Richard and Karl Play Daggerheart

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Welcome to Richard and Karl Play Daggerheart—part actual play, part GM roundtable. Download free play along content at https://rajkevis.itch.io In each episode, Richard and Karl bring the world of Daggerheart to life through immersive gameplay, then break it down behind the screen. After the dice settle, they dive into what worked, what didn’t, and how to run it better—sharing insights, tips, and lessons for both new and veteran Game Masters. Whether you're here for the story or the strategy, this podcast is your companion for mastering the heart of Daggerheart. 

  1. May 22

    Running The Wish Thief One Shot

    Send us Fan Mail We run Daggerheart’s free adventure The Wish Thief and stress-test its mystery, chase, and combat pacing while riffing on why D&D 5.5 feels like a half-step that adds table friction. We end up with a stolen wish tiara, a countdown-driven investigation, a night festival chase, and a dockside showdown that gets messier than planned.  • GM and player dynamics and why tables thrive on bold choices  • D&D 5.5 edition drift and why small changes can create big confusion  • How internet feedback and focus grouping can flatten creative design  • Using collaborative worldbuilding prompts to build a city fast  • Running a gifting ceremony as a structured improv mini-game  • Investigation countdown pressure and the “quantum culprit” approach  • Chase mechanics that stay playable and cinematic  • Keep-away combat objectives and why they beat pure damage races  • Post-session critique on what we would run differently next time  Donate to the Osborne collection of childhood literature, like legitimately. Donate to libraries.  A bunch of our adventures are up on Itch.io, and I am planning to put up more this weekend.  Support the show Download episode content at https://rajkevis.itch.io/

    2h 28m

  2. May 8

    Episode 15: Lightning Volcano And Fire Cats

    Send us Fan Mail We bounce from game dev brain rewires to interactive fiction teaching war stories, then drop into Daggerheart where a lightning volcano turns exploration into a survival puzzle. We bribe fire cats with fish, steal a power boost from a wounded tree spirit, and learn the hard way that waking a dragon on purpose has consequences.  • Unity Vector2 and Vector3 as more than coordinates  • Using vectors for distance, angle, and force in physics  • Designing a bot opponent with A star pathfinding  • Why easy mode should make imperfect choices  • The Shawshank Redemption as a masterclass adaptation  • Teaching Twine and Inform 7 to humanities students  • Inform 7 prose rules and world simulation logic  • Grad school travel budgeting and conference panels  • Daggerheart exploration at the lightning volcano  • Fire cats, offerings, and the burning heart tree  • Siphoning gauntlets and the decision to fight  • Dragon horde reveals and a brutal solo battle  I’ll eventually get around to putting more free adventures on Itch.io now that I’m on summer vacation in air quotes  I also put my Inform 7 text-based game on my Itch.io for free    Support the show Download episode content at https://rajkevis.itch.io/

    2h 14m

  3. Apr 3

    Episode 14: Shark Dentist

    Send us Fan Mail We spiral from a decade long Unity project and Windows upgrade paranoia into a Daggerheart session where the ocean itself tries to kill us. Lyra rows into a petrified ash town, picks a fight with the supernatural, and barely escapes a lightning lava nightmare with a pocket full of weird loot. • Unity dev setbacks, Visual Studio autocomplete failure, and the one setting that fixes everything  • Windows 11 TPM requirements, registry workarounds, and why you should fact-check us  • School overload, writing feedback, and the strange logic of ordering drinks you dislike  • Shark combat tactics, water disadvantage rulings, and becoming the shark dentist  • Looting an ash-covered general store for practical gear and a premium bedroll  • A haunted city “echo” with a five turn disaster countdown and spectral attackers  • Escaping by boat as blue magma hits seawater and the world snaps back  • A hidden cat cave, a journal-poem, and lore threads tied to electricity  • A cliff climb progress counter, Fear management, and an earned portal seed  Thank you, people who have been supporting the campaign by buying our itch.io modules. Support the show Download episode content at https://rajkevis.itch.io/

    1h 57m

  4. Mar 6

    Episode 13: What Do We Owe A Captive Flame?

