Richard and Karl Play Daggerheart

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

  Send us a textA 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 showDownload episode content at https://rajkevis.itch.io/

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• Episode 10: Featherlight Beginnings

  Send us a textThis 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 showDownload episode content at https://rajkevis.itch.io/

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• Episode 9: Two Days from Retirement

  Send us a textThis 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.Download episode content at https://rajkevis.itch.io/

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• Episode 8: On The Wings of an Eagle

  Send us a textThis week in Witherwild, Karl learned that gravity is undefeated and eagles have zero respect for personal boundaries. One minute he is minding his own business, the next he is airborne cargo in some giant bird’s relocation project. It did not end gracefully. Woods: 1. Karl’s spine: also 1, miraculously.Separated from Lyra and everyone who actually makes good decisions, Karl tried to navigate the forest like a normal adventurer. Instead he stumbled into the Bone Fey. They were charming in the way that a skeleton politely asking if it can borrow your femur is charming. Karl lived. He made an impression. No one is sure if that is good.Meanwhile, Lyra got a peaceful break from babysitting Karl’s impulse control. Nature really provides.So the episode’s moral: raptors are jerks, the woods are full of creatures who want to redecorate you, and sometimes personal growth looks like not getting fully disassembled by fae bone collectors.Download episode content at https://rajkevis.itch.io/

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• Episode 7: How Not to Steal a Boat from a Newly Widowed Friend.

  Send us a textThis week in Witherwild, Leroy decided that “security clearance” was just a suggestion and waltzed into a laboratory like he owned the place. Instead of stealing anything useful—like, say, information, artifacts, or even snacks—he made friends(?) with a spirit he also upped his drip game.The real shocker wasn’t what he took, but what he didn’t: a boat belonging to a grieving widow, which he somehow managed to leave untouched. Growth? Or just the dice forgetting to punish him that hard? Either way, the river remains widow-owned, not Leroy-powered.Naturally, after all that chaos, he decided the best place to recharge was in a coffin. Yes, an actual coffin. My man bypassed hammocks, bedrolls, and couches to tuck himself into a velvet-lined box like he was auditioning for “Undead Chic: The Nap Collection.”So the episode’s moral: don’t trust Leroy in a lab, do trust him with your boat (surprisingly), and if you’re ever tired enough, anything with a lid counts as a bed.Download episode content at https://rajkevis.itch.io/

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