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Daggerheart
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Daggerheart (Tabletop Game)
What stories await you?

Fight With Hope
Face Your Fear

Daggerheart is a fantasy Tabletop RPG system published by Darrington Press, released for open beta playtesting in March 2024, then officially launched for public release in May 2025. Created and designed in partnership with various creators of Critical Role, with lead design by Spenser Starke (Icarus, Alice Is Missing, Candela Obscura), the game is thematically reminiscent of Dungeons & Dragons, but is intended to be used for story-first campaigns, with streamlined gameplay mechanics and focus on character progression and narrative freedom.

The big mechanic that sets Daggerheart apart from its contemporaries is its "Duality Dice" system, where major rolls are determined by two 12-sided dice of asymmetrical value, one representing "Hope" and the other "Fear". The sum values of these 2d12 rolls are considered, but how the individual dice roll matters: a roll where the "Hope" die is greater presents a "roll with hope", giving players "Hope" as a spendable resource to give positive narrative benefits, while a roll where the "Fear" die is greater creates a "roll with fear", granting the Game Master a spendable resource to create negative narrative consequences.

Character creation is similar to how it goes in Dungeons & Dragons, with your choice of Character Class, Heritage, background, etc., along with a few major additions in the form of Domains, thematic collections of special abilities and spells represented by cards, and Experiencesnote , established narrative moments within a character's backstory that can be referred to to bolster dice rolls for an appropriate action. Combat is fairly loose and rules-light in approach, with no predetermined initiative order, rounds, or grid-based movement — players and GMs are encouraged to play out fights in ways that make sense for narrative flow, with players working together simultaneously to fight the GM's adversaries, and the GM interjecting after a player fails an action roll or rolls with Fear. The game also emphasizes that there are next to zero forms of resurrection, meaning all deaths are to be treated as final.note 

The Core Rulebook includes six "campaign frames", pre-made settings inspired by different subgenres of fantasy to help create campaigns of different tones:

Upon the game's official launch in May 2025, Darrington Press announced that the game would be added to their Community Gaming License (alongside their previous TTRPG, Candela Obscura), allowing for creation and publishing of homebrew content compatible with Daggerheart. They also host The Void, a community playtesting hub for future Daggerheart content, where players can try out work-in-progress subclasses and other features before their official release. The game's first official published expansion, Daggerheart: Hope & Fear, is set for release in summer 2026.

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Daggerheart provides examples of the following tropes:

    General Game Tropes 
  • Action Initiative: The default rules do not call for this, meaning the order that players and the GM go in come down to discretion and good faith for what feels like a reasonable pace. However, there are a set of optional rules for those who prefer tactical play and structured turns: each player gets a number of action tokens (it's recommended they start with 3), and every time they make an action roll, they spend one token and move it to the table's action tracker, resetting the stock when everyone's available tokens are spent.
  • All Deaths Final: Not quite, but pretty close. There is only one method of resurrection, and that's a "Resurrection" spell that is only available at the maximum level of level 10 to Seraphs and Wizards and is purposefully designed to be nearly impossible to pull off. You have to reach a spellcast roll of 20, failure renders it unusable for a week, and success has a 5 in 6 chance to render it permanently unusable. The game is otherwise not fickle about the concept of Character Death — if a character dies, they're effectively gone for good.
  • All or Nothing: One of the options after reaching zero hit points is to "Risk it All", throwing their Duality Dice to see if they survive: a higher Hope die or a tie means they do, restoring some health and clearing stress, but a higher Fear die means they go down for good.
  • Alternate Company Equivalent: A ton of elements of Daggerheart are designed to be similar, but not identical, to those found in Dungeons & Dragons. Ancestries like drakona, clanks, infernis, and galapas are plays of races codified by D&D (respectively dragonborn, warforged, tieflings, and tortles), and even the class arrangements should be familiar to those coming in from D&D, especially 5th Edition — Druids can "Beastform" instead of "Wild Shape", Rangers use "Focus" instead of a "Hunter's Mark", Sorcerers and Wizards are different magic users defined by Talent vs. Training, etc.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • Daggerheart borrows many mechanics from Dungeons & Dragons, but purposefully streamlines some of the more numbers-crunching elements of the game in order to better fit the flow and narrative-leaning philosophy of the game. The rules as written truncate the admin needed for elements such as hit points, range, and ability-casting resources, as well as reducing the cruft for certain elements for worldbuilding and flavor, such as cutting the need for multiple languages. The rules also state that these aren't strictly unmoving factors, with optional rules in order to simulate more intensive rules for those who wish to play them using the Daggerheart system (distance being defined by exact measurements instead of general ranges, turn-based initiative, etc.)
    • The rules-as-written allow a Player Character to use a Super Wheelchair. However, the rules also say that this wheelchair can't be targeted, can't be destroyed, and can't be taken away from a character unless their player allows it to be taken. Otherwise, the chair would be an easy target for a Killer Game Master.
    • The rules permit players to fudge around with certain ability and spell conditions if their characters feature disabilities that would get in the way, such as blindness, deafness, limb differences, etc. The rulebook specifies that Daggerheart has no set style for weapons combat nor a set style of spellcasting, and encourages Game Masters to work with their players to adjust the rules when necessary, such as through utilizing different senses for sense-based conditions (such as "a target you can hear"), tweaking ranges, or addressing things in-universe by giving player characters magical or non-magical aids, or making the world setting accommodating for those with disabilities.
  • Armor Is Useless: It usually isn't, but this can be pulled off using the "Bare Bones" Valor card, which grants a hearty set of Armor Scores and Damage Thresholds buffed with Strength for those who choose to not equip armor.
  • Armor Points: Armor, in addition to altering characters' damage thresholds along with other features, provide a pool of these in order to negate damage. Each armor has a "Base Score" to determine how many "Armor Slots" the character wearing it has available, and upon taking a hit, the player can cross out one of those Armor Slots to reduce the threshold of damage (mitigate 1 hit point), only consuming one Slot per hit. Characters can only restore Armor Slots as an action during downtime.
  • Bag of Holding: Available as a piece of loot, dubbed the "Infinite Bag", which stores items in a pocket dimension that never runs out of space, allowing one to store and retrieve an item at any time.
  • Character Class System: The game launched with nine character classes (Bard, Druid, Guardian, Ranger, Seraph, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warrior, and Wizard), each with a pair of subclasses. In addition to their specific (sub)class features, each classes also gets abilities/spells from two Domains, which purposefully overlap with other classes.
  • Charm Person: "Enrapture" is a level 1 Grace card that allows one to roll to mark someone as "enraptured", being unable to focus on anyone except the PC and their voice.
  • Common Tongue: The game's rulebook specifies that Daggerheart assumes that everyone speaks a common language (it being up to the participants to decide if it's through magical or mundane means) and that Signed Language is also widely understood across cultures and communities. As a result, players don't need to pick any specific languages for your character to know, though the game still allows tables to come up with specific regional languages if they so choose.
  • Consummate Liar: "Deft Deceiver" is a level 1 Grace card that allows those who use it to act as this, spending Hope to grant Advantage on any rolls intended to trick or deceive anyone.
  • Continuing Is Painful: One of the "death moves" upon being reduced to zero hit points, simply titled "Avoid Death". Unlike the option to "Risk It All" (roll your duality dice and let them decide whether you live or die) or "Blaze of Glory" (which guarantees death but at least allows you to go out in a big, impactful way), "Avoid Death" is the comparatively "safest" option, letting you fall unconscious instead of dying completely. However, this option has the cost of a permanent scar that crosses out one of your Hope slots, nerfing you for the rest of the campaign.
  • Counterspell: The name of a level 3 Arcana spell, allowing you to interrupt any magic effect taking place as a reaction roll. It's one of the earliest-level spells that necessitates being sent back to the vault upon a successful cast.
  • Critical Hit: The Duality Dice system has what's considered a "Critical Success" from rolling double on both your Hope and Fear dice, which removes a point of Stress and grants a Hope point.
  • Deckbuilding Game: Abilities are represented by cards, which are tied to one of nine Domains of general themes ("Arcana" for instinctive magic, "Blade" for weaponry, "Valor" for protection and defense, etc.), with each character getting access to two Domains from their character class. You can decide whatever cards/abilities to put in your hand based on your level, can swap out your loadout between rests and level-ups (you can do it outside of those conditions, but they incur a "Recall Cost" of Stress), and your options, loadout size, and general power of cards increases per level.
  • Detrimental Stat:
    • The game heavily relies on the push and pull of "Hope" and "Fear", and while Hope is a good thing for players since it gives them benefits and resources for abilities, players "rolling with Fear" gives the Game Master Fear Points that they can use to screw them over.
    • Stress is something accumulated not just by outside forces, but also from some player-casted abilities. Taking some Stress here and there isn't too detrimental, but once a player's Stress meter is maxed out, any further additions of Stress rips through their health points.
  • Disciplines of Magic: Abilities are codified through cards, which belong to one of nine different Domains. While not all of them are strictly "magical" in nature, the categories largely define the means the abilities classes can use, many of which constitute "spells" for magic-focused classes. The Domains are the following:
  • The Dreaded: "Notorious" is a level 10 Glamour card which makes it so that your Player Character earns this reputation, treating you differently based on knowing what you've done. The effects are largely beneficial, with you getting free food and drinks anywhere, everything else you need to buy is reduced in price, and you can mark a stress to gain a whopping +10 bonus to any rolls involved in attempting to get what you want. It's so pervasive that it can't be placed in your vault, and it doesn't count against the Limited Loadout of cards you can have active.
  • Dying Moment of Awesome: When you go down to zero HP, one of the options you can take is "Blaze of Glory" to invoke this. You take one additional action immediately, which is guaranteed to be a Critical Success. However, once that action's over, you die with no chance to save yourself.
  • Familiar: "Natural Familiar" is a Sage spell that lets you summon one as a companion until your next rest, which can be commanded to perform simple tasks or act as an Animal Eye Spy at the cost of Stress. When damaging enemies in melee range, it joins with you and adds more bonus damage. Beastbound Rangers are able to gain a much more long-term "Ranger Companion" with much more robust stat blocks and progression.
  • Fatigue Mechanic: Stress represents any physical or mental toll your characters develop and is something that will be gained upon using some of their abilities, performing certain moves, or just generally being in perilous situations per the discretion of the GM. If you go over the Stress cap, any Stress must instead be marked out of your Hit Points. The most effective way to remove Stress is through downtime.
