Daggerheart: Hope & Fear Expansion Explained w/ Spenser Starke & Rowan Hall

Greetings adventurers and welcome back to Quest and Answers, the show where we talk to all manner of awesome people from around the gaming world. I'm Dan Casey and today we have some very special guest joining me. They are, among other impressive things, any award-winning game designers behind such games like Candela Obscura and Dagger Heart. Their brand new expansion Dagger Heart Hope and Fear is available now wherever fine TTRP Jews are sold. Folks, please welcome Spencer Stark and Rowan Hall. Hi! Hi! Hi! Thank you, folks, for being here today. How are you folks feeling now that it's finally out in the world? Congratulations first and foremost. Thank you. We feel great. Yeah, it's been it's been it's such a it's such an interesting process to get books to shelves because we turned it in so long ago that now we're on our like second wave of excitement. There was the first wave when we turned it in and then there's a lull where it's at the printer and nobody besides us know what's in there and then and then it comes out and then everybody gets excited again. So I think it's nice because we get that sort of second wave. Yeah, it's it's by the time everybody is getting it it feels new again to us. Yeah. Because we turned it in so long ago which is really it's like a treat. How long is that gap from when you say like okay we're locking this we have to move on to the next thing and to really finally get to share it with the public. Yeah, it really depends. Yeah. But one of the things that I was not prepared for I was just talking about this yesterday before I knew about like publishing and getting things around the world that like pirates are a very real consideration like because there are pirates who go after containerships. Like that is that is a non-zero factor. We have to include in our timelines which if you told me when I was a kid that I would actually be talking about pirates in my job as an adult I don't know if I would believe. Yeah, the idea that pirates would be a meaningful obstacle to getting your job done. It feels fanciful as a child but you know I would happily watch the captain Philip sequel we're trying to liberate a container full of dagger heart. Just getting just getting some games. Yeah, I mean it's it's months and how many months that is depends on a lot of factors but like even just being months plural means that we've had enough time to step away from it and come back to it and and then also you always have to factor like if pirates then we have to make time to have like they're just you have to add on time to make it to make it work and then once it gets in it has to be warehouse. So like there's probably the least exciting thing for the listeners to hear about the logistics of getting some real logistics heads in the chat. Don't worry. But yeah, I think that's it's one of the small quirks with publishing something physically nowadays. When a lot of stuff is made digitally not just in the games world but like in general right things are sent over the internet so files can be immediate when they're actually making something. People in a place putting things together it takes a long time. Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah, well I'm grateful there's the physical version that's part of the tactile joy for me of playing TTRPGs. We're going to talk about hope and fear in just a minute but I want to take things back a bit further. We always like to talk about we talk a lot about TTRPGs and board gaming tabletop gaming in general on this show but I want to go back. Do you remember what the first game or tabletop role playing game was that really sunk its like hooks into you and made you think about gaming in a different way? Yeah, my first game outside of like a monopoly or like a mouse trap or something. I jumped into the deep end. I played X-Wing the fantasy flight X-Wing game because I had some friends who invited me over to play and they're like we're gonna play Star Wars and I was like I'm so down I couldn't be more down. They're like it's a little complicated I was like I don't care and then I got there was like oh wow it is complicated affectionate. I need to learn everything and now I'm immediately going to the store and buying my minis so because they they come to those cool ships that you can buy and collect and stuff so that's what I first jumped into and you know doing that kind of skirmish war game was so different than anything else I had ever played and then I was like but what if we tell stories and they were like we can do that too and just came out of that. That's such a good question I think you know I played Pathfinder and DD up until this point but Spencer invited me to a game of Blades in the Dark that was really cool for me and that was my first like non d20 role-playing game and Briya was there and Joey and Gina and Vivo and it was such an amazing group of people and I had been playing all TTRPGs in a narrative forward way anyway but that playing on a chassis where the rules were so much lighter than like Pathfinder and they were told in such a different way to help you engage with time in a different way like the flashbacks and whips in the square like a revelation for me and then I think we also not long after that played a game of something is wrong here that would be larked something is wrong here that for at Big Bad Con rest in peace overnight we played all the whole night we played that's cool that's cool it's a lark and I think like a good 14 hour lark with the right people yeah can fix things like four AMO is crazy I'm not sure the big ills in the world but it could fix the small ills of life I think look I'll take any ill that can be fixed one of them I love what you said about Blades in the Dark is that was definitely a revelation for me as well in terms of like a breath of fresh air I love how you know like you mentioned the flash back mechanic almost like creates this interesting conversation between the like game master and the players in a way that shares that onus of having to shoulder the entire storytelling burden so it's very cool yeah it's a huge inspiration I think for both of us I ran that campaign for a very long time and then as we near the end of that campaign as we near the end of that campaign a bria was playing in that campaign and we a brilliant iron guard for this you don't know a bria is amazing she's the best and near the end of that campaign a bria and I coordinated that there was a thing that was going to happen where essentially I switched seats with her at the table and then she was running good society which is the like Jane Austin as we went into a full flashback before the cataclysm oh wow and so we are now suddenly playing in dust ball before the fall of that's amazing in good society exploring the origin like the ancestors of these characters anyway it was very cool but that kind of like free flow story game style of play is what we've