The Joy of Playing To Find Out (Patreon)

Unsurprisingly, I am playing a lot of Daggerheart right now.

One of my groups started a new campaign recently and while I had a lot of ideas about where the story could go thanks to the background and connections prompts the players had answered and our discussions about the setting (using one of the campaign frames in the core book), I didn't have much specific direction going into yesterday.

I spent about an hour updating sheets and my Roll20, then doing some prep, pulling likely environments and adversaries for the opening I had in mind, with the characters traveling across the region. I had potential waylays in mind, and knew that I didn't need much else since this first session was also going to be a fair bit of letting the players settle into their characters a bit more.

As we got started, I asked the players what the PCs have done so far in the region, what the adventures they'd had forming their connections were like.

And one player suggested that his character had been retrieving items for a contact, referring to things we discussed in our session zero.

So I decided to start there, as it'd give us a view into the 'main' settlement for the campaign and it'd let me establish some NPCs before the group went off on their own.

Two and a half hours later, I'd used approximately 2% of my prep but everyone had a great time.

This, for me, is exactly how I want to be able to play Daggerheart. Following the GMing Principles and Best Practices, as well as the broader principles of story games/narrative games, I started us zoomed in with 1 PC talking to 1 NPC, broadened the scene to include the other PCs, giving them each spotlight in turn, and then I interrupted the everyday with an immediate threat/danger - someone getting mugged in an alleyway.

By following my storytelling instincts and weaving in what we as a group had established about the setting and the characters (including the detail of deciding that the mugging victim was a member of the most common ancestry in the region) I was able to spin "You drop off loot to a contact" and "There's a mugging in the alley" into what I expect will be a recurring sub-plot/arc for the campaign and threaded elements of that plot into the main plot while integrating the backstory and objectives of three of the four PCs in the first session to get them all pointed in roughly the same direction.

The group learned about a local faction, that faction's status in the city, some about how law enforcement works in the city, the overall architectural and social vibe of the city, and some of the dominant pressures/tension points facing communities in the area. All this with an amount of setting material no more than 10% as big as most ttrpg setting books.

In keeping with the design principle of "Draw Maps and Leave Blank Spaces" (most commonly associated with Dungeon World, I honestly don't know if it goes back farther than that), the campaign frames are maps, but maps with large blank spaces. They come with maps, but those maps are largely un-labeled before the group brings them to the table.

We had enough scaffolding to get our feet and then be able to take off running.

In the largely improv-driven session, I would keep things on-track by constantly trying to reincorporate story elements and to ask myself questions like "How does this fit the larger picture?" and "Is there a greater meaning here?", using the character's abilities and backstories as connective tissue and permission to make narrative moves that put them in the crossroads of history for the setting.

This was all, undeniably, supported by the fact that I know the system incredibly well, including the campaign frames structure and the frame in question. And I'm playing with a group that already knows the game and where we've played together for going on 8 years.

But the thing that stays with me, that makes me feel like Daggerheart is in a great place and is on a good path to earning a spot within the market, is the degree to which I feel that the game can do what it tells you it is good for, and how from the core resolution mechanic to the setting and setting-building structures in the book, the game provides tools for very flexible, player-driven storytelling that helps the GM make sense out of coincidences and unlikely outcomes.

If you want to hear me talk more Daggerheart, you can watch this video with GM tips from this summer (referencing the 1.4 beta build) https://youtu.be/LX1DcKFFtcs and Patrons should check the feed for another video exclusive to them, on Environments.

When the game is out out, I'll be able to talk about the final version and will probably be writing and making videos about it a lot. :)