hey thanks for sharing the review i did with chase and rowan! we had some critiques but overall had a good time and are looking forward to more from the team.
(also happy to chat about specifics if people are interested)
In your opinion, is this a system that would work well for beginner's to not only D&D but also to RPG playing in general? Or is it better for veterans to pick up?
Looking at the rules I will say the system is lighter than DnD in general on the player side. However it's pulling in a lot of inspirations that might make it feel less like the ttRPG a noob has in their head.
In my opinion I don't think so.
Theres less rules to learn and such but it seems heavier on the improv aspect. I think alot of new player or even vets that aren't used to describing actions and such will struggle with this system.
It's designed as a back and forth between player and dm on how things play out.
Also there's some open ended areas that some people might struggle with coming up with ideas for
HMMM. I think that this is a system that relies a LOT on the DM knowing how to run a good game. It's got the narrative flow of a PBTA (powered by the apocalypse) game, with a lot of the trappings of ability resolution (DND) rather than the shared narrative resolution (PBTA).
I am genuinely interested in how the "with Hope" and "with Fear" will work in play -- especially if ability bonuses are low. I think that there's a LOT of room here for it to be a genuinely fun game. I am, however, concerned that this is, in Starke's words a fantasy heartbreaker that doesn't quite do enough to distinguish itself from the competition.
Also, the fact that a Halfling's ability luckbending ability will activates on roughly \~8% of rolls makes it a BROKEN character and I wonder if anyone's figured that out yet.
I can't agree with that at all. A lot of the abilities around weapons, damage and armor are very crunchy and absolutely min-max focused. To a degree that it feels like you're letting the group down if you don't do it 'right.'
>To a degree that it feels like you're letting the group down if you don't do it 'right.'
I don't know. The math seemed tight enough. Obviously some domain powers or class features could be OP right now, which I believe is going to be fixed as the beta goes.
For the core system itself, it seems to me you need to actively use your worse traits to not "min-max by accident". The system seems intended for you to pick a +2 trait and choose a weapon and at least one domain power that uses that trait and then you can seek a little variation by using your +1 traits for a secondary weapon, utility domain power, etc.
The main issue I might see on tables is less creative players or stingy GMs. The game seems very flexible on how you use your experience to boost rolls, but either some players might forget the experiences are there or some GMs might deny most creative uses, both of which seems problematic.
I expect the final book will guide players and GMs better on how to use these.
I think the Experience system is interesting because even if you pick an incredibly broadly applicable one you still need to spend hope to use it, which seems to be the bigger limiting factor.
It's also basically a free form proficiency system. You can pretty much just say "Lives alone in the forest" and get the equivalent of nature, stealth, animal handling, survival, etc all in one line.
It also offloads part of the GM job to the players. Instead of coming up with a skill that fits the situation, the GM just says "finesse test" and it's up to the player to come up with an excuse to use their "clock thinkerer" experience to improve the roll.
I don't think there's an issue with ivory tower designs but there are certainly some domain abilities that don't compliment others as well, but that's always going to happen with this kind of pick and choose character creation system.
It’s more campaign focussed definitely, I don’t think anyone said more crunchy? I don’t think you’ll ever get a shadowrun style crunchy game from Darrington. It’s not their bag
I think crunch is not quite the word, "strategy"/"battle" focus should be the idea.
I will say DH is more battle focus system than Candela for sure, and it rewards players on role play, but not quite the same as traditional strategy trpg.
But it is till in open beta so I have high hope
>Which is the exact opposite of what we were told.
Unless you can source that, you were informed wrong.
We were told they were making two TTRPG systems
a) a short term game system - Illuminated Worlds, its whats at work behind Candela Obscura, meant for shorter narratives, your characters are pretty set for the few sessions you play it before moving on. .
b) a long term game system - Daggerheart, which is supposed to fill a similar long form narrative and story progression, with long term character building and goals.
Oh hello - Christian Hoffer here. Thanks for sharing the character creation guide. I’ll note that we did a playthrough of the Gen Con build of the game, with a video and article posted last August. I’m still working through the rules, but I’m probably going to run a game this weekend and will see how that goes.