always gravitated I also think like Blades in the Dark being such a revelation for all of us and then for us having strash and layla make the illuminated world system and then us getting to step into candela and then kind of take that into another game like tracing that lineage yeah the strash was a consulting designer on blades and so like having it be so in the family so many people pulling on these like really interesting threads that's been a really interesting through line well and then I don't know if you know this you might but um but for those who don't know all of the domain symbols in dagger heart of the like different the cross blades in the symbol you know all the things all of those are built except for the one for dread all the rest of them were built by John Harper and John Harper yeah tapped him for dagger heart so it was one of the things that he did was he built those for us that's so cool the he the don't like the double helix DNA of everyone's TTRBG experienced blending to make something new together that's fantastic yeah yeah and he also designed the deluxe cover for candle and scare up so we call John Harper as often as human the name is just going to be staring at you from your cell phone otherwise so I want to talk about a hope and fear I mean this seems like a pretty sprawling expansion I'm very excited about it new classes the dread domain as you mentioned transformations adversaries campaign frames you name it but I'm curious from your perspective what when you began sort of designing this as like the first major expansion to dagger heart what was the thought process was there anything that you felt that the core system couldn't express easily enough or that you were particularly excited to expand on well I mean so we had a different plan after dagger heart released and people were so enthusiastic about it that like we had the amazing champagne problem of having to kind of change our plans and so dagger heart hoping fear was born out of the community's excitement which was really a fun opportunity we opted to do a book that had offerings for everyone because we wanted to get people more on all fronts as much as we possibly could I think transformations were my thing that kind of the seat of it was planted in core but we couldn't actualize it until down the road and hoping fear presented that opportunity really nicely yeah we kind of got to do a lot of things that we were playing with in core but we either came to the conclusion or knew even as we were playing with them that they weren't right for this book they weren't going to fit and and uh you know in core we talked about this before um Inkore, the page count, the amount of page we had in the book, it came down to the weight of the ink. It was so, like, we had to be so precise with it and there had to be so much cut from the core book so that we could make it something that would ship internationally for a reasonable price and, you know, all these different considerations. And so we were like, great, we have a bunch of stuff that we played with and I think for me, that's how I like to operate, I like to have more and then decide what the best stuff is and let all of that come float to the top and then take the things that weren't either weren't right for that book or that we were like, we can cut this from this book, continue to iterate on them until they feel like they are at the quality that we would expect of the rest of the book and then put those out as well because it's all such an iterative process that, like, just continuing to refine and refine and refine is always the, like, trajectory of design for me. And so, so yeah, so being able to have the opportunity to take things that we were excited for but either didn't fit or we wanted a little more time on, it'd work on them and then finally bring them to the audience when they were ready. I think we also wanted to show people what we're thinking about for Future Growth as well, so like we introduced a new domain in Dread so that people could play with two new classes and then also we expanded classes with different domain combinations that we hadn't released in core and we offered kind of a new mechanic that goes in the heritage space and then we have campaign frames and adversaries and that kind of shows all of the different ways we're always thinking about expanding the game. So it's a little bit of that everything with, like, a future site. Yeah, and this was also what we're sort of calling like a core expansion, meaning like the expansions, the projects that we put out after this aren't always going to be this way because this has a lot in it and especially has a new domain and we really don't want to bloat the game super fast, but we knew that people would be excited for, like, a warlock and a witch and those kinds of things and people are calling for it. So, so we're always weighing, like, how do we not bloat the game, but how do we give people more that they get to engage with? And I think that's a big challenge in a game line, right? Now, one off game, it's not that big of a deal, but as you go out a game line, you have to consider, like, how are people imagining the content that's coming to them, as far as is it necessary? Do I have to now buy six books to be able to do it? And so everything in this book is optional. It's all up in content. None of it should feel like you have to use it. That's such an interesting thought because I was, as you were talking about this, I'm thinking, you know, thinking about the future of dagger heart. This feels like such a meaty expansion and, like, really, like, building out the game in a meaningful way. When you're building future iterations, are you thinking about it as, okay, this needs to operate as if you have hope and fear, it'll work perfectly. Or if you only have core, it'll work perfectly. Or do you think about it as, like, well, I'd really love for this if they had both because it really synergizes an interesting way. And such a good question, we always want to start from core. You shouldn't have to have multiple products to be able to engage. I think there's a world in the future in which there are, like, optional opt-in things. We haven't done that yet, but I can imagine a world in which there are, like, optional opt-in things if you have certain pieces, but the books themselves should not rely on each other to function. Like, you should just be able to buy core and then buy the one of the books that speaks to you and you should be able to use that. Yeah. My goal is that, like, if a new TTRPG person comes to someone's, like, massive library in their home and they're interested in dagger heart, if that person has, God bless, like, 10 books one day, knock on wood, that if the newbie is interested, they're, like, "Oh, don't worry. Like, you don't need all these books. You can borrow this one and you'll have everything you need to enjoy." Because I never want as much as possible, I want to eliminate that fear of joining