Roleplaying games have implied
settings. Daggerheart's
is deliberately kept as sparse as possible, as it offers a plethora of game
settings (“campaign
frames”) and advice on
using them or creating new ones to structure play. The pros and cons of the approach are
obvious: maximal flexibility, minimal fallback.
That
said, “Daggerheart has established ancestries, communities,
classes, abilities, and spells – so some worldbuilding aspects will
exist similarly across every campaign” (page 11). I'm setting my
sights on what these imply about Daggerheart's metaphysics. What's
stated? What can be inferred?
By metaphysics I mean cosmological, structural, and supernatural elements of the game world(s).
What can we
learn?
I'm looking only
at the Daggerheart core rulebook here. The “World Overview” in Chapter
1 is particularly informative. I'll give page references in other cases.
The Core Realms
The Mortal Realm is a plane, in the many-dimensions sense, and is
where “the majority of material beings and objects” as well as
the Faint Divinities are. Allegedly but not
definitively, the Mortal Realm was created by the Forgotten Gods
during the Earliest Age.
The Hallows Above is another core realm. It formerly belonged to the Forgotten Gods, and is now home to the New
Gods.
The Circles Below are also called the “lower realms”. Many of the Forgotten Gods are banished there, becoming Fallen Gods. Allegedly but not definitively (a) “places of corruption, destruction, and violence”, and (b) the home to some of the most dangerous creatures in the core realms.
The Realms Beyond: The book is laid out as if these are the fourth of the core realms. However, the text implies that the Mortal Realm, Hallows Above, and Circles Below are the core realms, and that the Realms Beyond are some of the “many realms” of the overall cosmos.
The Realms Beyond include “the Elemental Lands, the Astral Realm, the Valley of Death, and countless others”. The “Chaos Realm” (page 250), an “otherworldly space where the laws of reality are unstable” is “alien to the Mortal Realm” and likely a Realm Beyond. It features impossible architecture and glimpses of other worlds.
Gods and such
→ The Earliest
Age was a time when immortals from the Hallows Above intermingled with
mortals. Of nonspecific duration and distance other than “millennia”
ago (pages 11, 235).
→ The Forgotten
Gods were the first known gods. No mention of what they were called when
they were in control – certainly not “Forgotten Gods”. They
fought the New Gods and lost, and “many of” them were imprisoned
either in the Mortal Realm or the Circles Below. Presumably the
others were killed, but the ones “who fought most passionately”
were the ones banished to the Circles Below, so there's room for
interpretation that some of the losers were rehabilitated as New
Gods.
→ The Fallen Gods
are simply those of the Forgotten Gods banished to the Circles Below.
Unlike in e.g. Christian mythology, nothing is implied to have
changed about them in the process. Fallen Gods are designated (but
are not objectively stated to be) “evil practitioners of tainted
magic”, and their banished Faint Divinity allies (and their
descendants) “demons”; Infernis descend in turn from demons.
Temples to the Fallen Gods still exist (page 102), and it is possible
to have a “direct channel” to them (page 106). Fallen Gods might
also be encountered as an adversary (page 235); interestingly only at
the same level of threat as “really muscular zombie” (page 239).
→ The New Gods
turned up after the Forgotten Gods as a distinct set of entities, but
it's unclear whether or not the war began immediately. They seized
and colonised the Hallows Above. They still exist and can intervene
in the world in set ways.
→ The Faint
Divinities are “lesser deities created by both the Forgotten and
the New Gods to oversee the Mortal Realm.” They have narrower
spheres of influence but “can greatly influence the lives of
mortals.” The main text does not actually say so, but many of the
campaign frames place the Faint Divinities as being physically
present in the Mortal Realm.
The gods'
reach includes (page 44) the ability to “appoint” seraphs who are “imbued
with sacred purpose” but whose
ethos are only “traditionally” in alignment with their god's
domain or goals. Some seraphs (page 236) are tasked with enforcing their god's will. Deities who appoint seraphs are those who
exist “within the realms” [plural], which implies that
seraphs can serve a Forgotten or Fallen God, or possibly even a Faint
Divinity.
Interestingly,
Daggerheart definitively has gods but does not seem to have an afterlife. The gods have specific
observable qualities, and can be communicated with. There
is no mention in the text of a heaven, hell, reincarnation, paradise, judgment, or such.
Aside: Resurrecting
a dead character is merely “often” (i.e., not always) difficult
and costly (page 106). Page 182 contradicts this, calling death “more
permanent in Daggerheart than in other games of the same genre” and
the Risk It All roll being “final unless you provide another means
of resurrection in your story”; it also contradicts the wording of
the Resurrection spell by claiming it can only be used once.
