GM: David Gallo
Players: Stras Achimovic, Dylan Boates, Spenser Stark, Sean Nittner
System: Heart
Since David stated hinting that he might run Heart, I had been pushing for it. I’ve never played Heart or Spire but I’ve been watching Rowan, Rook, and Decard games for a while with interest. I was excited to get a change to play one. Here’s the pitch:
Heart: The City Beneath is a standalone roleplaying game that gives players the opportunity to take on the role of delvers – people on the fringes of civilisation who are driven to explore a shifting, unpredictable realm waiting beneath the surface of the world in search of answers, absolution, or revelations.
Using the Resistance System first developed in Spire: The City Must Fall, Heart focuses on what player characters have to lose in pursuit of their goals whether that’s supplies, friends, sanity, blood, a way home, or spatial or bodily integrity. Anything is up for grabs.
Classes such as the addict Junk Mage, the bee- filled Deep Apiarist, the ravenous Cleaver and the pre-deceased Deadwalker give players the opportunity to explore the world from unique perspectives.
We were playing the quickstart adventure Drowned using the iconic characters:
- QUIN MOREAU, Penitent VERMISSIAN KNIGHT (Dylan)
- LYND VASSAIL, Heartsong-Called WITCH (Stras)
- TENACITY MALRIQUE, Adventurous HERETIC (Sean)
- GETHIN BAYN, Forced HOUND (Zim)
- YNNETH DANARIAN, Enlightened JUNK MAGE (Spenser)
The names of these character classes all sounded rad and the short backgrounds on them were cool. We started running into questions though when we tried to figure out what was “baseline” weird vs. what was “heartsblood” weird in this game. Since there was so much reality bending an uncertainty about the world we struggled a lot with questions like ” You recently witnessed an unearthly sight with another player character. Who was it, what happened, and how did they react?” we really didn’t know how to answer what was “unearlthly” give all the other things that sounded strange but were actually commonplace beneath the spire.
Once gameplay started, we attempted to stop the drowning by killing the vassals belching forth water. We didn’t pickup on the fact that it was a hopeless battle and so we ended the session many of the vassals destroyed, but few of the people from Divesse saved.
Thoughts on the game
David was a true trooper for running this game as we all badgered him for information that he didn’t have or that would have taken too long to dig up and present.
I enjoyed some of he the bond questions, but struggled to have context for them. I wanted something that pulled a basic needs a bit more (why do you distrust them? what do you want from them? why would you protect them always? etc.)
Setting-wise, I’d try Heart again (even play this Delve again) now that I’ve got some sense of the world as well as expectations of a delve structure.
The mechanical element that chafed however, was the rules about Risky and Dangerous rolls. On these rolls you remove your highest die (when it’s risky) or two highest dice (when it’s dangerous). Since we typically we rolling 2d10 at most (either from having a skill or domain, but not both), the chance of success (8+) on a risky roll is 9%. Even the chance of Success at a Cost (which I think is usually the sweet spot in games) is only 25%, which just feels too punitive to be fun (percentages calculated on https://anydice.com/program/3c6c7).
Finally, Quin, so sorry I brought all those plague ridden folks to your home!
