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Michael R. Underwood

Michael R. Underwood

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Michael R. Underwood posts

Daggerheart Charity game Mon Jan 19

Daggerheart Charity game Mon Jan 19

Hello everyone! I will be GMing a charity one-shot of Daggerheart next Monday, January 19th, raising funds for Feeding America. I'm delighted to be joined by a great cast of performers, including Daniel/RiceKombo from BladeBoundSaga, Rowan from beloved Daggerheart actual pl...

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Player Prompts stream this Wednesday

Player Prompts stream this Wednesday

This Wednesday (Jan 14th), I'll be streaming with my thoughts and guidance on using player prompts in ttrpgs, especially but not limited to Daggerheart. This will include how I use prompts as prep and how I improvise prompts during play.

Join me Wed, Jan 14 at 1pm EST live at twitch.tv/turbotango or watch the VoD Thursday...

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Vinegrasp Warden preview

Vinegrasp Warden preview

Alongside the other work I've been doing, I commissioned some art for the Warden, my Daggerheart-compatible class using the Sage & Valor domains. There will be two subclasses for the Warden, and today I'm sharing the art and rough cards for one of them.

The final layout on the cards may be different, this version is just using the Ca...

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Menagerie of Mayhem #1 for backers

Hello Bladecrafters and Book Lovers!

Today I am delighted to bring you the final PDF for Menagerie of Mayhem, Volume 1, my first creator-owned larger Daggerheart-compatible supplement. It's very much a direct result of the support you and other patrons have provided, and I'm very grateful to be able to ma...

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Menagerie #1 proof preview

Menagerie #1 proof preview

Menagerie of Mayhem #1 is in final proofing stages, and I hope to have the final PDF to post for backers very soon. As a reminder, all backers at the Bladecrafter level ($10 a month USD) or at a higher tier will receive the PDF as a backer reward, before the book goes on sale.

Today I've got a preview of the final layout,...

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Building Modular Encounters

Building Modular Encounters

This week's stream will talk about my method for building modular encounters to use with the Daggerheart rules, which involves developing an environment and related adversaries to present a dramatic situation for the PCs to navigate.

In the stream I'll continue to develop this approach, which I've used in the Wish Glade encounter from View Post

Perilous Journey - illustrated Environment

Perilous Journey - illustrated Environment

Hi all,

Today I have the first piece of art from several commissions I've made for upcoming Daggerheart-compatible releases. From artist Ehud Kurzweil, we have an illustration for the Perilous Journey environment, seen below (a simple PDF with the environment + art is attached to this post).

PERILOUS JOURNEY
Tie...

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SOTYs (Stuff of the Year Stream) tomorrow 12/31!

Tomorrow, on the last day of the year, I'll be hosting my annual no-longer-just-a-bit Year-in-Review-Slash-Sorta-Awards show, the SOTYs. SOTYs stands for Stuff Of The Year stream, and is also the name for the awards. :)

What this all means is that I do a year-in-review stream and I talk about some media/games/things I loved, some important...

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Fear Moves for the Witherwild Campaign Frame

Fear Moves for the Witherwild Campaign Frame

Earlier this week, I saw a cool one-shot prompt page from Jack Panic aka DNGN CLUB, which you should check out for its own sake. You can pick it up along with two other short Daggerheart-compatible supplements 2025-12-30 14:08:02 +0000 UTC View Post

Holiday downtime + Bastion of Hope art

I'm taking the last two weeks of the year 99% off from working, as I'll be spending time with family and recharging to prepare for 2026.

However, to tide folks over, I have recommendations of some of my best videos from the year plus a preview of some art from Bastion of Hope:

How I Do GM Prep for Daggerheart: 2025-12-22 15:59:56 +0000 UTC View Post

Friday Morning Musings on DH design

This morning I was thinking about a mechanic I've seen a little in Daggerheart but I want to investigate more:

Forcing PCs to vault domain cards. This might show up as a stun/stagger kind of feature or as a "magic binding", or even something like memory loss.

On a certain level, it could be interpreted as just a Stress tax/cost, bu...

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Best of 2025 Daggerheart advice

Best of 2025 Daggerheart advice

As mentioned, I recorded a video with a very short overview of my 2025 from a career perspective as an introduction to an experiment where I tried to condense several of my most popular Daggerheart advice videos into just a few minutes each.

This video in this form will be exclusive for patrons and YouTube subscribers, but I may chop it u...

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Best of 2025 in Daggerheart advice tomorrow

Best of 2025 in Daggerheart advice tomorrow

Hi all. Rather than a normal stream, tomorrow I'll be posting a video where I try to distill the best pieces of my advice for and perspectives on Daggerheart into a 2025 greatest hits video. Patrons will have exclusive access to this until January, then I'll then use individual pieces for shorts on Instagram/TikTok/YouTube shorts.

Likely t...

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Voice of the Swarm - WIP adventure

A while ago, I talked about a adventure that I was working on for the Witherwild campaign frame. I've now run that adventure for two different groups and am feeling good about it, but my focus in adventure-writing has shifted over to the Dungeons of Drakkenheim Campaign Guide.

But I didn't want this work to go totally unu...

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WIP Adventure tomorrow + gear/item stream on Wed

WIP Adventure tomorrow + gear/item stream on Wed

EDIT: The image above now links to the VoD!

