New Daggerheart Campaign Frames Make It Perfect For Hobbit, Legend of Zelda, or Game Of Thrones Inspired Games

Summary Rowan Hall and Spenser Starke reflect on how they have found the balance between external feedback and staying true to their vision with the open beta testing of Daggerheart.

The collaborative approach of Daggerheart's combat mechanics encourages players to be more invested and creative in shaping the story as well as communicative at the table.

Campaign frames in Daggerheart allow GMs and players to choose different fantasy sub-genres for a unique and immersive experience.

Critical Role launched its game publishing imprint, Darrington Press, in 2020 and has debuted a number of games under this banner. Candela Obscura and Daggerheart have been highly anticipated by fans as role-playing games, with the Candela Obscura Core Rulebook being released last November, months after the Candela Obscura actual play had first debuted on the Critical Role YouTube and Twitch channels. Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall teamed up to create the horror-inspired world and lore of Candela Obscura using the Illuminated Worlds system.

Hall and Starke have proven to be a brilliant team once again working together on Daggerheart. This TTRPG follows the traditional sword and sorcery genre of RPG with players jumping into a fantasy world that inspires heroics and adventure. Daggerheart is still in development, but the open beta closed last month. The entire team has had both internal and external input to help the game evolve and become an even more engaging experience. The Critical Role cast has played Daggerheart one-shots on their channels to show how the game can be played from character creation and beyond.

Related Critical Role's New TTRPG Is A Game Changer With One Huge Difference From D&D Daggerheart, Critical Role's new TTRPG, seeks to rival D&D in the tabletop space, and its differences could be what helps it come out on top.

While at Gen Con, Screen Rant caught up with Darrington Press' Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall about Daggerheart. They reflected on what they learned from the open beta testing and the importance of building a strong foundation. They also shared details about their new campaign frames and why the combat mechanics allow the table more fluidity during battles.

Spenser Starke & Rowan Hall Reflect On How The Candela Obscura Live Show "Was Really Magical"

Starke, who was the GM, looked back at his experience during the live Candela Obscura show and how they curated it to allow the players to experiment, which led to the LARPing aspect. Hall praised the hard work of the team behind the scenes and explained how her and Starke's experience with LARPing prepared him for this to play out on stage.

Spenser Starke: We had a blast and it's interesting because when they told me that we weren't going to have tables, I knew going into it that we had the opportunity to get up. It wasn't like we planned, Okay, we're going to get up at certain times, we're going to do stuff. It was just like, "Hey, if you want to get up, you have the freedom to be able to go pace or whatever you want to do." We were like, "Cool, we'll experiment with it." We know how it would manifest. Rowan Hall: Everyone was enthusiastic. Spenser Starke: But we didn't really know. We are very lucky in that we do a lot of LARPs. Rowan Hall: We parlor LARP all the time. Spenser Starke: We parlor LARP all the time. So a lot of our home games are us running Good Society LARPs or Fiasco LARPs or anything like that where the way we role play is we will make characters and then we will all sit back in the audience section and be like, Okay, what scene do we want to see? We want to see a scene between you and you. You're going to go up. Rowan Hall: We have them do a scene. Spenser Starke: You guys get up, here's where we're going to set the scene. What are we thinking here? It's this kind of thing. Rowan Hall: And we have a homebrew rule that if you're in the scene, you can't cut it. The audience cuts it. Spenser Starke: The audience is the only one who can cut. Rowan Hall: It gets just so many good moments, when people think the scene is over and then no one cuts. Spenser Starke: You let them keep going and then they find the real meaning of the scene. Anyway, it's this magic kind of thing that we love to do. We try to do one once every quarter. So when we were told we weren't going to have tables or we were going to have tables off the side, I was like, "Oh, cool, I'm comfortable getting up and interacting in this space, but I don't know what everybody else is going to do." So for me, the moment where I was like, Oh, this feels so different. Was at the end of act one, when a bunch of the cast got up and were looking in that box. And then everybody moved to the corner and then I moved to the corner and I was like, Oh my God, we're in a LARP. We're doing the LARP. And then we call cut just as they open the box, we're doing the thing. So yeah, so it was really magical in that way and none of us planned for that to happen. There wasn't a conversation about us doing certain things. It just kind of organically became this like, Oh, we're all getting up. Okay, we're all moving. Rowan Hall: So this was behind the scenes. Some of us who work at the company were kind of in this mezzanine area that was separate from the audience. For example, our editor was taking notes and we were chatting. I was chatting with my lore keeper. I don't remember who it was went, "Oh my God." In that moment when they all stood up and moved over and I went, "That's just how Spenser plays." [All Laugh] I was like, "That's my kitchen a couple months ago." But I also think so much of that, Max and Steve know Candela like the back of their hand. Max and Steve were such a big part of defining this world. Nox comes in and makes the most amazing sets and I feel like you guys were able to do what you did because Max, Steve, Nox, the entire crew made you a playground. Watching that all come together, that set go up in one day, I was like a kid in a candy store just watching it. It's like a LARP TTRPG dream. Spenser Starke: Yeah, %1000. We would be absolutely nothing without the massive crew of people. I remember when we got done, I was just sitting there when everyone was clearing out, and I was just watching, I don't even know, 25 people who were all on stage taking it apart and getting it out that night. Just in awe of the craftsmanship and work that it takes to put on a show like that. So yes, we were so thankful to everybody who was a part of it. It's wild. Rowan Hall: It's so interesting having been in kind of the backstage, front stage. There were two backstage's, there were three. Just seeing all the magic happens that facilitates that, that I don't think people talk about or purposefully they don't see. But it's that little bit of extra magic sprinkled on it.

