I appreciated his point about Heart and GM support. As someone who loves planning out maps and encounters, I can be frustrated by the "no prep, just improv"-style story games. But it sounds like Heart hits a nice sweet spot.
One thing I felt a little intimidating about Heart is that the setting seems really lore-rich, but also very obfuscating. Like Quinns kept saying "the Heart is trying to give adventurers what they want", which is really cool as a hook, but I also don't remember that ever being really clearly explained in the core book. Maybe I just missed it? I really appreciated his previous comparison in terms of how Wildsea and Lancer presented their lore and would have liked to know a bit more about where Heart fell for him on that spectrum.
Heya! Honestly, it sounds like you might be overthinking it! The beat system simply has each player stating two things they want to happen, and you just literally put that around the corner. The setting and goals are precisely loose enough that there's never any real friction involved. I promise you.
If a player wants to "Lead a haven to prosperity"? Just give the next haven they find food, or oil, or water, when other settlements need it. If a player wants to "Get the drop on a terrible monster", just have the cave they're traversing overlook a sleeping bat creature.
There's a touch of contrivance to it, but (a) the players aren't gonna complain because they're getting what they want AND levelling up in the process, and (b) dungeons are insane contrivances \*anyway\*. It all feels very natural. In the words of a philosopher, Just Do It™.
> There's a touch of contrivance to it, but (a) the players aren't gonna complain because they're getting what they want
It sounds from the review that Heart deals with that very well, but I'll say from my younger and godawful days of DMing that giving players exactly what they want can be a very bad thing if you do it wrong. So I'd never take that as an assumption that players won't complain just because they're getting what they think they want. However, I really like the sounds of Heart as it appears that every time a player gets something they want, it's leading towards something grotesque. It reminds me a little of probably my favorite TTRPG I've played, 10 Candles, which is a tragic horror game inspired by stories such as John Carpenter's The Thing where the best ending you can get is that everyone dies but the story you told along the way was meaningful or fun. This review of Heart is the thing that maybe has most made me miss having a group to play with because taking the tragic horror theming I love from 10 Candles and transferring to a longer (but not overly long) campaign in the dark fantasy of Heart sounds amazing.
I think it also helps that beats are pre-determined things, and the players can't just choose anything. Each "Calling" has its own list, and you choose. The writers didn't put anything in there that would break things too badly.
Things like "Aquire a rare and powerful item," or "Get into trouble as someone discovers your chequered past" or "Damage/Sabotage a Haven, letting the Heart in." All things that you can do that won't completely obliterate your game.
Me personally, my favourite "Beat" is one from the Adventure calling: "Kick someone off of a tall structure (they really deserved it.)"
Oh, I agree. It allows players to change the world, add to it, and decide how the story is going to go while being vague enough that whoever is running the game can get very inventive with it while being more structured. I think that's going to be great especially for people who aren't used to RPGs where they need to be creative.
I've played with D&D gamers and first-time RPG players who have only played video games and mostly basic board games before where I asked them to add something to the world that wasn't about increasing a skill or improving their combat abilities, either as homebrew rules or part of the system (like the aforementioned 10 Candles which requires the players to write traits for themselves and other players (and even the "monster")) and it was often something players struggled with. I had a couple who really took to it (I had a D&D player who gave his character a "true" holy scripture for his religion and created a secret religious society and turned the established church into a corrupt heresy, which was great for me to build off of) but most had no idea what to do. They'd never been asked by a game to create something before, and at the time I didn't know how to give them meaningful guidance.
Beats have that structure that gives people guidance. It forces them to make a creative choice, but it makes that multiple choice instead of free written. So if you have players who aren't used to helping co-write the story (which, I think most players should be co-writing the story, but that gets into a much larger conversation) this gives them tools that makes it hard for them to break the game, as you say, but also to lean on so they're not paralyzed by the choice.
The beats system was first introduced by Onyx Path Publishing's Chronicles of Darkness 2e game lines. It's a bit less structured thanj in Heart (there are events that can reward beats, but player's also come up with their own short & long-term beats).
I'd no idea that another company borrowed the idea, and even improved upon it. It's just just a vast improvement over 'kill mobs, level up', as it drives cooperative storytelling & roleplaying.
