Review: Daggerheart Corebook

"I used to be 'with it'. But then they changed what 'it' was. Now what I'm with isn't 'it', and what's 'it' seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you!" - The Simpsons

This one, I didn't actually buy; a friend lent me his copy for a few days, so I inhaled it at speed, took notes, and pondered. This review is based on a high-speed read-through and watching videos by enthusiastic YouTubers.

In a Nutshell: High fantasy narrative-focused RPG from Darrington Press, the Critical Role people; there's a PDF version available here for $30.

Core Mechanics

When your PC tries to do something, you roll 2d12; the Hope Die and the Fear Die. You add the scores and any modifiers, and if the total meets or beats a target number, you succeed, otherwise you fail. If the Hope Die has the higher score, you succeed or fail with Hope, and good things happen; if the Fear Die is higher, bad things happen.

Combat uses a form of popcorn initiative; a PC goes first, and so long as they roll with Hope, they can nominate another PC; if they roll with Fear, the spotlight (as initiative is called) passes to an enemy.

If you succeed at hitting someone, you then roll damage dice, multiply the result by your proficiency, compare the  outcome to their damage thresholds, give them a chance to mark off an armour slot to absorb some of it, then deduct 0-3 from their hit points, depending on the outcome of the previous steps. The damage die type is determined by the kind of attack, the number of dice is indirectly determined by PC level.

What's Inside?

Introduction (11 pages): What's an RPG, what kind of RPG is Daggerheart, what other games and fiction inspired it, core mechanics, what you need to play, how to be a good player, and so on. The game is designed for a GM and up to 4 players, but seems equally at home with one-shots, short campaigns, or long ones.

Preparing for Adventure (76 pages): Character creation. It's big because there are a lot of options. This covers the game's basic theology, how magic works, and other matters that influence character creation. There are nine familiar classes, each with two subclasses; 18 ancestries ("races"), and you can mix and match half-whatevers with GM approval; 9 different types of community your PC could come from. There are six familiar traits, with values from -1 to +2; these are applied directly to dice rolls. Each character has a set inventory, and begins with two "experiences" - effectively, groups of related skills - each with a +2 modifier. An example PC is provided to show how it all works.

Playing an Adventure (53 pages): Player-facing rules; mechanics for combat and non-combat tasks, spellcasting, levelling up, equipment. Levelling up unlocks additional powers, improves modifiers, adds experiences, and so on. This chapter also has a detailed example of play.

Running an Adventure (53 pages): Rules for the Game Master. What the GM does, how to be a good one, GM-facing mechanics (which are sometimes different from player-facing ones), session zero, safety tools, how to run a session, a one-shot or a campaign. This is more conversational than the previous chapter, focused on giving advice rather than explaining rules, and reminds the GM they can change or drop things they don't like.

Adversaries and Environments (60 pages): The bestiary. Note that Daggerheart treats environments and events as a kind of monster, with statblocks of their own. Types of adversary or environment, guidelines for building encounters, guidelines for creating new monsters, statblocks and whatnot.

Campaign Frames (55 pages): Six example campaign structures for long-term play, each with an overview, modifications to the core rules, things for the GM and players to bear in mind, how to kick off and run the campaign, what to focus on in session zero, and a generic map to customise by adding specific features.

Appendices (35 pages): Quick reference, character sheets, maps, other reference documentation.

...and we close with an index.

What I Liked

• The artwork is nice, cartoonish but in an upmarket way, the sort of thing you'd find in a contemporary graphic novel.
• The game is supportive of new players and GMs; lots of advice on how to do things.
• The metacurrencies, Hope (for PCs) and Fear (for the GM), which are generated by player dice rolls and used to power special abilities.
• No whiffing. Every dice roll does something to advance the story.
• Ranges measured as Close, Far etc. rather than numerically. I can see this working well for Theatre of the Mind or solo play. (Numbers are provided for people like me.)
• The advice to players, especially the admonition to embrace danger. PCs who avoid risk like the plague frustrate me.
• The advice on using and advancing countdown timers. Some very clever stuff here, including using them in ways I haven't seen before such as for holding your breath.
• The tactical advice to GMs on how to use each of the main types of NPC enemies.
• A nice range of NPCs and monsters in the bestiary, concisely described, and with specific ones designed for social encounters.
• The way that environments such as "Raging River" or "Imperial Court" are statted up to use as settings for encounters. That's clever.