Starke isn't sure if future episodes of Candela Obsucra filmed in the studio will take inspiration from the live show or keep the format from before. However, Hall revealed that this experience will definitely have an impact on their home games as they incorporate LARPing into their own games.

Spenser Starke: We don't know. I know that we had a great time and I think on our side, if they call on us to do that, we're there. It is just a matter of figuring out what that looks like. We are also so crazy busy on Daggerheart right now that I know they're like, "Okay, just let them finish the game and we'll talk about what next steps are for all of the other projects once they're done." Rowan Hall: Our home game play of Candela though, you did the live show and then we all went Parlour LARP of Candela? We haven't done it yet, because time. But it did affect our home game. We immediately wanted to do that. We always played Candela at a table. We'd never hacked it into a LARP, so we can't speak for the company, but I'm there. Bells on.

Open Beta Taught Darrington Press To Handle Daggerheart "Not Being Done And It Being In The Public Eye"

The entire Darrington Press team has learned a lot from the open beta for Daggerheart. However, when discussing what they have taken from the experience Starke didn't point to a specific change made to the game. Instead, he shared how this experience has helped him learn to find the balance between listening to the audience and staying true to the game they want to make.

Rowan Hall: I feel so grateful! I can't imagine what play testing this would look like without so many people putting it through its paces. Because there are so many permutations in this game. All of the levers you can pull, levels one through 10, all of the cards, all of the different class combinations in a party. It would be a gargantuan undertaking if so many people in the community didn't jump in to help us with our home games. People from one table to the next just don't play the same way. That's the best part about TTRPGs, so if it was only ever play tested by us, we would naturally miss things because there are so many other ways to play that we haven't cracked yet. Spenser Starke: I also think there's an interesting balance in, if we're just talking running open betas in general for games. One, putting a game out there that isn't done yet is really scary, I think for us just because we are like, "Hey, please trust us. We're putting a game out and it's not supposed to be finished." So I think one of the things we learned is to just be okay with it not being done and it being in the public eye. Because people will pick it up and be like, "We're reviewing Daggerheart," right? And you're like, well, We're on the open beta of the thing. We would love for your feedback to come in via the surveys and stuff. So it's really interesting to watch the development, because it is a thing that a lot of people inherently, because the nature of CR existing, have their eyes on. We are navigating what it means to put a not finished game out in the world. So it's really cool. So we watch those reviews and are able to get people that are from all these different viewpoints. Those have been really useful, the people that have been going in depth, covering what they like, what they don't. All of that is so useful to us. On top of that, talking about open betas in general, I think one of the things that I am trying really hard to navigate, and I know the whole team is trying hard to navigate, but only speaking for myself, is weighing how much the surveys from the community point us in the direction of how the game should be, versus making the kind of game that we want to make. When those are at odds, what direction do we go? How much do we hold on to the kind of thing that we're excited about versus how much do we say, Well, the audience doesn't necessarily like this as much as we like it, we have to get rid of it? How much you compromise. You compromise towards them, how much are you letting be dictated by an open source essentially? And then it becomes less focused, less auteur-ish. Rowan Hall: The thing that I keep repeating to myself is if you make something for everyone, you make it for no one. The really beautiful part about the TTRPG community is there is a game for everyone. If you are open to a bunch of systems, you'll find it. You don't necessarily have to hack one game to be something that you want. There's probably a system for it. For example, if you want to play out Stranger Things, Kids on Bikes. If you want to be a superhero going to high school, Masks. You don't have to hack those systems. They're beautiful and they exist. So often TTRBG systems are genre films in that way. They are an engine for genre storytelling. But we can only make the game we want to play to fit the ask. So we're making a sword and sorcery game based on what we are looking for. Spenser Starke: High fantasy, heroic, hopeful, cinematic, actual play-focused system. There's been a lot of learning for me around what do I take and when do I say? I see the note, but I think what they're bumping up against is actually from X, Let me fix X, and let it trickle down to fix that part. But I don't think that's actually the issue. We face this a lot in game design where we sit down and get feedback from individuals and they're like, "Hey, I really don't like this mechanic." They're seeing the effect as opposed to seeing the root. Because they're not close to it. They don't know all the subsystems, they just know what they feel. So a lot of it is like, how do I interpret the notes to be able to address the issues that people are having but still do it in a way that keeps the game the kind of thing that us at the company want to be making? So I think that's the big open beta thing that we've learned. All these minute things about, Okay, we're fixing these bugs and things are broken and all that and all that's great. But as a game design studio, we're learning how to navigate feedback.