the TTRPG space. And I think the interesting thing about dagger heart is one of our, like, principles that we're always going back to is streamline and streamline again. So adding a new domain, for example, I think introducing the domain and maybe the entirety of the cards if you put them on book pages is maybe, like, four book pages, but that's because we're putting in a lot of work to make sure that we're explaining things as simply and coherently and often, it has to fit on a card, so it's a short text. And so even though that portion of the game doesn't represent as many pages in a book, it's actually a huge expansion in play and it offers so many different options and permutations and has to be played tested against so much of the rest of the game. So I get, I'm very enthusiastic that even as we're expanding it, when you actually have all the cards in your hands, it still doesn't add to this, like, experience of too much. You still can go, "Oh, it's, here's your domain and hand it to someone and it's, it's fairly bite size." Yeah, I think to speak to that, like, making those decision points at places where it's not slowing down play, so, like, you're making a decision point about your class and then you get your domains. And after that, everything else functions the same. There's not like, you're not running like, you know, you have 26 cards in your hand, right? So like, really trying to be aware of like, how are people using this? How can we make expansions that feel like they honor the principles of the core game and give people something a little bit extra that they can opt into? Mm-hmm. That's awesome. I love the approach of Streamline as well because I definitely think that part of the challenge of getting newcomers is you don't want them to be sort of like, "Hey, paralyzed with choice, but B, you just feel like, oh, I have to understand 12 books worth of something." In order to actually sit down and play this one, all you need is imagination and a couple hours. Well, TTRBG books are really interesting. I don't know if anything else exists in this space, but like, this book is the manual. The computer that this is the manual for is actually six people together at the table, having a really good time. And so we're trying to make text to be like, "Here's a roadmap for you to have good time, but also if you hack it and run a different operating system or, you know, all of the different metaphors." Like, you can, all of the magic is at the table. And so because we're selling the product of the book, it seems like this is the entirety of the offering, but the streamlining is a huge part of the process of making sure that people have a good time when they're actually doing it. And that's like, so much of our time is just focused on that. Yeah, a lot of our work is, a lot of the way that we talk about our work is in scaffolding. So there's sometimes where I write something and I'm like, "Oh, that's about me as a GM." That's like, that's actually me as a GM writing that. That's not me as a game designer writing that. I need to back off of that. I need to create the tools for the GM to be able to do that, especially in collaboration with the players. The great example of that is in the "WareDragon" campaign frame in Hope & Fear, which is one of the new campaign frames, there's a collaborative villain builder. So during your session zero, you're building with your whole table, the villain that is going to sort of be the Maleficent kind of figure in your story. But in doing it together, now one, it takes burden off the GM in building that. It also means that there's so much buy-in from the players because they help to make that thing and now they have all that information in their head because they were part of the process as opposed to having to read it, right? So you're sort of, how do we create fun and engaging? How do we create fun and out of that fun create information that then offloads the cognitive load that would normally be on either in pages that you'd have to memorize or on a GM to make up? How do we shift that into the table doing it together because then everybody remembers it because it lives in them as opposed to being a thing they have to memorize. It's a monster of their own making. It's fantastic. I love hearing about the process here and definitely sounds like you folks are in lockstep in terms of like creative sensibilities, but I'm curious, are there any spots in sort of the like overarching development of Hope and Fear where you approached this from different directions? Was there like a feature or an idea that you really had to convince the other person was going to work? Well, I think transformations were something that we back back in forth. We batted back in forth quite a lot just trying to find the right, honestly, the right name was one of the big ones. Oh my god, naming that was brutal. And it sounds so simple now, but it was, we were like, is it a curse because it was like vampire and werewolf at first and we were like, is it a curse? I don't think curses write because we want to do like demigod, is it alter, is it an altered thing? Anyway, we went back and forth and I think we also just like on the concept there was a, there were a lot of explorations of what that could be and I think you always had such a clear vision of this thing should not be a class, it shouldn't be an ancestry, it's got to be something that lives outside of all of those. I was really adamant about transformations from the jump, like when we were making core Some folks started pitching vampire classes. The vampire was kind of the heart of this, but like vampire classes and vampire ancestries. And in Dagger Heart, your class is kind of like, what appears at career day, right? Like that's your job in some ways. And then your ancestry in Dagger Heart personhood can be so different. Like you don't just have to be a human. You could be a little frog guy. You could be humanoid dragon. And so to me, it doesn't make sense that being a vampire or a werewolf or a ghost would only look humanoid. So those things couldn't be ancestries. And so then we had to reevaluate. And yeah, I think you and Rob and I, I think we all got together and we had a North Star. We just had to figure it out. And like I think I'm hoping fear this happens all the time. But like for a while, there was a crazy power creep. Like we were just designing this most badass stuff. And it was so broken. And that's just how you got to do it. Like you go big and scale it back. But it was fun looking at each other and going like, oh, okay. Well, I think also one of the other experiences that people tend to have is like that we're in lockstep. But I think that only comes out of a lot of hard work to be in lockstep, right? People don't see the behind the scenes of us like banging our heads against the wall trying to fix a thing, pitching a thousand different ways. It not being like, it's not there yet. It's not there yet. That's not quite right. Well, this