Hi folks! This week I've got both a stream and a big WIP release.

Tomorrow (Tuesday), all paid members will get a work-in-progress draft of "Voice of the Swarm", a substantial adventure I've been developing for use with the Witherwild campaign frame and the Daggerheart ru...

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Inspiration Deck stream this Wednesday

Inspiration Deck stream this Wednesday

UPDATE: The link above leads to the VoD for this stream!

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After a bit of time to recover from PAXU, this week I am going to launch a stream series titled The Design Lab, which features more out-there ideas for modifications or additions to the Daggerheart rules. I'll be kicking off the series by intr...

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Menagerie of Mayhem, Pt. 1 - Text-only

Menagerie of Mayhem, Pt. 1 - Text-only

UPDATE: The PDF of Menagerie #1 is now available for Patrons at $10 and up. This text version here (not the PDF post) will contain all errata, including updates that haven't made it back into the PDF (as for that I need to pay a layout artist to make the ...

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PAX Unplugged Recap!

PAX Unplugged Recap!

Hi all!

I've got a bonus for patrons today - an exclusive con recap about my time at Pax Unplugged last week. I talk about the big Daggerheart news coming out of the con, the events I attended, the things I bought/acquired at the show, and some of my general thoughts about the experienced and how I engage with conventions.

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36 hours left for the Dungeons of Drakkenheim: Daggerheart KS!

As I write this, there are just under 36 hours remaining in the Dungeons of Drakkenheim: Daggerheart campaign! We're just about to unlock a Random Enc...

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Designing Boss Encounters stream on Wed

Designing Boss Encounters stream on Wed

Update: Here is the YouTube link: https://youtu.be/DDQuPHRW-UU

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I'm back from PAX Unplugged and delightfully exhausted, but the streams must go on. Something that came up a lot over the weekend was Boss-type adversaries for Daggerheart and creating those epic, cli...

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My take on a Masquerade Ball environment

A fun bit from the PAXU Daggerheart panel: the team mentioned a Masquerade Ball environment in Hope & Fear, which is fabulous.

Separately, I started writing a Masquerade Ball environment a month or two ago but hadn't completed or polished it. So the announcement inspired me to go back to what I had and polish it up to share with Patro...

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Designing Daggerheart Adventures (Interview)

Designing Daggerheart Adventures (Interview)

Recently, I had a great chat with the Welsh DM for his YouTube channel, talking mostly about Designing Daggerheart Adventures - what goes into the process, what adventures for an improv-driven game might even look like, and some of my experiences in designing Daggerheart adventures so far.

Check it out at the link above, and when you do, ...

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Crowdfunding Roundup stream this week!

Crowdfunding Roundup stream this week!

This week I am heading to PAX Unplugged up in Philadelphia - and there's a lot of work to be done in preparation - so I'm switching things up a bit for this Wednesday's stream. I've been very much in crowdfunding mode this month, but there are a ton of other ttrpg projects that are currently, coming soon, or just finished crowdfunding, and I wan...

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Introducing: the Menagerie of Mayhem

Introducing: the Menagerie of Mayhem

Art by Tania Herrero, additional art and cover design by Andrew Bauman.

Some life stuff has put Bastion of Hope on hold for a bit longer, so I've moved another project into pole position:

The Menagerie of Mayhem is a series of short adversary books for use with the Daggerheart rule...

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Bastion of Hope campaign frame - Text-only

Dear all,

Bastion of Hope is in final layout, so today I'm bringing you the finalized text for the campaign frame. Patrons at $10 and up will get the full PDF (with art and layout) before it goes on sale to the public. There have been some notable revisions, especially in the tegion writeups for the other nations around B...

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Stream Schedule + Drakkenheart Week 1 Review

Stream Schedule + Drakkenheart Week 1 Review

What an eventful week it's been!

Last Tuesday saw the launch of the Dungeons of Drakkenheim: Daggerheart Kickstarter, which funded in an amazing 13 minutes! The campaign is now over $270k USD, racking up ...

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Dungeons of Drakkenheim: Daggerheart - campaign frame overview

Dungeons of Drakkenheim: Daggerheart - campaign frame overview

ICYMI, the stream where I talk about the Dungeons of Drakkenheim: Daggerheart Campaign Frame Kickstarter is now on YouTube. I also walked through the beta campaign frame, which is available for FREE, and you don't even have to back the campaign to get it! (T...

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GM Classes - Early WIP

I'm keeping busy with Drakkenheim work, but have no worry, I am still making material for Patrons to enjoy before anyone else.

After reading through Girl Frame by Isabelle M. Ruebsaat and 2025-11-06 14:00:09 +0000 UTC View Post

Dungeons of Drakkenheim: Daggerheart is LIVE!

The Dungeons of Drakkenheim: Daggerheart campaign guide Kickstarter is live, and funded in just 13 minutes!

There are tons of stretch goals ahead, including many that will set me up to add even more cool elements to the project, like new monsters, more mutations, and so on!

You can also download the beta campaign frame for FREE now...

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Drakkenheart Week!

Drakkenheart Week!

This week is the launch of the Kickstarter for the Dungeons of Drakkenheim Daggerheart Campaign Guide!

UPDATE: the campaign is live and funded! There are plenty of exciting stretch goals ahead!
And now that the campaign is live, I can share that I'll be walking through the FREE beta campaign frame that folks can download (without nee...

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