Jambo's GM Journal

Our first session of Daggerheart’s Age of Umbra campaign. (Side note, in real life I’m months ahead of this – but it will take time to catch up!)

Every campaign has to start somewhere.

For the characters of Age of Umbra, that somewhere was Okros.

For me, this was also the beginning of something new. I’d played a little Daggerheart before, but this was my first time running a campaign using the system. Some of the players were completely new to Daggerheart, and a couple were relatively new to tabletop RPGs altogether.

So before we threw everyone into the deep end, we had some character building to do! I’m doing this by the book (ish) and followed the session 0 guidelines in the Daggerheart book pretty closely!

Session 0: Who Are We?

Our party consisted of:

• Melvin – Human Warrior, played by Martin
• Drakana – Orc Ranger and her wolf companion, played by Cazza
• Leven – Giant Seraph, played by Adam
• Nienna – Moth Faerie Rogue, played by Chelsea
• Lucrezia – Elf Sorcerer, played by Kieran

We started with character creation and, importantly, spent some time talking about who these people actually were. Rather than simply filling in character sheets, we talked about everyone’s characters, their backgrounds and what had brought them to this point.

We also tried some of Daggerheart’s connection questions. I really like the idea behind these questions. They’re a great way of creating relationships between characters without requiring the players to arrive with elaborate backstories already written.

In practice, though, I think I threw a few of the players in at the deep end. Some were still getting their heads around Daggerheart itself, while others were still learning the conventions of tabletop RPGs. Asking them to immediately invent meaningful relationships between characters they’d only just created was perhaps a little ambitious.

It wasn’t a disaster—the questions were fun—but it was something I learnt from.

Sometimes players need a little more context before they’re ready to create the context themselves.

Welcome to the Age of Umbra

To help with that, I spent some time introducing the Age of Umbra campaign frame.

The world is a dangerous place. The old gods are gone, the Umbra has changed the land, and the people who remain have learned to survive in a world where hope is something precious.

I wanted the players to understand that before we started. Not every detail of the setting needed to be explained. They just needed to know what sort of world they were stepping into.

And then I wanted to get them playing.

A Very Small Adventure

Rather than spending the entire first evening talking about the campaign, I decided to run a very short adventure. The characters had all arrived in Okros, although they’d travelled there from different places and for very different reasons.

Okros would be their starting point.

They were gathered together by Elder Akadana, who had a simple request.

A local forager named Garnar, a Galapa, had failed to return.

Would they go out into the surrounding marshes and find him?

It wasn’t supposed to be an epic quest. It was an opportunity to introduce the characters to the setting, let everyone roll some dice and, perhaps most importantly, give the players a chance to learn how Daggerheart actually works by playing it.

Into the Swamp

The party headed out from Okros and into the marshes.

They eventually found Garnar, but they weren’t alone.

The swamp was home to a number of small, fiery toads, and the party soon found themselves fighting their way through them.

Then something considerably worse appeared.

A large, malformed toad emerged from the marsh.

It was a grotesque creature, covered in tentacles and considerably more dangerous than the little creatures they’d already been fighting.

For a first taste of Daggerheart combat, it did the job. The party had to work together, and eventually Nienna delivered the final blow. The threat was dealt with. Unfortunately, Garnar wasn’t in particularly good shape. Fortunately, Leven was there to help. After healing the injured Galapa, the newly formed group made their way back towards Okros.

A Place to Call Home

And this is where I wanted the session to end.

Okros isn’t a huge settlement. It has stood for around fifty years, a small community surviving in the shadow of the wider dangers of the Age of Umbra. At its centre burns the Sacred Pyre. The flames burn high above the settlement, visible for miles across the Idol Hollow plains.

I asked the players what they thought there place in Okros was? They decoded they were foragers and hunters, helping feed the town. So I narrated:

Weeks passed. The five strangers became a crew. They began regularly venturing beyond the gates to forage and bring back what the settlement needed. They became familiar faces. People knew them. They had responsibilities. More importantly, they had begun to feel like they belonged. For the first time, perhaps, they had somewhere they could call home. And for a little while, there was hope.

Looking Back

I think this was a good way to begin the campaign.

The adventure itself was deliberately small. There wasn’t a huge mystery to solve or a world-threatening villain waiting around the corner. The purpose was to get everyone comfortable.

We created characters, established some connections, learned about the setting and then actually played the game.

Looking back, I’d probably spend a little more time helping newer players with the connection questions. Daggerheart gives you some really interesting tools for building relationships between characters, but I think they work best when players have a little understanding of the characters and the world first.

The short adventure worked well, though. It gave everyone a chance to learn the system without making the first session feel like a rules tutorial. And, perhaps most importantly, it established something that would become increasingly important as the campaign continued:

Okros was home.

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Next time in Age of Umbra

The party have settled into life in Okros. They’ve become regular members of the community and have begun venturing outside the settlement to forage.

But something is changing.

A group of Delvers have disappeared.

And when the community turns to the newly formed crew for help, their simple life in Okros is about to become considerably more complicated.