ARE used to improvising these kinds of things, but it'll just take a mindset shift to get used to it.
@@DndUnoptimized fair take. But to be clear, I combined two aspects with one based on GM ruling for "Success with complications or non critical fail" If DC is 20 and you roll a 19, some dms will say that you don't open the lock, some might say you do but break your thieves tools. So yea, isn't a outright fail, but DMs could make it interesting
For most GMs, the hope & fear results will default to the same small selection of tired crap every time, as GMs get burnt out trying to come up with "new stuff" for every roll.
I hope not, I think it will be pretty situation dependant so it will be hard to have a streamlined result. Of course, just giving them stress could be a streamlined result, but I don't think narratively or mechanically that will work out using it for each fear roll.
Awesome! Yea I don't think the system is hard and I think 5e DMs for the most part won't have any problems except for making success with fear rolls. But if you are great at improv then I'm sure it's smooth sailing
Nice! I'm sure there are lots of systems that will have similar improv requirements for a GM. I do think overall DH runs quite smoothly so I hope 5e DMs won't have that hard of a time either.
I really enjoyed running it. I think once a DM becomes used to the system it'll be really easy and smooth. Way less rules to memorize and easy to balance combat. I think it'll work well especially if they can make combat a little more simple or become way better at explaining it.
Lol that could be a compliment (he is pretty successful) or a copyright infringement claim. He might have a video saying similar things, I'll have to check out his reviews. I think our content for the most part is pretty different, but I haven't watched a lot of his stuff.
@@TheGladGolem haha I was just joking about the copyright infringement, but thank you kindly! He definitely gives off a very friendly air in his videos and I like that about him.
Correction: Duality dice is not a binomial distribution, sorry for the incorrect info.
People, if you can’t improv as much as you’d like then don’t overthink it or force it. If it’s a success with fear for example, just acknowledge the success and take your fear resource. Not having an abundance of RP is better than an abundance of forced/pointless RP. Just flavor things when they feel natural.
Man respect for anyone who can drop the phrase “binomial distribution” so casually. Great video and insights-thanks so much for sharing!
Haha thanks! I meant to dive further into the math behind it, but I figured I'd leave that to another video.
Just to be pedantic, that’s not what binomial distribution means. Two dice does not make a binomial distribution. It makes a normal distribution. Binomial distribution means a yes/no or true/false outcome. D&D has more of a binomial distribution because it is pass/fail. As Daggerheart has five outcomes it is not binomial.
The 5 outcomes is not what we are talking about with the distribution, but freak, you are right, two dice is not binomial, I misremembered my statistics. Thanks for the correction.
A suggestion:
Outside combat, do not let the player roll unless there is a clearly defined penalty for failure other than a lack of success. If a person is picking a lock, they succeed (eventually) unless failing is going to result in alerting guards with the noise. Once you have a penalty for success, you then have a framework for succeeding with Fear or Failing with Hope. In this case, succeeding with Fear means you open the lock and alert the guards with the noise. Failing with Hope means that the door remains locked, but you don't alert the guards.
In combat, put together a short list of extra effects based on the location or surroundings and pick one (or allow the players to) based on Hope or Fear. For instance, let's say you are fighting foes from outside the doorway of a room. The list could include:
- a penalty to damage because your/their weapon hit the doorway on that swing
- falling prone, so you/they cannot both move and act on your next activation
- someone shuts the door
- hitting an ally and inflicting a Stress
- an item spills out of your/their pack
- stuff spills onto the doorway, anyone passing through will take a Stress
...these would be in addition to allowing players to improv cosmetic or even mechanical effects based on the roll, such as called shots to limbs or disarming foes based on Hope. A GM of course can always improv effects on the situation decided by what is grim or hilarious during a specific fight. "I toss him a potion in the middle of the melee"... what could possibly go wrong?
Yea definitely a good idea for making a list, at the least it will help you get in that mindset.
I said in the video that DH pushes for less rolls and sounds like you agree.
I didn't have fear consequences during battle, but I could see them being used sparingly to keep the action going.
You can always just add a stress to the player as a cost.
