Dungeons of Drakkenheim Case Study for Made to Measure/Archetype Adventure Design (Patreon)

EDIT: I've added the current term of "Archetype" design to the title to make it easier for people to find my writing on the approach.

As part two of my series sharing the development process of what I'm currently calling Made to Measure adventure design, I decided to use a popular campaign book that I have actually played through entirely: Dungeons of Drakkenheim by the Dungeon Dudes, published by Ghostfire Gaming.

To unpack and explore some of the ideas I’m developing for this adventure design method, I’m going to work through a case study of how I’d adapt a well-regarded adventure book that I’m familiar with from playing it. I don’t play a lot of modules, so it was easy to pick Dungeons of Drakkenheim as the place to start. I completed an 80-something session campaign earlier in 2024, playing on StartPlaying.Games.

Spoiler note – I haven’t read the full book for this campaign, and my DM changed a number of things from the book (he told us as much), but this essay will still include some spoilers if you want to stay totally fresh on the campaign/setting.

Setting the Table

The first thing to do is to figure out what the archetypes are going to be.

The Drakkenheim-specific character backgrounds are a great foundation, and are probably the closest thing in existing adventure design (that I know of) to Made-to-Measure design. This makes it a bit easier to adapt for Made-to-Measure design.

When I played Drakkenheim, these were presented as options, but we were not directed toward these backgrounds as “You should consider these first since they’ll present the best connections to the setting.” Now it’s important to note that this campaign was a paid game on Start Playing, so the DM was, understandably, very hands-off in “Here’s what you should play”. Instead, he worked to support what the players (his clients) were interested in bringing to the table.

I’m not going to do the entire process of making this adaptation, but in the interest of developing the idea, if hypothetically the Dungeon Dudes hired me to adapt Dungeons of Drakkenheim for Daggerheart using the Made to Measure approach, here’s the outline of what I’d do:

Picking our Archetypes

There are five new Backgrounds in the book, and each has a variant (Continental Nobility has the variant Last of the Line, Mageborn has the variant Malfeasant Mage, etc.). Those core Backgrounds become the base for our archetypes, and we include the possibility of using the variants through the background questions associated with each archetype.

Taking the new backgrounds as our archetypes for Dungeons of Drakkenheim (I might change some of the names, put for this exercise, let’s leave them as-is), we have:

• Continental Nobility

• Mageborn

• Devoted Missionary

• Survivor

• Treasure Seeker

It seems to me that the different archetypes have different levels and types of effort needed to get them strongly invested in the setting.

Continental Nobility
For a member of the Continental Nobility, what is their connection to the nation of Westemär and to Drakkenheim in specific? Are they seeking deeds that prove they/their family are the rightful owners of some contested property? Do they seek to restore the noble line? To take the throne themselves? For this Archetype to work, there needs to be enough connection between the PC and the power structures of Westermar for other factions to want to use or dispose of the noble, and ideally, the noble should be in a position to benefit greatly from secrets revealed through exploring the ruins of Drakkenheim. A noble will have an automatic connection to the Hooded Lanterns, since they want to restore the royal line and repopulate Drakkenheim.

Mageborn
Any Mageborn could be interested in Drakkenheim due to the incredible magical potential of Delerium. In 5e, Delerium dust powers almost any material component requirement. In Daggerheart, I’d have Delerium dust be a consumable that you can spend to instantly refresh a Once per Short Rest/Long Rest ability (I’d probably want to do that even for a non-magic-using character by reframing Delerium as an all-purpose power source.)

Depending on how Delerium is used or spreads, the balance of power maintaining the Edicts of Lumen and the Amethyst Academy could be totally overthrown, and any number of Mageborn characters might be interested in changing that balance and/or seeking power from Delerium itself. But for these archetypes, we want to think about what the setting asks of or influences the character as well as what the character wants from the setting.

Devoted Missionary
The fall of Drakkenheim was an apocalyptic event, and so it’s not surprising that any number of people would come to Drakkenheim as a divine calling, seeing Delerium as a sacrament or as evidence of spiritual corruption. We can extend this archetype to anyone coming to Drakkenheim for spiritual or religious reasons.

Daggerheart has fewer inherently religious classes than 5e (just the Seraph), but it’s easy to flavor other classes with a religious tint (A Wizard could easily be a priest if you focus on the Splendor domain). Any character connected to the world of the spiritual has an automatic hook for interaction via divine revelation (dreams, visions, etc.) and they’re well-positioned for both the Followers of the Falling Fire and the Silver Order to try and influence and/or recruit, which makes them easier to integrate into the faction game. No matter what approach they take, at least one of those factions will be unhappy, unless the PC can somehow thread the needle and get the two factions to team up.

Survivor
The Survivor archetype is probably the one that is most instantly personal in terms of generating buy-in for the character. You’re from the city and you lived through the fall, plus you already have a relationship to the ruined city. But we also need to determine how and why Drakkenheim and the factions are interested in/want to gain influence on the character. Does someone in one of the factions have a connection to them that they’ll try to leverage to bring the PC closer into alignment with that faction? Why did this PC survive, what did it cost them, and who in or around Drakkenheim wants something from this survivor for what they’ve seen, done, or have. Are they the last person to see a member of the royal family? Do they secretly hold an item that is key to retrieving or reclaiming something important in the city?

