DEV-TALK 009 - How Does One Modulate?
I’ve talked a lot about how our content is modular, shown some of the modular bits, and frankly used the word ‘modular’ way too much. But without sounding too much like a salesman, that’s the real bread and butter of our design. Since our Kickstarter launch and the feedback I got around that time, I’ve TOLD you all about how modular our content is and how easy it is, but I haven’t SHOWN you (that’s a callback I’m really proud of it). So, I’m going to start this show and tell by using my new obsession as the system we will translate into, and let me tell you this is probably the EASIEST system to convert our content into, with monsters being made in minutes and locales able to be run on the fly.
We’re going to start with a favorite location of mine, the Harborfront Lighthouse. It’s one of the city’s oldest structures, and due to the city’s… Interesting history with monsters from the deep it is something of a representation of the city itself. Due to the isolation of the location and the NPC’s tie to the overarching story, it’s a creepy place where even creepier stuff happens. As I’m writing this, I’ve not reread it or done any preparation to (hopefully) show how easy it is to convert, and my top-of-mind thoughts as we do it!
It’s not a crafting workshop I swear. Typos never truly end.
This is the description and initial introduction. It’s simple and gives some inspirations/one-offs to use to describe the locale to the party as they arrive or even as they pass by it. Anywhere you see something with [Bold Brackets] this is a ‘Key Customization’ option. In this example, we have the appropriately spooky and on-brand body of water known as the [Ghost Sea]. If you’re using The City of Glass Campaign Frame some of these details are covered with a bit more lore, BUT this is also an opportunity to change my creepy ocean for perhaps your own ocean, giving you a general region to seat Ardenfell into your world. The city doesn’t have many requirements, but being near an ocean certainly helps the oceanic trade! In this case, I’m going to put Ardenfell right where it is in Cealla, making a note of where it is in the world, and then we’re going to move to the real meat and potatoes!
So immediately we see some more of those tasty brackets! This gives you an idea for an NPC and a prompt that can get your players to go explore the locale as a sort of mini-quest! Give them a name and build your own NPC, or simply take this concept, think of a name on the fly and you’re off to the races! As you can see so far, all of this stuff can work or be altered for most any game, but “Hey” I hear you asking “I was promised MEAT & POTATOES." Don’t worry, I promise there’s more and when we get to the encounter associated, you will have your appropriately satiating meal. Now we’ve got some hooks to get to the Lighthouse, but we also have some new lore for our locations star NPC Old Man Lightfoot, as well as some unique sections of the location to help orient us and our players to the space in our heads!
One big item to change however might be the reward section of the Siren’s Song tie-in event, having the [Well-Funded Explorer] instead offer 2-3 Handfuls of Gold with a promise of more if they show interest in their work and by proxy, the Forgotten Altar Encounter which is found at the end of this neighborhood section. However, for the sake of this exercise, we’ll simply change the gold to be more fitting with Daggerheart’s vibe, and prepare to get into it with the encounter associated with the Lighthouse…
Keep The Lights On.
Now we’re getting into it! We’ve gotten to the Lighthouse, we’ve shaken hands with Old Man Lightfoot and likely poked his personal items and maybe tried to steal something precious before thinking better of it. We have a quick pitch of the encounter, a descriptive text for ‘Setting the Scene’, and some ideas how to use this encounter to tie your narrative into something larger! That’s all well and good, but you can read all those things, but the most important thing is… WE FINALLY GOT A SKILL CHECK.
I’ve been waiting for an excuse to use this gif
Alright, so we have a pretty cut & dry action that needs to be performed, in this case it’s Wind the Lighthouse Gears and a general text description of the difficulty, which in this case is Moderate. So if I’m GMing, I look at this and go ‘Hmm, I imagine winding the wheel to get the gears moving would require some strength to do, so I’ll probably ask to make a Strengh-based Action roll.’ That part is easy enough to divine, but how do I decide what is Moderate Difficulty? Well, if you’ll allow me to Tarantino for a bit, earlier in this guide was a section on modular skill sections that looked a bit like this:
Pretty cool huh? We got a little chart right out the gate that gives us a range to select from, either so we can have a little creative control to scale things up or down accordingly, or perhaps to allow for a glorious sliding scale of success to provide another data point depending if the roll with Hope or Fear. ‘But this isn’t a D20-based system!’ I hear you mathematically minded members saying, and you’re right! Now I would love to say to you that I did a bunch of equations and consulted my friend Max who is the smartest math man I know, but I didn’t have to. You see, the wonderful designers of the game provided us with this as a tool for GMs to generally define and categorize their action rolls:
Did this make me feel super seen and like I actually have some ability to design games? Yes. Does it matter that scales like this have existed in other games? I chose not to hear that question. Okay but jokes aside, our system gels REALLY well with Daggerheart, meaning if you just reference this chart a few times, you’ll likely be able to run this encounter on the fly with minimal prep time. I look at this, I see something that needs strength and is moderately difficult, I’ll set it at 14 because that seems to pass my internal smell-check, and we’re rolling the dice! In this case, if they were to roll Success with Fear I’d likely pocket my Fear token for now; the stakes aren’t high enough yet, though I may use this to get in their heads RIIIIGHT before the next time they have to do this without Old Man Lightfoot around to help. If they fail, Lightfoot will jump in to show them how, but will clearly be concerned they might not be the right folks for this small job.