Maybe that persuasion attempt was just SUPER stressful. Maybe you jumped across that ledge, but you slipped for a tiny moment and thought you would die, your heart is racing from adrenaline and fear, you take a stress point. Maybe you're trying to find the right trail in the wilderness, but get lost for a moment as paths all seem like the correct and incorrect ones at the same time, you are uncertain and you panic for a moment thinking you're lost, but you pull through, rationalize the situation and find the direction you have to go, however the experience cost you some time and a stress point, etc etc there's so many examples you could make for this.
One flavor I heard that I absolutely loved was a player using the Fungril ability to connect the hive and rolling a success with fear. He connected, got to talk to a person of interest, got some answers, but the conversation was interrupted suddenly as they heard the last thoughts of a dying fungril some distance away, their laments and regrets filled their minds and they were forced to end the connection and took a stress point.
PS - Losing a hope point can also be a consequence. People lose hope after failures all the time in real life, I don't see why a GM wouldn't apply the same as a mechanic in the game.
What a well-articulated, well-balanced review. Speaking from experience gives it a lot more weight and I'm curious to know how the Daggerheart will evolve from here.
Thanks! I think there are some good improvements that could be done, but I like the general idea
we have been playing 1.2 through 1.3, and we have yet to have an issue with the DM improving the results of the dice, what it does do (and ai agree with you here) it helps people improve their imrpov and narrativeability as they play.
That's great! You must have a very good DM
I'm running the playtest one shot tomorrow, this was insightful. Thanks!
Good luck! I'm sure it'll run smoothly
Great video and thoughts as always! I especially loved your “there. Problem solved” in regard to spotlight hogs.
Looking forward to more!
Haha, I'm sure people will disagree with that, but I do think they are effective tools suggested in the ruleset to change it up when those problems appear. Thanks for the support!
@@DndUnoptimized I think they’re great tools that are both simple and effective. The types of things that are often overlooked.
@@DndUnoptimized I think it's telling that the designers know the rule will be enough of a problem that they needed to come up with optional rules to deal with it.
This is really fair and well thought out feedback. I still need to watch your first playthrough video but from this alone DH feels like it could be a fun
Thanks! DH was a ton of fun and I want to try again
One thing I'm doing as an exercise for the one shot-two shot I'm running is writing down something true and something rumored about every important NPC, location, or event that would be relevant to the plot. When a PC rolls to determine if they know something about that, or wants to discover something I consult the truth and the rumor.
A success with hope means the player knows something true, and knows it is true.
A success with fear means they know something true and something rumored but aren't sure which is which.
A failure with hope means they know something rumored, but know that it is false.
A failure with fear means I flip a coin and tell them something true or rumored, and that they don't know which it is.
These can be narratively improvised by confident gm storytellers but I like spending prep time to think about and explore truths and rumors ahead of time, that gives me stuff to work with when I'm already playing.
That's an awesome idea when dealing with a social heavy campaign! Kudos to you for that prep work. I would fail at improvising this, so maybe I'll steal this if I end up needing something similar!
Regarding rolls, a stress point is a very easy consequence for a bad roll that you can use in a flavorful way in many situations.
Maybe you get some social anxiety as you try to convince a person, maybe you panic as you are looking for the right path in the wilderness, maybe you jump a ledge, but slip for a moment and almost die, leaving your heart racing.
Alternatively you can take away a hope point too. Failure can make people lose their hope IRL, I don't see why you wouldn't use this as a mechanic from a GM standpoint.
You can also use HP, but that's far more situational and is a lot more punishing. Like, climbing for example you could have a consequence be that the player slips, or a loose rock falls out, but they regain their grasp, however they pull their muscles hard and hit their hands into the stone with force as they regain their hold, leaving them slightly bruised.
One flavor I heard that I absolutely loved was a player using the Fungril ability to connect the hive and rolling a success with fear. He connected, got to talk to a person of interest, got some answers, but the conversation was interrupted suddenly as they heard the last thoughts of a dying fungril some distance away, their laments and regrets filled their minds and they were forced to end the connection and took a stress point.
Yes, stress is the "default" bad thing, but I wouldn't use it too much. Using HP, hope, or armor slots are interesting ideas and I like them. I don't want players to be scared to interact with the world, so it all needs to be reasonable and fair depending on what's being attempted, and having narrative consequences feels less of a punishment than losing a resource.
