Cthulhu, Rascal, & Not Playing Daggerheart

Thomas Manuel

I. Spotlight

It’s grainy because it was taken 30 years ago

I got to write a lovely story for Rascal News about the HP Lovecraft Historical Society and how the founders, as teens, developed their kind of Cthulhu game where they dressed up, made props and special effects, took them to real locations, and solved mysteries. There’s also a delightful cameo by Nick Offerman from Parks and Rec. It’s one of the most nicest, most fun subjects I’ve ever reported on and I think you’ll really like it.

This is the kind of writing that I think is more or less impossible to find outside of a site like Rascal. Which is relevant because we’re trying to ensure that we’ll be around next year!

II. Links of the Week

Articles

  • Whose Measure God Cannot Take writes a very funny list of discourse topics from the future:
    • DNR: “Do not review”. Initially an instruction by some game publishers that only certain kinds of people are “allowed” to publicly discuss the game, in analogy to DNI lists on social media sites like tumblr. Later a term adopted by those who polemically believe it’s impossible to critically review an RPG rulebook or adventure “even if you’ve run it many times.”
  • Orthopraxy writes a review “of Impossible Landscapes for Delta Green that is really a review of the Person I Was when I first read it.”
  • Tabletop Battles (the site that was formerly known as Goonhammer) has an interesting review of the queer duet game Have You Been a Good Girl: “This game, for me, feels closer to those intimate, messy, exploratory sessions of roleplaying I have enjoyed in the past through play by post roleplaying.”
  • The Indonesian RPG scene has lots of cool things happening it.
    • The Appendix N jam wrapped up and there’s a bunch of free OSR adventures that were submitted by designers out of Indonesia.
    • One of the organizers who started a convention that took place recently talks about how the journey to this whole new hobby begins with borrowed dice and people making space for you.

Misc

  • Also, looks like there is finally an end to the Diamond bankruptcy fiasco for Paizo with them set to get back all of their unsold stock. They were very worried about this stock flooding the market at pennies on the dollar and completely destroying their ability to sell books so I’m sure they’re really relieved.

III. What am I playing?

I’m currently playing only game and it is Daggerheart. Or is it. We’ve been playing this campaign for a few months and it has been my absolute best work as a GM making an urban fantasy “pressure cooker”. It’s a crime game in a beautiful, sad fantasy city where the magic is fading. I’ve talked before on how it’s absolutely a realization of the unwritten rules of Doskvol and Blades in the Dark. (I also elaborated on bluesky.)

But what I’m teasing in that second line is that we’re barely using any Daggerheart mechanics when we play. This is partially due to the fact that I find the combat to be extremely boring and so all those mechanics barely get used because combat barely happens. When combat does happen, there’s usually a strong narrative reason not to do it and run away. (The reason is usually that these are tier 1 characters and everyone they would want to fight always outnumber and outclass them.)

So we essentially use the core mechanic (2d12+stat) and Hope/Fear as currency that’s about it. Are we playing Daggerheart? I feel like your answer to this question is a philosophical claim more than anything. In my opinion, no. If I wrote down the rules I use and published it, nobody would call it Daggerheart and also everyone would agree they were boring. And that’s true. We are definitely playing with boring rules.

But the game is, like I said before, some of my best GMing ever and the whole table is having a great time. The key here — and I feel like since this is my newsletter, you’ll forgive me for being so forward — is that I am the one who deserves the credit for that. The game gets exactly zero credit in any success! Okay, maybe 5% because there’s actually a weird thing going on with the GM moves.

Daggerheart has GM moves, borrowed from Apocalypse World but as Chris Chinn has said before, moves are not integrated into the structure of the game. The GM gets a currency called Fear that does very specific things in combat but can also be spent outside combat to make GM moves. But the problem is that you don’t need a currency to make GM moves outside of combat, you’re doing it all the time for free. I have unlimited power (and I need it to functionally run this game) so what’s the point of putting a cherry on top of that?

But. Here’s the thing: Because I’m tracking this currency, a very subtle thing happens. I start seeing it as a kind of reminder of how mean I’m being. If I have 8 Fear, I start feeling like I need to introduce some new badness, complications, threats. So I’ll start interfering by using NPCs and the world in a way that I might not have otherwise because I want to get rid of all these Fear tokens. So, I’m getting an unintentional prompt to make more things happen.

This is NOT how they’re meant to be used. If you use them like this, you get a very mean game. Because you’re using the resource that is meant to be used for all sorts of regular, routine stuff only for for extra mean stuff. You can’t have a “nice” D&D game if you use it like this. It works in this campaign because it’s all about crime and how scary the city is, and we’re getting a kick out of being around some very nasty people with some very nasty schemes.

IV. Small Ads

All links in the newsletter are completely based on my own interest. But to help support my work, this section contains sponsored links and advertisements. If you’d like your products to appear here, read the submission form.

  • Barkadan is a survival horror & high fantasy ttrpg setting inspired by the vibrant culture of the Philippines and the uncanny aspects of the Filipino-American experience. Now live on Kickstarter!
  • Episodic Adventures is a weekly podcast that dissects TTRPG modules. The hosts look at a variety of adventures to answer the question: “Would You Run It?”. Season 2 Out Now!
  • Virtual Battle Mat: the simplest VTT online. Drop a map, place tokens, play. Voice and video built in. No rules engine, any system. Feels like a real table. vbm.games

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Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. If you’d like to support this newsletter, share it with a friend. If you’d like to know more about my work, check out the coolest RPG website in the world Rascal News or listen to me talking to other people on the Yes Indie’d Podcast.

One response to “Cthulhu, Rascal, & Not Playing Daggerheart”

  1. Daniel Avatar
    Daniel

    Sounds like you are playing Daggerheart to me, and I’m sure that team would agree. They seem to love watching their game bent and twisted into interesting shapes.

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