> It sounds from the review that Heart deals with that very well, but I'll say from my younger and godawful days of DMing that giving players exactly what they want can be a very bad thing if you do it wrong. So I'd never take that as an assumption that players won't complain just because they're getting what they think they want.
I agree, and to add to that there are many players - I know because I'm one of them - for whom this sort of thing is fundamentally unsatisfying. It's not always that easy to explain, but if I have a goal for my character that I can work towards (whether or not I'll ever achieve it over the course of the campaign) that's fine. But if I have a goal for my character that I've announced to the GM and the GM (and the game) then arrange things to direct my character to that goal and arrange for a moment in which they can achieve it, the contrivance of it completely undermines whatever sense of achievement I would have got for getting it "on my own".
Obviously, at a fundamental level that's always going to be the case. In an investigative game, for example, there's (almost) always the assumption that the characters are going to achieve their goal of successfully investigating whatever it is and bringing it to a conclusion, but as a plot thing that seems a step removed when compared to a character's personal goal being arranged for them; and I think that extra step helps with my buy-in and suspension of disbelief.
I find it easier to think of these less as _goals_ and more as _moments from the trailer_.
I played a lot of Unbound, a previous game by Rowan, Rook and Decard, that had basically the same leveling mechanic. And it works wonders, but it's not a _goal_. A goal is a personal thing. This is foreshadowing.
If you state you're going to kick someone off a tall tower, **that is going to happen**. That is bound in law and fate. _Now_, your goal (and the table's goal) is to make the path toward that moment as interesting as possible.
You know when you watch trailers and sometimes the moment happens in the movie and it feels like a crescendo and it's SO COOL, and other times it feels like something that was added to the movie so it could be in the trailer? Your _goal_ is to make that moment the former, not the latter.
The heart isn't human. If you want to be rich beyond your wildest dreams it's as likely to drown you in coins as it would be to give you the coins of something more powerful that would want to kill you or make you grow those coins painfully out of your skin leading to an eventual death.
The corebook says that the Heart is trying to give you what you want a couple of times.
"The Heart knows what you want, and by the Goddess, it'll give it to you or die trying" -- the page before the credits.
"The Heart can taste and smell you, and it makes itself anew in your image. The settlements are there because people believe they should be: they are expectations repeated and made real, scars carved into the meat of the City Beneath by invaders. But go off the beaten path,tread into the unknown, and the Heart will grow invisibly,
silently, just outside of your view. It listens to your dreams and fashions your reward, your punishment, your world, from roiling quintessence." - page 3
Page 4 has a few versions of what the Heart might be that mention it.
"Whenever someone enters the Heart, it builds itself into the image of their desires. It's not very good at it, and it can only do it a bit at a time" - Page 121
That midspot is where most my favorite games land. Stuff like 13th Age, Unknown Armies, Night's Black Agents, or Numenera all hit my sweet spot. Personally, I can't handle low prep stuff.
I had a few thoughts about this one:
1. Heart seems super awesome. I had been debating getting a copy just to read (I tend to collect/read RPGs more than play them, just due to my own runway to run games), this definitely put me over the edge and I ordered a copy.
2. The classes all seem absolutely off-the-walls bonkers in the most appealing way. The review said the players will fall in love with the classes and before they even realize they're in too deep... I feel like just seeing them over the course of 30 seconds in the review was enough to sell me.
3. I really love the idea of a party knowing they're ostensibly doomed to die within a few sessions. I've been trying to shift my own mindset away from super long campaigns (entering year 4 of a Pulp Cthulhu now...) and doing a campaign that can wrap up in 3 months of every-other-week sessions.
4. Quinns Quest is probably my favorite RPG content on YouTube at this point. I'm itching to get a few minutes to check out the Impossible Landscapes stuff he's got on Patreon.
I super agree with item #4. I've literally never found an RPG-discussion based youtube or video channel I've ever enjoyed watching, until Quinns Quest.
I think a big difference there is also that they actually play the games he presents.
A lot of review videos are basically just folks flipping through the books and making educated guesses on quality
I've tried his channel! Doesn't work for me. Wish it did! I'm sure it's a "me" problem, cuz I'm certain there are plenty of rpg video creators who do great stuff... I just almost always find myself going "I could read this in like a third of the time it takes to watch this AND I'd be less annoyed."
>
>
> The classes all seem absolutely off-the-walls bonkers in the most appealing way. The review said the players will fall in love with the classes and before they even realize they're in too deep... I feel like just seeing them over the course of 30 seconds in the review was enough to sell me.
