Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Daggerheart: Hope & Fear Expansion Explained w/ Spenser Starke & Rowan Hall

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

The first formal expansion for Daggerheart is finally here and it is massive! To take you deeper inside Daggerheart's first expansion, Dan Casey say down with lead designers Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall to discuss how Hope & Fear evolves gameplay, their design philosophies, and much more.Daggerheart: Hope & Fear is available now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Greetings, adventurers, and welcome back to quests 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 guests 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 TTRPGs 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. Yeah.

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, 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, until we 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 container ships, 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, you know. Yeah, the idea that pirates would be a meaningful obstacle to getting your job done 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 a dagger heart. Just getting some games. Yeah, I mean, 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 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, this is probably the least exciting thing for the listeners to hear about the logistics of games. We get some real logistics heads in the chat. Don't worry. Oh, okay. I love it. Good, good, good. But, yeah, I think that 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. in general, right? Things are sent over the internet so files can be immediate when you'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. Oh, wow. Because I had some friends who invited me over to play, and they're like, we're going to 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 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 it comes 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 our RPG 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... Very cool. And that was my first, like, non-D20 role-playing game. And Abria was there, and Joey and Gina DeVivo, 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 flashers and blitz and the were like a revelation for me. And then I think we also, not long after that played a game of something is wrong here, that we larp something is wrong here. that for at Big Bad Con, rest in peace, overnight we played, the whole night we played something as a LARP. And I think like a good 14-hour LARP

with the right people can fix things. We finished at like 4 a.m. It was crazy. I'm not sure we have the big ills in the world, but it can fix the small ills of life, I think. Look, I'll take any ill that can be fixed one of the time. I love what you said about Blades in the Dark because 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 flashback 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 was a huge inspiration, I think, for both of us. I ran that campaign for a very long time. And then as we neared the end of that campaign, as we near the end of that campaign,

Abria was playing in that campaign and we, Abria Ayangar, for those who don't know, Abria is amazing, she's the best. And near the end of that campaign, Abria 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 Austen as we went into a full flashback

before the cataclysm. Oh, wow. And so we are now suddenly, playing in Duskval 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 towards i also think like blades and arc being such a revelation for all of us and then for us having strash and leila 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 structure is the consulting design on blades and so like having it be so in the family so many people pulling on these like really interesting threads has been a really interesting through line well and and then I don't know if you know this you might but but for those who don't know all of the domain symbols in Daggerhart all of the like different the cross blades and the symbol you and all of those are built except for the one for dread all the rest of of them were built by John Harper.

And John Harper for Daggerhart. Yeah, tapped him for Daggerhart. So that was one of the things that he did was he built those for us. That's so cool. The dual, like the double helix DNA of everyone's TTRPG experience blending to make something new together. That's fantastic. Yeah, yeah.

He also designed the deluxe cover for Candelipscira. We call John Harper as often as humanly possible. As you should. Yeah. His name's just going to be staring at. you from your cell phone otherwise. Ideally. Yeah.

Amazing. So I want to talk about 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, 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 Daggerheart 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 Daggerheart Hope and 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 seed of it was planted in core, but we couldn't actualize it until down the road. And hope and 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, you know, in core, we talked about this before. In core, the page count, the amount of pages we had in the book, it came down to the weight of the ink. It was so, like, it, 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're 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're 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 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, 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 or 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 blow 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 um in a game line right no one-off game it's not that big of a deal but as you build 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 as you were talking about this, I'm thinking, you know, thinking about the future of Daggerheart. 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? It's such a good question. We always want to

make, we always want to start from core. You shouldn't have to have multiple products to have 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 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 TTRP person comes to someone's like massive library and 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 just 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 Daggerheart is one of our 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 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 playtested 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-sized yeah i think 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 running, like, you know, you have 26 cards in your hand. Yeah.