That example is fun narrative and mechanical punishment for sure! Definitely lots of interesting things you could do as a GM here and I look forward to how the community works with it!
For GMs worrying about being overwhelmed about the amount of improvising expected of them:
1) When a player rolls w Fear, it's not necessary to apply a complication right away. Just bank the Fear and use it later.
2) Think of the players succeeding as them getting momentary narrative imposition and rolling with Fear as the GM getting momentary narrative imposition. Succeeding with Fear means both the player and the GM get to impose something on the narrative, as long as they don't seek to cancel the other out.
3) When rolling with Fear, if you feel stuck, flip the choice of consequence back on the player (or another player). "What complication do you think would make sense in this situation?" Or present two options and have them pick their poison.
Great ideas and I definitely agree!
I think people will get used to "success with fear" pretty quickly as they see examples in other players ganes, the main thing is making sure the fear isn't so penalizing that it's worse than the success.
I think utilizing Advantage and Disadvantage works really well. For example, a party member rolls SwF for climbing a rope, the fear frays the rope (or maybe makes it slick) so the next person to climb gets disadvantage, on SwH the next person can see the footholds the first player uses giving them advantage to climb.
That's a really good idea in those situations, I like it. Yes I imagine people will get used to it pretty quickly once they run a few sessions and are familiar with the ruleset.
The point to remember regarding "Success with fear" is that it shifts the narrative beyond the specific action that the player took, not diminishes that action. As long as you deliver the success of the character before shifting to the consequence of the fear roll, you provide the character with a sense of accomplishment and differentiate it from the consequence that happens next.
The player succeeds with fear on a picklock attempt. Great, they opened the door, but now there are enemies inside the room.
The player jumps between rooftops and rolls with fear? He made his way successfully to the other side but nearly missed, causing them to take 1 stress from the near fall.
The player tried to get a discount from a merchant and succeeded with fear? Great, he got the discount, but not by the full amount he asked for.
The player is asking an NPC to join them on a quest and rolled with fear? Great, the NPC joins but asks to be compensated in some way.
As long as the consequence promotes the narrative in a way that compliments the success of the action, you are using this outcome to the best of its potential.
This is a bad idea … it will create massive swing and likely to come up nearly 50% (46)…
Build a table d12 of things tha go against the player … dropped shield or weapon, armor strap tears giving -2 on armor until repaired, food soils or is lost, shoe laces rip, etc… just bad luck
The issue won’t be someone not letting others go, it will be the change of momentum shifting against the players and DMs be to afraid of spending actions and fear to play the monsters in full. The action economy can be a bit unpredictable
Have fun though, I do like the lack of initiative
@@kevoreilly6557 I agree. If the consequences don't match the task being attempted, or there is a mechanical punishment for each roll with fear then PCs will be afraid to interact with the world. This is why I think it's hard for GMs. Just giving them a stress each failure doesn't work, so it has to be a last resort fallback, and the regular "punishment" should be narrative.
the dual dice really seem like nothing more than yes but or no but on a Oracle roll.
The biggest challenge I keep seeing on live-plays is failing to find DaggerHeart's very different definition of "turn" and more importantly "action".
Players (together) have a turn, not one turn per player. And within a turn, you do things that only become "actions" when you need to roll the duality dice. Now, I agree with many that several abilities need to be clarified (some very powerful stuff can be done without rolling!), but that's the concept.
And it means, for example, that there isn't a lack of opportunity attacks at all... If you moved to attack and failed, then the GM can take over and take their turn *interrupting your movement* with an attack that prevented you from getting to your target and thus explaining failure.
It also means you can drink a potion or give many kinds of aid without it being an action for you... an action is when you roll the duality dice and that is when you put a token onto the tracker. But note... moving without doing anything else that becomes an action is, itself, an action during combat (and just as interruptible as above).
People wanting their move/action/bonus action economy as their turn will not find DH supports them at all... There are no individual player turns, just individual player narration, abilities, and actions during the Players Turn.
That's a good point, and one that needs better explanation in the rule set probably.
I still don't think there are opportunity attacks, but that's just me, it becomes more of a narrative thing.