There's a definite
impression that the Hallows Above and Circles Below are just places
where gods happen to live, and not afterlives. Getting there takes specialist
knowledge and an enormous investment while, crucially, being alive.
The gods are more like super powerful alien beings than anything that
maps well onto the belief patterns we have on Earth, but this is
generally true for most fantasy TTRPGs.
Not much is set in
stone about Daggerheart's gods, their powers, their domain, or the extent of the human-like qualities (agendas
and personality traits) which the text hints at.
We do know that the gods are mortal – confusingly, given that they are several times called ‘immortal’
and juxtaposed to mortals. It is possible (page 250) to “breach
the gates” of the Hallows Above or “break the barrier” between
it and the Mortal Realm, slay one or more gods, and usurp their powers. The mortality of the
gods is emphasised several times by the campaign frames (e.g., page 255).
Planar travel
Communication: The Hallows Above
are “closely connected with most other realms” (page 11), and according to the text it's because of that cosmological feature (i.e., not because of some godly power or
designed property) that “the gods residing here can see and speak with
the creatures of the Mortal Realm without leaving their domain”. Communication with the gods may be obfuscated, although it's unclear if this is an interplanar limitation or a feature of the gods themselves.
Travel: There are
specific methods by which the New Gods “can leave the Hallows Above
to occupy other realms, but in the current age they must always
sacrifice something of personal importance to do so.” According to
rumour (not definitively), this was a deliberate choice to help
protect the Hallows if the Forgotten Gods return.
There's an
implied symmetry for entering the Hallows Above, and the requisite
sacrifices have caused “some of the great calamities that have
befallen the Mortal Realm in recent millennia.”
Accessing and
traversing the Realms Beyond from the Mortal Realm “requires
specialised knowledge and hard-learned skills”, possessed by some
beings in the core realms.
Security: Other planes
typically have “safeguards against Fallen [Gods?] who wish to cross
from the Circles Below. Within the Mortal Realm, the use of arcane
magic in acts of great evil is said to open a temporary rift between
the two planes, allowing Fallen [Gods?] to pass through.”
Details of the magic system
Magic is “very
powerful and incredibly dangerous” (page 12). It permeates the
environment, and there is specifically a “magic of the wilderness”
(page 30).
Magic can manifest
within people (page 12). Some magic is innate and heritable (page
46). This kind of magic can be cultivated and there's a skill
component to using it.
Magical power can be
acquired and developed through learning, tool use, and taking
supplements (page 50). Having knowledge of magic leads to, or
correlates with, being able to use it. Secrets can be inherently
powerful.
...Other than that, magic is largely
left as a mystery. Daggerheart doesn't make commitments about its origin, ground rules,
systematisation, relationship to divine powers, etc.
There's not much
to glean from the domain cards. Many game powers labelled ‘ability’
rather than ‘spell’ seem nevertheless supernatural. Magic can be
used to break the rules in all the classic ways (slow time, transmit
information from the future, negate gravity, break space, directly
change reality, create and destroy matter, etc). This ‘canonical’
collection of spells is constrained in various ways that would be
visible in-world, e.g., in magnitude and locality, which is obviously a TTRPG design consideration.
Notes from the
bestiary
Fantastical creatures, undead, and things like “waygates” and “incarnations of fate” exist without any specific
metaphysical underpinnings. “Outer Realms” monsters are likely
from Realms Beyond. There are also nature spirits that are mentioned repeatedly (pages 183, 230, 283, 338, 339).
Sapients
Where did people
come from? According to “stories” the gods created the world
(page 12), but that has little epistemic weight. It seems unlikely
that people evolved biologically, given that there are eighteen
subgroups of people that (a) have enormously varying physical biology (e.g.
dragon breath, flight, drastically varying lifespan and size, being
made of metal or fungus), (b) are all capable of having children
together, and (c) have such similar brains that there is no variance
between subgroups in mental characteristics or personality traits.
Aside: There
is one exception to the latter. Humans specifically (page 65)
“incorporate [sic] both magical and mechanical tools, accessories,
and items that assist their daily life and tasks”, and “often
dress to clearly display social status, wealth, personal faith, or
aesthetics”. These traits are necessarily rare amongst the other seventeen kinds of people, otherwise they would not have been ascribed to humans in particular. Daggerheart separates culture and
community from ancestry, so these are inborn traits of humans, not
ones developed amongst insular human-dominated societies.
