**Come here and talk about anything!**

This post will stay stickied for (at least) the week-end. Please enjoy this space where you can talk about anything: your last game, your current project, your patreon, etc. You can even talk about video games, ask for a group, or post a survey or share a new meme you've just found. This is the place for small talk on r/rpg.

The off-topic rules may not apply here, but the other rules still do. This is less the Wild West and more the Mild West. Don't be a jerk.

----------

This submission is generated automatically each Saturday at 00:00 UTC.

**Come here and talk about anything!**

This post will stay stickied for (at least) the week-end. Please enjoy this space where you can talk about anything: your last game, your current project, your patreon, etc. You can even talk about video games, ask for a group, or post a survey or share a new meme you've just found. This is the place for small talk on r/rpg.

The off-topic rules may not apply here, but the other rules still do. This is less the Wild West and more the Mild West. Don't be a jerk.

----------

This submission is generated automatically each Saturday at 00:00 UTC.

I'm not trying to be mean or anything like this, but I've found this subreddit has been a bit difficult to use to get recs or discussions going about games because a lot of people seem to simply post the name of a game in the comments and then don't explain why they've done that.

I think it'd be more interesting to have people explain why they recommend a game or why a certain mechanic in a given game works for them/doesn't work for them, instead we end up with posts asking people questions about games and the replies are mostly people posting a TTRPG system's name or mechanic without explaining why.

I'm here to see people's opinions, not their reading list!

Since I love reading reviews of systems by people who've actually played them, I endeavor to post my own. You can skim my past opinions here and here to see if my tastes align with yours. This post is long overdue because people keep beating me to the punch (examples 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

I've now played Daggerheart for a year and can opine on its qualities! TLDR:

• I favor less crunchy and more narrative systems.
• I liked the character building, hope mechanic, cards, and resource pools more than expected.
• I disliked the simplicity, complexity, fear mechanic, and combat depth more than expected.
• It's not for me.

Background

I am not a Critical Role person, and Daggerheart was not on my list of games to try. My longstanding group is in a taste-testing phase, though, and someone suggested it. I didn't realize at the time that we'd be playing a longer campaign. We now have about 1 year / 20 sessions / 5 levels under our belt.

I can also admit that I had a vague air of superiority while approaching this system 😤. I mostly know about Critical Role as "those people who popularized 5E." I don't mean to disparage their creative talents or the massive team that contributed to the product, but... I assumed this would be their celebrity cash grab version.

Things I liked

It's not a cash grab! There is a legitimate system here. There is a lot of content and thoughtful rules. There is a lot of absolutely gorgeous art. It looks D&Dish enough that you could onboard new players who want that experience, but it's also different enough from D&D (in a lighter, more narrative vein) that I actually think it might show new players a better time.

Character building is fun. I tend to play lighter systems. With that comes less room for non-diegetic character growth and shorter average campaigns. Daggerheart feels a bit closer to Dungeon World after you add on Class Warfare: there are lots of fun options to stare at and theorize about. The pick-two domain system is incredibly elegant, creates a bunch of interest overlap archetypes, and cleverly allows classes to share abilities while still preserving unique niches. It's lovely. The amount of items is also fun in a "shopping for presents" way (but more on this later).

Hope is exciting. A quick primer: Daggerheart has you rolling 2 different d12s for most things, and if the lighter d12 is highest you earn Hope (to a max of 6). Among other uses, it can be spent for a small bonus while rolling. This is actually fun: you spend 1 hope for a ~50% chance of getting it right back. It has a vague "energy gauge" feel of seeing a number go up and knowing you can do something with it later. I can almost see my maxed-out Hope meter glowing.

Cards are a great tool. Okay, maybe this is a cash grab, but it works. It's a wonderful way to represent abilities. It keeps them concise and uniform. It makes them fun to flip through. We played digitally using Demiplane + Roll20, so no physical cards were purchased, but if you shelled out for them in-person I know they'd be a blast to lay out, flip through, vault, all of that. As someone who made a physical card-based TTRPG, I'm a fan.

The resource pools worked. Daggerheart has HP, stress, armor, and hope (which I already mentioned). You may have heard how damage works: you get to roll big attacks against a target's lower/upper thresholds to see whether they suffer 1, 2, or 3 damage. On one hand, it's a lot of resources and numbers to track. On the other hand: every resource pool caps out around ~8, and you spend and recover them pretty quickly. It was actually a lot of fun to juggle, and added some character differentiation. I admire the designers for enabling the fun of large attacks while still keeping HP tightly constrained.

Things I didn't like

It's too simple. Wait, didn't I say I like lightweight systems? Daggerheart feels like it's carrying the torch of games like PbtA and BitD, just with more content and richer production values. But in practice, it felt... flat? There are 36 listed items for tier 1, yet it barely mattered which one I was wielding. So many of the abilities are just flavorful ways to deal damage, inflict the 3 status effects, or change your position.