Without initiative I'm less of a referee and more of a dictator and I think the fun at the table is hugely dependent on the DM being benevolent. When Brennan DMed for critical role he did some narrative gameplay and there's a point where he asks if the player wanted to lose their arm at the shoulder or elbow and that was the "good" outcome according to Brennan. Fun for a show but I don't think a lot of players would have loved it if that to happen to them just because the DM says so.
Interesting. I never felt like the initiative system made me feel like a dictator. You can force your turn sometimes, but it costs you a lot of resources, so it kind of works out for the players honestly.
I do agree that DH has a bigger dependency on a benevolent GM than D&D. But maybe it's just more obvious if you have a combative GM in DH, which might be a good thing. It's sometimes harder to spot a problematic DM in D&D.
I also agree that this system will excel in the story telling and performative game that CR plays, which makes a lot of sense.
Great breakdown and advice, well done!
The multiple results of hope and fear will be something GM coming from 5e and similar games might struggle with at first, but similar systems have been around for a while. You have something similar for PbtA games, Blades in the Dark, Quests, and a whole lot of other games. I do think its a great way to flex your gm muscles and will result in much more interesting results.
Yea I think with a bit of time, us 5e GMs will get used to it and learn some new tricks!
Honestly the various resources are a great way to add consequences in my opinion.
Hope, stress, hp, armor points, you can all use them as a consequence for a bad roll. Like, say a persuasion check suceeds with fear, maybe they PC gets some social anxiety and panics a bit, gaining a stress. Or maybe a player is jumping across a chasm and they succeed with fear, so they slip for a bit and panic, their heart beats like a drum, adrenaline pumps through their body, they manage to regain their balance, but it leaves them with a stress point.
Maybe they are trying to find their way in the wilderness and fail a roll entirely, they're lost and they panic, they don't know what to do, they lose a hope point as they feel discouraged.
Maybe they are climbing a cliff and they succeed with fear, they grasp onto a rock that causes another to fall on their head, their helmet dents, but protects them, they lose an armor point.
There's so many options to work with, it doesn't always have to be a big thing or something earthshattering, it can be something as minor as a point change.
Ive noticed that a number of mechanics have a 'countdown dice' type mechanic
Perhaps player abilities could cause a condition at countdown 1d4, and then the GM can use fear to reduce a countdown by a set number to quicken the enemjes escape, but guarantee at least a short while under the effect.
I like how Daggerhearts gameplay and mechanics codifies what GM's can do to introduce new threats or complications. Of course, there's the argument of 'I'm the GM I can do this anyway' but I feel like for new GM's its a lot of cognitive load, but it also helps build a GM mindset they could take to other systems in the future. 'Problem players' can also witness that its costing the GM something, so they can't argue about barriers being an asspull.
Getting the players to describe scenes is also nice, give them the taste of the GM role for a little bit. Maybe it sparks them to run a game for themselves
Yea, that's a possibility and makes sense to me. I definitely like the GM fear mechanic to introduce things (fear in general really). It feels more fair for some reason and more collaborative too since it isn't an infinite resource for the GM.
Yes I like this idea. Gives scope to make more interesting or powerful effects too simply by increasing the countdown die.
Great review! Well thought out and presented in an easy-to-understand manner. =)
In regards to how a dice roll affects the narrative:
The way I see it, the only difference between the outcome of D&D's d20 and DH's 2d12 is the "Success with fear". the rest are pretty much the same:
Critical in D&D has the same effect as critical in DH: "you pull it off well and get what you want."
Success in D&D has the same effect as Success with hope in DH: "You get what you want"
Failure in D&D has the same effect as Failure with hope in DH: "things don’t go to plan. You probably don’t get what you want and must face the consequences"
Failure in D&D has the same effect as Failure with fear in DH: "things go very poorly. You probably don’t get what you want, and there is a major consequence or complication because of it."
Success with fear is an alien concept for someone coming from D&D which they will need to get used to, but 4/5 results should be the same.
Agreed, it's success with fear that is the strange concept. Hopefully they will get used to it quickly, but it's stressful and difficult to make it up at first.
I disagree that players shouldn't be rolling lots of checks because player experiences are core to social challenges and require hope to use.
If players are Incentivized to save hope for combat it will negatively impact their roleplay and exploration because they will not be using their character experiences.