    Send us Fan Mail A quick detour through two-player greatness—Fox in the Forest, The Crew, and the new Lord of the Rings co-op trick-takers—turns into a full-blown design jam on how theme should shape mechanics, not just decorate them. That idea becomes our compass as we rejoin Daggerheart mid-battle, where grayscale koi bend time long enough for a desperate sprint to the boats and a hard-earned rest that unlocks a level 5 glow-up. We name our signature move—Precise Pressure Points—dial up combo potential, and feel how character growth can be both math and meaning. Once aboard, the world gets thornier. The ship’s engine room hides a hamster wheel powered by a captive fire spirit, a “cleaner” alternative sold as pragmatic and humane. Is a storm a someone? Can you free a force that doesn’t negotiate? Before we can answer, the cafeteria becomes a stage: chili that burns a little too perfectly, four “nurses” with the wrong posture, a bandaged tattoo, and an engineer who’s awfully good at the captain’s lock. We lean on instincts and sleight-of-hand—apology dabs, quiet poisons, and a spinning kick that lights out three at once—then unmask the saboteur at the skull-and-crossbones door. This one blends game design talk with crunchy tabletop moments: detecting lies in flavor text, reading a room like a hand of trumps, and deciding whether utility justifies a cage. We also get some real-life texture—DIY craft vs AI shortcuts, the joy of time reclaimed after a move, and why protests need clean asks to land. By the end, the assassins are in irons, our reputation with Haven soldiers spikes, and the moral question of the spirit engine still hums beneath the deck. Sail with us toward the glassed coast, where the choices only get sharper. If you enjoyed the ride, follow and subscribe, share with a friend who loves card games and chaotic RPGs, and drop a review telling us: would you free the flame or keep the ship running? Support the show Download episode content at https://rajkevis.itch.io/

    1h 60m

  5. Jan 16

    Episode 12: A Fortress, A Turtle, And A War Doctor’s Dilemma

    Send us Fan Mail A fortress rides in on the back of an elder mountain tortoise. The grass dies ahead of its march. Our lighthouse hospital—powered by a star-drawn barrier of blue roses—has hours before dusk, and a withering mage on the ramparts is already carving rot into the wall. We’re in charge, like it or not, and the choices aren’t pretty: fortify the gate to funnel the fight, or seal it and dare them to scale the walls. Count boats against bodies and hope the math bends. Arm a medical camp without losing its soul. We pull the camera tight on Lyra, seven years wiser and suddenly the highest-ranking medic on site. Volunteers line up—a brusque Goliath, a twitchy smuggler, a one-legged draconian with taped scalpels—and we get to work. Acid vials from the lab. Shrapnel bombs packed with syringes. Drip fang and gorgon root poisons ready for last resort. Ravens scatter with pleas for help while storm-prayer stitches lightning into the clouds. The barrier brightens with fertilizer and fades with fear. Then the line breaks in the most direct way possible: a sprint into the sea of steel. We showcase how to run mass combat that stays cinematic and clear—spotlighting clusters, using environment cards, and letting minion math carry tempo. Knights charge and get staggered. Elites crumple under combo spikes. A syringe-bomb detonates mid-command. The mage’s beam scythes the wall. Boats belch black smoke on the horizon. It’s tactics and storytelling in lockstep: how to use terrain, time, and fear as resources, and when to trade pride for people. We leave on a razor’s edge. Reinforcements hit the dock as the turtle fortress presses closer, the barrier flickers, and the field swarms with conscripts and archers. Next up, we choose: retreat to save the camp, hold for a siege, or gamble on a counterstrike up the shell. If you love story-driven TTRPG combat, improvised defenses, and hard calls under pressure, this one delivers. Enjoyed the ride? Follow, share with a friend who loves actual play, and drop a review with your answer to the big question: retreat, hold, or assault the turtle? Support the show Download episode content at https://rajkevis.itch.io/