This is a small example of conversion of our system and how I’d play it, but as you can see the preparation that’s required is as barebones as could be for running this in Daggerheart! 3-5 minutes to read over the location and the encounter, a mental or physical note on the ranges and their definitions (moderate, low, etc) and you are ready to run this encounter at your table. Personally, I’m a huge fan of countdown triggers or ‘clocks’ to determine varied outcomes, so let’s turn this locale into a Tier 1 Event space! Referencing the page above, we have four unique trigger points for the encounter taking place overnight, so I’m going to make a ‘Good Ending’ countdown set at Eight and a ‘Bad Ending’ countdown set at Six.
If the party can move the good ending countdown to 8 before failing enough to move the bad ending to 6, then hurray! If they can’t, well then they will get to read ahead because I still have to explain combat so… Yeah they’re going to fail. But! Before we get there, let’s think about these triggers. Failure with Fear should move the Bad Ending up by 3, while a Critical Success should move the Good Ending up by 3. Failure with Hope and Success with Hope will move their respective clocks up by 2, leaving our previously mentioned wildcard check; Success with Fear. Having now read ahead (and remembered this encounter more) I’d probably pocket that Fear and move BOTH countdowns up by 1.
But I also want some Actions for this event! Things that happen when the players fail to push the narrative, and in this case, scare my players accordingly! I’m making two Actions right now on the fly looking at the location description and I got two ideas: Falling Down the Stairs (Moderate), and A Brief Haunting (Moderate) with one targeting Stress and the other doing damage. For the first, I’d probably have players make an Agility Reaction Roll (13) to avoid Falling Down the Stairs. On a failure, I’d set the damage at 1d8+4 physical damage as they feel themselves shoved down the stairs by some unseen force. Alternatively, if they’re hanging out alone in one space after a failed check, I’d have them make an Instinct Reaction Roll (13) or mark a Stress and maybe describe them hallucinating they are standing atop the deck of a ship, surrounded by mist before feeling something run a finger along their neck before ‘waking up’ back in the room they were in!
You’re in one!
‘Yeah but skill challenges and events like this are the easy part to convert’ I hear myself saying so I can segue us into the next part of this explanation, ‘What about combat and monsters and stuff?!’ Well lucky for us, in this hypothetical encounter the party got the Bad Ending and our poor Lightfoot is going to be unable to fight off his possession, and attack us via the main adversary in the Forgotten Altar Encounter! So let’s jump ahead and steal the monster of that encounter and use it here for a quick, ad hoc showdown. Let’s meet, the Death’s Head.
In the combat scene associated with the Forgotten Altar Encounter, this malevolent spirit empowers his foot soldier type undead with Occult Empowerment, which in turn activates the Undying Assault feature on these guys, which simply means that while this ability is on them, they can’t be killed. Thinking about this, I think in the Bad Ending I’m going to have Old Man Lightfoot be possessed by this Death’s Head, and have the Occult Empowerment borrow a bit from Occult Alacrity as well, and make him a creepy, wall-climbing old man like the Exorcist or Insidious (I think?) but far from invulnerable. Now Daggerheart has some GREAT guidance on making and modifying monsters in their system. If you/we had the time to build our own perhaps we would, but for this example, we are SPEED… So we’re going to use the lovely Improvised Stat Chart as a reference, and we’re going to look at Sapping Ray and go to town!
Since they got the Bad Ending I’m going to assume we’ve got some lovely Fear saved up. I’ll kick this encounter off describing Old Man Lightfoot surrounded in mist and malevolent energy, and then as he scurries along the wall of his Keeper’s Quarters and clearly making his way upward… But not before spending a Fear to have him use the Sapping Ray action on the more magically sensitive member of the party. I might have the Death’s Head speak through Lightfoot, goading them to attack and kill the old man, hinting that while he seems healthier and faster at the moment, he can be killed or harmed.
At this point, players can simply kill Old Man Lightfoot (hey that’s not cool!) or more likely, try to find creative ways to break the possession and save him! I’d probably give him a +2 attack modifier but set the damage at 1d8+3. Then I’d set a four part countdown trigger for ‘breaking the curse’ using the same success/failure values and be off to the races! This way, we’re pulling a good ol’ Mega Man; introducing concepts for a future encounter ahead of time to prepare them for something they’ll likely contend with later!
And just like that… We’ve converted an encounter into Daggerheart in just a few minutes! Or, in this case over the course of two days as I took a break to finish this outtro (writing endings is tough okay?). Daggerheart has been an amazing system to begin learning, and even I was a bit surprised at how easy it was to convert our work into their ruleset. Hopefully this is helpful if you’re following our project or are interested in more modular game design, and of course if you have any questions or thoughts please let me know, ESPECIALLY if I’m messing up any rules!
