Game Mastering in Daggerheart: Agenda, Principles, and GM Moves

Daggerheart doesn’t hand new GMs a chapter labeled “Agenda.” It doesn’t need to. Read its GM Guidance section closely enough and the same three-part structure PbtA veterans already know, an Agenda, a set of Principles, and a list of Moves, is sitting right there under different names.

This guide pulls that structure out into the open, so running Daggerheart clicks faster whether you’re coming from D&D, from a PbtA game, or from nothing at all.

🎯 Why “Agenda, Principles, and Moves” Is the Right Lens for Daggerheart

If you have ever run a Powered by the Apocalypse game like Apocalypse World or Monster of the Week, you already know the shorthand. Every GM chapter breaks down into an Agenda (what you are trying to accomplish), a set of Principles (how you behave turn to turn), and a list of Moves (the concrete tools you reach for when the fiction calls for one).

Daggerheart, the fantasy TTRPG from Darrington Press and Critical Role’s Matthew Mercer, does not use the word “Agenda” in its own rulebook. But once you read its GM Guidance section closely, that same three-part structure is right there under different labels. If you have GM’d a PbtA game before, you can map almost everything you already know directly onto Daggerheart instead of relearning GMing from scratch.

This guide pulls apart Daggerheart’s actual GM Principles and GM Moves, then reassembles them into that familiar Agenda framework. For a plainer walk through the same source material, our Daggerheart GM Guide breakdown is a good companion piece to this one.

🌟 Your Agenda as a Daggerheart GM

Daggerheart never states an Agenda outright, but its Principles and Practices consistently point at the same three underlying goals. Treat these as your Agenda whenever you are unsure what to do next at the table:

• Make the world feel alive and dangerous. Every scene should showcase a place, a culture, or a creature that feels like it exists whether or not the party is looking at it.
• Play to find out what happens. Daggerheart’s own Principles state this almost word for word: be surprised by the choices your players make, rather than steering them toward an outcome you decided on beforehand.
• Keep the spotlight moving and the fiction connected to the mechanics. Every roll, every Fear you spend, and every move you make should trace back to something that just happened in the story, not the other way around.

Everything else in the GM chapter, the Principles, the Practices, the Moves, exists to help you execute that Agenda consistently, session after session.

🧭 The Seven GM Principles

Daggerheart’s official GM Principles are your guiding star when you are not sure how to handle a moment at the table.

Begin and end with the fiction. Use what is happening in the story to decide when to call for a roll, which move to make, and how difficult something should be, then connect the result back to the narrative.

Collaborate at all times, especially during conflict. The PCs are the protagonists, and antagonism should live in the fiction between characters, never between you and your players.

Fill the world with life, wonder, and danger. Give locations, NPCs, and threats enough texture that players want to poke at them.

Ask questions and incorporate the answers. When you ask a player what their character’s hometown looks like, use what they tell you. It keeps the whole table invested in a world they helped build.

Give every roll impact. Only call for a roll when something meaningful is actually on the line. If success is a given, skip the dice and just say yes.

Play to find out what happens. Resist scripting outcomes in advance, and let the dice and the players’ choices actually change the story.

Hold on gently. If a plan, an NPC, or a plot thread stops working, let it go. Nothing you prepped is precious enough to force.

Daggerheart pairs these with a set of GM Practices (cultivate a curious table, cut to the action, tell players what they would know, ground NPCs in motive, and others) that are less about philosophy and more about table management. Worth reading once, but the seven Principles above are what you actually lean on mid-session.

⚔️ Making GM Moves: Your Actual Toolkit

This is where Daggerheart’s framework earns its PbtA comparison most directly. A GM move is any concrete way you push the story forward in response to the players, and Daggerheart hands you an explicit list rather than leaving you to invent one from scratch:

• Show how the world reacts
• Ask a question and build on the answer
• Make an NPC act according to their motive
• Dangle a PC’s own goals in front of them to drive action
• Signal an imminent off-screen threat
• Reveal an unwelcome truth
• Force the group to split up
• Make a PC mark Stress
• Make a move the characters do not see coming
• Show the collateral damage
• Clear an adversary’s condition
• Shift the environment
• Spotlight an adversary
• Capture someone or something important
• Use a PC’s backstory against them
• Take away an opportunity permanently

