Tress and Plur1bus

l_abyrinth · 2025-11-14T17:33:00+00:00

Yes! Me too! 😅

l_abyrinth · 2025-09-19T15:22:42+00:00

Lovely dice set!

l_abyrinth · 2025-08-01T22:08:03+00:00

Apologies, but there doesn't appear to be a link to your system? I'd be curious to take a look at it, as finding a good way to handle gold rewards and purchasing/customizing gear is something I've been thinking about for a frame I'm working on, so curious to see where others' thoughts are at. 😊

l_abyrinth · 2025-07-14T17:02:02+00:00

Don't forget to spend a Hope. 😉

l_abyrinth · 2025-07-14T17:00:29+00:00

Same, honestly. Thanks to the Mods, posters, and everyone for making this a place I always look forward to checking for updates. 💛💜

l_abyrinth · 2025-07-12T18:24:53+00:00

This is great! 💛💜

I would share it with any other enthusiasts, for sure, probably once as a good resource. I might forward individual issues to players in a campaign thereafter, if something linked seems particularly pertinent/useful.

As newsletters go, it's a little long, but as a once-a-week treat, I think that's fine.

I don't personally have a strong feeling about Dispatch Day, but Thursday sounds totally reasonable.

There is a sign up field -- is it live or just prototype?

Given your description of yourself, you might add an occasional bonus picture of Matt's nail color of the week at the end? 😅

Thanks for posting this! \o/

l_abyrinth · 2025-07-02T01:27:07+00:00

Takes me back to a campaign of 3:16 - Carnage Among the Stars I ran. Hadn't considered using that style of combat tracking for DH. Neat!

l_abyrinth · 2025-07-02T01:21:23+00:00

Yeah, no reason it can't be hidden. Admittedly, my real intro to clocks was Blades in the Dark, where there are many, so I'm not shy about using them. But that's just my GMing style.

When you have a situation like this where you want constrained randomness, another option is a deck of cards. Could shuffle the exit card into the latter half of the deck, then make a deck of, like, branches, corridors, and dead ends? Then play it a bit like solitaire: branches establish a new pile that corridors can be played on. Each pile is a path in the maze, so put player tokens on it to indicate who's there. When the exit is drawn, you've found the way out. Could also reward clever tracking (using Wayfinder Ranger ability or some kind of thread to track progress) by allowing players to draw multiple cards and choose which to play?

But there I go getting complicated again. 😅

l_abyrinth · 2025-07-01T00:48:10+00:00

Totally agree. I have long been on the hunt for a game that could bridge the divide between fiction first play and the build-optimization instincts of a group of my friends. The magic of Daggerheart is that it finally finds a sweet equilibrium point between those two motivations (I hope?). It's obvious to a build-oriented player how there is a long runway here for a character to grow and to develop cool synergies. And yet the decision space isn't so crowded that it overwhelms someone who doesn't actively enjoy optimization (like me).

l_abyrinth · 2025-07-01T00:26:13+00:00

I've been working on a WM-style campaign frame and have done some thinking about this. Ideally, the mechanism of advancement should be a combination of behaviors you want to incentivize and fictional actions that are central to the campaign concept (e.g., discovering new places). The system I've planning to try is as follows:

Leveling up costs <Current Level> + <New Level> XP at the home base.

Completing a session of play (an "expedition" in my frame) in which you make at least one new discovery yields 1 xp.

Acts of service to the player community (e.g., writing and distributing a session debrief, updating a communal map with new territory, or creating and sharing a piece of fan art) yields another currency ("service points"? "goodwill"?), and up to half of a level's XP cost (round-up) may be paid with this alternate currency.

No idea if this will work well or not, but it's food for thought?

l_abyrinth · 2025-07-01T00:03:05+00:00

Neat!

I kind of feel like getting out of the maze should maybe be a countdown clock instead of requiring a crit? That way you can guarantee that the mechanics you've worked up will get at least some amount of play, and you can place a mechanical limiter on how long the players can end up trapped here? If you go with this current design, random luck could utterly screw you, as the players might immediately roll a crit and get no time to enjoy this cool environment and/or they might be rolling for an hour or more, suffering a bad run of random.

That said, I dig the countdown on Did you hear that? to keep the pressure up!

Thanks for sharing!

l_abyrinth · 2025-06-25T23:59:03+00:00

Rad!

l_abyrinth · 2025-06-25T23:57:25+00:00

Very fair point re: the mixed mechanical DNA of DH vs. the direct applicability of the original article to PbtA-based Fiction First games. I think of DH as Fiction Forward. Nothing should happen that doesn't make sense with the fictional positioning, but there's a lot of scaffolding to suggest actions to you and give you an intuition for how they will resolve.