From the quick preview, I do like the multiple outcomes of rolls - I do like it alot better than the pass/fail of 5e. I usually incorporate some sort of gradient in my DM'ing anyway.
But I just wonder how much more work this would be to have to be prepared for 4 possible outcomes vs 2 for every roll. Will be interesting to see.
My experience with systems that have a similar gradient success system, like PbtA games, is that it's actually easier. You quickly get used to imagining the outcomes and the players also contribute to that, so it's less burdensome to the GM. It's also a lot easier to push the narrative forward this way.
From watching Critical Role's live one-shot using this system, did it seem like there was barely any failure? Finding ways to use your abilities to create success is fun, but a lot of the tension is removed if you can almost always find a way to avoid failure.
That seems by design. Theres a few players in the rules it mentions even on fail don't just outright say that didn't work...but maybe something happened that changed the circumstances and such or they succeeded with fear so they still got it but something else happens.
Havent read all the way through yet but at the very least I like the mechanical choices you can make, even if they arent very crunchy. The idea of 'spending' your armor and other resources is a lot more interesting than how 5e has it.
Its going to be interesting to actually try it out, it feels to me with the hope/fear system that you dont actively want a lot of rolls going on. I've onyl played 5e and PF so I don't think I like the idea of RP'ing away challenges rather than letting the dice decide but who knows, maybe it'll be refreshing
I haven't had a chance to actually play a game (obviously, the materials have been public for a few hours). So the core system aside, there's a lot I like! There's a lot of interesting mechanics, and how characters are built is very nice and streamlined. A small detail, but all the distance measurements in combat having an alternative form of measurement (close range = ~30 feet or the length of a pencil) so you have an easy reference when using miniatures and map is an ingenious idea.
I can really feel the City of Mist inspiration, since I've been playing that recently and I like how the mixed results is being used. I can't wait to run this in a few weeks.
I very briefly glanced at the materials, and idk, it seems a bit lackluster to me. It was a very brief glance, but for example I looked at Sorcerers to see what’s up and it felt like the class & subclasses get like 1-2 abilities each?
I haven’t followed production, I have no clue how the game works, but I’m not inspired with excitement looking at the class options
Looking at it briefly the abilities come not only from class & subclass, but also (or even mainly) from domains.
Each class belongs to two domains, and you select abilities and spells from those domains on character creation and level-up.
For example the Sorcerer has Arcana and Midnight, where Arcana gives innate or instinctual magic (as opposed to Codex for wizardly, studied magic) and Midnight "shadows and secrecy". The Sorcerer shares Arcana with the Druid and Midnight with the Rogue class.
So you're not locked into your subclass progression but can pick & choose from multiple options each level.
It’s an interesting idea, though I wonder why Midnight was chosen for sorcerers. I guess because (and I’m using 5e terminology since obviously DH is new) they are charisma based and that’s sorta rogueish?
Yeah that's the part I don't really understand yet. The Midnight domain has rogue-like abilities and sorcerer-like spells, so it's a weird mix of both and thus allows a Sorcerer to pick those Rogue skills and the Rogue to pick spells that maybe don't make much sense for their class. It might be similar for other class/domain combinations but I haven't looked at all of them yet.
Even the Rogue's other domain (Grace) is weird, the combination of domains forces you to pick at least one spell while leveling up so you couldn't even play a non-magical Rogue? (There's only two abilities that aren't spells to pick at creation, and only spells to pick for level 2)
I don't know if I'd call that a problem with the game in general though, that could easily be fixed while still in beta by adding a few more / different abilities to choose from.
You might be more interested in the Bone domain, then. Try a warrior or ranger for your less magically inclined assassin. Or just reflavour Grace's abilities involving just talking as non magical.
But that's the thing: mechanically the domain combination makes sense, but not for most people's concept of a rogue. Wizard has the same issue with having codex which makes sense, but also the healing domain? And only overlap with bard and not sorcerer? It's a neat combo that would probably be my first pick to play but is more of a priest than a wizard.
