Premise
There’s a strange underground known as The Heart that is full of infinite possibility. It is forever changing, and changes all who wander inside. Figuratively, and literally. Feels a lot like the computer game Darkest Dungeon.
Core Mechanics
Rolls are made using a d10 dice pool. You start with 1d10, and add an extra d10 for having a relevant Skill, Domain, Mastery, or getting Assistance from another character.
The Difficulty of a roll determines how many of the highest showing dice are removed, or if success is even possible.
If the difficulty would lower the amount of dice to 0, you only roll 1 die, and consult a different chart for the results. (One with very bad outcomes.)
Character Creation
Pick an Ancestry, Calling, and Class.
Answer questions about your character’s past from their Ancestry and Calling.
Gain your Calling and Class’s Core Abilities
Gain your Class’s equipment.
Gain 1 Major and 3 Minor Abilities from your Class.
Select 2 Beats from your Calling
What It Does Interestingly
Character death is the player’s choice; but characters can still wind up VERY disfigured.
There’s a different kinds of Stress (damage) that represent different sorts of things going wrong.
Rules for Delves, random journeys between places in the Heart.
Beats, objectives the player character’s are aiming to achieve. (And how they gain new abilities.)
Potential Pitfalls
The Game Master is expected to disclose the difficulty of rolls before they are made; there are some situations where failure can still be beneficial. (i.e. completing a Beat.)
There’s a lot of narrative abstraction in Heart; e.g. taking Luck Stress is when you see a dumb character doing dumb things, and you know they’ll eventually get what they’ve got coming to them.
Rolling should only be done when there’s a definite risk.
Sections to Pay Attention To
Delves are the meat of the game, and there’s plenty of sample Delves to use.
Domains are general descriptions of what a place is like, or what a person would be familiar with. They’re the main set piece of this game.
Final Thoughts
Heart is a game that oozes a weird aesthetic about a strange land that’s ever changing. There aren’t many hard rules, and much of a Game Master’s rulings will revolve around “does this make sense regarding what we’ve already established?” And, there’s an escape hatch for if things seem inconsistent:
The Heart is an unstable place that is always changing, and always reactive to the desires of its dwellers.
