0.Design Intent

Who is this for?

This is for players who want to play Daggerheart

0. Design Intent

Daggerheart is marketed as a collaborative storytelling experience.

But while Daggerheart’s core rules are something like 70% combat, with little to no mechanics for ensuring true collaborative gameplay, the otherwise compelling design polish, balance, innovative Hope and Fear mechanism might be little more than a variation on a very Dungeons and Dragons (5e) theme.

In fact, there is little stopping someone from merely porting over dagger heart’s core concepts to the D20 system and DnD in general.

But there are glimmers of hope. The Hope and Fear system is reminiscent of Fate’s own Fate Tokens, and systemized means of giving players not only a say in the story – but also a means by which they can solve any kind of problem without resorting to combat.

Daggerheart already ties every dice roll to the story. The GM sets Difficulty based on what’s happening, not a fixed chart. Every roll changes the story somehow — win or lose, with Hope or Fear.

But nothing forces this to happen the same way every time. It depends on the GM. This supplement adds rules that make it happen every time, no matter who’s running the game.

This supplement borrows tools from Fate. It builds them onto Daggerheart’s own rules. It uses Daggerheart’s own resources — Hope, Fear, and Spotlight tokens. It doesn’t add new ones.

Here’s what this supplement adds:

  1. Aspects — facts about the world you can spend Hope on for a bonus
  2. Create an Advantage — the roll that makes an Aspect
  3. Compels — a GM tool. The GM offers a complication. You get Hope if you say yes.
  4. The Spotlight Tracker — now used in every kind of scene, not just fights
  5. Overturning an Aspect — a new move. Replace or clear an Aspect that’s already in play.
  6. Ask, Answer, and Declare — Asking stays free, even simple statements of fact. A costed version of Fate’s “Declare” move gets added back in. None of this needs new dice or new stats. You don’t change how you build a character. It’s all table rules layered on top of the normal game.