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Did you know that Roll20 provides support for your Daggerheart adventures with tons of features to streamline your play – including a free quickstart VTT adventure with tokens, maps, and more? Adding the Demiplane integration, Roll20 offers numerous Daggerheart goodies, like quick access to compendium information and Daggerheart character sheets, so you won’t need to switch back and forth between tabs to look up stat blocks on the fly. If you’re curious about Daggerheart, everything you need to get started is only a click away.

But as any experienced GM knows, there’s no such thing as too much prep. If you want to take on Daggerheart with the ideal setup, there are several ways to maximize your VTT so you can fully utilize all it has to offer. With a few tweaks and adjustments to your game settings and a little help from our Roll20 community, optimizing your Daggerheart experience is easier than ever.

Let’s check out five popular hacks that Daggerheart players are loving. Shall we?

Tracking Fear

Figuring out how to simply and clearly demonstrate how much Fear the GM has accumulated is probably the first head-scratcher you’ll want to get around when running Daggerheart online. Fortunately, the Daggerheart community has devised several ways to circumvent this problem. Starting with an official mod extension for pro subscribers, and even a few workarounds for non-subscribing members.

Build an In-Game Fear Tracker Using Mods

To build an interactive Fear Tracker graphic, you’ll need a Pro subscription to gain access to mods. If you’re entirely new to mods, check out our previous blog post on Modding in D&D to figure out the fundamentals. Fortunately, installing the necessary mods needed to build an in-game tracker doesn’t require much expertise. All you need to know is where to find your mod library, which can be found under your game settings.

To create the right environment to host an interactive Fear Tracker, we’ll need to download a couple of necessary mods: libTokenMarkers, TokenMod, Messenger, and SelectManager.

From there, all we need to do is launch our game and create a rollable table titled “GM-Fear”. Then, click “Add Item” and create a Token for every point of Fear up to 12. To do this, you’ll need some Token art. We recommend using GM Fear Tracker by OneBoxyLlama, which comes with numerous art packs for you to customize your tracker and detailed instructions on how to implement them on Roll20. 

Once you’ve added items with labels for all of your Fear tokens and have uploaded your chosen art for each token, save your changes and select the “Token” button next to your new rollable table. On your map, select the new Token and name it “GM-Fear” to match the title of your rollable table. Then, navigate to your macro tab and add two new macros, named “AddFear” and “RemoveFear” respectively. Open your AddFear Macro and insert !token-mod --ids {& select gm-fear} --set currentside|+1 in the action box and save your changes. Open RemoveFear, insert !token-mod --ids {& select gm-fear} --set currentside|-1 and again, save your changes. Lastly, hit “In Bar” next to each macro to add a button to the bottom of your screen. 

Voila! You now have an interactive Fear Tracker that works like magic! This is probably the most involved setup process on this list, but with the beautifully designed custom Tokens by OneBoxyLlama, it’s more than worth the effort. If you’re feeling a little lost, check out our Guide to Macros for more information!

Bonus tip: You can use the same methodology to build a Countdown tracker!

Utilize the Fear Autotracker Extension Mod to Take Advantage of Text Chat 

Interested in modding your game, but looking for something that requires a little less setup? Check out the Fear Autotracker Extension! Utilizing the demiplane integrated character sheets, the Fear Autotracker Extension by Roll20 user orbotik keeps track of every Duality Die roll made and updates the text chat with the Hope/Fear results. Simple, streamlined, and straightforward.

To set up Fear Autotracker Extension, navigate to your mods tab, search for “Fear Autotracker Extension” in the mod library, and click “Add Script”. Before you rush off to launch your game and take it for a spin, remember that the Fear Autotracker Extension only reads Duality Dice rolls that are triggered from Demiplane character sheets, so you’ll want to make sure you’ve integrated your DH character from Demiplane first. 

Once that’s done, launch your game and give it a try!

