Welcome to the tabletop! I'm here to help you be the best possible TTRPG enthusiast you can be with guides, general impressions of new games I find, and stories from my years with a variety of tables that I've been at.
I would encourage people to watch some actual plays to get an idea of how this game goes. I've been impressed how well the mechanics work and how much flexibility it gives everyone in combat. And I like the reference cards too, as much as I was afraid of yet another card game. This ain't that. I'd love to get to play it sometime. And I look forward to the final product.
Thanks for your analysis on this. I feel like Critical Role might do well to offer a general system-agnostic roleplaying guide. It seems like nearly half of the open beta material was filled with their gameplay suggestions that would be valuable at pretty much any table. As for Daggerheart itself, my experience (with the 1.3 beta, in my case) was similar to yours. There are some good concepts in the game. However, I thought that the Hope/Fear system actually detracted from the immersion, storytelling, and roleplaying. The system basically hammers home the idea that the player characters are the narrative heroes of a story, with their own special rules. The world revolves around them and their actions, and even the adversaries can't do basic things unless the players generate Fear for them to use. I also was not able to detect any clarity with their rules as written for running friendly NPCs. Do friendlies generate Hope and Fear? Does the GM have to spend Fear to fuel the actions of allies, or do the players have to spend Hope? Which dice to friendlies use? Who decides when they move? I use friendly NPCs of some sort in every game I play or run, so I found this ambiguity to be particularly glaring. In most games, there are differences between PCs and NPCs baked in. PCs have more detailed character sheets, for instance. But in Daggerheart, those difference are spotlighted with virtually every roll of the dice. Everyone at my table commented on this when we tried the beta, and found it off-putting. I wish CR success with this, but I think they're committed to the Hope/Fear system, so I don't know that I'll be going back for more Daggerheart.
First of all, kudos to you and your group for giving it a shot! That’s also an interesting bit of feedback regarding NPCs, I hadn’t even thought of that yet, but I know at my tables I generally don’t use NPCs in combat outside of adversaries and the majority of the time they don’t need any rolls from me. I’ll add I personally don’t have a problem with the players being the hero of the story with their own rules as well, since that can fulfill a fantasy for the players, but I see where you’re coming from there.
Solid break down of everything. I honestly tend to agree with your assessment overall. I think it'll be a solid game, that'll attract a very specific group of players.
If anything else, I think CR fans will be more willing to give it a shot because it’s what their show is doing. And I think there’s some great potential with it as well. It’s not perfect, but I know that I for one really want to do more with it.
This was a great video man! It's not my cup of tea (I actually like some more game/crunch personally), but I love how you acknowledge it's not going to be for everyone. One of your best videos in my opinion.
@@themoonlightspartan3206 I'm not going to watch that vid again, listening 🎧 to badass music. It was " I pay someone for a something rpg. Looked it up, it's txt based. Sorry for the confusion
It has become my go to fantasy game. The OGL kerfuffle drove me away from 5E D&D and pathfinder is too rules heavy for me. This is a good, moderately complex, ttrpg.
The fact that you pronounced Green "Ronin" properly... rather than the ridiculous boutique sounding cringe Green "Roh-neen" version that so many other RU-vid people do... was very appreciated. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the AGE system (it feels a little too video gamey for my taste), but I do enjoy the comparisons of various systems and their mechanics. Great video.
Thank you! And I appreciate the additional thoughts, not every game is for everybody. I’ve personally heard good things and I’m working on putting stuff together to give the game a shot in the near future.
@@ThatGamerAjax I am all for more content on RPGs... even the ones that don't really click with me. I mean, I am certain that Fantasy Age is an amazing game, or how else would they be able to produce a 2e, let alone have all of the other variations of the Age engine. As I said, for me it feels a little too video gamey. An example would be how the spell system feels... odd... with only something like 8 spells per "arcana", but having so many different arcana. Many of which just feel like an upgrade to a previous spell, or a spell from another arcana with the serial numbers filed off and a different name applied. Why only 8 per school/arcana? It feels like a skill tree to me. Another would be how the stunt system feels a little too restricted. Why only "x" number of stunt choices (many of which feel the same, or simply don't apply to the situation), rather than an open ended question of "what cool thing did you do after rolling that stunt (or crit)?" Regardless, my opinion of the game, good, bad, or otherwise, does not detract from the fact that the game is associated with a company that clearly knows what they are doing. It just does not feel like an actual TTRPG to me. There is just something more free (again, to me) about playing an old school game like Whitebox, or Swords & Wizardry, or even something like The Black Sword Hack, where things don't feel like they are on some pre-defined rails. Have a question about something in those kinds of games? Make it up on the spot to fit the moment. Want to swing from a chandelier after cleaving 2 foes in half? Sure... Dex check... or just do it, because it just sounds cool. Even in the Whitehack (now in its 4th edition), the rule of cool is all but spelled out. Yes, there are many people that prefer rules as written, super crunchy and full of every detail and every option mapped out. Many people seem to want every class to basically be "fair" (not any one class stronger than any other class), and the DM to not throw bad guys and/or monsters at them that are OP. And, honestly, there are times when I enjoy those types of games. It's super rare that I want to play them, but I can certainly appreciate them whether or not I wish to run those games. At least for me... after playing this stuff since D&D first came out... old school games, or games that are closer to an old school feel, tend to offer more fun, freedom, options, and potential character customization. The challenge is, the table has to be willing to go with the mindset of rulings over rules for it to be that kind of experience. Annnnnnd, I wrote a wall of text. Sorry.
Fantasy Age has been my personal go to game ever since 1st Edition and I love its flexibility through the whole "buffet of rules options" the entire AGE based game bouquet offers. I highly recommend playing with the Fortune option to replace default HP. It's SO much fun! <3
Its a fun game. I felt whith my group there are players that struggle with the more free form format because they want to "win" so bad :D but i think they will get it at some point
I love this, now I don't dm though I am a player and when this happens I will definitely be exited. Anyways that is out of the way, the reason why I am commenting is because I play the sims. Now the story that I do have is sort of a cross between a fan fiction (bc of some of the charcters in my story are from games, and movies that I like)/rpg(well I am the one playing it on the sims though lol)/ and a generational legacy challenge based off of old fairytales. Basically there are characters I like and their children are based off of fairytales, and I have concucted this whole story for myself for fun. But the charcters have been through a lot and each story had a lot happening, they also had to defeat a foe their parents also had to deal with, and thier friend just had woken up from being a sleep for like a whole year. In the back of my head I wanna add a lot of conflict in the story that could be unnecessary. So I have been doing some things that they would like to do together, instead of having them be in a crisis every 40 seconds. And watching videos like this helps me understand why and epilogue is sooooo important. anyways thank you for coming to my ted talk and like bob ross I'll say this "God bless my friend."
This was always the solution in living Greyhawk, just throw money at the problem. A tangle foot bag once brought down a dragon at comic con because the party meta gamed. Consumables and inventory management had always been a massive part of early dungeons and dragons. The infinite cantrips of 5th edition was countered with the never ending magic missles wands.
Im a dm for a new group and since they were starting out i gave them a selection of magic items that each one could choose one of to start with... They chose an immovable rod an infinitly restoring health potion (restores ever other round) and a cursed sword that does high damage but does half the damage to the user they abused the potion and the sword to do hige damage constantly and the immovable rod was used to drown a goblin by tying him to it and activating it at the bottom of a river. After this all happened ive never given out magic items in the beginning again and made it so that non cursed items have limited uses
I run a game that is dnd but set in the 1980s and I have spell cigarettes Which are spell scrolls that have been rolled up and are smoked to gain the effect
I don't understand the disappointment. They've been pretty clear what their design goals were here. Maybe, I'm conflating disappointment and surprise? I don't expect to be an early adopter because the whole OGL fiasco prompted me to look at new games and booted me out of a creative funk. I'm in no hurry to go back to 5e in any wrapper. But, if they complete the game I loved, and don't try to fix what isn't broken... "just like 5e" is exactly what I would want from this.
My opinion has changed slightly since I've been looking over more materials. When the initial announcement was revealed, I thought they were going to be making something more akin to their own original system, but I am hoping for the best with this as a whole.
Funny, I actually found the lore part disappointing. It was so clear that there have been constraints that didn't allow the world to be fleshed out, we only get what was already in the games (and the extremely mediocre novels).
I’ve only run the game twice myself as a GM, so I don’t feel like I’m in a position to weigh in on GM topics for this one just yet. Once I get a bit more experience, I’ll be sure to make another video
I cannot believe I hadn't seen this video. Some really amazing insight into how you went about your conversion for Winds. Honestly, a really great watch!
I met the Emberwind group at a homeschool convention in the vendors' section. It seemed like a great system and the artwork was on point. It's taken 5 years since then to finally get my family involved in D&D so I doubt I'll be able to get them to change systems.
Personally, I wouldn't give up hope if you pitch it to them. The systems are pretty similar to each other, and in my opinion Emberwind is a lot easier and faster to learn.