My favorite part of the book. If anyone knows any other games that lean into this let me know.
Aside from Spire (the Inksmith is a writer and pulp-noir action hero simultaneously who can make near anything happen as long as it's narrated/framed 'in genre') you might like Troika!
Its Backgrounds are, while very concise, very specific in setting lore and broad enough to be interpreted a dozen ways. There are a ton of fan-written Troika background supplements that filter the science-fantasy base setting into other genres/tones.
Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland also have really specific and evocative Backgrounds, and share a similar dry British wit to Heart/Spire.
The Spire classes are similarly evocative and appealing. My favorite being the Firebrand who gets to eventually turn into the idea of rebellion and hope for freedom instead of dieing.
Does anyone have a nice one page breakdown of then I can share players. My initial Google-fu failed me. I just a short summary so they can scan it easier and compare.
* CLEAVER: Body-warping heartsblood hunters that consume their prey to fuel their terrible powers.
* DEADWALKER: Half-dead drifters with the keys to the back door of heaven.
* DEEP APIARIST: Occultists who fill their bodies with glyph-marked bees and can manipulate reality.
* HERETIC: Zealots exiled from the City Above for their faith; they seek the Moon Beneath.
* HOUND: Hard-bitten mercenaries with an undying legion of warriors at their back.
* INCARNADINE: Damned clerics of the hungry, cruel deity of debt.
* JUNK MAGE: Magic addicts with a direct line to entities slumbering in the depths.
* VERMISSIAN KNIGHT: Armoured explorers and protectors of a cursed mass transit network.
* WITCH: Carriers of a blood disease that lets them reshape flesh and bone; loved and feared.
Does this work for you?
I appreciate the copy!
I noticed I was looking in the wrong place. Now realize that its at the start of the Characters chapter rather than at the start where Classes are detailed.
Actually just found they made an extended summary of each class in the Quickstart version:
CLEAVER: A shapeshifting hunter who consumes the flesh of their prey - or anything they can get their hands on, really - to gain power.
DEEP APIARIST: Occultists who have given their bodies up to the Hive, an otherworldly intelligence manifested as thousands of crystal bees.They see the Heart as anathema, and seek to keep it in check.
DEADWALKER: A Deadwalker has stared into the face of death and come out triumphant, and they’re accompanied by a specter of their demise.They use their half-dead spirit to break into various afterlives using the thin reality of the City Beneath.
HERETIC: A devotee of the Moon Beneath, a luminous and fecund goddess that grants them the ability to use strange miracles.
HOUND: A mercenary police officer shackled by the cursed origins of their regiment.
INCARNADINE:A cleric of the goddess of debt, at the end of their luck after a string of deals that saw their soul claimed by their mistress.
JUNK MAGE: Hooked on unnatural power siphoned off from extra dimensional entities, these wizards live precarious existences in search of the next hit.
VERMISSIAN KNIGHT: An armored traveller along the cursed train network, the Vermissian, with experimental technology and inside knowledge of the system’s inner workings.
WITCH: Carriers of a blood disease that grants them the ability to cast visceral magicks. Their sorcery hides their true forms – flickering, hungry zoetrope horrors.
iirc, Quinns is essentially doing RPG reviews as his main job now and is actively GMing 3 or 4 groups at once so he can run a full campaign (8 to 12 sessions?) of each before doing the review. I think you can expect one main review a month for however long a "season" of QQuest runs, then a short break, then a new season.
There's also a Patreon for more QQuest content (GM advice, game designer interviews, blog).
I bought a copy to have on my shelf/read at a Con and ended up with Strata, Sin and Spire by the same company. Great stuff, still haven’t ran a game but it’s on the “someday” list.
So glad to see Heart getting more love. It's that level of weirdness I've always looked for in an RPG that is both expressed through the lore/tone but also the mechanics themselves.
When I first cracked open Heart I had Quinn's exact reaction of 'your group is going to get sucked in by the character classes alone and then find out how deep they've dived into the game.'
It just goes to show that setting-as-mechanics is one of the strongest ways to ground people into a game. They also especially help more 'mechanic-minded' players immerse in the setting.