  • Forced Sleep: "Slumber" is a spell available in the "Book of Illiat" card, allowing you to put a target within very close range to sleep, only waking up if they take damage or if the GM spends Fear to cleanse it.
  • Gold–Silver–Copper Standard: Daggerheart features a twist of this with the rules as written: gold is the primary currency, but rather than relying on strict number values of individual coins, prices are measured and compartmentalized as "handfuls", "bags" (which are ten handfuls each), and "chests" (which are ten bags each). The rules state that these are purposefully abstracted so that exact values don't need to be tracked closely (so one doesn't have to consider tipping someone a single coin or flipping one into a well), though they do have an optional rule that a handful consists of ten gold coins for those who prefer granular measurements.
  • Healing Hands: The name of a level 2 Splendor spell, allowing you to grant some hit points or cleanse some stress from an ally.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power: Among the Blade cards — a Domain otherwise specialized in militaristic combat and some of the most violent, offense-focused abilities in the game — is "A Soldier's Bond", which allows you and an ally of your choice to each gain 3 Hope per long rest simply by complimenting them or asking them about something they're good at.
  • Hit Points: Relative to something like D&D or Pathfinder, characters in Daggerheart have very few hit points, starting with only six. Taking damage is interpreted through the "Damage Thresholds" of each character to breach, where depending on the collective damage rolled by an attack, it's bound to whack off one or two total hit points. Armor Points can also be used to preemptively mitigate damage, saving you from breaching certain thresholds. Especially minor damage doesn't even result in any hit point loss; rather, it contributes a point of Stress.
  • Humanshifting:
    • "Uncanny Disguise" is a Midnight spell that allows you to magically disguise yourself as any humanoid you can envision at the cost of Stress. While disguised, the PC gets Advantage on Presence rolls to avoid scrutiny, but they only get a limited number of actions before the disguise automatically drops.
    • "Adjust Appearance" (as part of the "Book of Sitil") allows you to magically shift your appearance and clothing to avoid recognition.
  • Hybrid Power: Downplayed; it's possible for a character to be a mix of more than one ancestry (partly human or otherwise), and there are rules allowing them to inherit one unique ancestry feature from each, though there's no distinguished reward for combining them (any character with three or more ancestries are capped at only getting two features).
  • Interrogating the Dead: "Final Words" is a level 2 Splendor spell that allows you to do this, granting a moment of life to a corpse and having them truthfully answer between 1 to 3 questions to the best of its ability based on what it knew in life.
  • It Only Works Once: A majority of cards provide functionally infinite uses as long as you have the resources needed to cast them, but a select few are intended to be one-and-dones with varying degrees of severity:
    • "Counterspell" (which has the power to instantly negate any magical effect and the consequences thereof) must be sent back to your vault upon a successful usage.
    • "Vitality" is a card that grants two of three permanent buffs upon choosing it: an extra Stress slot, an extra Hit Point slot, or +2 to your damage thresholds. Once those buffs are chosen, the card is sent back to the vault permanently.
    • "Shrug it Off" is a level 7 Valor spell that allows you to mark a Stress to reduce a severity level of incoming damage, and has a 50/50 chance of being sent back to the vault per each usage.
    • "Master of the Craft" is a level 9 Glamour spell that grants you a permanent +2 bonus to two of your Experiences or +3 bonus to one of your Experiences, and is permanently retired upon usage.
    • "Unbreakable" makes it so that if you're brought down to zero hit points, you regain d6 hit points instead of making a death move, but after doing so, the card gets moved to the vault.
    • "Resurrection" is a doozy: casting it requires a 20 Difficulty spellcast roll, and on a failure, you can't use this for a week. On a success, you have to roll a d6, and if you get a 5 or lower, the spell is vaulted permanently.
  • Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Downplayed, if not outright Subverted. All classes in the game feature generally consistent scaling through the way leveling up and stat progression is handled, namely by the ever-evolving Proficiency stat determining how much damage dice you roll while making attacks. While casters have a much wider scope of abilities to use than martial classes, martial classes get access to weapons with far better damage dice that scale better, especially in later levels. All characters have Experiences as a toolbox to deal with problems that works roughly the same way, rather than spellcasting being able to easily obsolete many skills or do things no skill could ever reasonably do. As a result, the caster/martial gap is significantly reduced compared to TTRPGs like Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder, where "casters with versatility" and "martials with high raw numbers" are fairly even in relevance and efficacy across shared tiers of play.
  • Loads and Loads of Races: The game launched with 18 playable "Ancestries", each with their unique designs and mechanical benefits. Some of them are Standard Fantasy Races (humans, dwarves, elves, orcs, etc.), some are equivalent to races codified by Dungeons & Dragons (infernisnote , drakonanote , clanksnote , etc.), some are canonized reworks from Critical Role (galapasnote , katarinote ), and some are more original spins on assorted fantasy creatures (ribbet, fungril, simiah, etc.).
  • Master of Unlocking: Available to those with the "Pick and Pull" Midnight card, which grants Advantage while attempting to pick nonmagical locks, disarm nonmagical traps, or steal items from a target, either by stealth or by force.
  • Morale Mechanic: The focus around "Hope" and "Fear" leans into this. Rolling with hope indicates a character accomplishing with high morale, which can then be used as a metacurrency to help themselves or others, either by bolstering dice rolls or casting certain spells, even if your action roll collectively fails (ie, "failing with Hope"). Conversely, rolls with Fear indicates something going wrong that will invariably interfere with the mood, the consequences of which additionally tie into Stress.
  • Protective Charm: Granted in the spell "Rune Ward", which allows whoever is wearing it to spend Hope to reduce incoming damage. The form of the ward and why it does this is up for the player to decide, with the text specifically asking one to "Describe what it is and why it's important to you."
  • Schrödinger's Suggestion Box: Players choose two "Experiences" at the start when creating characters, which are player-chosen aspects that represent a skill or part of the character's background. Any time they feel their Experience is relevant to a roll, they can spend a Hope to add a bonus to it. This encourages players to engage with their character's backstory and personal narrative while playing the game (especially as campaigns go on and characters can accumulate more Experiences), as well as building the world alongside the GM, creating towns, factions, or NPCs in Session Zero if they're especially relevant to their character's backstory.
  • The Six Stats: Characters are determined by six primary stats similar to those codified by D&D, but altered slightly (effectively removing "Constitution" and splitting "Dexterity" into two different stats): Strength, Finesse (fine motor skills), Agility (gross motor skills), Instinct (perception and intuition), Knowledge (analytical ability), and Presence (social skills).
  • Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: The game offers many different ancestries based off of animal people — katari are cat people, faeries are insect people, firbolgs are bovine people, etc. — and many of them offer much flexibility in how anthropomorphic they are, allowing players to make them Little Bit Beastly or more animalistic per their discretion.
  • Spell Book: "Grimoire" cards (which are primarily found under Codex) are framed as this, being able to contain two or three spells at once, enabling those who use them more powers to access at a time.
  • Spin Attack: The "Whirlwind" ability, which triggers after hitting someone in very close range, allowing you to deal half damage to everyone other enemy around you.
  • Super Wheelchair: The game includes a set of mechanics for "Combat Wheelchairs" for wheelchair-using PCs. While they're designed to allow for flexibility in terms of flavor, they mechanically come in three tiers: Light Frame Models that allow for more acrobatic abilities and speed (and only require one hand, allowing them to devote a spare hand to wield a weapon), Heavy Frame Models that are bulkier and add further weight to their attacks, and Arcane Frame Models that allow them to channel spells.
  • Truth Serums: "Tell No Lies" is a level 2 Grace spell that forces a target on a successful spellcast roll to become unable to lie. They can get around this by remaining silent, but refusing to answer a question makes them incur Stress, and moreover, the target is typically unaware that the spell has been cast on them until it causes them to utter a truth.
  • Wall Crawl: Granted with the Arcana spell "Wall Walk", which lasts until the end of the scene.