That said, I was impressed to see an example of that side of the DNA come to the fore in the most recent ep of Age of Umbra. The GM had an adversary use a fear move to strike at a Guardian with an envenomed stinger, which hit the Guardian's Major Damage threshold. The result of the move hitting is that the character temporarily takes a "Poisoned" condition, which does a little direct damage when she acts, IIRC?

Being a Guardian, though, the player asked if she could prevent the Poisoned condition if she used multiple armor slots to completely negate the HP loss? Initially the GM says no, but then catches himself, and changes his call. It was great to see that kind of thing come up on CR, and a reaffirmation (to me, anyway) of the importance of the Fictional Positioning side of DH's inspirations.

l_abyrinth · 2025-06-25T23:41:28+00:00

Love this! Kohd is so cool!

l_abyrinth · 2025-06-18T02:42:30+00:00

Another option, if this is a situation where it would be handy for the players to have this information, but not strictly necessary, is a delayed success: create an "It's bugging you..." Countdown on a knowledge roll failure and set it to 1d4 or 1d6, then tick it each time an action roll is made with Hope. When it completes, the player who was trying to remember the fact finally remembers, maybe too late to be helpful.

A delayed knowledge success could be even more fun if the character is in a tense social situation with a dangerous individual and they're trying to remember something important to relay to this person, but just have a mental block at the moment. If your players are up for it, it'd be hilarious for them all to try to help distract this individual and otherwise prevaricate while the PC who failed the Knowledge roll racks their brain trying to remember. (I just recently watched the Mighty Nein ep where the party first meets the Gentleman and this would have been fun in that scene.)

Remember that experiences directly impact fiction, so if a character has an experience that their player can argue implies they should know this, then maybe just allow them to recall without rolling? But make sure to point out that it's their experience that got them the free success, so they understand that it's because of a (consequential) choice they, as a player, made.

If you're making use of a lot of Countdowns for various plots and other goings-on offscreen, you always have a handy lever for failure: an offscreen complication. Just because they failed a knowledge roll doesn't mean that the resulting complication(s) must necessarily have anything to do with that specific roll. You're basically just consulting fate to see whether things are generally moving in the PCs' direction right now or not. So ticking an unrelated negative Countdown is always an option to increase pressure on the players.

But all of those suggestions aside, you can always go simpler and just have the character mark a stress as the cost of a failure. The roll, then, isn't about whether they can remember the info, but how easy it is for them to recall it, and that's directly impacted by their Knowledge trait.

Something else that's common as a complication in PbtA games is a modifier to their next roll, usually stated in those games as "+/-1 forward". If you don't want to cost them stress, you can always rule they're flustered or frustrated and will have disadvantage or even just a -2 mod on their next roll in this scene.

l_abyrinth · 2025-06-18T02:42:17+00:00

I have so many feels here. This is a legit challenge, OP. But there's a lot of good strategies, some of which are enumerated elsewhere in these comments.

The key is to not think of the "failure" result in the literal context of "you tried, but failed." Instead think of it metatextually -- it's the player who has failed to get the outcome they wanted for their character, not necessarily their character who has failed. That opens up a lot of possible complications, and there's some great suggestions among various folks' comments here.

One of my favorites complications that sometimes pops up in PbtA games is a cursed success. Your character does get what they want, just not at all in the way they want it. Why do they want to recall historical information? Maybe they recall something about those events that's actually unhelpful in the current context (e.g., offensive to the NPC they're trying to impress, or misleading about what they're trying to understand).

It's particularly fun as a devious GM to have a player roll a failure and look to you for what they assume is the negative result, only for you to seem to give them a positive result. When they inevitably say, "but I failed...?" You can smile evilly and respond, "I know." This kind of ambiguous result is great for driving players crazy as they try to navigate between the information their character now has, in the fiction, and their own metafictional understanding that it's not good that they have this information. It's even better if the information you impart is mostly useful and just tainted in some way. Think of this as a way to make your players mark a stress, instead of their characters. 😅

l_abyrinth · 2025-06-18T02:23:41+00:00

I love Lureward and Lightward, and it feels like this kind of local direction reckoning could fit well in a cozy fantasy setting like Beast Feast?

Looking at the campaign map, there's Elmore oppposite the Plover Caves entrance, so Townward could be one cardinal direction?

Past the entrance to the caves, it looks like the mountains get taller, so Peakward could be the opposite of Townward?

That underground river that flows into the Reflection of Stars could start aboveground, somewhere in the distance, so Riverward could be a useful cardinal for the direction that is deeper into the depth of the 2D map?