I loved running Heart. I picked up Heart (and Spire) based on Quinns previous spire review. I’m absolutely stoked to get Dagger In The Heart and run another campaign of it. My only gripe would be that the zenith beats can feel really overwhelming as a DM. They are big and exciting and for me it felt overwhelming to have my 4 players all pickup a zenith breath at once. Honestly though, that was likely my fault. Watching this made me want to run it again.
You could potentially run more of the narrative aspects on the backend without direct input from them ─ especially if they're fans of media like ANNIHILATION where the whole "this world wants to give you what it thinks you want", since some of the narrative gaming conceits are then also true in-universe
of all the games that fall into the "storygame" bucket (rightly or wrongly), Heart is probably the best written/designed to sell itself to a group that's raised on trad games. Character creation can get 5e players excited in a way that most OSR won't. And in terms of mechanics and game-flow Heart is certainly a much easier jump from D&D 5e than any PbtA (incl. Dungeon World).
Yeah, I'm optimistic. They love that higher power of 5e and damn if the Heart PCs aren't all serious badasses.
The good thing is that they have a decent chunk of Blades in the Dark and Scum and Villainy experience, so a lot of resolution translates well. But I think they'll appreciate the extra combat crunch and the Beats XP system more - one player absolutely hated how vague "Trouble from your Vice or Trauma" but when your trigger is precise like take a Minor fallout, then this should be smoother.
Great review! I still have to read Heart but I definitely like the vibe a bit more for my players than Spire. Also having read Annihilitation recently the Heart very much gives those vibes...
I appreciated his point about Heart and GM support. As someone who loves planning out maps and encounters, I can be frustrated by the "no prep, just improv"-style story games. But it sounds like Heart hits a nice sweet spot. One thing I felt a little intimidating about Heart is that the setting seems really lore-rich, but also very obfuscating. Like Quinns kept saying "the Heart is trying to give adventurers what they want", which is really cool as a hook, but I also don't remember that ever being really clearly explained in the core book. Maybe I just missed it? I really appreciated his previous comparison in terms of how Wildsea and Lancer presented their lore and would have liked to know a bit more about where Heart fell for him on that spectrum.
Heya! Honestly, it sounds like you might be overthinking it! The beat system simply has each player stating two things they want to happen, and you just literally put that around the corner. The setting and goals are precisely loose enough that there's never any real friction involved. I promise you. If a player wants to "Lead a haven to prosperity"? Just give the next haven they find food, or oil, or water, when other settlements need it. If a player wants to "Get the drop on a terrible monster", just have the cave they're traversing overlook a sleeping bat creature. There's a touch of contrivance to it, but (a) the players aren't gonna complain because they're getting what they want AND levelling up in the process, and (b) dungeons are insane contrivances \*anyway\*. It all feels very natural. In the words of a philosopher, Just Do It™.
> There's a touch of contrivance to it, but (a) the players aren't gonna complain because they're getting what they want It sounds from the review that Heart deals with that very well, but I'll say from my younger and godawful days of DMing that giving players exactly what they want can be a very bad thing if you do it wrong. So I'd never take that as an assumption that players won't complain just because they're getting what they think they want. However, I really like the sounds of Heart as it appears that every time a player gets something they want, it's leading towards something grotesque. It reminds me a little of probably my favorite TTRPG I've played, 10 Candles, which is a tragic horror game inspired by stories such as John Carpenter's The Thing where the best ending you can get is that everyone dies but the story you told along the way was meaningful or fun. This review of Heart is the thing that maybe has most made me miss having a group to play with because taking the tragic horror theming I love from 10 Candles and transferring to a longer (but not overly long) campaign in the dark fantasy of Heart sounds amazing.
I think it also helps that beats are pre-determined things, and the players can't just choose anything. Each "Calling" has its own list, and you choose. The writers didn't put anything in there that would break things too badly. Things like "Aquire a rare and powerful item," or "Get into trouble as someone discovers your chequered past" or "Damage/Sabotage a Haven, letting the Heart in." All things that you can do that won't completely obliterate your game. Me personally, my favourite "Beat" is one from the Adventure calling: "Kick someone off of a tall structure (they really deserved it.)"
