Daggerheart Playtest Thoughts as a Game Master and Player

hello everybody tall Paul here and today I want to talk about dagger heart this past weekend me and another GM were able to run a game of dagger heart as well as playing a game of dagger heart I ran the quick start adventure while the other DM ran the Marauders of windfall both of these were for darington press's 1.4.2 play test of the game this was very exciting for both us and our players as this is something we all wanted to try so let's talk about it a little bit so to start what is dagger har dagger har is a fantasy tabletop role playing game from darington press the publishing branch of the critical role Empire this is a story-driven game built to create a world with the game master and the players working in kind of Unison this uses a 2 D12 system one of your D12 is Hope and the other one symbolizes fear these dice will ultimately impact the outcome of your characters The Duality between the forces of Hope fear on every hero drives the unique character focused narratives forward in addition to the dice there is the card system it makes it really easy to get started and start seeing how your abilities kind of start stacking up you have cards that describe the community you came from what your ancestry was and how those experiences kind of shape your character Meanwhile your subass and domain cards Grant your character plenty of tantalizing abilities to choose from as your character evolves first let's talk about the play test packet in the play test packet you actually get a quite good array of items this is the GM's instructions it basically tells you when this current edition came out what the current edition is the things that were updated how to get your materials updated if you're using a previous version of the uh play test next up you have the manuscript this is a 300 and some odd page document this is basically their rule set for the game it also goes has stat blocks for Monsters spells it also goes through a lot of the different you know Core Concepts of the game and even when it talks about things like encounters it mentions things like is this the best way to move the story forward really driving home the fact that this is meant to be a story driven game after that we have the quick start adventure which is the adventure that I ended up running uh during our gaming session the Marauders of windfall which is the uh game that the other DM ran that I played in you also get this really cool kind of GM guide cheat sheet this has things like action roles uh example of GM moves difficulty how to set your different kind of DCs hope and fear how to spend hope and fear you know this is also a sheet that I'll get into more once we get into the actual Adventure that kind of guides you through your uh character sheet and tell tells you which different things do and then a guide to kind of go through character creation if you're creating a character from scratch including things like names there's a play guide that you can share with your players which is fantastic rest equipment and then some blank cards if you want to kind of Homebrew your own stuff right off the bat now before I started running the quick start adventure I did read through the play test manuscript I did not read it word for word I looked for Core Concepts rules just kind of browsing it to get a good idea of what the game is and kind of how to run it this was after I read the quickart adventure and from reading the quick start adventure I was fairly confident even right off the bat that I was going to be able to run this game effectively even without reading the play test Manu script word for word now before we get into the nitty-gritty of the quick start adventure I will say that this is a fantastic introduction into the game it is well thought out well written and really gives players in GMS a really good way to kind of just get in and start playing now for me and my players we had most of the materials that we needed to jump right in so we hopped right into choosing characters this is one of the characters that are pre-generated for this adventure Marlo Fairwind you're going to give each player a four page character sheet the first one is actually going to give basic rules as well as kind of a little bit of background on this character the little STD right here you can cut out and just kind of fold into a little Tepe which is absolutely kind of a fantastic idea that I loved from this adventure in addition for one for every player character there is also a couple of pages that have all of the different monsters as well as some scenery that your players will experience in the game so you don't need any kind of Miniatures or anything to really just hop right in and start playing the connection section here was actually kind of a surprise it's always good to kind of build a little backstory to a character but these questions really drove home and created a start to the story for the characters with a little bit of background also a couple of my more adventurous and you know louder spoken players really kind of noticed that certain players weren't contributing and Drew them into their connections which would later down the road you know I owe you a favor would add to that story of hey I did this to return that favor which was really fantastic next up you have the actual character sheet for all of the different preens very simple layout to the character sheet but in trying to go through and understand where each section what each section is and what it does there's actually a really cool little tool which is this sheet of paper so basically the way this functions is you slide your charact put it on put your character sheet on top of the sheet and just slide it over the arrows then point to different sections and these sections describe like this one goes into evasion and armor what's going on on this part of the character sheet and how to use evasion and armor in combat and the last section is just the cards this is going to go over the community the ancestry subass and then a couple of the domain cards these are fantastic I didn't cut them out I just kind of gave each player the individual sheets with them on it but it was a very quick way to kind of see all of their characters different abilities and they other than a couple examples had really great explanations that allowed the players to understand how these different traits would work both in combat