Create Your Own Fear Tracker Using Token Bars

How about an alternative for those without a Pro subscription? Right out of the box, Roll20 comes with tons of features under the hood that perfectly complement DH mechanics. In this case? Token bars. 

Token bars are highly modular and can be customized to represent almost anything you can imagine, including Hope, Fear, and even Stress. Usually, we assign Token bars to NPCs or players to help visualize resource management, especially during combat phases. But, in reality, Token bars can be assigned to represent a variety of things, including Fear itself. Using only your chosen token art (in this case, I’m using a text graphic with a transparent background) and a single Token bar, you can build your own interactive fear tracker from scratch.

First, drop your Token art on your map. This can be whatever you’d like, so long as it represents Fear to the players. Select your Token art, open its Token settings, and find the Token bar boxes on the right side of the panel. Choose a Token bar, and fill in the minimum box with 0 (or however much Fear you have), and fill in the maximum box with 12. Then set the permissions so players can see your new Token bar, and save your changes. 

Simple! Now you have a token with a Fear tracker attached and visible to everyone. Just make sure to keep it updated so everyone’s on the same page! 

After they see your sweet new Fear tracker, your players may want to see their Hope tokens visualized on screen as well. Use the same methodology above to give players their own Hope tracker! 

Spotlight = Token Markers

Without any in-game indicators, the Spotlight mechanic can be somewhat of a nebulous concept. Where other games use initiative to imply that attention is turned toward one person's actions, Daggerheart uses a more free-flowing system that can be passed back and forth in both combat and social encounters. Spotlight doesn’t just mean, “someone is taking action”, but more “this is someone’s moment”, which doesn’t necessarily exclude other players from getting in on the fun. Players can spend Hope to help an ally in the spotlight, participate in group rolls, or even tag-team rolls, all while the spotlight is on their ally. It’s a system that provides players with endless opportunities to follow their impulse, allowing everyone at the table to engage in a refreshingly dynamic play experience by jumping from moment to moment to paint a scene.

But with so much opportunity for action, sometimes things can feel a little hard to keep track of. In the more extreme of scenarios, the free-flowing feel of Daggerheart can result in a table of players that push each other side to wrestle the spotlight from the other’s hands, shouting their moves at the top of their lungs as they race to be the first to act, or a table that sits their trepidatiously, studying their character sheets as they grapple with their next move. In either case, using Token Markers can turn the Spotlight mechanic into something closer to a queue system, allowing players to clearly indicate to the table whether or not they’re ready to be in the spotlight, or are happy to wait in the wings.

Think of it like this:

Green = Spotlight is on the player

Yellow = Waiting to take the Spotlight

Red = Not ready for the Spotlight

From there, your players only need to select their token and apply a Token Marker with the corresponding color to indicate where they’d like to land in the queue. Now, whether you’ve got a table made up of raucous troublemakers or note-taking introverts, you’re working with a foolproof queue system to instill your players with the patience or permission they need. 

Enable Range Scale

Last but definitely not least, this quality of life change is maybe the easiest, yet most necessary, on this list. Daggerheart doesn’t use a metric system like other games. Instead, it uses a range system based on descriptive tags. Melee, Very Close, Close, Far, and Very Far. By default, Roll20 uses metrics in increments of 5ft to measure between tokens, but thankfully, there’s already a built-in feature that allows you to take advantage of Daggerheart’s measurement system.

To make this quick tweak, from your Campaign homepage, navigate to your Game Settings and then open your Game Default Settings. Find the “Use Range Scale” option, and check the box to enable it. Make sure you scroll down to save your changes and then launch your game. If you don’t notice your changes taking effect, try creating a new page. You can also access your page settings from the page switcher to make the same changes to a specific page.

The Daggerheart community is rapidly growing, and with it, new contributions from the Roll20 community are emerging. If you’re looking for more ways to optimize your VTT experience for Daggerheart, don’t stop here! Check out the Roll20 forums for tips and tricks, and more.