Tropes present in the official Daggerheart campaign frames:

    The Age of Umbra 
  • After the End: Age of Umbra takes place in the Halcyon Domain a century after the God-King Othedias betrayed the Pantheon, provoking a divine retribution that left the realm eternally cursed with darkness known as the Umbra. What remains of the lands are small communities of the "Enduring" desperately clinging onto the light, with the fight for survival being a massive uphill battle against nightmare beasts and corruption abound.
  • Background Magic Field: The forces of spellcrafting and magic — especially dark magic — flow through one of these in the realm, known as the Aetherweave. All spellcasters are collectively known as "Aetherweavers", and the practice of handling it by the present day is considered something of a lost, esoteric art, with those who practice it being seen with mixes of awe, fear, and distrust.
  • The Corruption: The titular "Umbra" is a force of darkness and undeath left in the fallout of the Apostasy, consisting of souls of the deceased reanimated into revenants who destroy everything they loved in their former life, not unlike a Zombie Apocalypse. With the rise of these undead comes the Umbra, a sapient darkness searching for more to corrupt and destroy, and by the present day (a century following the Apostasy), the realm has been plunged in an eternal night, with only small pockets of people left surrounding pyres to stave off the inevitable. The campaign frame includes mechanics of becoming Umbra-Touched upon certain negative conditions, namely by being attacked by other Umbra-influenced monsters.
  • Crapsack World: With the Pantheon of gods disappearing from the realm, leaving behind the unholiest of divine retribution, the Old World has become enshrouded in an eternal darkness that corrupts the living and reanimates souls of the dead into destructive monsters, and survival is only getting harder by the day.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: For the most part, the exact opposite is true, but the campaign frame makes a point that not all of the shadowy plagues that pervade the land are strictly "evil", and may be born out of tragedy that can be empathized with. It's advised that not all of the dark forces of the Umbra need to be destroyed without question, and suggests creative options in parlaying or even redeeming the threats, perhaps as an avenue of consideration for means to cleanse the Umbra's corruption.
  • Dark Fantasy: The campaign frame wears this genre on its sleeve, directly inspired by works including Dark Souls, Kingdom Death, Berserk, The Seventh Seal, and Blasphemous. Taking place in a dark and broken age of kingdoms following the abandonment of their Pantheon, threats of the apocalypse are omnipresent, challenges are unforgiving, and victories can only be achieved following immense trial and tribulation.
  • Darker and Edgier: Easily the darkest of the campaign frames in the Core Rulebook, with an apocalyptic Dark Fantasy tone that encourages high-risk challenges, the rarity of respite, and high lethality.
  • Darkness Equals Death: Oh yes. The Umbra is an ethereal, semi-sapient force of darkness that pervades the realm, filled with the souls of the damned and hiding vicious monsters ready to drag what remains of the living mortals down with them. The only chance mortals have of survival is huddling near Sacred Pyres for their light to keep the Umbra at bay.
  • Have You Seen My God?: The realm of the Halcyon Domain used to have a Pantheon of Veiled Gods, being the subject of massive, brilliant cathedrals in their honor, but after the God-King Othedias conspired with his Grand Ordinants and Aetherlords to tip the balance of divine power in his favor, they were royally pissed off, abandoning the world in what is referred to as the "Apostasy", and forsaking the survivors to an ever-growing shadow of increasing desolation.
  • Hope Springs Eternal: A heavily suggested theme. Life in the Age of Umbra, to put it lightly, sucks, but a prevalent theme is maintaining hope even against what may seem to be an inevitable doomsday. Set a century following the Apostasy, everyone born into the world is raised by communities who have developed the skills, ingenuity, and resilience to survive, and while the Pantheon is absent, rumors are abound of ways to potentially bring them back and redeem themselves in the eyes of divinity, potentially allowing the light to return. The campaign frame encourages relishing in the constant threats of the apocalyptic setting, but also to allow light, hope, joy, and victory to shine through.
    "Be mindful of balancing the starkly terrifying, bleak realm you're navigating together with scattered locales of untainted beauty, moments of inspiring humanity, and chances to truly make a difference for a better and brighter future. The highest highs leave room for the most memorable lows, and vice versa."
  • Light Is Good: With the setting being defined by a supernatural darkness bringing apocalyptic levels of destruction and corruption, light leads the way. Enduring civilizations are built around Sacred Pyres that act as fiery beacons of safety and warmth, lit by Blessed Branches, magical relics of the Old World that carry a splinter of divinity.
  • The Night That Never Ends: The Umbra manifests as a dreary haze that keeps the lands in darkness; even during the zenith of the day, the sky resembles a gloomy, dark overcast. Things are only occasionally broken up by severe weather events such as heavy rains or cursed, perpetual storms of vibrant hues, or the lucky day on hallowed grounds, where golden sunbeams or gossamer moonlight may grant boons (or curses) to those present.
  • Old Magic: Magic of the Splendor domain, being based on light and divinity, is naturally scarce in the Age of Umbra, especially since the departure of the Pantheon also marked the fall of the the Grand Ordinants, the great clerics of old who originally practiced said arts. Those who practice it are usually seen as beacons of hope, or draw unwarranted attention from those who wish to express their hate for the absent gods.
  • The Power of Love: The campaign guide stresses the importance of compassion and community as a means for survival: the Enduring have survived the lands and the seemingly inevitable doomsday by working together, and the value of fighting alongside one another to accomplish the same goal that surmounts all others cannot be overstated.
  • Zombie Apocalypse: The effects of the Umbra is not unlike this: the mortals left behind in the Old World are marked by a "soul blight" that curses them to return after death as a corrupted, violent revenant bent on destroying everything they loved in their former life. If their risen body is destroyed, the marked soul simply withdraws into the Umbra, another birthing place for more death, destruction, and monsters.

    Beast Feast 
  • Adventure-Friendly World: The setting of the campaign frame was defined when one Hylaeus the Forest Mage placed a "Lure" in the Plover Caves, drawing monsters from down below into the depths of the earth. The quaint Standard Fantasy Setting village of Elmore has been kept safe for centuries thanks to the Lure, but with recent monster attacks and events indicating that the Lure's power is fading, adventurers have been called in to scavenge the caverns, hunt what's down there, and restore the Lure's arcane power.
  • Cooking Mechanics: As is natural for the premise, there's a set of mechanics for harvesting ingredients from "beasts" and "blooms", evaluating their flavors, and preparing them in quirky fantasy meals. During downtime, player parties can prepare feasts, and depending on the quality and diversity of their ingredients, they lead to a "Meal Rating" that they can divide around to clear hit points, Stress, and gain Hope.
  • Dungeon Crawling: Beast Feast has a prominent focus on exploring dungeons (the caverns of the Plover Caves) to defeat various monsters and bring back rewards, namely the edible stuff that makes for good food.
  • Fantastic Underworld: Much of the setting of the adventuring takes place in the Plover Caves, a seemingly endless series of tunnels filled to the brim with monsters lured there over centuries, along with supernatural flora and other exotic treasures. The deeper you go, the more dangerous and delicious the creatures are, the more precious and powerful the treasure is, and even deeper still lies The Lure. It's recommended that player characters from Underborne communities may also originate directly from these caverns.
  • Food Porn: The Core Rulebook strongly encourage GMs to engage with this, appropriate for a game all about finding and cooking delicious fantasy food.
    "Describe the world through a fun, over-the-top culinary lens. When describing beasts, highlight the parts of them that could be particularly useful in a dish or valuable to a specific recipe. When describing the environment, lean on the PCs' senses — especially smell and taste — to draw them in and provide details they don't see. Use food-related colors ("the glass orb you find is the color of rich honey"), names ("she introduces herself as Penelope Pepperbottom"), and comparisons ("you march your way through the sludge of the tunnel, thick like molasses") to immerse your players in the world."
  • Improvised Weapon: The campaign frame suggests that the Player Characters start as everyday villagers with little access to high-grade fantasy weapons, and are encouraged to start using mundane items that can be appropriated for dungeon-crawling. Included is a table of such weapons and their properties, including cleavers, sharp rakes, fishing rods, and rolling pins, and even the magic items include silly things like the "Enchanted Mop" and the "Whisk Wand".
  • Lighter and Softer: Of the campaign frames in Core Rulebook, Beast Feast is advertised as being the most colorful and lighthearted, with a simple Food Porn-centric pitch and Dungeon Crawling intended for narratives that are equally silly and sincere.
    "If there's a place for a silly character name, a low-stakes yet important life goal, a weird personality quirk, or a zany aesthetic, it's this campaign frame. Embrace the fun, make bold choices, and look for opportunities to set up your character's allies for comedic moments. Additionally, let your character experience vulnerability, reveal a hard personal truth, or bond with another character over something important to them. Strive to balance comedic and heartfelt moments."
  • MacGuffin: The core endgoal element at the heart of the campaign frame is The Lure, an ancient orb of powerful magic created to trap monsters in the cavern, one whose power has been waning and must be restored to keep Elmore safe, and is located at the very lowest levels of the caverns. The descriptions are purposefully vague in details to allow players to decide on traits for it to occupy their stories, including how it was made, why its power has started to fade, and what the PCs need to do in order to activate it again.
  • Monster Organ Trafficking: Much of the pitch surrounding the campaign frame is the fantasy of slaying monsters and finding ways to cook them for delicious meals, with the village of Elmore being populated by those who have made it their culture. The campaign frame comes with mechanics for harvesting beasts and "blooms" (the supernatural flora of the caverns), ingredients to collect, and flavors to achieve.
  • Monsters as Cuisine: Beast Feast is a campaign frame/setting based heavily around Dungeon Crawling, hunting monsters, and finding ways to cook them for delicious meals, with the hub village of Elmore being populated by those who have made it their culture. The campaign frame comes with mechanics for harvesting beasts and "blooms" (the supernatural flora of the caverns), ingredients to collect, and flavors to achieve, with whatever you collect on ventures giving you boosts to make even bolder ventures.
  • Mundane Fantastic: Despite its emphasis on Dungeon Crawling, a lot of Beast Feast takes inspiration from "cozy fantasy" subgenres. The home town of Elmore is no stranger to the fantastical monsters of the caverns, and nevertheless runs as a rustic community of trade and barter, and the business of hunting monsters is no stranger than raising livestock, to the point of there being chain restaurants by local businesses within the caverns themselves.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The campaign frame suggests that Fungrils can hear the fungi populating the caverns screaming as they are harvested, and it's advised that players might want to play as different ancestries or find alternative ingredients to make cooking a more shame-free activity.

    Colossus of the Drylands 
  • Animal Companion: It's strongly suggested that each player character have a mount, and to treat it as both a personal companion (the lore establishing that everyone learns to ride from the moment they learn to walk) as well as a useful tool for traveling the massive expanses of the Drylands to gaining advantages while doing battle. It also encourages you to choose what kind of animal to be your mount, with a suggested table ranging from standard horses, to direwolves, to rhinos, to giant turtles.
  • Applied Phlebotinum: "Essentia" is a crystal found within the veins of the earth and are harvested by mortals for their seemingly divine power, being the source of all magic that falls into mortal hands. This is because it is literally "divine power"; they are effectively the "blood" of the Forgotten Gods who were buried in the earth ages ago, whose veins bleed up into the surface.
  • Colossus Climb: Because the colossi are, by definition, huge, and are so big that they require multiple stat blocks to cover the areas of their body, there are specific rules on engaging with and combating them, which also includes the ability to climb them.
  • Cosmic Horror Story: One of the big overarching themes of the campaign frames is the contrast between mundanity of life in the Drylands vs. the impossibly, cataclysmically huge Divine Conflict between the Forgotten Gods and the usurper New Gods, with day-to-day businesses of essentia miners trying to get by being juxtaposed against the sheer godly gravity of angry deities trying to reclaim the Hallows Above to awe-inspiring and horrific effect.
  • Dismantled MacGuffin: Much of the conflict surrounding the campaign frame is finding the nine "soul shards" of Kudamat's soul, each guarded by various colossi created from his will. These shards were formed after he was first felled by the New Gods, quartered and given to nine mortals in ancient times to deliver as far away as possible to ensure he couldn't return at full strength. Unfortunately, they didn't travel far enough, and despite being placed around the far reaches of the Drylands, that's nothing for the buried god Kudamat, who now knows where the shards are and is siphoning their power regardless, with the new conflict being to relocate and seize them from his grasp before it's too late.
  • Divine Conflict: The campaign frame takes place between a humongous clash between gods of old and new, with the puny mortals caught in between. The Mortal Realm was created in "the Earliest Age" by those presently identified as the "Forgotten Gods", but were usurped and overthrown by "New Gods" in a violent battle, tossing them from their place in the high Hallows Above and trapping them in the earth of the Mortal Realm and hellish Circles Below. The vengeful return of these Forgotten Gods is considered its own massive apocalyptic conflict that risks taking out all of the mortals with them.
  • Fantasy Gun Control: Subverted; basic firearms you'd expect for a Weird West campaign setting are present and available for players to use, including revolvers, rifles, and shotguns.
  • Hell: The "Circles Below" are strongly implied to be the setting's equivalent to it, in contrast with the "Hallows Above" representing Heaven. Neither are given very much concrete explanation in the campaign frame, but it suggests that some of the Forgotten Gods were sent there beyond just being buried in the earth, and that the Infernis may have their ancestry tie back to demons from there.
  • Leaking Can of Evil: Kudamat is among the Forgotten Gods buried and reduced to myth within the earth beneath Godfell Mountain, an area surrounded by civilization mining for the amazing magical "essentia", which unbeknownst to them is his blood. Kudamat has recently obtained contact with one of the nine total shards of his souls — quartered by the New Gods and sent out into the lands, far away as mortally possible to prevent his return — something that has already caused the land to sunder and erupt with his godly power, and so the chase is on to find them before he siphons their power and unleashes his horrible divine wrath.
  • Our Giants Are Bigger: The titular colossi, also referred to as the Children of Godfell, are physical manifestations of Kudamat's will, being hellbent on protecting the nine soul shards as their powers are being siphoned back to Godfell Mountain, where Kudamat awaits his return. The campaign frame provides guidelines for GMs to create their own, and in the 24 premade examples (including one gestalt colossi consisting of three entities and a symbiotic duo), all come in extremely different shapes, personalities, and abilities — some are animalistic beasts, some mechanical monstrosities, some much stranger creatures based in magic — but all of them are uniformly huge. In terms of gameplay, they're so big that their stat blocks have to comprise of individual sections as part of a collective framework (one example colossus has six: two legs, two arms, a torso, and a head — another one has twelve), along with mechanics and consequences for breaking and destroying them piece by piece.
  • The Prophecy: The campaign frame comes with one known as the "Prophecy of the Drylands God", which the description encourages being shared with players before character creation: in the center of the world is an ancient, terrible Forgotten God buried under a mountain and struggling to be freed, and one day, Kudamat, the first Doom, will escape his own earthen tomb with the help of nine other colossi known as the Children of Godfell, laying waste to the Mortal Realm and freeing the gods to Restart the World anew. Acting as an in-universe myth shared among the Drylands, how true it is is up for the players to determine.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: It's difficult to tell if the Forgotten Gods are this or the moral opposite, but the destruction they bring to the Mortal Realm from their awakening certainly isn't good news. Kudamat, the First Doom, was a Forgotten God, and the first to rise from his earthen prison, signalling the violent return of other buried Forgotten Gods in an effort to reclaim their rightful spot among the cosmos, destroying the poor mortals in the process.
  • Unequal Rites: Mortals being able to wield magic was, by and large, a cosmic mistake, and they're able to use it only because they've been unknowingly digging up the Forgotten Gods's magic power in the form of essentia. The campaign frame poses this as a potential conflict for Seraphs, who may be greatly defined by their faith in either the Forgotten Gods (such as Kudamat) or the New Gods, and thus may have differing opinions on the use of essentia — those who worship the former may use essentia prolifically, while those of the latter might have disdain for it.
  • Weird West: Set in the Drylands, a desert realm of mining towns, laborers, religious folklore... and giant colossi rising from the earth, devastating the lands in response to something ancient and apocalyptic. The campaign frame emphasizes the drylands as a place of extremes — it's extremely hot, extremely harsh, and extremely easy to die — and the conflicts surround lowly posses of heroic mavericks fighting for their lives in conflicts ordinary and huge alike. Additionally, unique to the campaign frame is the presence of firearms and other genre-relevant items like lassos.