Daggerheart Team Talks Building The Foundation & Hopes For Future Expansion

Hall broke down how she and Starke constantly remind themselves to focus on the basic foundation before building it out and taking massive swings. Starke also revealed how they needed to scale back initial classes and ancestries, but should the game prove a success, they would like to bring those elements back in the future.

Rowan Hall: I also feel so grateful for the people who read all of the pages that are in Google Doc form. I think this has been such a testament to the importance of layout and design and art. We knew that and we talk about layout and fonts and accessibility and engagement all day. But this has also been a really interesting experience learning at what point will people just not engage with a wall of text? I've been so grateful for so many people who say, one, they read the whole thing, God bless them, and they say, "How is the game asking me to engage with it?" And because they've read it all, they say like, "Oh, I've read the locations," or "I've read the campaign frames." So their insights are really tailored in a way that I know is quite a lot of work for the audience, but I'm really grateful to have it. Because it's not in layout yet and it doesn't have all the shiny pictures. Spenser Starke: Well, there's so much. I mean the system is huge as far as the scale of stuff that we've made. Tackling something like that is a Herculean effort. That if we didn't have those kinds of people, it would take so much time. It would take so much time to do all of it. Rowan Hall: The thing that we talk about all the time, [Spenser] and I, is reminding ourselves that we have to build the foundation. We say this, everyone on the team, we're always reminding each other the wider team because we've all been playing TTRPGs for a minute. When we get character sheets put in front of us, we're always trying to make the A-C choices, the wild decisions. We're always trying to turn everything on its head just a little bit. But we do that because we've been playing TTRPGs forever because this is our job. We have to build the foundation, the basics. What does it look like? I would say like lore-borne, library. I just need the version that is focused on knowledge. Elf, humanoid with pointy ears. I just have to bring myself down to the basics. It's hard because we want to not just run and sprint but fly. I think we have kind of an idea of where this game will keep going. It's hard to scale it back and be like, no, we just have to do this. Spenser Starke: I think it's part of us also putting out 18 ancestries. We were like, Okay, we have to give people the options of what they would normally want when they get to a fantasy game. But also I need a little frog boy. I just need a frog boy. And I know it's weird. Rowan Hall: Fairies are bugs! Spenser Starke: Originally there were 27 ancestries that we had built and we were like, Okay, we can't put out 27 ancestries. We can't put out 18 classes. But in success we have the opportunity to put out more, but we can't put out 18 classes for people to learn and that we have to play test. We can't put out 20 domains or whatever it is, right? We can't do that yet because the larger we scale up, the more time it takes to test everything and everything in combination with everything. Which is the other bit that's really a challenge is when you add a piece, you're not just adding a piece, you're adding a piece in combination with every other piece that's in the game. So the focus has really been how do we create the, like you said, create the foundation for this kind of system and say, here it is at its core, if you like the core, let's build together. Rowan Hall: There's so many ideas. That's the experience. It's so exciting to think about what could happen.

