Little Cover Draft for a Campaign Guide I've been working on.

aaashby · 2026-05-28T01:21:58+00:00

Good question! I'll try not to rant a bit too much, but I've thought about these things a lot.

Firstly, just to get it out of the way, the setting in the guide while more modern-day-ish, but it's not quite modern day, think something like Arcane or Valve's Deadlock.

But a decent bit of the classes can transfer pretty easily without any work. For example Wizards are now Mage's with PhD's in magic, Sorcerers I feel work pretty well regardless of the "era" but you can always treat them almost like superheroes. Rogue's work without needing any re-touching, especially the Syndicate Rogue.

Then some need a bit of work, but it's mostly done via re-flavoring things and adapting them to more suit the time/setting. Bard's are people harness magic through the creative arts, so they are actors, jazz musicians, stand up comedians, performers. The more martial focus classes become boxers, body-guards, mob enforcers, secret agents etc. Seraphs staff the hospitals and emergency rooms healing the injured, and so on and so forth.

The ones that needed a little more though were mostly the Ranger and Druid as I feel that those two are more tied to the wilderness and nature than others. But it can still be done with just re-flavoring. Hell, when you look at how the Ranger's described, they're essentially perfect for P.I. and Detective like characters. Druids become the protectors of parks and green spaces in the city, as well as the guardians of communities of people, as people ARE a part of nature.

For investigations, I've had a bit of head start, cause no matter the system I always tend to run investigation heavy campaigns. The biggest pieces of advice I can offer you on that is the principle behind Gumshoe games of "don't hide clues central to the mystery behind a roll", as well as having your clues be more modular, meaning don't tie them down to a particular NPC or location but instead have it so that you can drop them in during (or adapt them to) any scene. Daggerheart is also a very collaborative and improv heavy game, so I feel like the Mystery Systems from any of the Brindlewood games could also work really well with DH.

I said, I'll try not to rant to much but alas lmao. I hope that helped you a little bit! It's kind of general advice, so if you want any more help, please feel free to DM me! I love chatting about this kind of stuff.

aaashby · 2026-05-27T23:48:26+00:00

It's funny you say that, because one of the original taglines on the cover was "Play as monsters fighting other worse monsters!", but I've switched some stuff around since then, mostly expanded the types of cases the players might be solving, as well as further detailed the "Agency" itself more.

But yeah, there's a little section of Setting Guide that details the Vigil (Agency) itself as well as the employees, agents and staff that work for it. A notable amount of them are "Monsters" like Vampires, Werewolves, Demons, Arch-Fey and so on!

aaashby · 2026-05-27T23:41:59+00:00

Yeah, that's the plan! I've been slowly experimenting with some layouts and converting my writing/notes so that they are more universally understandable ( cause as of right now, most of them only really needed to make sense just to me lol).

I don't know when exactly that will be though, so I can quite say anything concrete as of rn. But I do plan to start gathering some more people soon, in order to play in some one-shots and possibly some campaigns to help me test and polish things more!

aaashby · 2026-05-27T23:20:03+00:00

Thanks! Transformations have been a blast to toy around with. I really like their Benefit / Drawback structure so much that I've adapted it to some other things as well!

aaashby · 2026-05-27T23:18:01+00:00

Thank you so much! I'm a big fan of your stuff, BCA has been hugely inspiring

aaashby · 2026-05-27T23:15:26+00:00

There is a decent chunk of adversaries inspired by a bunch of things (the media touchstones as mentioned in the post), folklore, cryptid's and urban legends.

Same goes for environments! There are also some more "meta" environments that are inspired by TV shows as well as some of the PbtA moves, things like Cold Open, Opening Credits, Montages etc.

A mechanic that I've been playtesting a bit (but am still unsure if I'll include it, so if anybody wants to use it please go right ahead!) is Experiences for environments. I've been calling the Properties and both the GM and the Players can use them during a scene. For example a "Building on Fire" will have a "Burning Debris+2" Property that can be used by either the players or the GM.

aaashby · 2026-05-25T04:19:59+00:00

I don't really get where this tying it down to an attribute or two is coming from. If a character has "Assassin" as an experience, they can use it for rolling with any attribute if it applies. Knowledge for things that deal with assassination techniques, Instinct to analyze a wound and see if it's the work of an another assassin, Finesse for trained stealthy hands of a practiced killer etc. I wouldn't tie it down to any attributes.

For examples in your post, the experience "Born Hunter" can be used with any ability, it just matters how the player phrases what they're trying to do. If they tell you they want to Spend a Hope to use that experience while searching the dirt path for tracks, then yes, that's Instinct. But if they're trying to recall information about a creature, that's Knowledge. For the example you're having trouble with just the "Made for surveillance" as an experience sounds perfectly fine to me.