works for me. And this doesn't quite work for me. Okay, what is not working about it for you? And I think that like that whole process between you and me and Rob, but also just like also the entire rest of the team at Darington as we play test and stuff. Like we hear considerations from everybody around the games that we make. And so, and that's a really important part of the process. And so, I think a lot of that lockstep comes we talk about. So I was like, we were like, yeah, you see us in lockstep, but that's because we've done all of that work to be there. Not because it necessarily happens. Also, now the core is out, like the game speaks for itself to us. Yeah, yeah, now we have to go back to the game and be like, what is the game asking for? It's not about what I want. It's not about what you want. It's about what is the game asking of us? And how do we live up to that? Well, I'm curious as well that's such an interesting thing about like the game speaking for itself, but also now you have a good amount of data as it were of like, okay, the game is speaking for itself, but also the players are speaking to the game. What's one of the most interesting or like meaningful pieces of feedback you receive that may you maybe consider Daggahart in a different way as you're approaching this expansion or future opportunities? Ooh, approaching this expansion. Well, I mean, everyone really wanted a blade midnight combination, so that I think there was a really loud community request for that and so that went in the book because people asked for it so much. And that influenced the priority at which we were able to approach that because so many people wanted it, we got to bump it up and have the assassin, which was really nice. Yeah, I think on the flip side of that, just approach wise, so many people wanted a warlock. And so many people built so many different versions of a warlock during our development, as we were trying to figure out what this was. And so it was really fun to, in the way that the assassin came out of a combination of domains, the warlock was like, okay, it could be any of these six things. What is the most interesting to us? And Matt Mercer was really excited about building a dread domain. And so, out of that, we were like, okay, well, that feels very warlocky. Let's see what, you know, let's see what that is like. And so, so yeah, I think those pieces of feedback of like, what do you want, what are you excited for? It really gives us a North Star of looking in combination with what we're excited for. I think there's always this approach that we have to the game, which is like a game for everyone is a game for no one, which means we have to be careful of not just trying to like make, try and make everybody happy. You have to make the design decisions that work for the game. But when we see something that the community is excited for and we're also excited for, then we can lock onto that and go, great, all of us are aligned that this is the thing that we want to do. How do we get there? One of my favorite days working on Hope & Fear, you and I were in one of the offices with a big whiteboard and we were breaking down the fantasy of a warlock. I'm going to be like, how do we approach this in Dagger Heart? What are the different ways we can do this and coming to the conclusion that we wanted to define kind of like the reason people made a pact, what kind of power they were after as the approach for subclasses was really, it took a lot of work to get there and also it was really fun. Once we locked onto it, we were like, everything else is out of the way now. Now we can do this and it was just kind of a finding the bridging paths. Yeah, I think one of the classic ways that packs tend to be formed, just coming from like traditional D20 fantasy is like a round a type of being, but we knew that we were only getting two subclasses and we knew that if we were doing those two, that if we only gave two kinds of beings that you were able to do this with, it would either be so vague that it kind of ate up real estate for us to do any subclasses later or it had to be specific enough that it carved out its own space and then people would be like, wait, but what about if I want to do a pact with X or Y or Z, and it takes a long time to make these books, it takes a long time to put out new cards, even subclasses because they're cards, like if we're going to officially release them, they have to usually be in a product of some kind. And so given all of that, we were like, how do we take a new approach this? How do we back up and just go like, what are we looking for out of this? What's the emotional experience of this? And that's kind of how we ended up coming into warlock and why it became what it was. What it is now. I also think so much of the fun of the warlock. You've got your favorite blanket, a freshly poured drink, and a cold case burning a hole in your streaming queue. You're not just watching true crime, you're running the investigation from the comfort of your couch. Welcome to murder, she watched. The podcast where we recap, dissect, and slightly over-analysed some of the best and craziest, true crime documentaries on our favorite streamers. Did the spouse do it? Why is the shady neighbor wearing leather gloves in July? Why did this guy agree to be interviewed in this documentary? We ask the tough questions that you're often just screaming at your TV. 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Locked Patron is born in the imagination of the player and at the table and what everybody makes of that, and making mechanics that open that door, but don't stop the fun, was really important, because I love watching people make a warlock and go, okay, this is my patron. And then talking about it with the GM and watching them negotiate how that person's going to appear, that character's going to appear is really exciting. And I want to make sure all of those doors are open in the warlock as we continue to cook with that class. Yeah, I love that. I love the sort of like interplay there, where it just leaves it open to the players. You can get as specific as you want later, but like you said before, this is meant to give players more of everything, including more choice. So that's refreshing. And I think those I think those pic lists really help in choice. That's one thing that we've seen has really resonated in that like a lot of people when you give them completely free open choice can feel really intimidating, but when you curate a pic list that they can choose from or and you can say or make your own, right? Like there's always that caveat, but by giving that pic list, we're as designers giving you the palette that we believe this thing is operating inside of the freedom to break it if you want, but like that is the else. We get to decide on the flavor in some respect, but then they get to be they get to inform it via their choice. And so that kind of like conversation that's happening between the book and the player, the book and the GM via control choice is something that we found to be super helpful in not making people love around. Yeah. I love the pic list. We interrupt this life changing interview with an important message from today's sponsor Fabletics. Folks, it's that time of year once again. 