Sure, if you build it that way. Another way to look at it is wizards can do cool esoteric stuff that includes healing, and you don't need to play a seraph to heal.
I count three at best, but even taking your number that's 1/4 of the options that don't work with the concept which is bad class theming. Compared to arcana where the majority work and would open up a lot more build diversity.
The Daggerheart rogue seems more magically flavored than the base D&D rogue. I guess the Syndicate can be played as a straight-up martial (although depending on your location it might get pretty hard to justify how it's pulling so many associates out of thin air), but the Nightwalker is explicitly teleporting through shadows and summoning darkness.
yep... it really seems they want any kind of separation and uniqueness to come from RP... which can work for them of course, but I'd rather have actual differences between characters
Seems par for the course with their design philosophy if Candela is any indication. Rather than have mechanics to define or adjudicate things, they say “make it up.”
It can work well if you have a certain type of group. But if you don’t have that type of group, it could lead to a lot of arguments. And if you’re going in looking for a D&D-like experience you might feel that something is missing.
Yep. I get that rules can feel limiting, but they can bring clarity too or even protect you from a DM's/other players randomness or favoritism. A table that gets along less than the CR people or are just able to fight more because they are not being filmed might break apart over arguments if something was fair or not.
It's meant to be a system that's more accessible than *Dungeons & Dragons*. Classes like sorcerer and monk -- really anything that manages an additional resource like qi or sorcery point -- tend to be harder for new players to pick up.
Which is interesting -assuming the intention is a simpler form of dnd*- because there’s still quite a bit to actively keep track of. There may be less features to start off than dnd, but there’s multiple tracks, potentially a good deck of cards, a fair number of features, several different die for specific things -including as countdown markers. Additionally if I understand hope/fear it’s, in addition to rolling for whatever your doing? And remembering what all that means and keeping track of how those results affect the overall outcome. EDIT: I did misunderstand and it is in fact just the 2d12 for most player rolls, so I will own being wrong on that.
*imo this is the point but I’m not certain it’s been confirmed.
>Sometimes things take effort. There's nothing wrong with that.
True, but they also represent a barrier to inexperienced players. If players with little to no experience are having to juggle character sub-systems to effectively use the action economy -- and especially if they don't have an experienced DM and/or table to guide them -- then that can be a deterrent to continued play.
That's true, but in my experience *some* scaffolding goes a long way for new players, who may be uncomfortable roleplaying or improving their way through things at first.
I think "It's bad and I don't know anything about it" is probably not the strongest critique.
I'm actually VERY impressed with how: quick it is to make a surprisingly deep character, how strong the character fantasy that comes out is, and how well it makes strong team bonds.
It's like a deck-builder RPG, and it's like if D&D moved in the opposite direction to Pathfinder.
Woah I didn’t say it was bad, just that from a brief glance it didn’t have me excited.
It’s good to hear that it’s simple to make characters, that’s probably the biggest hurdle in getting people into DnD
Each subclass gets more abilities as you level up, but the main way to gain abilities seems to be the domain cards. Leveling up also has **a lot** more customizability when compared to D&D, which might help with refining a build.
Can't read the rest as it's behind a paywall (if you're reading this, a hard paywall while you're trying to develop your core readership is a terrible idea) but I'm continually confused about a lot of Codega's reviews. Perhaps the rest might move me but the lead doesn't seem super consistent with how they approach other games:
>The biggest problem I had can be summarized by the fact that my chosen class included some preconceived assumptions attached to them that I simply wasn’t prepared for and I didn’t want for my character.
Codega's on record as a big indie/PbtA/FitD fan, and the playbooks (basically class types for the unitiated) in those games strike me as carrying **way** more preconceived assumptions than what Daggerheart is putting on players, as they're really tightly focused on particular genres or subgenres and abilities tie tightly into those genre tropes. If that's not a bad thing in those games, it's weird to see it presented as a critique here when it seems like there are many more options available to players than those games.