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? 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, A, paralyzed with choice, but B, 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 in 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. And 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 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 is in scaffolding So there's sometimes where I write something and I'm like oh that's about me as a G 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. A great example of that is in the reign of the Weardragging campaign frame in Hope and 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. That's awesome. 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. 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 a either you know either in pages that a that a 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's it's it lives in them as opposed to anything they have to memorize it's a monster of their own making that's fantastic mm-hmm well 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 bat back and forth. We batted back and 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. 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 curse? I don't think curse is right because we want to do like demigod. Is it an altered thing? Anyway, we went back and forth than that. 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 like vampire classes. And 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 a 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. Yeah. 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 on hope and fear, this happens all the time. But, like, for a while, there was 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 you go big and you scale it back but it was fun

looking at each other and going like oh okay well I think I think also one of the other experiences that 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 it you know us being like it's not it's not there yet it's not there yet that's not quite right oh well this works for me and this doesn't quite work for me okay what is not working about it for you and you know 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

Darrington as we playtest 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 those those times, like, with people where we're 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 received that made you maybe consider Daggarhart 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, like, as we were trying to figure out what this was. And so it was really fun to, in the way that, like, 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're like, okay, well, that feels very warlocky. Let's see what, you know, let's see what that is like. And so, yeah, I think those piece of feedback of like, what do you want? What do you excited for 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 and fear, you and I were in one of the offices with a big whiteboard and we were breaking down the fantasy of a warlock. And we're like, how do we approach this in Daggerhard? 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're like everything else is out of the way now. Now we can do this. And it was just kind of a finding the branching paths. Yeah, I think one of the classic ways that packs tend to be formed, just kind of, coming from like traditional D20 fantasy is like around 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,

like it would have either be so vague that the, that it kind of ate up real estate for us to do any subclasses later. Or it have to be specific enough that it carved out its own space. And then people would be like, wait, but what about if I, 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're like, how do we take a new approach? 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 is now. I also think so much of the fun of the warlock. Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder, what if?

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The Walk 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, and 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 is going to appear. It's 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, it 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, that's refreshing. And I think those, I think those pick 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 pick list that they can choose some, and you can say, or make your own, right? Like there's always that caveat. But by giving that pick list, we're as designers giving you the palette that we believe this thing is operating inside of, with the freedom to break it if you want. But like, that is the house. We get to decide on the, 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 controlled choice is something that we found to be super helpful in not making people overwhelmed. Yeah. I love a pick 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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style quiz. Be sure to select sundry when prompted to unlock the offer because this is a limited time offer, so don't wait. Again, that's fabletics.com slash sundry for 70 to 80% off everything as a new VIP. One thing I wanted to touch on, since we're talking about dread, is something that it sort of ties back to our initial discussion about Blades in the Dark, is I love the way that it lets players interact with the DM and specifically their GM, specifically their fear pool in ways that maybe other domains don't. 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 I've said this in the past. Mercer is sometimes like our dagger heart fairy. Like he'll have these ideas. 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 a GM because he sits in both seats. And so because he was like, oh, 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 playtest, 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 competitive. And it also was too like meta-gamy too awesome. 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 gym 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 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, 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. We knew that. Obviously, we've named a thousand things for Daggerhart, but with the dread domain, with things like jump scare and damnation, I watch people who were less experienced

TTRPG players, just want that because it sounds cool. Like, I'm not even looking 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 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. you just want to mold them to this vision. Yeah. Well, and we talk a lot about promise of the premise.

Yes. Meaning, like, if we're presenting a premise in the, in the player of the 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. If 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 atheris and with the gnome.

Yes, yes. So when we released Ancestries 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 aetherist 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 Daggerhart can you get wings? And if you get wings being an angelic being and you want to be a seraph, does that, like how does that interact with the subclass winged 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 however we imagined that character. And so we had to live up to that. And Linome, everyone has such a clear idea of these little whimsical friends and making sure that we captured the whimsy of, like, Flickr Step. Yeah. And then also still making sure we have enough diversity of just like, slightly different

humanoid as it exists in fantasy. It's like human, half-ling, gnome, elf. Giant, right? Who's like kind of just doing the 18 T bars all the way down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, and I think that, you know, if we're looking at like, if you're looking at, what was the first one you were talking about? Atherist.

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 they should have wings. And we're like, great, okay, let's go, let's go take the wings off, let's playtest it. We did that. And then there was like, so many people. So many people were like, oh my God, this is wrong. What did you do? Okay.

The first one was a small contingency of the second one, which was way more important. That's exactly why we play test. That was fun. Yeah. And also mixed ancestry, I think, is always a really nice offering. But Ethereum needed the wings. Yeah. And yeah.