Daggerheart
is otherwise very careful about this sort of thing (“individuals
from all lineages possess unique characteristics and cultures, as
well as personhood”) and notes that all people's minds work
indistinguishably, i.e., in a fundamentally human way. I think we should therefore regard these notes on human ancestry as an
outright error.
Either way, the ability of e.g. infernis, fungrils, and clanks to mix ancestries seems to
preclude a model of biology similar to that of our reality. Of course, Daggerheart has deeply pervasive magic, so
although the book doesn't state it, all such cases could be
magically induced. This might anyway be a case of “game design considerations” rather than
actual metaphysics of the setting.
Campaign frames
Chapter 5 doesn't
really talk about modifying the metaphysics for a campaign frame
(outside of mentioning unique setting distinctions and special
mechanics).
Looking at the
details of the cosmos mentioned in the book's campaign frames, we
quickly find that (of those that get into it) they are built firmly
on the implied metaphysics above, with little deviation.
The Age of
Umbra (as laid out on pages 281, 284, 287, 288) and Colossus of the
Drylands (as described as “myths” on pages 308–310) for example are each fundamentally compatible with Daggerheart's underlying
metaphysics, but develop those basics in different directions.
The Witherwild
This frame
reinforces the mortality of the gods, featuring a successful deicide
(Shun’Aush) and giving a physicality to their powers (the bodily dust of a
dead god gives rise to a plague; the god Nikta's two eyes are
individually responsible for ripening and ruination; maiming a god
changes their powers).
The Witherwild frame develops the Faint Divinities: “Gods in this land [...] wander the land as incarnate
beings, residing in both the natural world as well as within homes
and small villages. [...] Many communities, and some larger families,
even have their own small god or tutelary spirit who watches over
them. […] there is a constant push and pull between the goals of
people and their deific neighbors. The gods must curry worship from
mortals, often by performing small miracles [...]” Note that this is the only mention in the
book of gods having any interest in being worshipped!
The Witherwild frame
names six Faint Divinities (Fulg, Hyacynis, Ikla, Oove, Qui’Gar,
Rohkin) and says there are hundreds or thousands more. Gods are
person-like, with allies, alignments, and special interests.
Interestingly, a god's domain is described not as a source of power or set of powers but somewhere that effort is required (Qui’Gar presides over deaths near brambles and the current magical
verdancy has “made her job harder”).
Motherboard
This is the only
canon campaign frame that arguably departs from the base metaphysics.
In Motherboard, magic is ancient technology. There's a lot of
reskinning necessary, with somewhat vague guidance: “Consider how
these would manifest in a world where magic comes from technology,
then adapt the flavour of each feature accordingly.”
Faint Divinities are
ghosts in the machine. Regarding divine power, players “should
determine why their character relates to technology on a spiritual
level, rather than simply employing it. They should also consider if
and how they offer their devotion to the Motherboard or Faint
Divinities.”
The text falls short
of saying that gods (and the Hallows Above, etc) don't literally
exist in the Motherboard frame. But that's the more
plausible and parsimonious reading: the Motherboard is a “master
program” left behind by ancient technomancers, whose indistinguishable-from-magic advanced technology gives rise to all supernatural phenomena.
In conclusion
Daggerheart has magic, and lots of it. But it has no
deep underlying rules for a GM to fall back on in rulings (or viewed the other way, no constraints that the GM has to work
within).
In Daggerheart, gods exist but at times seem curiously divorced from
serving a religious purpose. There are only a few mentions of them
being worshipped (e.g. page 313), and this isn't strictly required even for the chosen champions who channel their powers. There's no mention of an afterlife, moral judgment, or belief in gods other than the ones that literally exist. There's
also no mention of god-oppositional philosophies, even though the
Faint Divinities affect people's lives.
(As I wrote in “Put Flourishes, Fairy Tales, and Folk Beliefs in Your Fantasy World”, these are the kind of details you are definitely going to want to expand upon in your campaign frames.)
The four core realms are “the basis for the worldbuilding
elements inherent to many of Daggerheart's mechanics” (page 12). The obvious question to ask now is: do Daggerheart's
implied metaphysics constrain campaign frames?
Arguably.
The book's frames are all built on those basics or agnostic to
them. The game provides very little guidance for tinkering with the
metaphysics, even as it weighs in on other analogous matters for
creating your own world (in Chapters 3–4 and especially 5). On the
other hand, there's lots of customise-it, revise-it,
collaborate-on-it, reskin-it, make-it-work-for-your-group sentiment
throughout Daggerheart, which could be extended to imply permission.
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