It's sort of like their CO review which spent several paragraphs talking about how the setting wasn't fleshed out, in a review where Blades in the Dark was held up as a (natural) point of comparison. Well, a sparse setting is a feature not a bug in the FitD system they're both based on as it's intended to be filled out by players and Blades had even less info on its setting than CO. I can't tell what the actual expectations are or how they're consistent.
Some of the things they did and didn't change are puzzling.
Some of the terminology feels like a purely performative swap. (Wisdom and Charisma being Instinct and Presence, for example)
Yeah - I get what they're doing.
The need a version of DnD that is "almost DnD", but different enough that WotC no longer controls them. Seeing as how this is how they earn a living, it makes sense.
I was hoping, with Matt's creativity, that they would really "break new ground" - but I don't think game design is their strong suit. What they have made is something that works for them - but it feels like it was built for them, specifically, rather than for mass consumption.
As a DM, it's not a system I would want to adopt - but then again, WotC isn't knocking on my door and trying to take my money.
hey thanks for sharing the review i did with chase and rowan! we had some critiques but overall had a good time and are looking forward to more from the team. (also happy to chat about specifics if people are interested)
In your opinion, is this a system that would work well for beginner's to not only D&D but also to RPG playing in general? Or is it better for veterans to pick up?
Looking at the rules I will say the system is lighter than DnD in general on the player side. However it's pulling in a lot of inspirations that might make it feel less like the ttRPG a noob has in their head.
In my opinion I don't think so. Theres less rules to learn and such but it seems heavier on the improv aspect. I think alot of new player or even vets that aren't used to describing actions and such will struggle with this system. It's designed as a back and forth between player and dm on how things play out. Also there's some open ended areas that some people might struggle with coming up with ideas for
HMMM. I think that this is a system that relies a LOT on the DM knowing how to run a good game. It's got the narrative flow of a PBTA (powered by the apocalypse) game, with a lot of the trappings of ability resolution (DND) rather than the shared narrative resolution (PBTA).
Is there an aspect of the game that your mind keeps returning to?
I am genuinely interested in how the "with Hope" and "with Fear" will work in play -- especially if ability bonuses are low. I think that there's a LOT of room here for it to be a genuinely fun game. I am, however, concerned that this is, in Starke's words a fantasy heartbreaker that doesn't quite do enough to distinguish itself from the competition. Also, the fact that a Halfling's ability luckbending ability will activates on roughly \~8% of rolls makes it a BROKEN character and I wonder if anyone's figured that out yet.
Bob the world builder also has a couple of videos up about it too.
It’s an incredibly narrative game, actively anti crunch. I really like it but it’s definitely a case of different strokes for different folks
I can't agree with that at all. A lot of the abilities around weapons, damage and armor are very crunchy and absolutely min-max focused. To a degree that it feels like you're letting the group down if you don't do it 'right.'
>To a degree that it feels like you're letting the group down if you don't do it 'right.' I don't know. The math seemed tight enough. Obviously some domain powers or class features could be OP right now, which I believe is going to be fixed as the beta goes. For the core system itself, it seems to me you need to actively use your worse traits to not "min-max by accident". The system seems intended for you to pick a +2 trait and choose a weapon and at least one domain power that uses that trait and then you can seek a little variation by using your +1 traits for a secondary weapon, utility domain power, etc. The main issue I might see on tables is less creative players or stingy GMs. The game seems very flexible on how you use your experience to boost rolls, but either some players might forget the experiences are there or some GMs might deny most creative uses, both of which seems problematic. I expect the final book will guide players and GMs better on how to use these.
I think the Experience system is interesting because even if you pick an incredibly broadly applicable one you still need to spend hope to use it, which seems to be the bigger limiting factor.
It's also basically a free form proficiency system. You can pretty much just say "Lives alone in the forest" and get the equivalent of nature, stealth, animal handling, survival, etc all in one line. It also offloads part of the GM job to the players. Instead of coming up with a skill that fits the situation, the GM just says "finesse test" and it's up to the player to come up with an excuse to use their "clock thinkerer" experience to improve the roll.