At the same time, GMs need to make sure that fear gained in non-combat situations is mostly spent in non-combat situations, otherwise a player will become shy about rolling for something unnecessary like a knowledge check with marginal upside if it means combat becomes more dangerous later.
It requires a GM to have things in mind for fear rolls outside combat, and also that players feel encouraged to spend hope on non-combat rolls.
I totally agree. Social challenges and exploration challenges, etc should have rolls, but I find a lot of 5e DMs make their players roll excessively. Lie about something inconsequential, sneak around for no big purpose, even things like, "roll to see if you heard the explosion" or stupid things like that.
I think DH discourages these superfluous rolls.
I agree, on the other hand though how scary would it be going into a dodgy situation that could turn into combat while the DM is sitting on a big pile of hope. It adds meaning to the role play and trying to get out of the combat. The build up of fear with the dm also mechanically and narratively is due to things going wrong for the party over a span of time so feels right that they would be on edge at that point. The opposite is true for collecting lots of hope.
That's true, the DM can totally build up a ton of fear to make the players on edge! I didn't consider the psychological aspect haha.
great balanced review!
One thing worth mentioning regarding removing a condition on a GM turn. You need to spend a full activation and lose a full fear if you decide to remove it. If you're familiar with how powerful a fear token is, the players would realize that the GM is losing a lot of resources
It's true, and depending on the fight and circumstances leading up to it, fear might be a big resource to lose. So maybe it's not a big problem, I'll have to run more games to see. Thanks!
I LOVE the fear mechanic. I can't quite put my finger on it but it adds something that 5e just doesn't have. Daggerheart makes it feel as if there's an actual... flow to the world, and it isn't just the DM making things up? It's hard to describe. The combat is great as well. However, I almost feel like they should make their weapon selection slightly more "crunchy" imo. Every weapon should be able to do something unique, and there should be different magic weapons (wands) as well. It would add a bit of that meta-gaming aspect people like but without overbearing the system. Nothing as expansive as PF2e but sort of similar
Yes! There is something about fear that makes some flow continue in the world and it's hard to describe.
Honestly we didn't get into weapons too much, but maybe expanding that section might add some potential crunch for those who like it. I quite enjoyed the secondary weapon idea and switching weapons taking a stress.
Having the features part will allow people to create some really cool unique weapons in the future so getting a new weapon is not just adding +1 or +2 etc. I think parties can have a lot of fun with that.
Hope you get a chance to query darrington about those unclear parts, and share with us what the answers are. Great video!
I'll submit my thoughts to them for sure, and hopefully the next release will be more clear and concise. I don't think I have any big questions for them in terms of how the rules work, but it definitely takes some serious study of the book to figure it out.
I can see a lot of similarity with 7th Sea with its hero and danger points, active narrative rolls, and different action order in combat.
I'll have to try 7th sea one day!
thought it was adam ragusea on that thumbnail
Oh, I guess we look alike haha
Same.
Agreed with the "end an effect by spending a fear". For me to enjoy DMing combat in DH, they would need to have a mechanic to inform when to use fear to remove a condition. Maybe a global countdown on conditions based on player actions or something…
Yea, I mean it does use some DM resources so maybe it's not SO bad. If anything the player has prevented the GM from using a fear ability or from acting more.
I do think it ends up relying on the GM being a good sport and wise arbiter more than 5e requires.
you end a condition when it feels right to the narrative. It's the DMs choice.
If you want to end a burning condition, use an action token for the monster to pat out the fire and then use a fear to end the condition.
Rulings. Not rules. It's a great ttrpg skill to develop.
@@MagiofAsuraI understand the concept. I don't like it. It feels meta-gamey to me as a DM to just "choose" when a player-activated effect ends, especially when if I choose to do it as soon as I can (which honestly would often make sense for the opponent), it makes the spells/abilities really bad for the players.
I believe what you said about this game lacking "crunch" really is a huge problem for daggerheart as a comercial product.
I believe that the reason no other table top RPG ever beat d&d is not because they were worse products, but because marketing and publicity never caught up. D&D was always up there in the common knowledge of people since the 80s. And now the way to sell daggerheart is by marketing it through critical role livestreams and banking on the fact that they are all somewhat media related people with a fanbase, a large one at that.