and out of combat and this is true for all five of the pregens that are available in this adventure now the exact same five pregens are actually available for the other one shot that the other GM ran that I played in so if you have a consistent group you can actually take a character at level one and then play it again at level two from the quick start adventure to their one shot that is also available in the play test materials that is also ail available in the play test materials now we get into the adventure Guide really at its core your players have their character sheets and now it starts leading you step by step the things you should do in order to have a successful session of dagger heart and it does say that right here in the introduction after the players get their packets you go over the question that's on all the sheets as well as their connections between other players to kind of build that kind of group dynamic it gives a quick little description of this setting and then it also addresses Fielding questions and it reiterates that this guide is built to lead the players and you through a successful first session of dagger heart and answer a lot of those questions and it really does a good job of that the next section guides the players as well as yourself through the mechanics it talks about the character sheet and the way to slide it over it talks about Duality Dice and then it talks about how you know roles affect the story how combat comes along how the action tracker works and then it even gives you a character sheet as well as one of the uh instructional guides on it so that you can hold it up and show your players how to do it as well which I thought was a really thoughtful little touch next it goes into kind of things that you need to know as the GM things that you should read in this section it talks about the different ranges talks about DCS and kind of how to set them how to spend fear as a DM and then it kind of goes into the synopsis of this adventure it's going to be a total of five acts and it kind of gives a brief little synopsis on each one after that it just kicks right into it there are sections that you read it tells you to read those allowed to your players shortly after that you hit your first action roll it guides it through you step by step tells you the outcomes if they roll with hope or with fear and then it goes right into the am Bush your first real Combat encounter here right in here in setting up the battle map it actually involves your players in the setting up of the things that around are around them this really adds to the story driven aspects of this game there are certain spots at the beginning of the adventure where it asks uh you to ask players like what do the trees look like and kind of help them build the way the world looks with you who's driving the wagon what do they see but even in setting up combat encounters it is involving the players in that action give them trees tell them to play some around and then you know put the different creatures that they're being attacked by in that space and it gives you kind of the ranges to put them and it kind of really spells out their motivations what are they doing there the thief is trying to steal the wagon and it really kind of guides you through that first encounter really really well after after that the players arrived in a little town there were some NPCs that were available kind of with some interesting story elements the dwarf kind of asks you know when their party's weapons were forged and if they had names and it was really cool interesting ways of of especially for someone who is not familiar with running NPCs to kind of have a little something that you know they can just say or ask and they don't have to come up with questions on their own they then end up in a little Tavern which pulls the players back in to help kind of describe the different layers of this tavern and the tavern itself is very cool it's built in a tree each levels different and it you know has fun little aspects like the players you know the patrons of this tavern have to take off their shoes and hang them over a line and when they leave the shoes are cleaned and there's little trinkets in them it's very kind of whimsical and and cute as the players progress through the rest of the encounter it kind of opens up a little bit it kind of does a lot of hold hand holding towards the front and then as you kind of move on to finding the individual you're looking for to deliver the package it starts opening up and it starts kind of allowing the GM and the players to kind of like more wiggle room if you will it's not as this is what you do this is the result this is what you do this is the result so there are a couple different ways that they can interact with the NPC that they're looking for all of this leads towards the final kind of encounter in the adventure the open Veil it is an ambitious encounter I will say that for a new DM it might be difficult um you're putting six enemies on the board with two different skill sets you're running a timer to tick down as well as kind of using the resources you already have to kind of regenerate monsters as the adventure goes on I was able to run it swimmingly and it was actually I thought a incredibly well-written encounter I think it was very Dynamic and a lot of fun I didn't feel like the players were undergeared or overgeared for it at all I think it was a really nice conclusion to this kind of quick start adventure and it felt very fitting for it there's a little epilog kind of as you speak with the individual who you're kind of working with um it kind of leads up to kind of the next adventure and kind of places some things in in place that if you want to expand on the world you can overall I really enjoyed running this adventure I thought it was a really good introduction into dagger heart and I ran it as written top to bottom they said read it I read it they said do this I did that there were a couple spots you know of course with role playing where I had to role play and it went a little bit either one way or the other but never so far that it was going off the rails now here are the little cutouts for the NPCs as well as the monsters as well as a nice little action track tracker you can cut out for your players to use um it's these small things that I found in this adventure really add up to a really positive experience uh for me you know it's pretty easy to