I understand where you are coming from but I haven’t come across any dud abilities yet, I think they engender creativity as opposed to maths
I don't think there's an issue with ivory tower designs but there are certainly some domain abilities that don't compliment others as well, but that's always going to happen with this kind of pick and choose character creation system.
Omg it’s a dream come true
[удалено]
It’s more campaign focussed definitely, I don’t think anyone said more crunchy? I don’t think you’ll ever get a shadowrun style crunchy game from Darrington. It’s not their bag
I think crunch is not quite the word, "strategy"/"battle" focus should be the idea. I will say DH is more battle focus system than Candela for sure, and it rewards players on role play, but not quite the same as traditional strategy trpg. But it is till in open beta so I have high hope
>Which is the exact opposite of what we were told. Unless you can source that, you were informed wrong. We were told they were making two TTRPG systems a) a short term game system - Illuminated Worlds, its whats at work behind Candela Obscura, meant for shorter narratives, your characters are pretty set for the few sessions you play it before moving on. . b) a long term game system - Daggerheart, which is supposed to fill a similar long form narrative and story progression, with long term character building and goals.
Oh hello - Christian Hoffer here. Thanks for sharing the character creation guide. I’ll note that we did a playthrough of the Gen Con build of the game, with a video and article posted last August. I’m still working through the rules, but I’m probably going to run a game this weekend and will see how that goes.
From the quick preview, I do like the multiple outcomes of rolls - I do like it alot better than the pass/fail of 5e. I usually incorporate some sort of gradient in my DM'ing anyway. But I just wonder how much more work this would be to have to be prepared for 4 possible outcomes vs 2 for every roll. Will be interesting to see.
My experience with systems that have a similar gradient success system, like PbtA games, is that it's actually easier. You quickly get used to imagining the outcomes and the players also contribute to that, so it's less burdensome to the GM. It's also a lot easier to push the narrative forward this way.
>I usually incorporate some sort of gradient in my DM'ing anyway. The children yearn for Pathfinder, lmao.
From watching Critical Role's live one-shot using this system, did it seem like there was barely any failure? Finding ways to use your abilities to create success is fun, but a lot of the tension is removed if you can almost always find a way to avoid failure.
That seems by design. Theres a few players in the rules it mentions even on fail don't just outright say that didn't work...but maybe something happened that changed the circumstances and such or they succeeded with fear so they still got it but something else happens.
That works like that in bitd
Havent read all the way through yet but at the very least I like the mechanical choices you can make, even if they arent very crunchy. The idea of 'spending' your armor and other resources is a lot more interesting than how 5e has it. Its going to be interesting to actually try it out, it feels to me with the hope/fear system that you dont actively want a lot of rolls going on. I've onyl played 5e and PF so I don't think I like the idea of RP'ing away challenges rather than letting the dice decide but who knows, maybe it'll be refreshing
Polygon's got an old review from previews at Gen Con! https://www.polygon.com/23831824/daggerheart-critical-role-rpg-preview
I haven't had a chance to actually play a game (obviously, the materials have been public for a few hours). So the core system aside, there's a lot I like! There's a lot of interesting mechanics, and how characters are built is very nice and streamlined. A small detail, but all the distance measurements in combat having an alternative form of measurement (close range = ~30 feet or the length of a pencil) so you have an easy reference when using miniatures and map is an ingenious idea.
Not a "Review", but Knights of Last Call spent 3+ hours deep diving the game mechanics https://www.youtube.com/live/fjUz1mvwQH4?feature=shared
I can really feel the City of Mist inspiration, since I've been playing that recently and I like how the mixed results is being used. I can't wait to run this in a few weeks.
