Daggerheart stands on the shoulders of a decades-long tradition of fantasy adventure TTRPGs that traces back to the beginning of the form as we know it. This game shares many characteristics with its predecessors—an attention to dramatized combat, familiar fantasy ancestries and archetypes, common touchstones from popular culture and folklore, and more. In addition, as you can see in the “Touchstones” section in the Introduction, Daggerheart draws inspiration from a variety of TTRPGs and other media beyond the fantasy adventure genre.

Daggerheart prioritizes and provides the tools for telling a certain kind of heroic fantasy story. The system is focused on building collaborative, character-focused stories full of emotion, and it weaves the narrative through the entire experience, including its combat. Battle comes alive when the dramatic beats and rhythm highlight the conflicting motivations of combatants, when the characters’ bonds impact their decisions in the fight, and when there is a goal beyond simply killing every combatant. Daggerheart truly shines when the battles against adversaries are a dramatic beat in a larger, emotionally grounded story about the wants and needs of the characters.

Following these GM principles will help the whole table have the best possible experience playing this game:

• Begin and end with the fiction.
• Collaborate at all times, especially during conflict.
• Fill the world with life, wonder, and danger.
• Ask questions and incorporate the answers.
• Make every roll important.
• Play to find out what happens.
• Hold on gently.