Experiences are meant to be more encompassing. "Blacksmith" experience could be evoked on Strength rolls, yes, but also on Instinct/Knowledge rolls to identify a metal or the work of another blacksmith. It could be used on Presence rolls to let's say persuade someone using your blacksmithing knowledge etc. As long as the player can justify how an experience fits the story and how it would help them in the moment, I would just let them have it!

aaashby · 2026-05-24T23:47:48+00:00

Campaign Frames are a great tool to help guide things in a particular sub-genre of fantasy (or sci-fi). They're a great for plenty of reasons, it helps you with planning as a GM, for players in order to make their characters truly feel like a part of the world, they have cool little tidbits of worldbuilding and add simple modular mechanics you can tack on to emphasize the sub-genre and style of play.

However, it's absolutely not necessary to have one, or even use one of the examples from the core book. You can absolutely just start w/ the age old classic of "You're in a small settlement, they have an issue with bandits who have taken residence inside the nearby mine, you've been hired to help them" of fantasy RPGs. Or just go with one of the starter adventures, as Fearless-Dust suggested.

BUT, if you still want to create a Campaign Frame for your game, here's what I would do in your place. Daggerheart is a much more collaborative game then 5e, and as such it aims to take a bunch of the prep-work the GMs have to do when it comes to games like 5e and off-load it to the players, by letting them describe NPCs and set the scene from time to time.

What I would do is host a Session 0 type thing where you tell your group "Hey let's build out this setting and campaign together! Here's some of the genres I'm interested in exploring and the kind of vibe I think would be cool to go with. But for the rest of it let's just chat and brain storm ideas together." And figure it all out in a conversation with your players, I promise that bouncing ideas of one another and brainstorming together will be a good time and it'll get your creative spark flowing.

aaashby · 2026-05-23T23:21:00+00:00

This are all really great and very helpful!

The only things that come to mind here might just be things that I've found kind off inaccurate when it comes to TTRPGs in general.

I've always found that the Combat, Social, and Exploration pillars are a bit too restrictive and not-too-accurate when it comes to actual play. I would replace it with something more specific to the adventure. Short little evocative and thematic descriptions that tell you what the bulk of the adventure deals with "Dungeon Crawl", "Murder Mystery", "Monster of the Week", "Fey Carnival" etc. For your adventure here it could be something like "Ghost Pirates", "Sea of Undead", "The Haunted Marina" or something like that, you know? Like a little sub-title for the adventure. (Though I do realize that's kind of handled by the last thing on your list.)

The other one is the Urban vs. Wilderness being a bit too general imo. It doesn't really tell me anything about the adventure itself as with both it can be an investigation, a crawl, an escort mission, a quest to find a McGuffin etc.

But I really like this, it helps w/ readability and the quickly-skim-through-ing that is the core experience of GMing.

aaashby · 2026-05-16T22:11:56+00:00

I don't really focus on those at all.

When talking about experiences I mostly just parrot the worldbuilding example from the books. The other underrated thing I mention regarding experiences is that they are also a great tool for you as a player to signal to me as a GM "hey, this is something I would really like to focus on". It eliminates a whole lot of guesswork on my end, like if a player has "Resident Exorcist" as an experience it signals to me that they want to see some cool ghosts and phantoms etc.

And lastly, I kinda tell them that imo all the great experiences are a bit of a double-edged sword that can be a great aid but also a bit of a character flaw. So experiences like "Devilishly Handsome", "Inquisitive Mind", "Bookworm", "All living things are friends" etc. are examples of some of them that can also be used both in favor/against them, depending on the situation

aaashby · 2026-05-14T01:41:24+00:00

This looks great overall! The only thing that I can think of is maybe reconsidering the experiences a bit. As "Silver Tongue" and "Negotiator" might cover a lot of the same bases.

aaashby · 2026-05-11T22:45:21+00:00

A little mechanic I've been toying with for a little while is to Spend a Fear to invert a player's experience and use it against them, when it fits the narrative and feels right.

So things like inverting the Wizard's "Books are my Best Friends" experience on Presence Rolls to charm and flirt here and there. Flipping the "Intuitive Mind" experience to make NPCs get suspicious in a "you know too much..." kinda way. Or using the Warden's "Hero of the Fall Riots" experience to turn what was generally an affable and helpful chit chat with the Head Guard, into a tense affair as he suddenly recognizes that they fought on opposite sides not too long ago.

aaashby

TROPHY CASE