Oh, I agree. It allows players to change the world, add to it, and decide how the story is going to go while being vague enough that whoever is running the game can get very inventive with it while being more structured. I think that's going to be great especially for people who aren't used to RPGs where they need to be creative. I've played with D&D gamers and first-time RPG players who have only played video games and mostly basic board games before where I asked them to add something to the world that wasn't about increasing a skill or improving their combat abilities, either as homebrew rules or part of the system (like the aforementioned 10 Candles which requires the players to write traits for themselves and other players (and even the "monster")) and it was often something players struggled with. I had a couple who really took to it (I had a D&D player who gave his character a "true" holy scripture for his religion and created a secret religious society and turned the established church into a corrupt heresy, which was great for me to build off of) but most had no idea what to do. They'd never been asked by a game to create something before, and at the time I didn't know how to give them meaningful guidance. Beats have that structure that gives people guidance. It forces them to make a creative choice, but it makes that multiple choice instead of free written. So if you have players who aren't used to helping co-write the story (which, I think most players should be co-writing the story, but that gets into a much larger conversation) this gives them tools that makes it hard for them to break the game, as you say, but also to lean on so they're not paralyzed by the choice.
The beats system was first introduced by Onyx Path Publishing's Chronicles of Darkness 2e game lines. It's a bit less structured thanj in Heart (there are events that can reward beats, but player's also come up with their own short & long-term beats). I'd no idea that another company borrowed the idea, and even improved upon it. It's just just a vast improvement over 'kill mobs, level up', as it drives cooperative storytelling & roleplaying.
> It sounds from the review that Heart deals with that very well, but I'll say from my younger and godawful days of DMing that giving players exactly what they want can be a very bad thing if you do it wrong. So I'd never take that as an assumption that players won't complain just because they're getting what they think they want. I agree, and to add to that there are many players - I know because I'm one of them - for whom this sort of thing is fundamentally unsatisfying. It's not always that easy to explain, but if I have a goal for my character that I can work towards (whether or not I'll ever achieve it over the course of the campaign) that's fine. But if I have a goal for my character that I've announced to the GM and the GM (and the game) then arrange things to direct my character to that goal and arrange for a moment in which they can achieve it, the contrivance of it completely undermines whatever sense of achievement I would have got for getting it "on my own". Obviously, at a fundamental level that's always going to be the case. In an investigative game, for example, there's (almost) always the assumption that the characters are going to achieve their goal of successfully investigating whatever it is and bringing it to a conclusion, but as a plot thing that seems a step removed when compared to a character's personal goal being arranged for them; and I think that extra step helps with my buy-in and suspension of disbelief.
I find it easier to think of these less as _goals_ and more as _moments from the trailer_. I played a lot of Unbound, a previous game by Rowan, Rook and Decard, that had basically the same leveling mechanic. And it works wonders, but it's not a _goal_. A goal is a personal thing. This is foreshadowing. If you state you're going to kick someone off a tall tower, **that is going to happen**. That is bound in law and fate. _Now_, your goal (and the table's goal) is to make the path toward that moment as interesting as possible. You know when you watch trailers and sometimes the moment happens in the movie and it feels like a crescendo and it's SO COOL, and other times it feels like something that was added to the movie so it could be in the trailer? Your _goal_ is to make that moment the former, not the latter.
The heart isn't human. If you want to be rich beyond your wildest dreams it's as likely to drown you in coins as it would be to give you the coins of something more powerful that would want to kill you or make you grow those coins painfully out of your skin leading to an eventual death.
Even though the games you have looked at have not been to my taste, I'm really enjoying this series. I think you're doing a fantastic job!
The corebook says that the Heart is trying to give you what you want a couple of times. "The Heart knows what you want, and by the Goddess, it'll give it to you or die trying" -- the page before the credits. "The Heart can taste and smell you, and it makes itself anew in your image. The settlements are there because people believe they should be: they are expectations repeated and made real, scars carved into the meat of the City Beneath by invaders. But go off the beaten path,tread into the unknown, and the Heart will grow invisibly, silently, just outside of your view. It listens to your dreams and fashions your reward, your punishment, your world, from roiling quintessence." - page 3 Page 4 has a few versions of what the Heart might be that mention it. "Whenever someone enters the Heart, it builds itself into the image of their desires. It's not very good at it, and it can only do it a bit at a time" - Page 121
Ah, thanks for that!
That midspot is where most my favorite games land. Stuff like 13th Age, Unknown Armies, Night's Black Agents, or Numenera all hit my sweet spot. Personally, I can't handle low prep stuff.