write a good Adventure but to really think about all of the small things that a new GM will need to run a game and provide those things in this play test I think it really kind of checked all those boxes now the one thing that I mentioned before and I a little concerned about is if someone has never GMD a game before and this is what they're handed there are a couple spots in it that get a little ambitious the last encounter and then some of the RP spots really kind of lead into well experienced DMS and GMS for things like tracking monsters they have trackers that are actually written onto the pieces of paper that monitor hit points stress and then have all of their information kind of tied in here and their stop blocks are are very fantastic Compact and give you the things that you really need next up it was time to go on the other side of the screen so I was able to play Ki Nix at level two um this is the same kind of summary that they give you for the level one character you get an additional experience um you get I've got your back not afraid of anything and let me reach that for you which are kind of really fun experience experiences to be kind of handed to you a lot of I used I've got your back a lot and not afraid of anything and then a couple will let me reach that for you which for me I'm an individual who's 68 it was a lot of fun kind of integrating those into my character for the Marauders of windfall the whole adventure takes place on an Airship so it was a much more confined space than my adventure we ended up getting into a couple of combat encounters and that's really where I believe Ki kind of shined um cool abilities like Whirlwind imer Shield body Basher really made the character feel Dynamic and it made me feel like I was heroic and you know pushing the narrative forward in a heroic way even through my combat when it came to some of the other kind of role-playing aspects I really didn't feel like there was a lot of additional things that I was able to kind of bring to the table with this character with being a ridgeborne and you know living in the mountains it really didn't apply to a sky ship that much but the GM Who I Am A Friend with pulled my character in and used kind of my combat prowess to allow me to roleplay in a lot of situations and kind of contribute to the overall Narrative of the story really well the other players at the table with me are other GMS as well so we really kind of tested the limits of the adventure and really drove it off of the Rails quite a few times it was a blast to play and it was very easy to pick up especially after having Run the game once for the adventure itself I really won't give it a rating cuz it definitely having driven it as far off the rails as we did I really can't speak to how well it is written I am going to run this adventure again for at least two more groups who want to experience dagger I'll be running the introductory adventure and then running Marauders of windfall uh kind of in concurrent week so one week we'll do the intro Adventure the next week we'll do Marauders and then I'll go to another group so I'm excited to be able to run this adventure as so I can kind of speak to it a little bit better and how it is constructed as far as playing dagger heart it was a very enjoyable experience for me I felt like I picked it up really fast I think for most players at the table having a little bit of ttrpg experience is always going to be beneficial in situations like this but I don't felt like I needed it through the adventure though I was able to use a lot of K's abilities other than the class feature which I didn't get the opportunity to use in the adventure every single card I utilized in multiple different points in the adventure and that felt really good there wasn't something just sitting on my character sheet that I never used or wasn't able to find kind of a use for which felt you know complete it felt like everything here was useful everything here was applicable I just wish there were a couple more things that kind of helped me in more social aspects so after this how do I feel about dagger heart well I find dagger heart enjoyable engaging and delivering on a lot of the points that they're trying to get across this is definitely a story-driven game that is built on fluidity between both the players and the game master a lot of the struggles that I had as a game master were with me not understanding how free I am to make actions what I want them to be I ended up piling up a lot of fear because I didn't use these things to do things like opportunity attacks or interrupt my players as much as I probably should have when it came to playing dagger heart I had a little bit of Hope but at that point I knew I needed to use it because it is a flee free flowing resource it comes very quickly especially when you're making a lot of ability roles a lot of attacks fear flies fast and hope flies fast in the end me not using that fear did not detract from my players experience at all I have a very good relationship with the players that I had in my table and they were able to openly say how they felt about the different aspects and their abilities the GM that ran Marauders of windfall was actually one of the players at that table so we switched so we could each get an opportunity to both run the game and play it and he felt a lot of the same things that I did that there was a lot of fear we had a lot of this resource and we definitely should have utilized it more he agreed that both of the adventures were incredibly well written and were great introductions into this game this experience with dagger har is leading me to do what I mentioned before I'm running two more groups through both the quick start adventure as well as the Marauders of windfall and I'm going to be introducing some players that have not played ttrpgs before in these game sessions to see if that knowledge of ttrpgs as a whole once that's gone if players kind of pick up on it as quickly I'm really excited to see what's in store for dagger har I know they have 1.5 coming up sometime this month um I'm hoping it comes out before I do these two tests so I can play test that as well and follow up with another video I really appreciate you joining me today we'll see you at the table

Channel: Tall Paul

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Id: QNzvZdswer8

Length: 20min 43sec (1243 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 04 2024