Well, and I think also on that, like, promise of the premise thing, there's always that weight of, like, how, like, we want it to feel new and fresh. And you want people to kind of get what they're expecting. 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, that's not what I recognize.

We've been speaking about that recently as like how, 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 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 have the context that'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. Triclops.

But then the weird, yeah, a trichlops. 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 intro. Versus, the naming on those, I was doing a lot of etymology research because we needed a name that kind of got people in that headspace, even if they don't know what that brute means because we didn't want to spend the weirdness budget too much on a name. versus gnome, 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 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.

And at one point I did, uh, early on a development. And then trying to remember, wait, what's the fire one? And people don't choose them as much. Yeah. And actually, to your credit, you figured this out so early in Daggerheart because the Kins were held from KER. 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.

Like if they chose them 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 Tidekin, 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 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, no. You're just like a fire guy. Yeah. Like you're just kind of a fire mental human.

Here's your two things, but like, make it up. Right. You use to 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 is 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. And if you're in a specific setting, like, we, there could be names for those things in that place. Yeah. Well, I also think that's an example of, like, you, a game for everyone is a game for no one. And Daggerhart, 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 and building in that. And so we're constantly, that is where we go, like, what is Daggerhart asking for? Like, we figured it out in core. And now we are beholding to that kind of way that Daggerheart wants to operate as we expand.

Yeah. I appreciate that sort of like the philosophy about making it easy to onboard players. And also it feels like speaking to what you're talking about scaffolding before. I want to talk a bit about campaign frames because I find that such an interesting part of the experience because it's rather than being like, okay, here is your full-fledged 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 I'm curious from your perspective, how far can a campaign frame maybe bend the Daggerheart system before it feels like you're maybe playing a different game? Yeah, we talk about that a lot. We tried to take it, we tried to do that in core. We tried to be like, Wither Wild is right down the middle.

It's exactly what you expect, right? It's Legend of Zelda, it's Dark Crystal. It's like right down the middle. And then taking it into like motherboard and... Sci fantasy. Yeah, Cy Fantasy and into Coloss of the Drylands. Weird West, that's... Both of those were like really pushing it to the extreme.

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 could have dagger heart DNA in it. But I think that for me, that's kind of the realm we're playing in. And Core tried to put those flags down to say, like, this is the beginning.

this is probably about where the end is, go crazy in between. Yeah, I think the dagger heart is heroic. Daggerheart is inherently fantastical. There's magic. There's quite a lot of magic. And as soon as we start pushing it, we find it, I think, frequently. And 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 Daggerhart can execute on well. We want Daggerheart to live up to what people need. And again, provide that really strong foundation so that when people build a weird addition to the house that's overhanging over the cliff, you're like, we're good, we got you, we built the strong foundation, you're not out on a limb here.

Yeah, I think most role-playing games in some respect are sub-genre emulators. And so it isn't just, most of them are not just like fantasy. I think even like the D20 classic, depending on which one you're doing, have a subgenre in them, even if they don't say that they do. And so I think of a lot of those games as subgenre emulators, and I think of, especially in the indie space, a lot of those games are actually sub-sub-genre emulators or sub-sub-genre emulators. They're very specific in what they do. I love building games like that.

Alice is missing, which is one of the games that I made before us at Derrington, is a sub-sub-sub-sub-genre emulator. It's a very specific genre of thing. But with Daggerhart, we sort of sit in like the heroic fantasy space. Okay, we're sitting in heroic fantasy space. That's this place they're playing in. What can we make below that? What sub-genres, what sub-sub-genres can we but below that and it's still 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 umbrae 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 genus one of those species, like, you know, down that list, like, does it fit in our species, or is it actually something else? So it's always a question. That's very cool to think about it in that perspective, though. You mentioned Age of Umbra, 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 play test? Oh, wow. The world of Sonic the Hedgehog has been thrust into a not-so-dark, not-so-stormy, hard-boiled detective story that probably nobody saw coming. Follow Sonic and the Intrepid Chaotic's detective agency

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messy Tudor era. We'll get into the Anne Boleyn of it all, figure out who really wrote Shakespeare's plays? Was Elizabeth really a virgin queen? And why was Henry the 8th the fucking worst? Listen to Vulgar History, wherever you get podcasts. I think a lot of it is stuff that we see happen in playtests, to be honest.