D&D as a product can grow a youtube based content in a big part because of it's crunch/more complex character building - there are many channels dedicated to just making characters and talking about rules. Daggerheart doesn't feel like it could fill this niche, so those people wouldn't feature daggerheart in their channels or wouldn't feature much, I guess.
This could impact their internet presence, growth and the competition with other systems, since everyone decided that this is the year for new editions/new games.
In my opinion they should just increase the number of classes, subclasses and probably domain cards for the official release. There could be up to 36 domain combination classes, but we only have 9, so there is up to 27 new classes with the existing domains, they could release with 18, 3 subclasses each, and improve the domain cards from the current 21 cards per domain with 2 per level except at first which has 3, for something like 32, with 3 per level except first with 5.
It's a lot of extra work, but it would bring some crunch to daggerheart. Some multiclass builds would make for interesting videos.
That's an interesting idea, but I feel like PF would be way more popular if it was all about how crunchy the system is.
I hope DH finds a place though, I think a lot of tables will have a load of fun playing it.
I dont see how roll results are that much different from DND.
Critical fail:
DND - Natural 1 | DH - fail with fear
Critical Success:
DND - Natural 20 | DH - matching numbers on each die
Success without complications:
DND - D20 >= DC | DH - Pass with hope
Success with complications or non critical fail:
DND - D20 > 1 and D20 < DC | DH - Pass with Fear
I don't agree that success with fear is equivalent to failing the roll. Maybe some GMs will rule it that way but it's not normal.
In 5e critical success and failure doesn't exist for skill/ability checks so you usually just end up with two options. In combat, yea you have Crit fail and success for attacks, but hitting below the AC is definitely not equivalent to success with fear.
All in all though, I agree with you, DMs ARE used to improvising these kinds of things, but it'll just take a mindset shift to get used to it.
@@DndUnoptimized fair take.
But to be clear, I combined two aspects with one based on GM ruling for "Success with complications or non critical fail"
If DC is 20 and you roll a 19, some dms will say that you don't open the lock, some might say you do but break your thieves tools.
So yea, isn't a outright fail, but DMs could make it interesting
For most GMs, the hope & fear results will default to the same small selection of tired crap every time, as GMs get burnt out trying to come up with "new stuff" for every roll.
I hope not, I think it will be pretty situation dependant so it will be hard to have a streamlined result. Of course, just giving them stress could be a streamlined result, but I don't think narratively or mechanically that will work out using it for each fear roll.
I heavily disagree, I just ran the play test last night. It was super easy, and I need to mention Ive only been a DM of a couple one shots.
Awesome! Yea I don't think the system is hard and I think 5e DMs for the most part won't have any problems except for making success with fear rolls. But if you are great at improv then I'm sure it's smooth sailing
After having run FFG's Star Wars using the genesys system for years now, Dagger Heart seems like an easy transition for me.
Nice! I'm sure there are lots of systems that will have similar improv requirements for a GM. I do think overall DH runs quite smoothly so I hope 5e DMs won't have that hard of a time either.
Daggerheart takes so much pressure off of the DM compared to something like D&D and pathfinder. It’s really simple.
I really enjoyed running it. I think once a DM becomes used to the system it'll be really easy and smooth. Way less rules to memorize and easy to balance combat. I think it'll work well especially if they can make combat a little more simple or become way better at explaining it.
PbtA could help the 5e DMs.
I've never played any, but I've heard good things! Hope I'll get a chance one day
Daggetheart does take a lot of queues from PbtA games, which I really like.
I apologize for this, I do not doubt your originality, buuut…
I cannot shake the feeling I am watching Wob the Bold Wielder.
Lol that could be a compliment (he is pretty successful) or a copyright infringement claim. He might have a video saying similar things, I'll have to check out his reviews.
I think our content for the most part is pretty different, but I haven't watched a lot of his stuff.
@@DndUnoptimized It is different. I was pointing out similarities in cadence, physical appearance and general welcoming demeanor. All kindly meant!
@@TheGladGolem haha I was just joking about the copyright infringement, but thank you kindly! He definitely gives off a very friendly air in his videos and I like that about him.