rdonoghue.bsky.social
Not writing nearly as much about RPGs or Agile as I would like to be.
3,970 posts
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206 following
Getting Started
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Thank you so much!
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Honestly, I’d love that!
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Better is something, at least. Can hope it trends.
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Go for it!
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So, with that, thank you to anyone who actually made it through this whole thing. I genuinely don't know if it's more baffling that I wrote it all or that people read it all, but either way, it's been a lot of a fun (and a somewhat painful lesson that blogging is a better choice for some material)
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All in all, that seems pretty doable.
So, I'm excited. Which is a nice place to be with any new game. The reality of it may delight, or it may fall apart at the table, but finding out is half the fun.
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Beyond that, of course, I need to familiarize myself with the SRD and general open-use policy and resources for the game. Partly to see what I can make use of, partly to see what sort of things I might make in the future.
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The other reason for using tokens - that it provides a visual language for numbers - is in my awareness, but is less of a big deal. In theory, it allows someone to glance at a pile and see if it's wrong, but that's kind of an antipattern. It's real value is clarity on video, which is not a concern
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All of this feeds back to the tokens idea, because takign the time to gather up the right number of tokens before rolling serves a very similar purpose. You can do the math *before* the anxiety stones get rolled.
And, heck, if you do it that, way, you can add them in whatever order you like.
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Even if you're not totally buying the inverse order, keep an eye out for this pattern. I think you'll find there are people who are perfectly capable at math and rules who describe themselves otherwise because they keep putting themselves in the position of needing to perform it at top speed.
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Why does this matter? In most situations, there are multiple modifiers to a die roll, and they can be confusing under the best of circumstances. Trying to figure them out AFTER the die has rolled adds an element of performance anxiety to it - you want to do it fast and you don't want to look stupid
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Some of this speed improvement may be cognitive, and I'm not in a position to speak to that, but I can confidently assert that some of it is *behavioral* - specifically, it is a forcing function. You need to have determined the bonus before you even pick up the die.
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What Ken found is that there's a measurable increase in speed for players in going from D12 + X to X + d12, but this is hard to persuade people of because it seems so counterintuitive to those of us who have been raised on dice first.
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The first is the simple fact that people process numbers differently, and physical tokens may be easier for them to process. So, rock on!
The second is a little bit more nuanced, and full credit to @kenburnside.bsky.social for his passion and research on the topic.
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This struck me as very odd, and I'm not sure it's something I could ever bring myself to do, but I am somewhat more cognizant of the potential benefits of the approach, which I see as twofold.
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So you don't have to search, there's a linguistic quirk in DH where the bonus on a roll is described in terms of tokens. Rather than rolling with a plus 3, you are rolling with 3 tokens. And the expectation is that they are literal, physical tokens, physically placed as part of the roll.
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I'm also making a mental note to try inverting the language of bonuses (so as to make it X plus 2d12, not 2d12 + X). This came out of a subthread from this where some folks weighed in very thoughtfully on the use of tokens in rolling in DH.
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But I *will* try it before I start solutioneering. That seems like a fair compromise.
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I am very good at keeping track of *some* things in my head, but I am also someone who writes down the values of each chip color on an index card at the start of every poker night.
So, frankly, I don't really trust myself with that level of complexity.
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I mean, yes, I have enough different tokens around the house that I could very literally have a different token type for every possible use, but then it becomes a game of remembering what the red glass ones means vs the yellow clay ones.
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Daggerheart seems tremendously averse to writing anything down in play, and instead, everything is just tracked with one set of tokens or another.
I'm willing to give it a try, but as soon as I have two piles of tokens that mean two different things, I am pretty much inviting disaster and confusion
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I'd say I'll have to gather tokens, but who am I kidding? I have more tokens on hand than will EVER see use.
That said, this *is* going to lead to some experimentations in play.
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That is, I suspect the sweet spot is "Strictly follow the rules for turn taking most of the time, but if it's *really* necessary to break them for rule of cool, then you can do it."
But that's just a theory, I need to test to really see if it's a multitool or a breakglass option.
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The elephant in the room is going to be the turn taking.
I've obviously read those sections several times, and will probably read them several more times. My *hunch* is that I need to ignore the "Take your turn any time" as more of a fallback than a central piece of guidance.