You are not picking these at random. Daggerheart’s action roll outcomes tell you exactly when to reach for the list:

• Critical Success: let the player describe their win, then hand them an extra opportunity or advantage.
• Success with Hope: let them describe the success, then show how the world reacts to it.
• Success with Fear: the player still gets what they wanted, but you take a Fear and introduce a minor complication (an adversary attacks, a PC marks Stress, a new threat appears, or the stakes go up).
• Failure with Hope: describe how they fall short, then add a minor consequence using the same options above.
• Failure with Fear: describe how things go wrong and make it worse, putting them in immediate danger, making them the focus of multiple adversaries, or separating them from the party.

Daggerheart’s own quick reference boils this down to four phrases:

• Success with Hope = “Yes, and”
• Success with Fear = “Yes, but”
• Failure with Hope = “No, but”
• Failure with Fear = “No, and”

If you have run Blades in the Dark or another PbtA-adjacent system, this will feel immediately familiar. We cover a different corner of that same PbtA family in our Blades in the Dark overview if you want a point of comparison.

🌗 Soft Moves vs. Hard Moves

Daggerheart also splits moves into soft and hard. Matching the right one to the roll is what keeps pacing from feeling either too punishing or too toothless.

Soft moves go easier on the players. They introduce new information and give the party a chance to react before anything bad actually lands, so use these on rolls with Hope.

Hard moves are more direct and immediate. The PCs do not get a window to head them off, so use these on rolls with Fear, especially on a Failure with Fear.

A practical rule of thumb: ask whether the players had any chance to see it coming or respond to it first. If yes, it is soft. If no, it is hard, and it should be reserved for moments where the dice earned that weight.

🎲 Fear: The Currency That Powers Your Moves

Fear is what makes Daggerheart’s GM side distinct from a lot of other PbtA-adjacent systems. You start a campaign with 1 Fear per player character, and gain more whenever a PC rolls with Fear or the party takes a rest.

You can hold up to 12 Fear at a time, and it carries over between sessions. It is not a resource you need to burn down before the table breaks for the night.

Spend a Fear to:

• Interrupt the players and steal the spotlight for a move
• Make an additional move on top of your current one
• Trigger an adversary’s or environment’s Fear Feature
• Add an adversary’s Experience bonus to a roll

The bigger the scene, the more Fear you should be willing to spend. A quick supply run at the market barely needs any, while a climactic confrontation with a story’s villain can justify spending six to twelve Fear across the fight.

If you are sitting on a large stockpile heading into a big scene, Daggerheart’s own guidance is blunt about it: spend fast, spend often, and spend big rather than hoarding it for a rainy day that never quite arrives.

🧩 Putting It Together at the Table

Here is what this actually looks like in practice. A player rolls to sneak past a guard patrol and gets a Success with Fear.

Following your Agenda (fiction drives mechanics, play to find out what happens), you let them describe slipping past the first guard. Then you take a Fear and choose a soft-leaning move since it is still a Success: you signal an imminent off-screen threat, maybe a second, closer patrol they had not accounted for.

That move came straight off the official list, it matches a Success with Fear outcome, and it keeps the fiction moving without punishing the player for succeeding.

Later, the same player fails an attack roll with Fear against a tougher enemy. Now you reach for a hard move: the PC marks Stress and becomes the focus of every adversary in the fight for a round, with no warning and no opening to react first.

If you are still getting comfortable running NPCs inside these moves, especially ones with the motive-driven behavior the Principles ask for, our advanced NPC creation guide pairs well with this framework once you are ready to build your own.

🔜 Where to Go From Here

Once Agenda, Principles, and Moves stop feeling like separate concepts and start feeling like one continuous loop, running Daggerheart gets a lot less intimidating. If this is genuinely your first session behind the GM screen, our first Daggerheart session guide walks through table setup and what to expect before you even get to your first move.

And if you are curious what the community is currently excited about, Daggerheart’s newest standalone edition, Hope & Fear, ships to retail on August 25, 2026, with a fresh presentation of the same core rules covered here.