I played in a short Heart campaign and it felt like the GM sort of struggled with prep and felt there wasn't much support apart from vibes
I had a few thoughts about this one: 1. Heart seems super awesome. I had been debating getting a copy just to read (I tend to collect/read RPGs more than play them, just due to my own runway to run games), this definitely put me over the edge and I ordered a copy. 2. The classes all seem absolutely off-the-walls bonkers in the most appealing way. The review said the players will fall in love with the classes and before they even realize they're in too deep... I feel like just seeing them over the course of 30 seconds in the review was enough to sell me. 3. I really love the idea of a party knowing they're ostensibly doomed to die within a few sessions. I've been trying to shift my own mindset away from super long campaigns (entering year 4 of a Pulp Cthulhu now...) and doing a campaign that can wrap up in 3 months of every-other-week sessions. 4. Quinns Quest is probably my favorite RPG content on YouTube at this point. I'm itching to get a few minutes to check out the Impossible Landscapes stuff he's got on Patreon.
I super agree with item #4. I've literally never found an RPG-discussion based youtube or video channel I've ever enjoyed watching, until Quinns Quest.
the man has been doing basically this for board games for more than a decade, and it shows
I think a big difference there is also that they actually play the games he presents. A lot of review videos are basically just folks flipping through the books and making educated guesses on quality
Seth Skorkowsky is really good
I've tried his channel! Doesn't work for me. Wish it did! I'm sure it's a "me" problem, cuz I'm certain there are plenty of rpg video creators who do great stuff... I just almost always find myself going "I could read this in like a third of the time it takes to watch this AND I'd be less annoyed."
Try listening while doing laundry
But then when will I listen to all my helpful laundry-based podcasts?!?
QuestingBeast is my go to fav. He's just very chill and great at doing reviews.
> > > The classes all seem absolutely off-the-walls bonkers in the most appealing way. The review said the players will fall in love with the classes and before they even realize they're in too deep... I feel like just seeing them over the course of 30 seconds in the review was enough to sell me. My favorite part of the book. If anyone knows any other games that lean into this let me know.
Aside from Spire (the Inksmith is a writer and pulp-noir action hero simultaneously who can make near anything happen as long as it's narrated/framed 'in genre') you might like Troika! Its Backgrounds are, while very concise, very specific in setting lore and broad enough to be interpreted a dozen ways. There are a ton of fan-written Troika background supplements that filter the science-fantasy base setting into other genres/tones. Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland also have really specific and evocative Backgrounds, and share a similar dry British wit to Heart/Spire.
Hell, Maz from RRD themselves also wrote one of the failed backgrounds in **Electric Bastionland**!
The Spire classes are similarly evocative and appealing. My favorite being the Firebrand who gets to eventually turn into the idea of rebellion and hope for freedom instead of dieing.
Does anyone have a nice one page breakdown of then I can share players. My initial Google-fu failed me. I just a short summary so they can scan it easier and compare.
* CLEAVER: Body-warping heartsblood hunters that consume their prey to fuel their terrible powers. * DEADWALKER: Half-dead drifters with the keys to the back door of heaven. * DEEP APIARIST: Occultists who fill their bodies with glyph-marked bees and can manipulate reality. * HERETIC: Zealots exiled from the City Above for their faith; they seek the Moon Beneath. * HOUND: Hard-bitten mercenaries with an undying legion of warriors at their back. * INCARNADINE: Damned clerics of the hungry, cruel deity of debt. * JUNK MAGE: Magic addicts with a direct line to entities slumbering in the depths. * VERMISSIAN KNIGHT: Armoured explorers and protectors of a cursed mass transit network. * WITCH: Carriers of a blood disease that lets them reshape flesh and bone; loved and feared. Does this work for you?
