It was a full house and it went really well. What struck me was how easy this game was to pick up. Within just a few scenes folks really started to work together and move the story forward. The game has this unique balance of narrative-sharing between the GM and players that I haven’t quite found in other TTRPG platforms. While the GM is fully capable of driving core worldbuilding - it opens the door for players to actively be part of it, and not only that, actively narrate and describe their characters and actions.
Part of this is the near-ellimination of the combat-slog. The combat slog I’ve found all-to-often in D&D, Pathfinder, and OSR games where combat becomes more like filling out a spreadsheet instead of an active and intense battle for life and glory. With Daggerheart, and especially leveraging Demiplane character sheets, it makes taking actions really simple. A click of the button and you make your roll, then tell us what happened!
Here’s an exchange I had during the game (roughly reconstructed):
GM (Me): “You land the killing blow on the skeleton, tell us how it went down?”
Player: “I swing my massive arms above my head, and with the strength of my arms I swing down with all force and wreck the skeleton - bones flying everywhere.”
GM (Me): “Only dust and bits remain!”
There’s engagement, there’s action. What’s more is there’s actually a story to tell, not a document to fill out or checkboxes to check. I can’t recommend this game enough.
Tokens#
As part of running the game on Roll20, I love to prepare maps. I’m really glad I found 2minute Tabletop’s asset packs - they are really amazing at not going overboard with “realism” that can, to a degree, over-complicate things. The art-style is somewhat like an American-drawn and Studio Ghibli mix. This lends the assets to being amazingly easy to modify and adjust, not to mention they have a token customizer tool. How cool is that!
Here’s a few tokens for the Daggerheart official quickstart I put together and customized:
Want to join? I am running this session reoccurring. See you there!