Campaign Frames Can Help GMs Build Out Stories Based Around Different Fantasy Sub-Genres

Custom image by Amanda Bruce

Starke and Hall revealed details about a newer element of Daggerheart known as "campaign frames," which will help GMs and their players cultivate the game to fit the fantasy sub-genre they want to play in. They give examples of the worlds that inspired a few of these campaign frames, including Legend of Zelda, The Hobbit, Game of Thrones, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Kingdom: Death Monster.

Spenser Starke: One of the things that we added just recently that I'm excited about, you kind of touched on, in the latest version, we've added campaign frames. Campaign frames are one of my favorite things that are in the game now, which are this section of the book that essentially gives you a pitch and some details and some themes and a bunch of other specific mechanics that you can implement for running a game of Daggerheart in a sub-genre of fantasy that you're interested in. So for example, we wrote one together, and Carlos Cisco, called The Wither Wild that's very Legend of Zelda, Nausicaa Valley of the Wind, right? This sort of whimsical world that's being overtaken. Rowan Hall: One of the big themes is contrasting the comfortable and the violent. I think of that with Hayao Miyazaki, but also with genre pieces that are aimed at younger audiences but not aged all the way down. Screen Rant: Like old-school Grimms' fairy tales? Rowan Hall: 100%. Spenser Starke: And so in contrasting that dark and that bright together and sort of doing the Hobbit, right? A cozy world that is running into this darkness that has sort of bumped up against them. So anyway, that's one of the campaign frames we have, which is think about being from humble origins and how you are fighting against this kind of force that has come into your land. On the flip side, we also have another campaign frame that has been built that's in the play test doc right now, that's called Five Banners Burning. It is a full on five nation political Game of Thrones style, Avatar the Last Airbender style campaign. So it's like these nations are on the brink of war with each other and your group, your party, is somehow tied to the center of that conflict. Rowan Hall: I love campaigns frames so much. I'm so glad [Spenser] invented this, you brilliant human. Because it has guidance for GM's, so principles. One of them in ours, I forget what the phrasing is, but it's basically make deities present in everyday life in the Wither Wild. In the woods, you can go walk up to a river and there will be a God stacking rocks. And that is what that God does. That God is focused on that river and those rocks and it will be affected if people dam up the river. It is affected by corporeal things, but it's also a God. One of my favorite ways to contrast campaign frames would be like if you wanted a grim dark campaign in Daggerheart, one of the principles of it as a GM would probably be like describe violence. So you describe the sword slashing into their stomach and the sound as it pulls out and the blood flying and you get really visceral. But if you wanted a campaign in Daggerheart that was cozy, you would say maybe describe violence, one of the principles would be make everything magical. Now violence is your sword gleams in the sunlight and you slash the enemy, and twirl. Now it's not about the violence, it's about the kind of heroism. Those are the same moment, the same mechanics, the same dice rolls, the same system, with two different sub-genres of fantasy. Spenser Starke: GM principles, in the campaign frame, guide you as the GM and kind of as a table in how to approach sessions to be able to capture that sub-genre. So Matt is working on a very Dark Souls, Kingdom Death: Monster, dark fantasy campaign, and that's going to have a very different feel and very different mechanics built in. Probably something, I mean I don't know for sure, but if I had to guess, it would have something that makes things more deadly. Have you have a watch-out during resting so that nobody gets hurt. Has these things in it that reflect a normal dark fantasy kind of genre, but that impact the moment to moment gameplay, in a way that reflects the kind of story you're trying to tell. Rowan Hall: I feel like campaign frames are such the distillation of what you and I shout about, not literally, which is mechanics and lore are inseparable. So many of the pieces of campaign frames are mechanical, literally. You can add plus ones or do different things, you have levers you can pull or you can say short rests are not as effective. It's your game. You can decide that. And it's also, some of those things are not literally mechanical, you're not looking at your notes or your character sheet, but lore is mechanics. Deciding how you define violence is a mechanic. Spenser Starke: Right, it's a soft mechanic. Rowan Hall: When I was brought onto the team for Candela, I was brought on to focus on lore and the kind of labor was going to be lore [Rowan] and mechanics [Spenser], and that's just not how we work. Spenser Starke: Yeah, no, it all became inextricable. So we're trying to really capture that and give people the opportunity to play in the kind of space that they want with Daggerheart. Because there's no built-in setting, because you're building. There are locations for you to draw from, and adversaries for you to draw from, but it's really about passing a map around the table and going, what do you want to see here? Because it's that collaborative nature. We found that it's really valuable for the entire table to get on the same page about what kind of subgenre of fantasy they're interested in playing. In the campaign frames we have, it's called the pitch, and it's just a couple of sentences that you read to your players that is, this is the kind of campaign I want to run. Spenser Starke: Providing that, it's like, Hey, here's the basics. If this sounds like it's interesting to you, come play this game, come play in this campaign. Now we're all on the same page about what the tone and feel and style and approach is and what we're all going to be focused on during the campaign. Which means we can build characters around that.