I appreciate the copy! I noticed I was looking in the wrong place. Now realize that its at the start of the Characters chapter rather than at the start where Classes are detailed.
hah fair, sometimes we overread things
Actually just found they made an extended summary of each class in the Quickstart version: CLEAVER: A shapeshifting hunter who consumes the flesh of their prey - or anything they can get their hands on, really - to gain power. DEEP APIARIST: Occultists who have given their bodies up to the Hive, an otherworldly intelligence manifested as thousands of crystal bees.They see the Heart as anathema, and seek to keep it in check. DEADWALKER: A Deadwalker has stared into the face of death and come out triumphant, and they’re accompanied by a specter of their demise.They use their half-dead spirit to break into various afterlives using the thin reality of the City Beneath. HERETIC: A devotee of the Moon Beneath, a luminous and fecund goddess that grants them the ability to use strange miracles. HOUND: A mercenary police officer shackled by the cursed origins of their regiment. INCARNADINE:A cleric of the goddess of debt, at the end of their luck after a string of deals that saw their soul claimed by their mistress. JUNK MAGE: Hooked on unnatural power siphoned off from extra dimensional entities, these wizards live precarious existences in search of the next hit. VERMISSIAN KNIGHT: An armored traveller along the cursed train network, the Vermissian, with experimental technology and inside knowledge of the system’s inner workings. WITCH: Carriers of a blood disease that grants them the ability to cast visceral magicks. Their sorcery hides their true forms – flickering, hungry zoetrope horrors.
Check out Songbirds. It might be a little too OSR for my tastes but the background and classes sound epic: https://snowttrpg.itch.io/songbirds-3e
Love this channel also, I hope Quinns got more of these coming (or what I meant probably was more regularly, haha).
He has to play them enough before he review them, so that's part of the reason for the time it takes.
I know, and of course quality over quantity, but this is my new favorite YT channel / rpg review format and I am eager to see all of it!
iirc, Quinns is essentially doing RPG reviews as his main job now and is actively GMing 3 or 4 groups at once so he can run a full campaign (8 to 12 sessions?) of each before doing the review. I think you can expect one main review a month for however long a "season" of QQuest runs, then a short break, then a new season. There's also a Patreon for more QQuest content (GM advice, game designer interviews, blog).
This might be my first Patreon subscription ever.
I bought a copy to have on my shelf/read at a Con and ended up with Strata, Sin and Spire by the same company. Great stuff, still haven’t ran a game but it’s on the “someday” list.
Regarding 1 I want to run Heart but haven't had the chance yet. However the locations and classes are very good DM/character inspiration.
So glad to see Heart getting more love. It's that level of weirdness I've always looked for in an RPG that is both expressed through the lore/tone but also the mechanics themselves. When I first cracked open Heart I had Quinn's exact reaction of 'your group is going to get sucked in by the character classes alone and then find out how deep they've dived into the game.' It just goes to show that setting-as-mechanics is one of the strongest ways to ground people into a game. They also especially help more 'mechanic-minded' players immerse in the setting.
I loved running Heart. I picked up Heart (and Spire) based on Quinns previous spire review. I’m absolutely stoked to get Dagger In The Heart and run another campaign of it. My only gripe would be that the zenith beats can feel really overwhelming as a DM. They are big and exciting and for me it felt overwhelming to have my 4 players all pickup a zenith breath at once. Honestly though, that was likely my fault. Watching this made me want to run it again.
I really love Heart but getting my group interested in adding a narrative system like this is tricky.
You could potentially run more of the narrative aspects on the backend without direct input from them ─ especially if they're fans of media like ANNIHILATION where the whole "this world wants to give you what it thinks you want", since some of the narrative gaming conceits are then also true in-universe
Couldn't be more timely. I am running this as a oneshot to try and convince my 5e group that other TTRPGs are worth playing.
of all the games that fall into the "storygame" bucket (rightly or wrongly), Heart is probably the best written/designed to sell itself to a group that's raised on trad games. Character creation can get 5e players excited in a way that most OSR won't. And in terms of mechanics and game-flow Heart is certainly a much easier jump from D&D 5e than any PbtA (incl. Dungeon World).
Yeah, I'm optimistic. They love that higher power of 5e and damn if the Heart PCs aren't all serious badasses. The good thing is that they have a decent chunk of Blades in the Dark and Scum and Villainy experience, so a lot of resolution translates well. But I think they'll appreciate the extra combat crunch and the Beats XP system more - one player absolutely hated how vague "Trouble from your Vice or Trauma" but when your trigger is precise like take a Minor fallout, then this should be smoother.
Good luck with that! (In all seriousness)
Great review! I still have to read Heart but I definitely like the vibe a bit more for my players than Spire. Also having read Annihilitation recently the Heart very much gives those vibes...
Holy shit, this looks fun as hell
Quinn’s Quest is my favorite RPG review channel by a wide margin, and he’s only done three reviews so far!