Example: In my game, the Queen of Thieves claimed to be my character’s parent and tried to bring her into the fold. Our DM played the Queen’s interest as genuine but she was still vengeful (killing one of the PCs with assassins)

Treasure Seeker
Drakkenheim has lots of treasure, but it’s intensely dangerous, and there’s treasure outside of Drakkenheim. Why are they here specifically rather than anywhere else? Are they here for specific treasure, are they on the outs with other treasure hunters and have been pushed out of their territory. Or is there a specific treasure they’re here hunting for?

This archetype may be the hardest of the five to connect to from the setting side. The best option is probably using a faction to ask the PC to retrieve specific treasure in exchange for riches and/or their pick of other treasures in the target location (“bring me the relic and you can take anything else from the cathedral you want”)

Personal Quests

Motivation is incredibly important for characters in rpgs. Even moreso in Daggerheart, since it is character-driven. Fortunately, Dungeons of Drakkenheim already has a section about PC personal quests, establishing that each PC has a specific goal they’re pursuing as the reason for why they’re coming to the most dangerous place in the world.

These are interesting because having them creates some mix-and-match options for our Made-to-Measure design. There are 12 example quests listed, so your Continental Noble might not want to Claim the Throne, but instead Find a Cure for mutation. 5 backgrounds and 12 quests. I wouldn’t create 17 archetypes to track/use in the adventure, but keeping the 5 backgrounds with 12 options for quests creates too many combinations.

So instead, since the quests are tied to specifics elements in the module, I think we can leave personal quests more as-is and focus on the backgrounds as our Archetypes.

For example, my Drakkenheim character had the Urchin background, but could be slotted in here as the Survivor archetype. She was born in Drakkenheim and spirited away shortly before the meteor struck, then returned to the city with a goal of retrieving a powerful divine relic (assigned by her Celestial Warlock patron). She ended up being Secret Royalty, which could be another archetype, though that’d either need buy-in from the character creation level or when the connection is revealed. I like the idea of “secret” archetypes that a player could opt in to for their character.

I’d present it as: “There are some secret Archetypes that your characters that we can bring into play or during the campaign. If you’re up for a big reveal about your character’s backstory, let me know but I don’t want to force more backstory on people without their buy-in.”

This Made to Measure approach already requires a bit of specific trust from the players to give some room to the GM to made adjustments and fill in gaps to connect things solidly to the module.

Making it Work

As I experienced it, Dungeons of Drakkenheim is a sandbox-style adventure with some point-crawl elements, where locations can be explored in a variety of orders. A few storylines advance with or without the PCs’ involvement, providing some sense of time progressing in the setting.

Given that, I think the majority of the work here is ensuring that we know what to ask of players in making characters that have a strong enough connection to the setting to feel like the campaign is about them and their relationship to Drakkenheim. The whole world isn’t about them, the setting is alive and moves on its own, but the PCs aren’t just playing through Drakkenheim – they’re powerfully invested in it and tied to both its past and its future.

Connections

Dungeons of Drakkenheim also has a basic character connections system on p.7, which we can use for some inspiration, potentially adjusting one or more connection question per class if we want to tailor more to this world and module.

This is more general advice – I definitely recommend adding additional connection prompts based on your setting or adjusting your connection questions to fit the setting. Especially if you want a little help explaining how the party came together – you can look for forces/danger fronts in the setting that might place the PCs in the same place and/or situation. And if you’re using a campaign frame, you can adjust the background questions to become connection questions or you can create your own as a way to more closely connect your characters to one another and to the setting.

Challenges

No adaptation is without its challenges. Some of the work you’d need to do to run Dungeons of Drakkenheim with Daggerheart has more to do with the setting and the expectations baked into the book by dint of being designed for D&D 5e.

The first and maybe biggest one that comes to mind is how magic is treated in the Edicts of Lumen, which lay out rules/restrictions for people that can do magic (in the setting, the term is “mageborn”).

In Daggerheart, 7 of the 9 classes can use magic (all except Warrior and Guardian), and 7 of the 9 domains have spells among the domain abilities. Since the module was written for D&D 5e, which has more non-magical classes (Fighter, Monk, Barbarian, and Rogue, though most of these have magic-using subclasses, and both Monk and Barbarian have supernatural/supranatural base class features), there's some reframing to do. Additionally, D&D more of a divide between types of magic, while in Daggerheart, magic is organized by domain.

So there’s some questions to answer: Do you adapt the Edicts of Lumen to only focus on spells and magic from certain domains? (The Splendor and Grace domains are fine for anybody, no prob, but the Arcana, Midnight, and Codex domains are regulated, etc.) What domains do people consider to be "religious" magic, what they'd expect from the Silver Order or the Followers of the Falling Fire?

If the Midnight or Grace domains are regulated, do the Rogues/Thieves’ guilds have relationships with the Amethyst Academy that ensure their independence, allowing the Midnight and Grace domain-wielding Rogues to remain independent? How does the setting change if magic-using Rogues are governed by the Amethyst Academy? Does this change the relationship between the Queen of Thieves’ faction and the Amethyst Academy? Between the Silver Order and the Amethyst Academy, etc?

There's more work to do in filling out this adaptation, but I hope this essay has served you well as a way of exploring and describing the process of Made to Measure design.

Questions for you: 

What did I miss from the book itself?
Is anything in this explanation unclear?
What other questions do you have about the Made to Measure approach?