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So, what was the thought process behind that, especially because, you know, you want fear to still feel like not a, not a cudgel, but threatening to the player, there needs to be that balance. Well, that interacting with fear was in the DNA of the Dread domain from the jump, because of the themes that we were pulling on, and actually huge shout out to Mercer. He had so many great ideas for interacting with the fear pool, and I think it's that this in the past Mercer is sometimes like our dagger heart fairy, like he'll have these regrets, and then he'll like design things overnight, and then we'll get them in our email in the next morning, like this big pile of awesome clever design. It's the best. And so, I think he, his passion for the Dread domain, and for interacting with that fear pool, I think was a real lead on that, because like we want to, I want to make games for the people I love to have a good time, and seeing how passionate he was about that from the jump, for me, was a signal that that is both fun for a player and fun for GM, because he sits in both seats. And so, because he was like, I like this in both positions, then we could really, I think, go full steam ahead. Yeah, it used to be a really, it used to be very consistently, fear-based in Dread, and we found that we, in play tests, we actually had to scale some of that back so that it didn't always have to do with fear. And also that, you know, there's the opportunity to like, take one of the GM's fear, right, or whatever, and you clear one of those, and we found that those interactions, when they were small and unintrusive on the whole, were really fun, but the minute it became like too much, it was too much, too much amount of, and it also was too like Metagame, too hot. And so then it was like, okay, well, we can still do other things with fear. What happens if a role with fear is actually good? for a player who is in the Dread domain. The GM, the GM still gets a fear, but like, they do extra damage. And now suddenly, okay, we're playing with a thing that isn't messing with the economy as much, because the economy can be thrown off with too much meddling. But what if we, what if we just, like, made it as a trigger? And so we started playing with that and ultimately landed on like a balance of that, that we felt like, spoke to the domain, um, allowed for that interaction, but didn't intrude too much and create problems in the games that we ran. The Dread domain was also such an attorney in learning how much naming really makes a difference in things. I, we knew that, obviously, we've named a thousand things for Daggerheart, but with the Dread domain, with things like jumpscare and damnation. I've watched people who were less experienced TT RPG players. I just want that because it sounds cool. Like I'm not the same at the mechanics. However this manifests, I want to jump scare people. And, and then knowing we have to really live up to those names and also make sure that the things with badass names that anyone I did and identifies with aren't competing with things that maybe are a little more meta. And I think there was also a huge period where we like retool names of spooky things to make sure there had to be mechanical balance and then there just had to be naming balance. Of course, you need the aesthetic appeal too. I feel like that's half the fun of like making a character as you just want to mold them to this vision. Yeah. Well, and we talk a lot about promise of the premise, meaning like if we're presenting a premise in the, in the player that GM's mind, we're making a promise with them. And if we don't deliver on that promise, that oftentimes is where I find people disconnect. It's too complicated or it doesn't do what they thought it was going to do. XYZ, it can upend people's not only like what they wanted, but like almost the trust in being able to look at the game and go like, oh yeah, I know what that is. That was a big thing with the a theorist and with the gnome. Yes, yes. So when we released ancestors on the void, both of those were really, we were really looking at people if they got what they thought they were going to get on the tin. And the a theorist was an angelic. It's an angelic kind of ancestry. And there was a lot of back and forth about whether they should have wings or they shouldn't have wings, and how many different places in Daggerheart? Can you get wings? And if you get wings being an angelic being and you want to be a serif, does that like, how does that interact with the subclass wing? Sentinel, like there were so many considerations. And ultimately, people wanted wings. And so all of that went out. Like there was no more option for no because that's how it would be imagined that character. And so we had to live up to that. And linole, everyone has such a clear idea of these little whimsical friends and making sure that we captured the whimsy of like flicker step. Yeah. And then also still making sure we have enough diversity of just like, it's slightly different humanoid as it exists in fantasy. It's like human halfling gnome, elf giant, right? Who's like kind of just doing the AT&T bars all the way down. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think that, you know, if we're looking at like, if you're looking at, what was the first movie if I got a theorist? This is why playtesting is so important because we put wings on them and then we saw it in feedback. There was like, there are some people that were like, hey, I don't think this should have wings. And we're like, great, okay, let's go. Let's go take the wings off. Let's playtesting. We did that. And then there was like so many people were like, oh my god. What did you do? Oh, okay. The first one was a small contingency of the second one was way more important. That's exactly why we playtesting. That was fun. Yeah. And also mixed ancestry, I think is always a really nice offering. But the theorists needed the wings. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think also on that like promise of the premise thing, there's always that weight of like, like, we want it to feel new and fresh. And you want people to kind of get what they're expecting so that they're not disappointed. So how much can we change? How much can we put our own stamp on this very standard fantasy thing? How far can we take it before people are like, wait, but that's not what I recognize. And we call, we've been speaking about that recently as like, we have to, we spend our weird budget somewhere. Our weirdness budget. There's a weirdness budget of like, if we're going to name something a weird thing, like if you're just going to give a name that doesn't really have any meaning to somebody who doesn't read the book, we're going to give that a, that's, that's part of the weirdness budget. It's a big factor in the weirdness budget. But if you don't spend it there, then you can kind of spend it elsewhere. But you have a limited amount before things become like, you're reading clockwork orange, where like every other word doesn't make any sense unless you're like, it's needed. For example, the giant, they can have one to three eyes. And that's not a huge weirdness spend because people know about cyclopses and adding in three eyes are like, okay, try and close. But weird, yeah, try and close. Exactly. But the weirdness does come in in the like, when their giants are young, they can have any number of eyes and it doesn't get sorted out until they go through puberty. And so like, that's just a tiny entrownness versus like a theorist, the naming on those, I, I was doing a lot of etymology research because we need a name that kind of got people in that head space even if they don't know what that group means because we didn't want to spend the weirdness budget too much on a name versus no that's just gnomes are like a standard name and then we got to introduce them having this kind of like jumping through space ability because everyone kind of knows what a gnome is so you can like spend a little bit of weird juice the the kins the elemental kins was also a big I mean this is like right down the center on those right like there's a world in which we created weird fantasy names for all of those um and at one point I did uh early on a development and and then trying to remember we what's the fire one people don't choose them as much yeah and actually to your credit you figured this out so early in diver heart because the kins were held from core they have existed for quite a long time you found out that when they had strange names people felt like there was this lore they were beholden to yes interesting that there were rules that they needed to know and as soon as you changed them to a version of what ultimately became released as like the kins people started picking them and they wanted to play with them because they like tied kin they're like oh I'm a water person yeah I don't feel like I have to learn something that I don't already know and you like I watched that happen yeah and you were so right yeah when when the names were more specific uh the lore felt more specific and then people felt like they're beholden to certain things I'm like no no you're just like a fire guy yeah like you're just trying to figure out fire a mental human here's your two things but like make it up right now you see your skin glow do you have like cracks in your skin we can see fire underneath any of that's fine whatever you want to do is your beard on fire like whatever you want to do uh it's totally fine and so by opening the name that really helped yeah that's such an interesting bit of like player psychology right there that's so fascinating but if you're in a specific if you're in a specific setting like we there could be names for those things in that place yeah I also think that's an example of like you a game for everyone is a game for no one dagger heart specifically our goal is to make onboarding really easy and to provide a really strong foundation for people to customize on top of with their own original ideas so choosing names that are really easy to understand at the jump and then inviting people to make their own like is your hair on fire or is your skin made of magma like those kinds of different decision points is a goal of dagger heart but there are other games where the juice is like learning this really specific name and learning what the really specific lore is in building that and so we're constantly that is where we go like what is dagger heart asking for like we figured it out in core and now we are beholding to that kind of way that dagger heart wants to operate um as we expand yeah I I appreciate that sort of like that the philosophy about making it easy to onboard players and also it feels like speaking to what you're talking about scaffolding before um I want to talk a bit about campaign frames because I find that's such an interesting part of the experience because it's rather than being like okay here is your full fledged like campaign setting that you have to everything is written in stone feels more like the here is the like structure upon which you can build everything that you have in your imagination and curious from your perspective how far can a campaign frame maybe bend the dagger heart system before it feels like you're maybe playing a different game yeah we talked about that a lot we tried to take it we tried to do that in core we tried to be like whether wild is right down the middle it's exactly what you expect right it's like this alda it's darker stall it's like right down the middle um and then taking it into like motherboard and high fantasy it was yes high fantasy and uh and into class of the drylands like those were the weird west that's both of those were like really pushing it to the extremes because for us we were like we want to show people this is the breadth and play inside of here now if you want to go outside of that you certainly can but for me once we start moving too far outside of that it becomes a different game we actually need to make something else right it could be based on dagger heart it can have dagger heart DNA in it but but I think that for me that's kind of the realm we're playing in and core try to put those flags down to say like this is the beginning this is probably about where the end is go go crazy in between mm-hmm yeah I think the dagger heart is heroic dagger heart is inherently fantastical there's magic there's quite a lot of magic um and as soon as we start pushing it we find it I think frequently and I I really appreciate those moments because one as a game designer you're always like ooh future games but also I think I think the TTRPG space is better for having more games and so you hit a point where like there is ultimately going to be a game that does what you want perfectly and hopefully we're filling that need for certain things and then also I really like the opportunity to pull other games off of my shelf and recommend them to people so I think we always want to stay in the bounds of what dagger heart can execute on well like we want dagger heart to live up to what people need and again provide that really strong foundation so that when people build a weird like addition to the house that's overhanging over the cliff you're like we're good we got you we built a strong foundation you're not out on a limb here yeah I think most most role playing games in some respect are sub genre emulators um and so it isn't just most of them are not just like fantasy I think even like the the you know D20 classic depending on which one you're you're doing uh uh have a sub