    2h 42m

  6. 12/09/2025

    Episode 11: Bear Jaws, Blue Lights, And Bad Choices

    Send us Fan Mail A joke about chocolate breath turns into a sharp look at how fantasy worlds inherit bias—and what designers and GMs can do to fix it—before we throw Lyra headfirst into the Witherwild. The fight is fast and feral: a fungus-laced bear, a brawler’s surge, and a transformation that exacts a brutal price. Daggerheart’s stress and hope economy isn’t flavor text here; it shapes the story beat by beat and leaves Lyra with blood on her hands and a blue light in the distance. That light belongs to a coastal medical camp wrapped around a lighthouse that drinks moonlight. Inside the stone walls, doctors in masks triage burns, ledger books stretch back centuries, and an elf with a cane resets bones with unnerving calm. Lyra sneaks through sealed labs and finds the red heart of the camp: a crimson lily whose twenty petals can depetrify the serpent sick—if you can live with the math. She also finds something worse: vials of the sickness itself, locked down like contraband. One theft later, the gates slam shut. The camp hunts a phantom. Rumors bloom. Procedure grinds on. And Lyra, restless and scared, frames a man who can’t prove a negative. We sit with that choice. A week becomes a month. Lyra folds gauze, runs water, and learns names. She befriends a nurse, watches lightning climb a mountain, and realizes that safety can be a place you earned, not a place you found. When the convoy to Alura finally forms, she doesn’t go. We end on a time skip fork and a level up, with a debrief on why Daggerheart’s stagger feels fair, why 5e’s bloat nudges tables away from cohesion, and how a session zero can defuse party friction before it explodes. Support the show Download episode content at https://rajkevis.itch.io/

    2h 6m

  7. 11/24/2025

    Episode 10: Featherlight Beginnings

    Send us Fan Mail This week in Witherwild, we open not with eldritch horrors or tangled plot threads, but with Karl’s body betraying him in the most low-fantasy way possible. First, the good news: he does not have MS. The bad news: his foot has been dramatically introduced to a knife. Life finds balance in weird ways. Between careful steps and cautious optimism, we check in on what’s new with Karl, because no campaign truly begins until the GM’s real-world hit points are accounted for. From there, we descend into the sacred ritual of character creation as Lyra finally takes shape. Stats, background, and the soft mechanical bones of who she’s going to become are laid out on the table. We talk about what makes this system tick, the weight of choices, and the looming poetry of death moves—those final narrative echoes that ensure even the end of a character means something in the world. And just when the rules start to feel heavy, the Witherwild does what it does best. We step out of the numbers and into the air, meeting a group of friendly birb people who feel like they flew in from a softer corner of the setting. Feathers, curiosity, and just enough strangeness to remind us we’re not in Kansas, or even in a normal forest. They’re a reminder that not every unknown in Witherwild wants your blood. Some just want to share stories, or breadcrumbs, or maybe directions you don’t entirely trust. So this episode’s moral: not every week is about fighting fate. Sometimes it’s about building it—one carefully chosen stat, one strange bird conversation, and one stabbed foot at a time. Support the show Download episode content at https://rajkevis.itch.io/

    2h 13m

  8. 11/07/2025

    Episode 9: Two Days from Retirement

    Send us Fan Mail This week in Witherwild, our opening chatter drifts from Stephen King’s novels to Richard’s grad school escapades—turns out, both involve terror, caffeine, and things that haunt you for years. Then we find ourselves in the quiet Katari village of Allura, where Leroy decides to do something radical: relax. Armed with a fishing pole and enough emotional baggage to sink a boat, Leroy heads to the lake to pray to the god of fermentation—because sometimes divine wisdom smells faintly of ale. Between gutting fish and grilling them over a crackling fire, he wrestles with the guilt and grief of leaving Lyra behind. There’s no battle map this week, just rippling water, whispered prayers, and one man trying to make peace with the ghosts of his choices. As we explore his fractured memories of his past. So the episode’s moral: healing doesn’t always mean fighting monsters—sometimes it means letting the line go slack, trusting the current, and forgiving yourself for drifting away. Support the show Download episode content at https://rajkevis.itch.io/

    2h 10m
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About

Welcome to Richard and Karl Play Daggerheart—part actual play, part GM roundtable. Download free play along content at https://rajkevis.itch.io In each episode, Richard and Karl bring the world of Daggerheart to life through immersive gameplay, then break it down behind the screen. After the dice settle, they dive into what worked, what didn’t, and how to run it better—sharing insights, tips, and lessons for both new and veteran Game Masters. Whether you're here for the story or the strategy, this podcast is your companion for mastering the heart of Daggerheart. 

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