I enjoy Shut Up & Sit Down occasionally and, while my opinion differs from theirs quite often, there are times where I feel they hit the nail on the head. Their politics are not the main feature of the channel, which I appreciate quite a bit. One of the hosts, Quinns, has a newish channel, Quinns Quest, in which he reviews TTRPGs. In one review, he praises Heart. Some other youtubers seem to think it's awesome as well.But... Here's the deal. Something that put me off was that it said High Elves consider themselves better than other races, but that one should not act it out at the table. What is the point of mentioning it or having it in the lore, then? With that in mind, Is this just a game for theatre kids who will be distracted by the nice artwork and flavor, or is it actually a good system in which to run games?If snowflakes want to be special but wish to avoid "races", why can't they just have a single race with unique traits to choose from due to mutation or some shit. What's the point of having species if they do not affect gameplay whatsoever?I am asking not because of politics, but because I am perplexed from the perspective of game-design.In his review of Wildsea, he also said:>Rules are the SECOND most important part of of a TTRPG. [...] The number ONE thing when it comes to designing an RPG is--for want of a better word--vibes.Now, that is not WHOLLY egregious. I can play a game if a system is flawed but it has some unique mechanic that makes it more appropriate for the setting and the GM is doing a brilliant job, but it is definitely a drawback.
I was a playtester for Heart and enjoyed it quite a bit. Would have done a campaign for the full release if our GM had more time.I don't recall any part about how you shouldn't act out the aelfir's perceived superiority - it comes up a lot in the text.
>>93918616Ah, actually, here is the sidebar - this wasn't in the test version and I must have missed it when looking over the final one. Reads reasonably to me - you can play with Spire's themes of race but Heart has a different focus.
>>93918616>I don't recall any part about how you shouldn't act out the aelfir's perceived superiority - it comes up a lot in the text.Oh, alright. Maybe it was just the youtuber saying it, but splicing it together with his description of the system in the review, then.Does your choice of race impact gameplay in any way, or is it just there for flavor?
>>93918629Ah! I responded before updating. It's not that I necessarily want racism at the table... Sometimes, the trope is old. I just don't like it being included at all in the lore if they are not comfortable with it.
>>93918653he's promoting a game he likes, so he's gonna try to preventivly cover issues that could come up when they go check it out.
>>93918596> Their politics are not the main feature of the channelI bag your pardon, but SU&SD have an awful lot of American leftist trubofaggotry. Maybe in the past it was occasional, like remarks about how there are a lot of white people in art for the Dune game, which is somewhat tolerable, but then it snowballed to troons and virtue signaling. I mean, just watch the latest Tom video.> What is the point of mentioning it or having it in the lore, then?A TTRPG is freedom, but these designers, affected by an X-card type of virtue signaling, can't resist telling the player how they suppose to play to be good boys. It is just a brainrot.> Spire & Heart: The City Beneath, Good or Overhyped?My Spire campaign ended this year. The game is 5-6/10.
>>93918742>My Spire campaign ended this year. The game is 5-6/10.Alright. 5-6 is not that inspiring! What kind of a system is it. Is it super light and people are mostly enamored by the flavor, or does it actually have some nice mechanics?
>>93918596Heart is great. I'm not as much of a fan of Spire because I think the design in the player options is less interesting but Heart knocks that shit out of the park. The core rules are generally pretty solid in each game but Heart clearly learned a load from Spire and as such is just better designed. Spire is like a 6 for me, Heart is easily an 8. >But... Here's the deal. Something that put me off was that it said High Elves consider themselves better than other races, but that one should not act it out at the table. What is the point of mentioning it or having it in the lore, then?Heart and Spire are different games with different vibes. Spire focuses pretty heavily on that shit, Heart doesn't because it's not really relevant to what that game is about. I don't really get what's super confusing about this. From a setting/lore perspective the Heart is an entirely different setup to how things go in the Spire. Even if you ignore all the massive shift in society, politics, and all that it's just sort of stupid to go around acting like drow are filth. The Heart doesn't care, and it's more likely to get you killed than not.
>>93918596>High Elves consider themselves better than other races, but that one should not act it out at the tableTelling other people what they should and shouldn't do at their own table is comically fucking retarded. Me and my group will play any goddamned way we want and there's not a single fucking thing anyone outside of that group can do about it.>Imagine being so out of touch with reality that you not only think you can tell people what to do with their property in their groups...>But you talk to them like their five-year-oldsSays to me that the target audience is only slightly fucking stupider than the creators.
>>93918949It says you can do what you want just that it's not written that way, unlike their other game in the setting that goes all in on it
>>93918997Okay, retard.
>>93918629>people hate you for what you believe or what settlement you come from but not because of your parentsso religious discrimination is ok but race discrimination is a nono? kek
>>93919010If you need a pretendy-time game book to tell you how to function as a responsible adult at the table, you're the one that's legitimately retarded. May your handler's chain be shorter than your beatings.
>>93919012>is okayit's the expected interaction when describing the setting, they're not telling you what to think about real life you sensitive baby
>>93919040the blurb was posted minutes agoanon mentioned that race relationships are a bigger focus of another game of the same company so they wanted to remind people that they can do other shit.You'll twist your argument to keep pretending the text says something that isn't there and refuse to accept you're making shit up, I know.
>>93919057Faggot, I don't care. I realize you're emotionally invested in this product more than anyone has ever been emotionally invested in you- but it's retarded to dictate this to people, it's retarded to buy products that do this, and it's basically a gravitational singularity of retarded to attempt to defend it.If you need this guidance to keep you behaving at the table, you shouldn't be at the table. You should be in a cage under the stairs like the other retards with responsible owners.
>>93919075it's a blurb describing relationships among NPC groups, what do you mean it's not needed? that's the point of a setting, giving you different considerations you might not have though about. Do you get mad when they bring up elves because you already know elves exist? It's the same thing.
>>93919086You got a bit more of an investment in this than the average fan.Fuck you and your product, faggot. Not buying it, bullying people who do, putting money in the pocket of your competitors.
After having looked into the system further, I don't think it's for me.Why?The system is built around several ways of accomplishing something. Example: You can hunt, kill, sneak, or discern to defeat a being in some way. Discern could be finding a weakness, etc.Well, if using skills is loose like this, why put points in one skill over another? You can almost always argue for using any skill... I prefer systems where skills, and their uses, are clearly defined. If I want to find a weakness, I could indeed use something like discern, but--if I then wanted to kill it--that would merely give me a bonus on an attack check. Generally, for me "discern" would represent a character's awareness, and I would have different attack skills. In short, the skills of Heart seem vague.Correct me if I misunderstood anything.
>>93918851The Resistance System is pretty lite for its core mechanics but the classes, at least in Heart, have enough fun mechanics to them IMO.It's called Resistance because the mechanics of "damage" are a major feature of the system. You've got 5 Resistances; Blood, Echo, Mind, Fortune, and Supplies. When Stress (damage) is applied to one of those tracks you'll check for Fallout. The more stress you have the more likely that is to happen and fallouts come in Minor, Major, or Ciritical. Majors need more stress on the track to trigger, and Critical are two majors combined. Blood is standard RPG Health and a minor fallout for it might be something like getting disarmed or a limp, while a major blood fallout could blind you, break a limb, or an injury so bad that makes you lose a skill. All that stuff you can survive. Critical will kill you, however you go out something interesting is bound to happen as death is a big part of Heart. A blood critical stress might offer you a chance at survival if you give up something major in return, or your soul remains to haunt your party until it's laid to rest. There are pretty solid lists for all the different Resistances and types of fallout. Blood, Mind and Supplies stress and fallout are all relatively easy to heal with medicines, drugs, and scavenging/purchasing. Echo and Fortune are much harder as those are more esoteric sorts of problems.The core resolution is a d10 dice pool where you take the highest value rolled to determine the sort of success or failure you get. Unmodified you're rolling 1d10. You've then got Skills, and Domain. Both will add a d10 to your pool. Skills work as you'd expect, Domains are broader and linked to types of environments or areas of knowledge. If you get a Skill or Domain again you get a Knack, which is like a specialisation. Tests can also be Risky, or Dangerous which remove 1 or 2 of the highest dice in the pool.So, pretty lite, but Classes is where the real interesting stuff is.
>>93919185Yup. I don't think I like this system of resolution. The skills are a bit too broad for me, and I don't like having to be unsure of if I can apply something or not. Oh well, it's nice to know before purchasing. To each their own.
>>93919150Skills aren't rigorously defined but they're certainly not that loose. Compel is conversational skill, Delve is acrobatics and athletics, Discern is perception, Endure is physical and mental hardiness, Evade is dodging and avoiding things, Hunt is tracking, Kill is murdering, Mend is repairing and building, Sneak is stealth and subterfuge. There isn't really much overlap between them and you can't really argue to use one in the place of another all that often. Like, you can use Discern to do something related to perception in combat but it's not a substitute for Kill and weapons are Kill equipment.
>>93918596The game seems like it matches the Zee Bashew joke of "a game designed by a failed novelist who has tricked you into reading his microfiction" to a tee. Everything I hear about it involves how weird and bizarre and surreal it is, but so little about how it actually plays. You can get infected by a building that spreads itself to other buildings or some shit... But what the fuck do you do with that as part of a game? How the fuck does this even last a whole session? I have no idea, but the way I've seen so many indie-loving hipster faggots talk up the game in the same exact way I've seen them talk up mediocre-at-best games makes me wary of it.
>>93919363God damn that is an absolutely perfect description, and I'm a fucktard for not knowing what a Zee Bashew even is
>>93919394Here you go. The video in question making fun of indie dystopian RPGs.https://youtu.be/_szmwfkvqRk
>>93919363It's a dungeon/hex crawler. It's not a super complex style of game all in all. You explore a nightmarish undercity, delve into dungeons, scrape your way through alien terrain, encounter strange and dangerous creatures, battle foes, etc. incited by a strong desire for something that defines the acts and experiences that will grant XP and your main drive for being in the Heart to begin with,
>>93918851>Alright. 5-6 is not that inspiring! What kind of a system is it. Is it super light and people are mostly enamored by the flavor, or does it actually have some nice mechanics?The game is very amateur. It is light, poorly play-tested and with a lot of low quality graphomania. The meat of the system is a plethora of wacky and often narrative class abilities, but they are either focused on abstract simplified combat or unbalanced to the point of being completely useless or completely OP. For example, there are skills for speaking the other language or purifying food, but game simply don't create scenarios where they are truly needed, unless you as a GM blatantly force it to be relevant. But then there are skills that give you straight universal re-rolls or bonus dice for skill checks.The interesting mechanics are 1) the idea of combining skills of character with domains of character instead of list of attributes and skills and 2) the idea of 5 “health trackers” for your health, mental health, money, reputation and being off the government's radar. But they are not thought through and vague. For example, there are only nine skills, but sneak and steal are two different skills. Meanwhile, lore and awareness checks are merged into Investigate and repair and heal into Fix. There are must be like only five skills and five domains instead of nine.The game doesn't even have distinct rules on how you're supposed to lose your resources. Authors have different opinion and that, and you can see in the book that there are TWO very different rules for this you need to choose from blindly. The same goes for Fallout you get from loosing resources. There are a few vague examples, and you basically need to improvise this crucial part of the game.
>>93919637The idea of bonds with NPCs is too complicated. It should be something simple like “your bond get the stress for a favor” instead of three tiers of bonds, starting bonds, and check rolls for bonds.There are no rules to actually track the progress of the revolution. Some classes feel sameish, but what is obviously a core class is selling as additional content.The setting is very childish, hand-waving a lot of things necessary for verisimilitude. How big is one floor, is there a sunlight? Is there a language barrier? How Empire controls the council? What exactly Spire produces as a colony? Only 5-year slaves?What jobs people have? Etc.
>>93919637I don't share 100% of these complaints with Spire but off the top of my head all of this either fixed or not a thing in Heart. Which I could get into if there is any interest there. >>93919642Which supplemental class did you think should be core?
>>93919671> Which supplemental class did you think should be core?Blood-witch. The occult is one of the main pillars of the setting, which is everywhere and one of the domains.
>>93919671> Which I could get into if there is any interest there.I thought about running it but it means translating all the beats and class skills to players. Huge pain in the ass.
>>93919845I meant "I could explain how the two are different in the context of those complaints". But there is also a supplement for doing that although in general I'd just start a new campaign. It's a new game, after all.
>>93918596>>93918653The real reason the races are the way they are is that this game is set in the same world as Spire, which is ABOUT fantasy racism (and terrorism.) So you can't have "racism doesn't exist in this world" in a game set in a world with another game about all the racism.>>93919266Yeah, this is how almost all RPGs work in practice, except when you have an overly controlling GM (or maybe in 3.PF or 5th D&D?) But if you aren't letting your Archeologist use their Archeology skill to have met this other Archeologist at an Archeology convention last year (instead insisting he roll his shitty Negotiate skill to get that faculty party invite), I kind of think you're doing it wrong in ANY game.>>93919363I think this is because of how many cool plothooks are sprinkled around in the setting material. I feel the same way about 13th Age or Delta Green, but this is even a little moreso. Some games really fill up the setting with things you, as a prospective GM, want to find a way to work into a campaign, and Spire/Heart is full of them. And that tends to dominate people's thought process as they read the books.
>>93919868Oh, I know it more or less. I have the pdf.
>>93919810AFAIK they made blood witch into a core class with the fifth anniversary release
>>93919185It's one of "those games" huh?
>>93919441I appreciate you, anon. I'm not saying that the game is devoid of play, but every time some pretentious faggot whose ego is built from how many indie games they've jacked off to talks up this game, they never just say "it's dungeon/hex crawler"
>>93918629Been playing this one and most other players gravitated to human, or just didn't bother fleshing out non-humans beyond meme features.Seemed like an unnecessary sidebar, desu.
>>93920092People like to talk about the unique bits of a game and not the bits that everyone has some understanding of. The setting and classes are fun and interesting, dungeons are a tried and true concept. Obviously people are going to talk more about the former than the latter.
>>93920116It's because the first game is all about fantasy racism. It's more about setting expectations for people familiar with that.
>>93920116Yeah, I honestly wouldn't allow most players to play a high elf PC in this setting, unless I really thought they'd do something interesting with it. But most players don't really want to anyway.
HEART has a lot of fiddly bits and things that don't quite work without modding. Does anyone have any homebrew fixes they use? In my case, I change delves. By default they're mechanically similar to a fight with an hp track you have to deplete. However, I find it a bit tedious. Instead, I give the players a problem with a set difficulty based on how far down they are. If they're in shallow areas they get a single, relatively simple problem. If they're deep in they get a series of difficult obstacles, with va max of three things they might have to handle to get where they're going.
>>93920427Which bits?
Personally, I think the class abilities, general setting and concept behind each system is really cool, but while the core system of Spire is generally simple (d10, degrees of success, only players roll, failure gives damage to differing stats and the goal is to subvert the establishment), overall I like it more than Heart. I feel like Heart is a bit too abstract with how intentionally loose its setting is. