Among the many ideas in Daggerheart, one big idea is that players and GMs alike should “Build the World Together.” In many TTRPGs, there’s an implicit idea that the GM is responsible for worldbuilding, and players are there to experience and inhabit it. In Daggerheart, players not only bring their own character details and backstory, but they are also supposed to add lore and even setup terrain for combat encounters for full collaborative worldbuilding.
To GMs, this probably sounds like a really nice idea. They can share the burden of prep and worldbuilding with their players. They can have an engaged and interactive table of players jumping in to flesh out the world.
But I suspect that players are adding a lot less to worldbuilding than either what Daggerheart intends or what GMs want.
In this post, I’ll go through some of the reasons why I think this is hard and what can be done about it.
Why is collaborative worldbuilding so hard?
Before jumping into solutions, I have some ideas about why collaborative worldbuilding feels difficult to do. Not all of these will apply at all tables, but it may help Daggerheart GMs introspect on what is and isn’t present in the table dynamics.
Players aren’t ready
As a GM, you’re in the middle of setting up a new location when you ask one of your players, “Phil, what’s the most popular tavern in this town?”
This is followed with some sputtering, a short, barely-formed response, and extensive effort by you the GM to save the situation without negating what the player said.
And that’s why every NPC is named Bob.
The players’ ideas don’t fit
Or sometimes one of your players crushes it and delivers a well-thought out, elaborate answer.
…that totally negates all of the prep you had done for the rest of the session.
A related concern here is that you as a GM are proud of what you have come up with, and you’re worried that the world will seem less “real” if players know that they can actively shape it as well.
You just forget to ask
For experienced GMs coming from other systems, it just isn’t natural to turn it over to the players. When you need to describe something, you just filling in details. When one of your players asks you a question, you either answer or you have them roll a knowledge check, then answer.
I suspect that this is really the most common reason.
How can we do better with collaborative worldbuilding?
So what’s a GM to do? The good news is that collaborative worldbuilding isn’t impossible or even necessarily difficult. It just requires a different mindset and training ourselves with some different habits.
Here are a few ideas on how to do this.
Be specific with your prompts
Let’s say your players step into a tavern, and you want them to help flesh it out. You could ask them, “What do you see?”
Or you could be a little more specific about what you want your players to fill in, such as:
- “You smell something delicious wafting in from the kitchen. What is it?”
- “The clientele here reminds you of your old stomping grounds. Who else is here?”
- “There’s a bard in the corner finishing up a sorrowful tale. How is the crowd reacting?”
- “The decor here is not only bizarre but also a bit scary. What do you see?”
By providing a more specific prompt, you can constrain the possible responses by your players to make sure that they fit what you’re looking for. You draw the box; they fill it in.
Also, this will make it easier for your players to come up with better answers. Blank canvases are scary, and creativity can often benefit from constraints.
Let NPCs ask the questions
When you as the GM ask a player a question, it’s already moved to a meta-game discussion about what the world is. The world pauses as you sort out the details that can make a player freeze up.
However, if a NPC asks a PC a question, then it’s just an in-game conversation.
- “Please tell me your scouting gave you an idea of how to get into the castle.”
- “What dangers are you worried about in the woods?”
- “My history is a little rusty; can you remind me what happened in the battle here?”
- “What ingredients can I get from the storeroom to help with the ritual?”
Of course, the player may still turn to you as the GM to tell them what to say, but it’s awkward enough that they may just go for it.
Prep less
One of the GM pitfalls to avoid is “overplanning.” As a GM, it’s good to be ready, but sometimes, it’s also good to not have the answer. It leaves gaps for players to fill in, and you won’t feel like your players are taking you off-course.
This particular idea is strange because prep feels like the appropriate work that a GM has to do. How bad is it to not do your homework? Even if the game usually goes sideways, you still are supposed to give it your best shot.
Give yourself the grace to know that you can actually make your game better by being less prepared.
Final Thoughts
Out of everything in the Daggerheart rules and principles, this is the one that I have the most concerns about doing right. I can manage variable initiative. I can build encounters, adversaries, and environments. I can come up with the graded success and failures with hope and fear involved.
But I’m not sure how it will go with getting my players into the mindset to contribute to worldbuilding.
And after all, it really comes down to me trusting my players to fill in the details. It will take an adjustment, but this is the collaborative game that Daggerheart is, and I’m excited to see where it takes my game.
Elsewhere in Daggerheart
I’m a bit late on my weekly blog post, but I feel like I stumbled across a lot this week.
TheGamer has an article on “10 Things To Look Forward To In Daggerheart.” There aren’t too many surprises for open beta participants, but it’s nice to see the news elsewhere.
The True Strike podcast has an episode reviewing the Critmas show. The video title is clickbait-y, but the conversation is quite insightful.
Shield’s Rest posted a video on how to build a Warrior. I have to be honest that I haven’t played enough Daggerheart to know what higher tiers of play look like and how to build for that, but maybe these guys have a better idea.
Geek Native saw a press release about Darrington Press doing a distribution deal with Macmillan (original press release here). There’s another confirmation for a Spring 2025 release, and this may help with international distribution as well.
We have more Daggerheart art from Bear Frymire!
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