    Five Banners Burning 
  • The Alliance: Armada is a federation formed out of a succession of pirates-turned-merchants who settled independently among trade cities through their naval superiority. They have the largest and most powerful navy of all factions, as well as superior maps of ocean and wind currents and allied monsters from the waters around Althas on their side, thought they have relatively small land area, limited overland access to the main continent, as well as a lingering reputation of being pirates and thieves. They seek to build friendly port infrastructure for trade among Voldaen and Polaris, as well as acquiring airship technology and deploying forces against adversaries.
  • The Empire: Voldaen was the kingdom that had previously ruled all over Althas, being the kingdom of which mortals and their gods alike fought against evil, and were bestowed with their divine favor. Over the course of centuries, however, their rulership has begun to splinter, seeing significant loss through various successions, most prominently with Jesthaen at the end of a bloody, costly separatist revolution. Presently, they still have the political and cultural authority of tradition, along with seemingly boundless wealth, but are facing political upheaval following the conflict, as well as strategic vulnerabilities due to major settlements sharing close borders with both Jesthaen and Polaris. Their goals involve reclaiming key resources from Jesthaen without starting another war, while also conspiring to have Armada turn on their allies and seize the magical talent and technology of Polaris for themselves.
  • Low Fantasy: The campaign frame heavily leans into this: rather than focusing on magic or supernatural conflict (though some of that is present), a spotlight is placed on the cold war between five neighboring factions locked in an uneasy series of alliances and rivalries, with a greater emphasis on political intrigue and character interaction as the threat of war looms over all.
  • The Magocracy: Polaris is a group of scholars and mages who succeeded from Voldaen to form their own nation of study and progress, bringing with them skilled magic-users, magitech innovations, airships, and magical creatures, though they lack in workers and raw materials. They're presently seeking to develop perfect magical "servitor" enhancements, along with securing new mines and quarries, as well as fostering immigration through job programs.
  • Mêlée à Trois: The premise of the campaign frame is that the kingdom of Voldaen — founded after the victory of mortals and their since-departed gods against forces of primordial chaos — fell into a state of unease and factional splintering, the single banner they once flew under splitting into five, all with different wants, needs, morals, allegiances, ambitions, and enemies up the wazoo:
    • Voldaen itself remains as a proud monarchy with traditional authority and riches, but recently damaged by Jesthaen's succession. An old ally of Hilltop, ideological rivals of Polaris, and on poor terms with Jesthaen and Armada.
    • Armada is a federation of pirates-turned-merchants who weren't interested in paying back the fortunes stolen by their forebearers, settling in trade cities and claiming strength and recognition through naval superiority. Allied with Jesthaen, disliked by Voldaen and Hilltop.
    • Hilltop is a rich theocracy that exerts a monopoly on access to the gods (who had since departed to fight otherwordly foes), allowing them to establish holdings in other nations' settlements. An old ally of Voldaen, unfriendly towards Armada, Jesthaen, and Polaris.
    • Jesthaen is a young republic made recently independent from Voldaen after a bloody but short revolution 15 years ago, consisting of workers and anti-monarchists who seek to prove their strength through displays of military might. Allied with Armada, "allies of convenience" with Polaris, and naturally on poor terms with Voldaen.
    • Polaris is a magocracy adherent towards pushing the boundaries of magic in the name of progress, having split from Voldaen to herald the dawn of a magical industrial revolution. Allies of convenience with Jesthaen, ideological rivals with Voldaen and Hilltop.
  • The Republic: Jesthaen is an anti-monarchist republic that made itself independent from Voldaen following a hard-fought, decade-long war that only fairly recently ended in a fragile truce. They feature a strong land-based military, natural resources, and large amounts of arable land on their side, but as a new nation, they face political instability, including from remaining conservative holdouts loyal to Voldaen. Their major objective is to claim revenge on Voldaen for their centuries of injustice, while also seizing control of temples away from Hilltop and establishing secure trade partnerships with allies Armada and Polaris.
  • Space Cold War: The continent of Althas has been fraught with conflict in the last few decades, with the once-dominant kingdom of Voldaen splintering into five different states, one of which — Jesthaen — came after the result of a bloody war that consumed much of the continent. Five years into the armistice, Voldaen and Jesthaen still have unfinished business and continue to have minor skirmishes and trade disputes, and with alliances remaining fragile, many believe that war is coming again — it's just a matter of when and how.
  • The Theocracy: Hilltop is a state formed from Voldaen priests asserting their authority as divine regents of the gods of Althas, having since monopolized all further contact and access to the gods and amassing great wealth in the process. Their presence is all across the continent, and they have wealth, divine power, a devout army, and plenty of intelligence and influence through their temples and shrines, but subsequently, they're surrounded by enemies and have a scarcity in domestic products like food. Their perception of Armada and Polaris is hostile, seeing the former as miscreants who ought to be returned to he fold and "redeemed", the latter as heretics, forming a conspiracy to implicate them as the supporters of a fallen cult.

    Motherboard 
  • After the End: Motherboard takes place in the "Echo Vale", named that due to existing in the echoes of a fallen civilization with Lost Technology ripe for use by the descendants. The steel and concrete of the old world succumbed to the plants and animals of the valley, and civilization is gathered in cities either walled and stationary or mobile on wheels or legs to protect themselves from violent outsiders and separate themselves from the less-hospitable "Wastes".
  • The Alternet: "The Network" is a major presence throughout the setting, a dense web of glimmering metal wire that shepherds information and communication across the disparate cities of the Echo Vale, the biggest tower connecting them all being the Motherboard itself. This existed in ancient times before civilization's fall, and continues to be used in the present, but the complex language used to create and modify the network is lost.
  • Clarke's Third Law: This setting reflavors all magic in the game's mechanics to be technological in nature. Mages are identified as "technomancers" who interface with the arcane language of the Network to control robotic remnants and warp reality to their whim. Sorcerers are considered "biohackers" that incorporate technology into their physical form, Wizards are tinkerers with Lost Technology, Druids use mechanized suits that allow them to adapt their body and senses as a facsimile of Beastform, and Seraphs gain their "divine" power from their veneration of gods through the technology, whether it be the Motherboard itself or the "Faint Divinities" somewhere in the Network.
  • Conlang: The setting has its own dedicated script called "Kohd", a language used by the Lost Technology of the network that is considered in-universe a dead script that only a select few know how to fully understand. The script is highly reminiscent of circuit diagrams, with abstract glyphs and lines being constructed together in ways that can translate to English should one put in the effort of deciphering it.
  • Fictional Currency: The currency of the setting is "quantum", a digital currency generally stored on a small black disc that can be inserted into devices throughout the valley, and can be gathered from selling scrap. 10 quantum is roughly 1 handful of gold in vanilla Daggerheart terms (thus 100 quantum equals 1 bag, and 1000 quantum is 1 chest).
  • Lost Technology: A huge element of the setting is the arcane technology left behind by a long-forgotten civilization, one whose value is still being discovered and cultivated by survivors of the Echo Vale. It's not clear why it fell, but the various machines and Network cables left behind indicate that it was mighty in its advanced knowledge of the universe.
  • Mechanical Animals: The Echo Vale is full of "renmants", robotic beasts from the old world that resemble organic animals that were made to serve various purposes (construction, defense, domestic laborers, etc.), and may or may not be dangerous unto themselves. They're drawn to power and information like organic animals to food, some "tamed" remnants being able to communicate and gather information across the Networks, they're able to generate energy photosynthetically, but also may hunt other remnants for their power cores, and people to siphon their energy. Because all autonomous robotic beings in the setting are non-sapient, the campaign frame advises banning Clanks as a playable ancestry.
  • Mobile City: Some of the more developed cities of civilization roam around, usually being built on mobile ships that can be piloted around, or in the case of the Carrowcroft Walkaway, sitting atop a giant multi-legged base that walks across the land like a giant turtle.
  • Morph Weapon: Unlike other campaign frames, Motherboard discourages the use of typical weapons in Daggerheart's typical selection. Instead, player characters receive "Ikonis" — given to citizens of the Echo Vale when they come of age, starting as metal rods that are designed to be modified and formed into new weapons to wield as they brave the lands, whose design, abilities, and upgrading augments are intended to be up to player discretion.
  • Scavenged Punk: The setting has elements of this. Taking place in a post-apocalyptic world, those of cities and civilizations may periodically have to travel into the Wastes full of treacherous land and hostile machine remnants for supplies, with a large culture around harvesting machine parts to apply for themselves.
  • Science Fantasy: The campaign frame draws inspiration from the likes of Horizon, Final Fantasy, Fullmetal Alchemist for a mix of fantasy and modern/futuristic elements, taking place in a "post-post apocalypse" where technology and the powers it grants are equally as revered and powerful in shaping the land as magic.
  • Star Scraper: The titular "Motherboard" is the tallest spire in all of Echo Vale, where all wires of the Network originate. No one has been able to enter or climb it, and its mysterious presence has led to many theories about its significance — some worship it as a god of information and keeper of the fallen civilization's wisdom, others see it as a "master program" left behind by previous technomancers and little more than a machine. Either way, it's extremely significant for its shepherding of data and power throughout the Network, with the belief that should it fall, so will all technology in the valley.
  • The Virus: The biggest antagonist of the setting is a digital virus known as Remnant's Fury, which slowly spreads across the network and turns the largely docile remnants into destructive killing machines, seen as The Corruption that threatens to destabilize the Motherboard and all technology of the world.

    The Witherwild 

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