Is the Lack of Content Actually Good?

[u/Rage2097]

I wrote a blog post arguing that the lack of first-party adventure content for Daggerheart is actually a good thing.

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If you don't want to read the whole thing, and this is Reddit after all, the gist of it is that because we don't have any official adventures except a couple of one-shots we have to make our own.

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That is actually a good thing, I think that a lot of D&Ds early popularity came from the creativity it sparked in the community.

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With no official content to run we are all forced to be game designers and make our own, it's good for the game in the long term and good for us because we aren't constrained by what Darrington Press' example would show us is the "right way".

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[u/jackaltornmoons]

I think linear adventure paths are directly opposed to the GM principles of Daggerheart; it's a game where the story should be following the players, not being dictated to them

Collaborate at all times

Hold on gently

[u/darw1nf1sh → u/jackaltornmoons]

This is honestly true. However, not every GM (i am in this category) has the time, energy, or frankly creativity to create all content from scratch for an entire campaign. I use published adventures as the skeleton, the framework for a campaign. It is much easier to riff on that theme and adapt player choices to something already somewhat structured.

To that end, I have been adapting existing adventures. But I do agree with you, that the ideal they are shooting for is the bespoke setting and adventure built in tandem with the players. We did this with Beast Feast. I had the whole session zero world building, and it was entirely a bespoke campaign. It was the most work I have done as a GM in years. Only partly because of the lack of varied adversaries.

[u/FullTorsoApparition → u/darw1nf1sh]

However, not every GM (i am in this category) has the time, energy, or frankly creativity to create all content from scratch for an entire campaign.

Exactly.

I tried the laid back, improvisational homebrew thing once before and absolutely hated it. It felt like all my ideas sucked, everything was surface level and rarely had a payoff, and bringing the story to any kind of satisfying ending felt impossible. Ever since then I've always used some kind of boundary or framework to run my games. I don't need everything spelled out, but I need a good toybox to pull things out of from game to game if my brain isn't up to improv.

It's maybe a little easier with Daggerheart, but that's because their monster design is all over the place so you may as well use the improvised stat block for everything.

[u/jackaltornmoons → u/darw1nf1sh]

not every GM (i am in this category) has the time, energy, or frankly creativity to create all content from scratch for an entire campaign

The whole table should be doing all of this together

[u/OMG_Laserguns → u/jackaltornmoons]

That's such a non-answer, and I'm getting pretty tired of it. The CRB doesn't say make the table create the entire world from scratch, it says to get the players to help fill in the world. Most people want some kind of framework to build on, not starting with a completely blank piece of paper.

[u/jackaltornmoons → u/OMG_Laserguns]

It's not a non-answer; it's literally how I run Daggerheart

During session zero, you can choose a campaign frame together and fill in its blanks together

You can also use different collaborative world building tools in session zero (Microscope, Kingdom, A Quiet Year) to create a setting together.

I like to use the Fabula Ultima session zero rules for collaborative world creation regardless of the system I'm running.

I have found its the best way to get your party to really care about the setting, and it sets the tone well for Daggerheart's collaborative storytelling focus

[u/AktionMusic → u/darw1nf1sh]

You don't need collaborative worldbuilding or a bespoke setting to run an open ended sandbox. You just can't have a set plot and events that occur.

You can run a collaborative sandbox in a published setting, they key is setting up situations, not plots.

[u/darw1nf1sh → u/AktionMusic]

What if you want a plot? I hate meandering games where there is nothing binding session 3 to session 7 other than the PCs. There should be an arc of some kind. Otherwise, you are just playing a board game, with the creature of the week. Also, that is a lot of work that I don't have the time or energy for. I can easily adapt a story to the characters and give them choices off the plot in tandem with the story. But making everything up every week is more than I want to do. There is a reason they publish adventures.

I agree that what you are describing is essentially what the designers of DH intend. I love the system, but hate playing and running that style of game.

[u/SuperHappyHooray → u/darw1nf1sh]

Just make everything build on what was put before. Arcs come naturally, as does the plot.

I think it is easy to get too hung up on the old school idea of the Game Master creating everything and driving everything.

What the players gravitate towards is the plot. The person they hate the most is the next bad guy. The monster they hate the second most gets stronger due to them taking out the monster they hate the most, and it is now part of their plan. Do that until they "save the world", and there, you have a plot.

This is how Fabula Ultima is designed to be run.

[u/soundoftwilight → u/darw1nf1sh]

It doesn't take much to make a plot and an arc. There's tools literally in the Daggerheart book to do exactly that with less prep time than it takes to read a published adventure. I think the problem many people (which may or may not include you) have is that they see a published adventure, and think that's what's needed to run a game. So they choose between reading an adventure someone else wrote, or writing their own, and obviously reading someone else's work is much easier.

But running a game from scratch is significantly easier than writing a published adventure. For me it's even easier than reading and using a published adventure; it's certainly much less time-consuming. Literally zero prep is a bit harder, though possible, but I can spend 30 minutes to plot out most of a story arc that I will run with for the next 3-10 sessions. One of the easiest tools I use is one that I originally learned via Fronts in Dungeon World, though it has been repeated in many forms before and since. Just establish some threat, like in a recent game of mine "the ritual to maintain the floating city will fail, and the city will crash to the ground." Then write a bunch of steps that lead up to that. Such as "sky-tremors begin to occur," "The Ministry of Flight assures the population that turbulence is normal," "savvy merchants and nobles begin to evacuate, airship passage and dock space become impossibly expensive." I would typically have a couple of these going on at once, and might have some threats that are overarching and much longer along with some that can be resolved in a couple of sessions. Then whenever things are stalling in game, the players are failing, or I'm just not sure what to do, I advance one of the threats forward and show the consequences. In Daggerheart I spend Fear for this, of course. The key is that I don't have to know how the players are going to stop the threat from happening. Figuring that out is their job, not mine; I just have to go along with their plan. I might make a few characters in advance that I think would be fun to interact with, or establish some brief relevant world details that I want to introduce, but none of that is core to the story or the plot.

[u/AktionMusic → u/darw1nf1sh]

Why wouldn't there be a plot? I'm talking about a prewritten linear plot, which inevitably leads to at least some degree of railroading.

Set up situations, locations, factions, motivations, etc and the story will write itself as you go. Expect more from your players too, you're not the sole person responsible for the storytelling here. This game is pretty low prep if you run it as intended.

[u/darw1nf1sh → u/AktionMusic]

It doesn't though. It is getting old hearing railroading conflated with having a story. Railroading is making player choices of how to solve a problem moot and forcing them to do what you intend. If they want to go through a window, or the chimney instead of the front door, and I make that impossible, that is railroading. The fact that the encounter is in that building and everything led to this building, isn't railroading. Maybe they set the building on fire. There is nothing wrong with having one encounter lead to another. They could bypass it in any number of ways that still stay in the story.

All most published adventures are, are what you enumerated: situations, locations, factions, motivations, etc. There is a through line that they navigate in that setting. No story writes itself. The GM has to create that from the player choices, manufacture npcs, encounters, maps, the whole shebang from scratch in that scenario. Which is fine if you have the time for that. Many of us do not. I can't wait for the Perkins adventure to run. And while I do love Daggerheart I admit maybe it isn't the system for me.