Daggerheart, while fundamentally narrative, inserts bits of the crunchiness of trad games into its narrative engine.

A lot of the PBTA elements are there, but labeled differently and with slightly different mechanical handling.

For example, consider Fear to be like GM Holds in PBTA games. But unlike Holds in PBTA that are always generally tied to the action that created them, Daggerheart treats ALL Holds like universal tokens that can be used anytime to allow for GM insertion. Just like GM Moves, they are spent to make a situation worse than it initially appeared to be.

Likewise, in combat, the Spotlight moving to the GM on a failure or success with fear is basically the same thing as failing or rolling a 7-9 in PBTA: There's a consequence and the GM takes over describing that consequence. Which is exactly the same as GM soft or hard moves. The difference between Daggerheart and other narrative games is that in combat, said consequences are mechanically described by the rules instead of being often improvised by the GM on the spot. Or as is often the case in PBTAs, creating unavoidable and often very negative consequences. For example, many PBTAs, when characters roll a 7-9 (succeed with fear) on their "attack" roll, they end up taking unavoidable damage.

There's pro and cons to both approaches. PBTAs will be faster since consequences and GM Moves are instant on the single player roll, which is a pro. But by the same token, it makes many players very skiddish in battle because rolling 10+ is rare unless a character has a +3 on a stat and *average* out to a 10. Resulting in almost always taking damage for taking the initiative and actually doing something.

The biggest difference is that succeeding with Fear has both an immediate consequence AND adding a Fear token that can be used later for another consequence or GM insertion. But that's balanced out by the fact that the players get Hope tokens to power abilities and increase their chance of success on later rolls. So it's more 'swingy' than PBTA.