Daggerheart includes a number of locations for you to pull inspiration from, repurporse for your own game, or use whole cloth. Each location has a number of themes that give you a high overview of what it will be like, and is designed at a certain tier so that you have a campaign path built in if you’d like one.

Tier 0 is for Level 1, Tier 1 is for Levels 2-4, Tier 2 is for Levels 5-7, and Tier 3 is for levels 8-10.

Themes

Below you’ll find a palette of themes to utilize when crafting locations for your Daggerheart adventures. We recommend choosing 1-3 words to use as jumping-off points when you need to expand upon or build a location, landmark, settlement, or faction whole cloth.

When building a campaign, you might choose or create regions that have overlapping themes in order to preserve the verisimilitude of the world you’re playing in together. For example, the starting themes above all share ancient or strange between them.

A city that is “verdant and serene” is very different from one that is “verdant and martial.” That difference is made even more pronounced when “devout” is added to the themes. How would a militarized community protect the forest home of their god vs. a quiet collection of worshippers that make a home in the remote woods with little outside disturbance?

Ancient - Artifactual, awe-inspiring, excavated, fossilized, hushed, irreplaceable, lost, preserved, primeval, risky, ruined, sacred.

Aquatic - Abyssal, bioluminescent, briny, calm, endless, enigmatic, monstrous, navigable, overpowering, peaceful, stormy, tumultuous.

Arid - Dry, golden, inhospitable, parched, remote, sunbaked, tranquil, unbroken, unforgiving, vast, waterless, windblown.

Desolate - Abandoned, conquered, desperate, expansive, hazardous, hopeless, lonely, polluted, ravaged, ravenous, remote, weary.

Devout - Ancestral, ascetic, blessed, fanatical, heartfelt, isolated, obedient, pristine, restrictive, sanctimonious, sincere, unyielding.

Frozen - Beautiful, bitter, bleak, breathtaking, brittle, crystalline, frigid, harsh, pristine, remote, stark, uninhabited.

Haunted - Alluring, captivating, covert, cryptic, cursed, eerie, gloomy, harrowing, lethal, nightmarish, terrifying, unfathomable.

Impoverished - Alienated, blighted, collaborative, disadvantaged, empathetic, enterprising, forsaken, hardened, resilient, restive, scrappy, tenacious.

Martial - Austere, dutiful, fortified, honorable, lethal, overbearing, regimented, safe, stoic, strategic, trained, violent.

Mountainous - Alpine, barren, formidable, jagged, majestic, perilous, remote, rocky, scenic, towering, unexplored, valuable.

Opulent - Artistic, comfortable, elegant, exaggerated, insatiable, lavish, privileged, stratified, superficial, treacherous, vibrant.

Scholarly - Acquisitive, assiduous, curious, cultured, deliberate, dismal, innovative, obsessive, progressive, refined, serene, sinister, strict.

Serene - Bucolic, communal, euphoric, harmonious, innocent, insincere, placid, quaint, quiet, riant, specious, welcoming.

Strange - Devouring, ethereal, illogical, imposing, monstrous, paradoxical, playful, spellbinding, surreal, uncanny, uncharted, weird.

Tropical - Balmy, bountiful, breezy, coastal, deceptive, flowering, infested, invigorating, teeming, tempestuous, tranquil, vivid.

Underground - Cavernous, claustrophobic, cooperative, dark, foreboding, hazardous, inaccessible, precision-engineered, resourceful, secretive, secured.

Urban - Bustling, efficient, industrial, innovative, labyrinthine, lively, multicultural, noisy, political, rapacious, utopian, wrathful.

Verdant - Biodiverse, dense, feral, flourishing, fragrant, harmonious, hushed, picturesque, unrelenting, unspoiled, vulnerable, wild.