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In the short term, I'm just going to sit on my discomfort with the domains not really existing in the fiction. Once I have my feet under me, that is something addressable with a frame.
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Part of doing that would be familiarizing myself with the cards. As it stands, I've skimmed them, and some patterns are evident, but nothing is going to reveal that more effectively than actually going through the process of selecting some.
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On the rules end, I'd definitely need to review things enough to internalize them, as well as make sure I have assets for things like tables and stuff, so as to minimize lookup time. Obviously I'd make half a dozen characters or more, until I fee familiar with the process.
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Setting aside the prospect of finding a cool frame online, if I were working from the book, I'd probably grab 5 banners or Umbra as starting points, but alter or replace the inciting incidents to be more in line with my tastes and table. So, that works.
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My instinct to make my own frame is *strong*, but I also realize that I could use that as an excuse to delay forever, so I will probably pick a couple of frames as possibilities, evenif I have to tune them a little.
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So, I think I can get players. Cool. What next?
Well, I need a premise. I could use one of the presented frames, or make my own. I also suspect that there are probably already dozens, if not hundreds, of homebrew frames out there.
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The fourth audience is strangers and newbies, and for them I must defer. DH *looks* like it could make a good con game or pickup game, but so much of that sort of thing relies on the GM's level of comfort and flexibility that I can't really judge it yet.
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There is a hypothetical third audience of folks who know D&D and D&D adjacent games, but don't venture far outside the bubble.
Obviously, it's very important how that audience responds to DH, but I am not in a position to judge. We just don't have enough of those locally.
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I *think* I can get their interest. The trappings of D&D will kind of work against it in this regard - Daggerheart *looks* more complicated than it is - so I'll need to do some dedicated prep to reduce the potential overwhelm at the outset.
But if I can get them through chargen, I'm optimistic.
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My second audience are my drama and story heavy players. They play Amber or Fate and can occasionally be convinced to try mechanically heavier fare, but it takes some doing. They're not averse to the *idea* of D&D, but the bookkeeping diminishes their fun. They are my real test.
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Even before we get into frames and homebrewing, we have the simple question of *who* I would want to run this for.
The first audience are my experienced nerds. Folks who have played a wide variety of games and are generally up for anything. They're something of a gimme - we'll try anything.
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Ok, so the real window into what I think about the game is what I intend to *do* with it.
I intend to run it, that's not even at question. The only challenges to that are logistics, but that is always the way. But *how* will I run it?
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And that is, to be clear, a completely legitimate difference in taste. They're not things with right or wrong answers. But, importantly, it's clear there are *reasons* Daggerheart made those decisions, which is worlds better than a sense that they were just kind of faking it.
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And lest it sound like I'm throwing shade without explanation, I can kind of sum it up as follows - whenever presented with a choice to do the simple thing or to introduce complexity for a benefit, DH choses simplicity.
I think this is MOSTLY right, but I think some of the trade offs fall flat.
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If it's not clear, I applaud this, if sometimes a bit warily. Opinionated games are almost always more interesting to me, and I immensely respect principled design, even in cases where I might disagree with it.
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So when Daggerheart embraces that *ethos*, but does so in all the trappings and structure of a modern D&D-ish game? It's jarring and confusing, sure, but also exciting.
And it elevates the DGAF to a whole new level.
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But, historically, deviating from that kind of thinking has also meant deviating from the *shape* of modern D&D.
Going back to the look and feel of much older D&D products is usually the marker for "This is D&D, but it's not" :vague hand gesture: "All *that*"
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One could assert that this sort of completionism has been a backbone of D&D.
Now, obviously, that is far different from it being a universal truth. There have been plenty of folks who love D&D without leaning into that particular line of approach.
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It's not a universal stance, of course, but it's a significant thread in the gaming community, especially historically. The drive for imaginary things to make sense (or, better yet, be RIGHT) is something you can see as far back as Gygax.
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I'm not sure if it's clear to every reader, but this is a very significant difference in mindset from a lot of the D&D and D&D adjacent audience.
To generalize, people who like applying rules and math to their imaginations like to have things MAKE SENSE, and that drives a LOT of design.
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It's answer to that is no answer at all. There are 18 ancestries, and they're just not going to stress about it. if *you* want to stress about it, that sounds like a you problem.