A Tier 1 Adventure Frame for Daggerheart
A fog-choked port town is under assault by undead raiders and aquatic monstrosities capturing victims for a sentient ghost ship known as the Bonewaker. Destroy it and its forces will fall, but doing so may require the summoning of an angry sea horror.
This is a compact, themed toolkit designed to help GMs quickly start a game of Daggerheart. It provides core elements for running a one-shot, including:
- player-facing questions that invite the table to help establish the setting, invent the sea horror, and create the ritual to summon it
- an exciting opening scene
- descriptive moments to support immersion
- suggestions for spending Fear outside of combat
- ready-to-use NPCs and encounters that can be dropped in as needed
- stat blocks for all referenced environments and adversaries
The included environments and adversaries are also available in the Heart of Daggers Homebrew Vault.
Two Ways to Play
In addition to the adventure frame itself, which is designed for GMs who prefer improvisational play, for GMs who prefer more structure there is a one-page adventure that combines elements of the adventure frame with the 5 Room Dungeon format.
Version Updates
Version 3 (Sept 30, 2026): This version has several small revisions, including: it’s now called an adventure frame, informational tags have been added under the title, the content on the first two pages has been reorganized to reduce the need to flip between pages, Fear costs for suggested use outside of combat have been tweaked to fit my evolving philosophy on spending Fear, and some content has been streamlined based on additional playtesting.
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Cover image art by Alderdoodle (alderdoodle.co.uk).
This product includes materials from the Daggerheart System Reference Document 1.0, © Critical Role, LLC. under the terms of the Darrington Press Community Gaming (DPCGL) License. More information can be found at https://www.daggerheart.com. There are no previous modifications by others.
Darrington Press™ and the Darrington Press authorized work logo are trademarks of Critical Role, LLC and used with permission.
No AI was used in the creation of this product.