"There Are So Many Brilliant Minds" At Darrington Press

Hall shared an example of how different the genre of fantasy and tone of a Daggerheart can be as well as how the different creatives at Darrington Press help shape the games. Starke also explained how he hopes the campaign frames help inspire GMs to create their own for sub-genres beyond what will be included in the book.

Rowan Hall: That happened pretty organically. The first game that we ran was all about backstory, a little more grounded and kind of a little darker. And then the second game that you ran, just now. So I ran the first one and you ran the second one was funny and it had references to Pepsi and Bob's Burgers and totally different. It was awesome. Spenser Starke: Totally different energy, but that was because the framing was different. So we're trying to mechanize that as best we can. Spenser Starke: We're trying to give scaffolding so that when you step in, you feel like you have structure around you that you can go, okay. Especially campaign frames being a microcosm for the macrocosm, right? We are giving you, I don't know how many are going to be in the book, but let's say there's six, right? We're giving you six campaign frames and you can choose from those. But if you're like, I really want to play in X world, this kind of world that I love and that I know my friends love, then you go, Okay, well I've seen six examples of how they do this, I think I could probably at least start my own. I could do a pitch. I could do the three sentences of the pitch and go from there. So teaching GMs just as much how to use the tools, as providing the tools is really important to us. Rowan Hall: My two dreams, always, for this is if the GMs can walk away from campaign frames saying, "I could do that," that's a win. Then my dream for Daggerheart and Candela, just Darrington as a whole is if people who maybe previously had only played 5e or had only played Pathfinder, played one of our games and then said, "Oh, there's a whole world of TTRPGs," and then picked up another TTRPG and another. Because it's such a gateway drug. The first game that you play, whatever it is, is a gateway to the next. So I hope that like campaign frames, which is a much smaller example, people being able to say, "I can do that." If people play a Darrington game and say, "Oh, there's more I can do those." I think that would be such a win. Spenser Starke: It's interesting to speak on that just very briefly, one of my big experiences early-on was playing For the Queen. Which we have recently acquired and we have published from Alex Roberts, who is one of the most brilliant designers. Rowan Hall: Maybe the best game in the whole world. Spenser Starke: It's so good. For the Queen is I think might be my favorite game. It is so good. Rowan Hall: I don't travel without it. Spenser Starke: It's brilliant. We don't travel anywhere without it. But it fundamentally changed the way that I thought about how games worked. It was an earth-shattering kind of game, in that I was like, I didn't know you could even make games that way. So I think in success carrying forward that legacy of, we want to show people that you can make games in all kinds of ways. So picking up For the Queen, publishing For the Queen, through Darrington, was one of those opportunities we saw of, Hey, this is available. Let's show people that there are so many ways you can play. You can play Candela, you can play Daggerheart, you can play For the Queen. They're all vastly different in their approach, but similar in that they're inviting players in and showing them something new. Rowan Hall: There's such a varied collection of game designers that have worked on Darrington games. If you sat, I think any one of us in a room with no one else and asked a question, you'd get a dozen different answers going all the way down, which is really exciting. Alex Roberts, if I could have a minute of her time, I would probably weep. I'm sure she could teach me so much merely existing. There are so many brilliant minds.

Spenser Starke Reveals What Inspired The Combat Mechanics For Daggerheart

Starke broke down the inspiration for the more collaborative and narrative style of combat in Daggerheart, as opposed the the initiative used in Dungeons & Dragons. He also explained how it can lead to more exciting scenes and a fluidity to the battle that isn't possible with the rigidity of initiative orders.