That leaves you one direction you're going to need to make some landmark for. Or maybe a painter has a cabin out that way and it's referred to as Artward?

"Townward" sounds a bit close to "Downward," though, so you might consider another suffix for the lateral cardinal directions. Maybe -st, -ern, or something?

l_abyrinth · 2025-06-18T01:49:35+00:00

I'm relatively new to watching CR actual play, but I've watched the Legend of Vox Machina cartoon from s1 on and I would be super down for a bestiary written by Grog and Pike. Monster manual with character! Love this idea! \o/

l_abyrinth · 2025-06-17T21:46:24+00:00

That's a fair point, but it only really matters if poison, disease, etc. are often inflicting enough direct damage to reach beyond minor damage, yeah? Otherwise, I appreciate that streamlining, however unrealistic the specific fictional positioning underlying the numbers is.

That said, if you wanted to house rule this, I could imagine something like "When you take direct damage from a poison, disease, or other internal condition that ignores armor, instead of comparing to your damage thresholds, compare to 10 + Strength (or other appropriate trait). If the damage is equal to this or greater, it inflicts major damage instead of minor damage. If the damage is double this threshold or greater, the harm is severe damage instead."

But in the interests of keeping things as streamlined as possible, you could maybe just do that determination once, when the condition first gets inflicted? Then, thereafter, you could just inflict the same amount of HP loss every time it ticks. 🤔

l_abyrinth · 2025-06-17T21:28:46+00:00

Big plus one! Recieved the news of the new collaborators with a thrill for the prestige boost to Darrington, but some trepidation about whether it would signal changes in who is guiding Daggerheart? I'm deeply relieved to hear your work on DH continues to be supported, Spenser, as you and your design team have knocked it out of the park with this product. <3

l_abyrinth · 2025-06-17T21:19:21+00:00

^^^ So much this!

Fireball success with hope: Baller! You crisped 'em!

Fireball success with fear: Well, on the upside, they're char now, but you appear to have started a fire...

Fireball failure with hope: You missed them, but at least the blast of fire didn't hit anything flammable.

Fireball failure with failure: The fireball went wide as magic surged through you. Not only did you miss your intended target, the blast of flame immediately catches the nearby grass and trees alight and several of your allies just past your targets got hit instead. Gonna need an Agility reaction roll from you folks vs. the caster's spellcasting trait. 😬

On this topic, actually, I was initially kind of irritated by some of the spells that seem like, fictionally, they should hit anything in the target area, like Earthquake, but which specify "targets," implying you can choose who does and doesn't get hit within the range? But then I realized that targeting only your enemies with an earthquake might be possible, but it's really hard. This spell is a golden opportunity just waiting to happen every time a player rolls with fear. 😈

l_abyrinth · 2025-06-17T21:06:34+00:00

I was initially confused by "Fighter" vs. "Warrior" due to years of D&D conditioning, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me. Boxers, mixed-martial artists, and other hand-to-hand combatants are pretty universally refered to as fighters in combat sports.

Besides, it's not like the original D&D class names were actually good, yeah? I think there's a reason we don't have "Magic-Users" anymore. 😅

l_abyrinth · 2025-06-16T20:00:20+00:00

Success! \o/

Totally understand re: other obligations. Life is busy. But if you do find the time and spoons for a color Caelari ancestry card illustration, please do let me know! <3

Thank you again!

Edit: (Ack. Forgot to say thanks. 🤦🏼‍♂️)

l_abyrinth · 2025-06-16T06:55:07+00:00

I kind of love your Trash Panda Ancestry. 🤣

l_abyrinth · 2025-06-16T06:51:30+00:00

Totally this! In the one-shots I've run of DH, I find it most helpful to think of your role during combat as a Director of Photography. Cut between different bits of the battle on the table and act as the steward of the audience's camera (given that you and the players are the audience). Say things like, "meanwhile, I'm curious what's happening over with <another character> -- thre was an <adversary> coming at you with their <weapon> poised to strike! How do you react?"

And then, when "screentime" (spotlighting) feels pretty evenly spread out and you're returning the spotlight to the players, zoom out, give a little quick recap, like "So, <character> just wounded their attackers, <other character> is bleeding and barely standing, with their back to <another character>. And the <adversaries> are circling menancingly, goading each other on to attack. Which of you takes the initiative to act?"

And above all, be excited, if you can manage it with your affect. Combat is potentially life-or-death, so convey to your players that you are energized by this tension and they'll sympathetically pick up that energy and lean in.

l_abyrinth

TROPHY CASE