genre in them even if they don't say that they do and so I think of a lot of those games a sub genre emulators and I think of especially in the indie space a lot of those games are actually sub sub genre emulators or sub sub sub genre emulators they're very specific in what they do I love building games like that like Alice is missing which is one of the games that I made before us at Darrington is a sub sub sub genre emulator right like it's a very specific genre of thing um but with dagger heart we we sort of sit in like the heroic fantasy space okay we're sitting in heroic fantasy space that's this place we're playing in what can we make below that what sub genre what sub sub genres can we put below that and so and that will still work if we start to deviate from that then there's a question of whether that campaign frame belongs here or if it's actually its own thing and I think you know we look at like age of umbro which is dark fantasy but it's still heroic um so it's heroic dark fantasy um and so because of the way the game is built and so we're always going back to that rubric it does this fit inside of this genius uh one of the species like you know down down that list like fit in our species or is it actually something else um so it's it's always a question that that's it's very cool to think about it in that perspective though you mentioned age of umbro and that made me think is there something that you folks maybe learn as designers from seeing either the game or a campaign frame interpreted through an actual play production or a lens like that that differs from what you would get from a typical playtest oh wow the tutors were probably the most scandalous dynasty in british history names like Henry VIII and bloody Mary are still known today this season on vulgar history were spilling the historical tea on the messy tutor era we'll get into the anviline of it all figure out who really wrote Shakespeare's plays was Elizabeth really a virgin queen and why was Henry the AIDS the f***ing worst listen to vulgar history wherever you get podcasts hey it's Hillary Frank host of the longest shortest time a women's health podcast for everyone and exciting news I've got a new original audiobook it's called wedlocked and it's a thriller about the pressure on women to smile through pain there's marital strife gaslighting gynecology and creepy music which is running under me right now if you like thrillers with a social message like get out promising young woman then wedlocked is for you get it now wherever you buy audiobooks I think a lot of it is stuff that we see happen in playtest to be honest it um I think that there is a lot of the actual plays that are happening for dagger heart I think are still happening in a very D&D or pathfinder adjacent style because that's what people are used to and what people have been running for a long time and so I'm really excited when I see people coming from up legs in the dark place or like you know belong outside belonging place and they come to dagger heart and suddenly we start to see the other influences come through and so yeah watching it it's like depending on what people's background is they run the game differently and that's totally okay you run the game however you want at your table that's what it's made for but I think that is for me the most interesting parts I kind of watch the game and go I think this is like a I think this is like a an indie kid Or I go like, "Uh, this person played Pathfinder because I can hear in there, in their terminology, in the way they're running it, certain things that speak to me from the influence of that game." Yeah, I mean, there's also just game ethos as well. It isn't even mechanics. It's not even what terms people say, but just like. Daggerhart, one of the things we talk a lot about in the room is the toy. What are we putting on the page that the person who reads the book has something to bring to the table and go, "Guys, we play with me." And what are they bringing in so that everybody else goes, "Oh, I can add to this. I know what to do with this, and they can throw them all back and forth." And that means that Daggerhart puts the player characters at the heart of the story. The world is for them. Like, everything that we put in campaign frames is designed to be interacted with by the player characters. And that means also that it is entirely appropriate for the players to make really big decisions about the world. That's how Daggerhart is designed. And there are a lot of games that are in maybe the fantasy genre that are not that way. Like, you as a player character are just a little guy in a big machine and you are not the main character. I think a lot of OSR existing in that face, right? And so when people maybe have only played games like that, they bring that with them into Daggerhart. And there is no wrong way to enjoy a thing as long as everyone is having a good time. And also, I see the different places that Game Ethos comes with us wherever we go. And I also recently played a game where I realized I was bringing Daggerhart with me. Oh, yeah, totally. Actually the other day. We were playing a different game. We played a different game and afterwards I looked at Spencer and I was like, "I kept making Daggerhart moves and expecting Daggerhart results." And that was on me. I would have evaluated the game more clearly and been like, "What is this game asking me to do?" And I didn't do that. And so it was really, it was a really good learning experience. It's my playing so many games so important. But I think that happens a lot when we're interacting with different people. Yeah. It's also just hard when you are immersing yourself so much in a particular system to then snap out of it. Obviously you want to engage honestly with whatever you're playing. But it's not dishonest to be like, "Well, this is what I've been thinking. This is how I've been thinking." Oh no, this is a very different system. Well, I think that's part of the experience. Yeah, and we're hoping that Daggerhart in some ways can start to challenge that for people as they get further into it if they're coming from that traditional D20 fantasy space. They will see that challenge and rise to meet it because collaborative storytelling games are like my bread and butter. That's where I come from. That's what I love. And so even if you just bring a little bit of that to the game, watching the way in which that changes the approach, I think is so valuable because the more I watch my players engage with that game in that way, the more I watch them become engaged with the other players as well. Because now suddenly they care about more than just them. And when they care about more than just them, they start to care about their party and then they start to care about the world and then they start to care about all of it, right? It doesn't take as long. Sometimes it takes like 12 or 15 sessions for characters that players feel like they're bought into the world. And