DAGGERHEART MODS

If you're like me, you've been reading, creating, and playing in DAGGERHEART for the last 3 months or more. There's plenty to like, but for our table the system is a bit overbuilt. There's SO MUCH going in that core book it's no easy task not only to learn, but to get exciting, intuitive moments to happen organically in the heat of play.

We're finishing our HARD SUIT PRIMAL mini-campaign in DAGGERHEART as it's written. We want to give it a solid chance to see and feel the design as best we can. If/when we continue, though, we've already heaped a laundry list of modifications that just seem too intuitive not to try. I thought I'd share 'em here with you, my faithful readers.

We've had a blast with Daggerheart thus far, taking it in, giving it a beer, and clashing with as many enemies as possible to learn the ropes. HARD SUIT PRIMAL available on DrivethruRPG.

I NEED MY D20: I've heard 'just use odds and evens as Hope and Fear!' This is an extremely strange rolling experience and, to me trivializes the system. Still, if you're like me and just love that sweet D20 roll. Here's my hack: Roll D20 vs. difficulty. If 15+ natural, succeed and gain a hope. If 5- fail and give the GM a fear and the spotlight. On middling successes and failures, gain neither hope nor fear and continue with the current spotlight. This evens out the sometimes-punitive and over-swingy duality dice, and just feels emotionally on target.

NO STRESS: Remove stress from the game. It's not needed. Consolidate stress mechanics into hope/fear where needed. Done.

HOPE TO POP: Miss your roll by 1? Spend 1 hope to make it. The best one here is rolling 15+ in this method, effectively spending and 'recycling' one hope.

TIMER ON AVOID DEATH: We all choose Avoid Death as our death move. When this happens, it can only be sustained for 3 GM spotlights, then death occurs. This can be especially dangerous if the GM has any spotlight-robbing ability and plenty of fear to make it happen.

MONSTER THRESH CLEANUP: Tracking injury intensity on adversaries can get a bit fiddly. Make your life easy with a single threshold number (use its highest one). Under? 1 hp. Over? 3 hp. This also makes the achievement of breaking the threshold far cooler.

CLOCKWISE SPOTLIGHTS: Chaotic turn order can be cool, but it often just gets quizzical looks. Clean things up and give clarity to players by going clockwise whenever players have the game. When this order reaches you as GM, spend 3 fear to 'rob' the spotlight or simply pass.

CARD MINING: It's cool to browse the card index at the back of the book, but character creation silos so many cards out of reach. Use equipment and ability homebrew to offer single-use access to a far wider array of cards, even high level ones! We did a lot of this in our design of HARD SUIT PRIMAL and it's super fun.

EVASION ARMOR: Evasion scores tend to be painfully low. Offer armor that doesn't just have scratch slots, but offers +1 - +3 Evasion. This type of armor does NOT also add scratch slots. It's that good.

Should be interesting to see where Darrington Press takes DAGGERHEART next. After about 35 play hours in 7 sessions, we're excited to dig deeper, like we do with all games.

Go get 'em. -B