What I Didn't Like

• The game has a strong focus on collaborative storytelling; it's designed for theatre kids rather than wargaming grognards like m'self.
• There's also a strong focus on safety tools and sensitivity, which tells me it is not a game I will enjoy at the table - that's correlation not causation; players should feel safe and respected, but a strong focus on this area usually means the game doesn't focus on aspects of gaming that I enjoy.
• Character creation is a magical muppet show; it seems every PC is a member of a different race, usually with big pointy ears, usually a spellcaster. This is high fantasy with the volume turned up to 11; I'm a gritty sword and sorcery guy m'self, and Daggerheart doesn't lend itself to that.
• How damage is inflicted seems unnecessarily long-winded and complex. In fact, most of the rules seem to filter what you're doing through several layers of stuff before you get to an outcome, whether those layers are extra rules or asking someone to describe what happens.
• There are a number of places where the editing looks a bit off to me; grammatical or spelling errors. I find those jarring during a read-through, especially when they keep happening.
• The GM's characters use different rules to PCs in some places. That increases the cognitive load on the GM, as he needs to know both sets of rules.
• PCs, and defeated enemies, can only die if players specifically want that to happen. That's explicit in the case of enemies, and while in theory a PC could die unintentionally, setting that up requires a deliberate decision by the player. 

What I'm Undecided About

• The heavy use of cards, quick reference sheets and so on. You'll need a piece of table roughly 30 x 60 cm just to lay out your character; that's 1' by 2' in old money. From running D&D 4th Edition, I know that using cards at the table is fun, especially for more tactile players; from playing WFRP3, I know that needing a lot of table space and fighting over that one unique card everyone wants in their hand are not fun.
• The spotlight. I suppose this is really a question of whether you trust your players to share the spotlight and hand initiative over to each other in a fair and efficient manner. The one time I've seen something similar tried - a house rule where characters on the same side could trade initiative rolls - it led to slow, clunky combat rounds. That could be due to the players involved.
• The mechanics are slanted in favour of the PCs, for example they roll 2d12 while GM characters roll 1d20; PCs will usually roll a couple of points higher than NPCs, their scores will be more predictable, and as critical successes occur when both d12s match, PCs can get those and NPCs can't - and there are no critical failures.
• The constant admonition to the GM to ask (or tell) the players what things look like. Great for the eloquent and inventive, but what about the rest of us? How well this works is going to depend on your table, I think.
• Tag Team Rolls. These allow two PCs to act together; in games with a more formal initiative mechanism, one PC would go "On Hold" and wait for their fellow to be ready, but as there is no initiative as such in Daggerheart, something like this is necessary instead. Doing this costs one PC at least half their Hope, but both use the better of their dice scores.
• Proficiency (ranging from 1 to 6) determines how many damage dice you roll for your weapon; as you level up, you not only get better at hitting, you hit harder with the same attack. This interacts with damage thresholds to mean you are more likely to inflict 3 hit points of damage.

What I Think

For all its cleverness, I put the rulebook down unable to shake the feeling that a Daggerheart campaign would be fanfic about a party of magical girl Mary Sues, orchestrated by an emotional support GM.

If you enjoy that kind of game, more power to you; but it's not for me.

Daggerheart may be the future of gaming, but like the past, the future is another country and they do things differently there. I left this game not feeling respected and empowered as it intended, but instead feeling obsolete, with sighs of "Okay, Boomer," following me out.

If you want me, I'll be at the corner table, drinking with Conan and Earl Dumarest.