Spenser Starke: Well, I think that one of the big focuses for me, especially coming from games that didn't have initiative, I play a lot of Forged in the Dark, Powered by the Apocalypse, Descent From the Queen, games where the difference between violence and no violence in a scene is somebody deciding to draw their sword and fight. The difference is not an entirely other game. As it sort of happens in these games that stop down with initiative. I really enjoy those games when I want to play that kind of tactical game. I think they're really important for players who love the structure and the order. So like [Rowan] said, there are games for all kinds of people. But I find myself gravitating towards games that feel really cinematic and allow me to think of the game as a means of telling a story. That means, we had it happen in [Rowan's] game just today. There could be a fight scene happening and then in the middle of that fight scene, two characters start having a conversation because one of them is somebody from their backstory. All of a sudden there's a conversation that's happening and everybody's on hold and we're having the discussion and then maybe there's violence happening in the background or people are still fighting, but we're jumping back and forth between. It was really important to me that the system supported all of that. We can have those moments of shifting in and out of combat because the game is combat focused. There's a lot of combat stuff going on. But at the same time, it's combat focused, hopefully, if we're doing our job right, in the way that an adventure movie is combat focused. We are getting to see the fight as part of the narrative. The goal of the fight, usually, always produces a better scene if it is not simply to kill everything on the battlefield. We got to have a different goal. We got to have more going on. The narrative has to have some sort of way in some way, other than just slaughter everything on the battlefield. So by framing everything as a narrative and a storytelling focused system, we hope that people approach battles, combat in a way that encourages them to explore win conditions outside of death.

Daggerheart's Battle Mechanics "Requires You To Trust And Communicate With Your Table"

Communication is key for Daggerheart not only with the combat mechanics, but the core of the game as a whole. Hall revealed how the combat mechanics played out at the table she has played at. Hall also shared how the golden rule is the basis of play and engaging in Daggerheart as well as other TTRPGs.

Rowan Hall: I think it's worth acknowledging that [Spenser] and I come from a background of film. [Spenser] went to film school, I went to school for acting. We both come from a writing background. I come from a mythology background. So we approach games with the love of all of those things coming with us. So the way we play games, and of course, then the way we write games is very similar. One of the beautiful things that I have seen at every single table we've ever had from the most experienced players, streamers, folks who are used to there being a camera on them, and people who have never ever had a TTRPG in their hands, ever. I always see moments in combat where they know it's someone else's time to shine. For example, today in the one I ran, someone from someone's backstory came on and they knew that that person was going to have a few extra turns. Because everyone was invested in the backstory and supporting them. People let them go a couple times and changed all of their actions to support them. We wouldn't have had that opportunity if there was initiative. I also always see at every single table we've ever had, people have always just naturally known to share. So when someone has their big moment, they know that their next moment's going to come, it's going to be their turn. They know when they hit the battlefield, everyone has always had, even before the action tracker, kind of this rough approximation of like, Oh, Rowan hasn't played in a minute. Rowan, what are you doing in this? Not even just the GM, the other players. I have found at my own tables that has, for me, made such a different experience above board than just being a player. I feel very lucky in that, but I also feel very grateful because I've been at tables that felt great, and I've been at tables that didn't feel great in my time playing TTRPGs. So I hope we can keep that going. Spenser Starke: Yeah. Well, and I think that one of the things it requires, right, is it requires you to trust and communicate with your table. That's sort of a base requirement for me at any table I'm at. So by removing a system that people are pretty familiar with in other traditional games and asking them to try something new, we're also asking them to rise to the challenge of doing something different. Specifically in doing something different to communicate and put focus on the other people at their table. We can't be at every table, but we hope that by trusting the players to do that, that they rise to that challenge. We give them permission, Hey, it is everybody at the table's responsibility to make sure that everybody at the table is having a good time. That is all of our job together, collectively. So we have to look out for each other. That's the whole, we're all in this together. So, I'm hoping that despite that being one of the big changes for a lot of people coming from more traditional systems, that it also asks them to think about their table in a really empathetic and thoughtful way. Rowan Hall: I spend a lot of time thinking about prerequisite art that you have to have consumed to enjoy a piece. Or prerequisite literature you have to know to enjoy a book on a different level. For example, I read Frankenstein pretty young. So books that are hearkening back on the legacy of Frankenstein have meant more to me because I had Frankenstein kind of in my rolodex of knowledge. Or some paintings that you look at are more interesting because it turns out that painter was roasting another painter that was their contemporary. Having that knowledge makes it totally different. But I think, and I don't know, but I find myself wondering if the golden rule is just prerequisite knowledge. That is the first thing that we all learn in play. You learn it, I don't know, maybe as a toddler, maybe in kindergarten. Treat others the way you want to be treated, share your toys. Because TTRPGs are at the end of the day just play. We are playing games. I think that those two rules might just be prerequisite knowledge for all TTRPGs. I'm not sure, but I think about that very often and I find myself kind of sussing it out looking to see if that's true. Just share your toys. Spenser Starke: There are a number of things with Daggerheart that are asking players to engage in ways that they might not be used to. I think that ultimately, is the reason why I'm so excited about it. Because it presents this opportunity to do something familiar in a way that maybe you haven't had the chance to before. Hopefully empower players to tell the kinds of stories that they're excited about. For players that like the style of game that Daggerheart is built around to do it in a way that the mechanics for them reinforce the kind of game they want to play, if that makes sense.