hopefully at the ground floor with Daggerhart, everybody's bought in. Yeah, I think sometimes people forget that that collaboration is a skill just like anything else. Like it's not an innate characteristic that you're born with. It's just like being able to add up dice really quickly, like being able to min-max a character in any given system, like that is a skill that you learn because you practice it. When we run Daggerhart, we always make the session at the table. Like we don't come up with an adventure that we're doing ahead of time. When we run one shots for people, we're always like, "Guys, what are we doing?" And we have targeted questions, or sometimes we bring the mavelib that's in court. We have different tactics that get us there, but we're coming up with it on the fly. And I think that's really important for both of us. One, because it's fun, but also it keeps us doing it, and it keeps us learning how people want to play. I never know what's going to happen next. That's the joy. Both the thrill and terror of Zero Prep, but it helps when you've been so steeped in the mechanics on your head. Well, the actual play that we did on stage at GenCon this year, I had a list of questions prep, and that's it. So in front of like a thousand people, there was no prep done. It was just a list of questions. I asked those questions to the players, and then we ran the session. And it's like, it's so freeing. I love it. If you can get over the terror, you just got to ride the course bike. Well, that's fantastic. I want to thank you folks again, and I want to ask one of our final questions that we ask everyone who've talked a lot about Dagger Heart today. But let's say that it is game night. You've been tasked with bringing any game you want, because as we've established, it's great when you can play more games. What game are you bringing, and why? Does it matter how complicated people will read the rules, believe it or watch a video if you send it to them? What game are you bringing to game night? I have an answer. I haven't actually read the rules for this game. I would want to go to game night, and I want you and Mercer to teach me Kingdom Death Monster. Oh, hell yeah. It's so good. It's so good. You guys only talk about it with the best stories. The minis are so sick. I want to play that so bad. We have a home game that we have to get back to, of Kingdom Death Monster at Mercer's with a bunch of people, and it's so fun and also horrifying on every life. If my dream game night is like, I hate the fate. I'm like, jump scare. Ha ha, I'm at your game night. I want specifically you little freaks affectionate. Tell me about the things with all the mounts and skulls and heads. Yeah, that's that. Yeah, KDM is a fantastic choice. That's a great choice. I hadn't even thought of that. Well, I think I think that running a role-playing game is probably my jam. And so I would probably do I probably do Lady Blackbird because you have been trying to play Lady Blackbird for literally a year. I love Lady Blackbird. I don't know if you've played it. It's a John Harper, really with Lady Blackbird. Okay, so go check it out. John Harper, same person who did Blades in the Dark. It's all road lead to John Harper. It's free. You can just download it. It's like a packet that you download. It gives you the characters that you're playing. And it gives you like the start of a setting or start of like an adventure. It's kind of like a campaign frame in some ways. And you just sit down. You take the characters. You distribute them out. And then you start playing. And it's like immediate. You're in it. There's no prep. You just start running it. And I've wanted to run it for so. I've run it multiple times, but I haven't run it in years. And I'm so excited. What we're going to do because Spencer and I've been trying to get this to the table in the world is conspiring against us lately. Okay, we're going to get off this call. You're going to get off this call. You're going to tell more Lady Blackbird. And the first of us to run Lady Blackbird gets a little treat in the form of like a snack or like a coffee or something next time we do. This is a sacred pact. The loser owes the other one a little snack. That's the kind of pact I can get on board with. That would be if I were in the dread domain, that is who I would make a pact with. I promise you I will give you a little snack. Fantastic. I agreed. It is written. It is decided. And with your spirit. I think it's also with you and also with you. Yes. Yes. So where can people find you folks on the world wide web if in fact you want to be found? Yes. Well, nowadays we're so much in a little hidey hole that I don't think anybody can find us, but on the internet you can find us. At Spencer Stark for me, basically anywhere that social media exists at the Rowan Hall for me anywhere on social media. And also there's the Darynton Press channel anywhere on social at anywhere at Darynton Press anywhere on social media. This is what we have editors. We're like constantly just writing the wrong things and the wrong positions and then Sadie fixes everything for us, our editor Sadie fixes everything. And you can find [email protected] and go get hope and fear. We're really excited about it and we hope you get to play it. It's online in the crit world store. It is out at guild stores. Soon it will be at people's friendly local game store. And I think just about anywhere that TCR can be found. Well folks, thank you both so much. I really appreciate you both taking the time. As you mentioned, go check out daggerheart. Check out hope and fear. Find it wherever you can. And if you want even more amazing conversations like this, you can find more question answers on geek and sundry's YouTube channel and wherever find podcasters served. So Rowan Spencer, thank you both again. I really appreciate you taking the time. And for now folks out there, tell us what games are you playing this week? What are you most excited to bring to your table? Let us know in the comments below and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Most writers have written really terrible stories. My name is Vince DeJohnny and I am no exception. The only thing different about me is that I kept them all. Now I'm going to force my very talented actor friends to read them with me. That would have been like a man in his 50s or perhaps 40s if he was as large. a smoker as the sense surrounding him suggested, "Wow! Drag him, bids it!" There are teen slasher's where every character sounds edgy as hell. There's sci-fi giants that read just a little bit too much like giant penises, and there's a murderer who enjoys musical theater for some reason. And occasionally, something I wrote 15 years ago will be much, much worse. Only after a few minutes did I realize that if I thought about a certain thing or said at a time when something was said or fought by what am I reading? What does that mean? 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