And yet it's too complex. If all these choices are primarily for flavor, I don't need all these mechanics bolted on that will ultimately amount to very little. Again, wading through the item list took a while. There are loads of differentiating factors. There are 9 classes x 21 cards = 189 cards to browse. Level-up choices that would be fast when staring at a 2-page PbtA playbook start to feel artificially inflated. Again: it was fun to weigh these choices. But after a year, none of them really justified the time investment for me.

Fear is half of a good mechanic. Quick summary: just under 50% of player rolls give the GM a Fear token (max 12), which is a fancy way to control pacing. Fear lets you attack with enemies, take enemy turns, and just generally do GM things. I am 100% in favor of codifying tempo with tokens; we did it in that card-based RPG we made, 6 years ago. But Fear is handed out arbitrarily, independent of success or failure. That kills it for me. You can be rolling great but have a GM with max fear; you can be failing all day but the GM is bone dry. I'm biased here, but I think narrative control should oscillate based on success/failure instead of a coin flip.

Combat was shallow. All my complaints are crystallized here. Fear's coin flip makes turn order and enemy strength erratic. There are too many things on my character sheet, but I always just attack. I could do cool narrative stuff, but because my cards all specify strict things like "Once per rest" I feel like I'm breaking the rules if I abuse them for flavor. I could ignore my cards and just do narrative stuff anyways, but then why have a system at all?

Closing thoughts

I will say that Daggerheart impressed and surprised me. I approached it with disdain, and found a robust system with good ideas. But there are plenty of good systems that I don't personally find fun, and I think Daggerheart belongs in that pile.

It's still higher than Pathfinder, though 😉

So you all know the expression "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle" that has a lot in terms of sheer quantity but very little depth for any of its components. What ttrpg would fit the opposite expression in your mind?

I see people who've played exclusively online for years and I can't tell if they genuinely prefer it or if it's just the only way to get a group together. For me something is lost when I can't read the room physically. But maybe I'm just bad at online play. If you love it, what makes it work? If you tolerate it, what's the thing you miss most?

I've been playing a witch in a Daggerheart campaign for several sessions, and we recently achieved level 2 and I feel like I must be missing something.

I just feel so weak. I never seem to get enough Hope to use my most consequential abilities, while the GM always seems to have more than enough Fear, and the freebie abilities I have like Vicious Entangle or Blighting Strike either feel too easily overcome with the GM's banked Fear, or barely better than a basic staff attack in practice.

While I've played a variety of RPG systems over the years (D&D 5e, Open D6, Savage Worlds, VtM, etc.), I just feel like something is not clicking with Daggerheart for me. My character just feels so weak and my powers and abilites feel so inconsequential. It feels like if the GM wanted to be hardcore with Fear, he probably could have steamrolled the party nearly every fight.

Instead of feeling like I'm being clever and finding unique ways to solve problems with the environment, my characters abilities and equipment, I feel like the GM is arbitrarily allowing things to stick or succeed, when he has the resources to end temporary abilities.

I just feel I'm either feast or famine with Hope, and the only thing it actually makes sense for me to spend Hope on is my Witch ability that lets me turn a failed roll from myself or an ally into a succes with Fear.

Can someone with more experience in the system explain what I am missing here?

My cards: Human, Highborne, Vicious Entangle, Blighting Strike, Hedge Witch, Natural Familiar

Hi guys,

I'm thinking for a while now of having a roleplaying game in an ancient greece setting but I'd like to hear your opinions and recommendations what system would be fitting. I own Agon and Scion hero but haven't played any of them yet. Do you know something else or have you played anything similar? I'd love to hear from you!

While we all know the popular RPGs (D&D, Pathfinder, BitD) and so one and so forth, I have to ask, does anyone know of any lesser known RPGs that you wish more people knew of?

For example, while I have Shadowdark and 7th Sea, I also have games like Monsterpunk, Nyx, and For Coin and Blood 2nd edition, just to name a few.

Any suggestions for TTRPGs with “pamphlet-sized” rules? I want something with a short page or two of rules that’s quick and easy to roll up characters and start a game on the fly, so in case of a power outage I can have an easy game to keep people entertained and kill time.

I'm a GM who doesn't have a lot of prep time, but still wants to run some games. My go-to in this situation is always a fantasy megadungeon or hexcrawl, since those require a lot of upfront prep but can be prepped in an hour or less between individual sessions.

Are there other types of games with a similar prep curve, requiring lots of upfront pre-campaign work but easy to maintain session to session? I'm especially interested in scifi and other non-fantasy genres, but that's not a hard requirement.

I'm not really looking for specific game systems, moreso just types of campaigns.

I'm looking at running a game inspired by old paganism and celtic folklore, and I'm looking for a system to run it in. I don't want to play D&D or Pathfinder, and I'm looking for something a little more narrative in its focus. Any suggestions?