"The GM Is A Player, Put It On My Tombstone"

Starke and Hall explain how the collaborative nature of Daggerheart gives the players a chance to be more invested. This engages the players more fully into the story and lore. This also allows the GM, a traditionally isolated role when building the campaign, to have more input from the players about what they are excited about and feel more like players themselves.

Rowan Hall: The GM is a player! The GM is a player, put it on my tombstone. I was so excited the other day a friend came to visit us and I ran Candela for her and she walked away and she said, "I always thought I'd be a player. I don't like GMing when I've done it in the past. I haven't enjoyed it, but I really want to run Candela." That felt like such high praise because she felt like it was accessible to her. Someone saying, "I always want to be a player," and then thinking that they can, GM tells me that hopefully we've been successful at saying in Candela, the GM is also a player. So I hope Daggerheart, being in conversation with the legacy of Sword and Sorcery games, is supporting the GM feeling like a player. Supporting GMs who maybe have been daunted by the idea of having to do everything. Seeing that their players not only can take some of the lift off of them, but will enjoy it. Spenser Starke: They have more buy-in when they are engaging. We've seen that a lot, especially with the campaign maps. You pass them around the table and everybody fills in stuff on the map that they're excited by. We did that just here, in this past play through and one of the things we found is that suddenly, and every time we do it, is that the players all now care about what's on the map, because they made it. And they remember it. So when I go like, "Oh yeah, the city of Alundra," and they go, "Oh, the city of Alundra, remember the city of Alundra, we did the thing." And it's like they already know about it like their character would know about it. So they're able to get excited about it in a way that if I was just describing it. If I had built it on my own as a GM and had no connection to the players, it would be a lot harder to get them buy-in about this place, even if I describe it to them. Of course as a GM, we are always having to make up stuff on the fly, but to have that scaffolding of, Okay, you're excited about the city of Alundra because it is a pirate town. Where it's lawless and all this stuff. They described that for me and I'm like, Great. I take that back. I flush out Alundra and figure out what it is. Now I can have all the themes and things that I want in that place that I, as a GM am excited about, but I know I have a hook. Rowan Hall: We had an experience when those maps were pretty new, very early in Daggerheart, and we brought someone in who'd never played a TTRPG before, and they were self-professed, quote, not creative. I don't agree with that, but that's what they say. And they were really worried. They were like, "What will I do? You have to give me the lore, or I won't be able to do it. I can't make it up." And Spenser and I were like, "Wait, let's try this." By the time the map came out, when it got to her, she was writing, putting in the place from her backstory and doing the whole thing and tying it into other people's. Then in the end she was like, "Oh my God, I know everything about this world and I didn't have to read 5, 10, 20, 50 pages." We figured it out in an hour. And I was like, "Yes, we got them." Spenser Starke: So it's really fun to be able to see the evolution of that. I think honestly, that's widely applicable to any game that you want run, right? We're hoping that Daggerheart also provides a framework for if you want to go run any game and you're like, I want to bring in this more. If you are a player or a GM who likes collaborative storytelling, if that's something you enjoy, these are also tools you can carry with you throughout any game.

About Daggerheart

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Daggerheart is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game of brave heroics and vibrant worlds that are built together with your gaming group. Create a shared story with your adventuring party, and shape your world through rich, long-term campaign play.

Check out more of our Critical Role interviews including our Candela Obscura interview with Rowan Hall and Spenser Starke.

Daggerheart is expected to be released in 2025.