I think that there is a lot of the actual plays that are happening for Daggerhart, 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 a Blades in the Dark place or like, you know, belonging outside a belonging place and they come to Daggerheart 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 part is I can kind of watch the game and go, I think this is like a, I think this is like an indie kid. Or I go like, oh, this person to play Pathfinder because I can hear in there. They're, you know, in their terminology, in the way they're running it, like, certain things that speak to me from that influence, from the influence of that game. Yeah, I mean, there's also, like, just game ethos as well. That isn't even, like, mechanics. It's not even what terms people say, but just, like, like, dagger heart, when we, 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 that so that everybody else goes, oh, I can add to this. I know what to do with this, and they can throw the ball 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 Daggerheart is designed. And there are a lot of games that are in maybe the fantasy genre that are not that way. They're like you as a player character are just a little guy in a big machine and you are not the main character. I think of a lot of OSR existing in that space, right? And so when people maybe have only played games like that, they bring that with them into Daggerheart. And there is no wrong way to enjoy a thing as long as everyone is having. 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, like, I was bringing Daggerheart

with me. Oh, yeah. 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 Daggerheart moves and expecting Daggerheart results. And that was on me. Like, I should have evaluated the game more clearly and been like, what is this game asking me to do? And I, And I didn't do that. And so it was really, it was a really good learning experience. It's why playing so many games so important. Yeah.

But I think that happens a lot when we're interacting with different people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's also just, it's hard when you are immersing yourself so much in a particular system to then like 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. I think that's part of the experience. Yeah, and we're hoping that Daggerheart 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, like can, that 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, 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 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 to 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 minx a character in any given system. Like that is a skill that you learn because you practice it. When we run Daggerheart, 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 like have targeted questions or sometimes we bring the Mavit 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. Yeah, I never know what's going to happen next. never know what's that's that's the that's the joy both the thrill and terror of zero prep but uh it helps when you've been so steeped in the mechanics on your head yes well the the the actual play that we did

on stage at gencon this year i had a list of questions prep and that's it so like in front of like a thousand people wow we're just there's and there was no prep done it was just a list of questions i asked those questions of the players and then we ran the session and it's like it's so freeing I love it. Yeah. You can get over the terror. He's going to ride that cortisol spike. Yeah.

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. We'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? It doesn't matter how complicated. People will read the rules. We'll even watch a video if you send it to them. What game are you bringing to Game Night? I have an answer. Okay.

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. Like, you guys always talk about it with the best stories. The minis are so sick.

Like, 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, like, so fun and also horrifying on every level. I guess my dream game night is, like, I invade. I'm like, jump scare. Ha-ha, I'm at your game night. That would be, like, I want specifically,

you little freaks affectionate to, like, tell me about the things with all the mouths and skulls and heads. Yeah. Like, that's that, yeah, KDM is a fantastic choice. That's awesome. It'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'd probably do Lady Blackbird. Oh, my God. We have been trying to play Lady Blackbird for literally a year. I love Lady Blackbird. I don't know if you've played it. I'm not familiar with Lady Blackbird.

Okay, so go check it out. John Harper, same person who did Blades in the Dark. It's free. All roads lead to John Harper. All roads 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 to bring that. Okay, this is what we're going to do, because Spencer and I have been trying to get this to the table, and 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 download Lady Blackbird. I will. 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 see each other. This is a sacred pact. Yes.

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 Dred domain, that is who I would make a pact with. Yes, yes, yes. I promise you I will give you a little snack when you win. Fantastic. I agreed. It is, it is written.

It is decided. So, so moot it be. And with your spirit, I think. And 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 Heidi 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 Darrington Press channel at anywhere on social, at anywhere on social media. This is why 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 fixed everything. And you can find Daggerheart at Deggerhardt.com. and go get hope and fear. We're really excited about it, and we hope you get to play. It's online at the CritRroll store. It is out at Guild Store. Soon, it will be at people's friendly local game store.

And I think just about anywhere that TCRPGs can be found. Yeah. Well, folks, thank you both so much. I really appreciate you both taking the time. As you mentioned, go check out Dagger Heart. 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 & Sundry's YouTube channel and wherever fine podcaster 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. Oh, please, not that music. That music gives me nightmares from my childhood. Could we get something a little bit lighter? Some lighter music here. Are you a fan of true crime TV shows? And what about Unsolved Mysteries?

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