How to Use Fear in Daggerheart and the Worry of Adversarial GMing
My experience running Daggerheart and my thoughts on fear as a metacurrency.
I’ve heard people worry that Daggerheart encourages adversarial GMing, where the GM does everything within their power to “win” over the players by defeating their plans and crushing their ambitions. People worry that the mechanic of the GM gaining fear and spending it on really powerful abilities will create this perception.
It’s not just regular online tribalism, it’s an understanable worry — I had this discussion with several other game designers in our company’s slack. Daggerheart’s fear mechanic may feel foreign to some GMs, especially if you haven’t played games like Slugblaster with its bite mechanic or Blades in the Dark with heat
But I think fear actually does the opposite. I think fear in Daggerheart is a masterful way to reduce the GM’s bookkeeping and let the GM lean into the fiction while assuaging the players’ worries that the GM is just trying to screw them and “win.”
I’m Colin, and I’m a professional video game designer. This is Drolleries, where I write about d&d, ttrpgs, and game design.
I’ve ran 6 sessions of Daggerheart so far (not counting the 3 sessions I ran during the playtest period), and I’m loving it. I’ll go into detail about my thoughts (many of them critical) in a future article, but for now, I want to talk about the most interesting feature for me as a GM — fear.
What stands out the most is the use of hope and fear as currencies that ebb and flow throughout the game, and how that changes the story, affects the players’ decision-making, and reduces the bookkeeping normally present in a game like 5e or Pathfinder.
In Daggerheart, fear is a metacurrency that the GM can spend to make moves that are harder — from powerful enemy attacks in combat, to sudden danger from an environment’s statblock, to just making a particularly hard move in the fiction. Just like the players gain hope when they roll with hope, the GM gains fear when the players roll with fear.
Fear in Combat
In combat, the GM spends fear to use powerful attacks and activate more than one enemy at a time. I like this because it replaces a lot of the bookkeeping required to run enemies in 5e. Instead of having to track spell slots or abilities that a monster can only use 5/day or 3/day or 1/day, it’s much easier to track fear as a pool of tokens in front of me. Daggerheart streamlines the experience of running a group of spellcasters, each with their own spell slots and 3/day abilities, because there’s only one pool of fear that all enemies share.
It also makes the limited use of enemies’ abilities more obvious to the players. When I make a particularly powerful attack or activate a bunch of different of enemies in one turn, the players are assured by seeing me spend 4 fear at once. And inversely, when they roll with fear and see me add a fear to my pool, they get worried.
In 5e, because the players are never sure how many spell slots the monsters have and they have no influence over the monsters’ abilities, the GM’s power is completely opaque and hidden from the players. This means that 5e is a game where the players are constantly evaluating whether it’s worth it to spend their most powerful spells or abilities or save them for later in the adventuring day.
But in Daggerheart, because everything is much more transparent, the drama is clear for all to see and there’s more anticipation of danger. When the players have lots of hope and the GM has little fear, morale is high. But when the players have little hope and the GM has lots of fear, shit gets real. Because the players can see the pool of fear and know that the GM is limited by it, the stakes are known and the player’s decision-making changes as a result.
Other Ways to Spend Fear
I also like that the GM can spend fear outside of combat, because it can justify the GM making hard moves that would otherwise feel too punishing. If the GM thinks it would be dramatic, they can spend fear to have it happen even if it’s an unlikely coincidence.
When the protagonist is screwed by coincidence in a movie, it’s interesting and dramatic. It heightens the stakes as we all think “how are they gonna get out of this one?” But when this happens to the players in a role-playing game, they often perceive this as adversarial GMing. When danger finds them by coincidence, it can feel unfair, especially if they’re already in a tough position.
But I’ve found that spending fear telegraphs to the players that I know what I’m doing, and that I’m collaborating with them to make the story more interesting. The players are more likely to accept it, often because they’d rather I spend fear in this way rather than spend it on a fireball that kills them.
Is It Adversarial?
I’ve heard from some people that they worry that fear would encourage adversarial GMing. I can see why they might be afraid of that, because the high-level description of what fear does is that it enables the GM to take hard moves in the fiction against the players.
My response to that is that I personally didn’t feel like the system encouraged me to be an adversarial GM. And I think that a GM with an adversarial style would run their games in that way regardless of the system. To me, an adversarial GM is one that doesn’t “yes, and” or “no, but” the players. They can only say “no,” and they believe their purpose isn’t to introduce obstacles to the player characters that create drama, but instead to win by defeating the players in any way possible.
If a GM has that mindset, I don’t think any game system can save them from that.
If anything, I think Daggerheart pushes players & GMs away from that philosophy of adversarial play. Because the GM is limited in their power by fear, and because they are encouraged to spend fear when they introduce obstacles to the players, it actually changes how the players think about the GM’s power. Their power isn’t ultimate and supreme, they can’t squash the players whenever they want.
It’s a similar principle to my article about fudging dice rolls and the purpose of dice: the rules make the outcome seem more objective. If the GM hits them with a really powerful attack, the players will see the GM spend the fear and be assured that it isn’t personal. The GM isn’t trying to win, it’s the rules that gave them the mandate to challenge your character.
Spending Fear in Environments
Daggerheart also has statblocks for environments. These are of limited utility to a GM, as I’ll discuss in a future article, but when I made the effort to customize them or design my own, they’re awesome ways to add mechanical weight to the tone of a space or scene.
I designed the following environment for a secret hidden nightclub of vampires (yes, like that scene from Blade). In my game, the PCs went to this club to locate and kill an evil vampire lord and also rescue the merchant’s son named Luis who came here with a vampire girl named Ymilia (who plans on eating Luis tonight).
The Blood & Love
Tier 0 environment
Difficulty: 13
the dance floor: concrete, strobing lights, hanging meat (some humanoid)
the bar: stone slab, stained everywhere and sticky (too dark to tell it's blood)
bartender barely talks, no patience
the bathrooms: white tile, shiny metal, banging on stall doors, people making outFeeding - Passive (Countdown 5).
When the countdown is triggered, the feeding starts. Vampires in the crows turn towards the nearest mortal and attack.
Decrease the countdown any time the players take a major action or make a roll.Dark and Loud - Passive.
Dark: Instinct rolls to see have disadvantage.
Loud: You cannot speak to someone unless they are within arm's reach. Presence rolls that rely on speaking alone have disadvantage. You can take a Stress to remove the disadvantage.Mysterious Dancer - Action
A vampire starts dancing with a PC. If the PC impresses them or shows them a good time, the dancer will help them. If the PC ignores or upsets the dancer, Feeding countdown ticks down 1 extra.Crowd Closes In - Reaction (Fear)
When one of the PCs splits from the group, spend a Fear and the crowd shifts to cut them off from the party. Nearby vampires take an interest in the PC that’s alone. Feeding countdown ticks down 1.Trampled - Action (Fear)
Spend a Fear to have people accidentally trample any PCs within range. Agility Reaction Roll or 2d4 physical damage and knocked prone. A PC can activate this feature by making a Difficulty 12 roll to start a mosh.
These actions that require Fear to use are things that could happen multiple times, based on the PCs actions. And I imagined that the Trampled action could also be used if a combat breaks out, which worked well.
The Mysterious Dancer action doesn’t require fear, because I had planned to just do that once, regardless of the PCs’ actions. It’s basically a planned encounter where the outcome depends how the PCs react to it.
Have you played Daggerheart? I’d love to know your experience with fear, especially if you’e been a player.