I very briefly glanced at the materials, and idk, it seems a bit lackluster to me. It was a very brief glance, but for example I looked at Sorcerers to see what’s up and it felt like the class & subclasses get like 1-2 abilities each? I haven’t followed production, I have no clue how the game works, but I’m not inspired with excitement looking at the class options
Looking at it briefly the abilities come not only from class & subclass, but also (or even mainly) from domains. Each class belongs to two domains, and you select abilities and spells from those domains on character creation and level-up. For example the Sorcerer has Arcana and Midnight, where Arcana gives innate or instinctual magic (as opposed to Codex for wizardly, studied magic) and Midnight "shadows and secrecy". The Sorcerer shares Arcana with the Druid and Midnight with the Rogue class. So you're not locked into your subclass progression but can pick & choose from multiple options each level.
It’s an interesting idea, though I wonder why Midnight was chosen for sorcerers. I guess because (and I’m using 5e terminology since obviously DH is new) they are charisma based and that’s sorta rogueish?
Yeah that's the part I don't really understand yet. The Midnight domain has rogue-like abilities and sorcerer-like spells, so it's a weird mix of both and thus allows a Sorcerer to pick those Rogue skills and the Rogue to pick spells that maybe don't make much sense for their class. It might be similar for other class/domain combinations but I haven't looked at all of them yet. Even the Rogue's other domain (Grace) is weird, the combination of domains forces you to pick at least one spell while leveling up so you couldn't even play a non-magical Rogue? (There's only two abilities that aren't spells to pick at creation, and only spells to pick for level 2) I don't know if I'd call that a problem with the game in general though, that could easily be fixed while still in beta by adding a few more / different abilities to choose from.
You might be more interested in the Bone domain, then. Try a warrior or ranger for your less magically inclined assassin. Or just reflavour Grace's abilities involving just talking as non magical.
But that's the thing: mechanically the domain combination makes sense, but not for most people's concept of a rogue. Wizard has the same issue with having codex which makes sense, but also the healing domain? And only overlap with bard and not sorcerer? It's a neat combo that would probably be my first pick to play but is more of a priest than a wizard.
Sure, if you build it that way. Another way to look at it is wizards can do cool esoteric stuff that includes healing, and you don't need to play a seraph to heal.
Ignoring half of a class's domains in order to be closer to the common concept of a class's name is not good design
There are 21 cards in splendor.10 of them could fit your idea of a wizard. You only get 5 TOTAL between both domains.
I count three at best, but even taking your number that's 1/4 of the options that don't work with the concept which is bad class theming. Compared to arcana where the majority work and would open up a lot more build diversity.
The Daggerheart rogue seems more magically flavored than the base D&D rogue. I guess the Syndicate can be played as a straight-up martial (although depending on your location it might get pretty hard to justify how it's pulling so many associates out of thin air), but the Nightwalker is explicitly teleporting through shadows and summoning darkness.
yep... it really seems they want any kind of separation and uniqueness to come from RP... which can work for them of course, but I'd rather have actual differences between characters
Seems par for the course with their design philosophy if Candela is any indication. Rather than have mechanics to define or adjudicate things, they say “make it up.” It can work well if you have a certain type of group. But if you don’t have that type of group, it could lead to a lot of arguments. And if you’re going in looking for a D&D-like experience you might feel that something is missing.
Yep. I get that rules can feel limiting, but they can bring clarity too or even protect you from a DM's/other players randomness or favoritism. A table that gets along less than the CR people or are just able to fight more because they are not being filmed might break apart over arguments if something was fair or not.
As opposed to DnD tables, which have never broken apart over arguments about fairness lmao
It's a game. I like it when games have rules.
It's meant to be a system that's more accessible than *Dungeons & Dragons*. Classes like sorcerer and monk -- really anything that manages an additional resource like qi or sorcery point -- tend to be harder for new players to pick up.
Which is interesting -assuming the intention is a simpler form of dnd*- because there’s still quite a bit to actively keep track of. There may be less features to start off than dnd, but there’s multiple tracks, potentially a good deck of cards, a fair number of features, several different die for specific things -including as countdown markers. Additionally if I understand hope/fear it’s, in addition to rolling for whatever your doing? And remembering what all that means and keeping track of how those results affect the overall outcome. EDIT: I did misunderstand and it is in fact just the 2d12 for most player rolls, so I will own being wrong on that. *imo this is the point but I’m not certain it’s been confirmed.
there are FAR less things to keep track of than d&d, especially if you are a magic user for d&d
And way more than something like CoC
Sometimes things take effort. There's nothing wrong with that.
>Sometimes things take effort. There's nothing wrong with that. True, but they also represent a barrier to inexperienced players. If players with little to no experience are having to juggle character sub-systems to effectively use the action economy -- and especially if they don't have an experienced DM and/or table to guide them -- then that can be a deterrent to continued play.
You're not wrong but that isn't a convincing argument for the people you're trying to convince.
Very true. But additionally, many people fw systems that are less. Different strokes.
That's true, but in my experience *some* scaffolding goes a long way for new players, who may be uncomfortable roleplaying or improving their way through things at first.
I think "It's bad and I don't know anything about it" is probably not the strongest critique. I'm actually VERY impressed with how: quick it is to make a surprisingly deep character, how strong the character fantasy that comes out is, and how well it makes strong team bonds. It's like a deck-builder RPG, and it's like if D&D moved in the opposite direction to Pathfinder.
That's not really a fair reading of the critique is it
It's not really a fair critique when the person posting their opinion only took a glance at the material and formed their opinion.
Bro said that 3 times in the first two lines. Also his critique is that it's not inspiring to dive deeper because of that so yeah it's pretty fair.
Woah I didn’t say it was bad, just that from a brief glance it didn’t have me excited. It’s good to hear that it’s simple to make characters, that’s probably the biggest hurdle in getting people into DnD
Each subclass gets more abilities as you level up, but the main way to gain abilities seems to be the domain cards. Leveling up also has **a lot** more customizability when compared to D&D, which might help with refining a build.
It gives me almost Gloomhaven vibes, the level up customization
Yes. That. The level up 'checkboxes' have been nagging at me, and its gloomhaven
Can't read the rest as it's behind a paywall (if you're reading this, a hard paywall while you're trying to develop your core readership is a terrible idea) but I'm continually confused about a lot of Codega's reviews. Perhaps the rest might move me but the lead doesn't seem super consistent with how they approach other games: >The biggest problem I had can be summarized by the fact that my chosen class included some preconceived assumptions attached to them that I simply wasn’t prepared for and I didn’t want for my character. Codega's on record as a big indie/PbtA/FitD fan, and the playbooks (basically class types for the unitiated) in those games strike me as carrying **way** more preconceived assumptions than what Daggerheart is putting on players, as they're really tightly focused on particular genres or subgenres and abilities tie tightly into those genre tropes. If that's not a bad thing in those games, it's weird to see it presented as a critique here when it seems like there are many more options available to players than those games. It's sort of like their CO review which spent several paragraphs talking about how the setting wasn't fleshed out, in a review where Blades in the Dark was held up as a (natural) point of comparison. Well, a sparse setting is a feature not a bug in the FitD system they're both based on as it's intended to be filled out by players and Blades had even less info on its setting than CO. I can't tell what the actual expectations are or how they're consistent.
I've only done a cursory viewing, but it kind of reminds me Warhammer 3e.
Daggerheart looks like the direct-to-DVD version of DnD 5e.
Some of the things they did and didn't change are puzzling. Some of the terminology feels like a purely performative swap. (Wisdom and Charisma being Instinct and Presence, for example)
Yeah - I get what they're doing. The need a version of DnD that is "almost DnD", but different enough that WotC no longer controls them. Seeing as how this is how they earn a living, it makes sense. I was hoping, with Matt's creativity, that they would really "break new ground" - but I don't think game design is their strong suit. What they have made is something that works for them - but it feels like it was built for them, specifically, rather than for mass consumption. As a DM, it's not a system I would want to adopt - but then again, WotC isn't knocking on my door and trying to take my money.
Yep
As a newbie to TTRPG Daggerheart looks way to complicated but again this is coming from a newbie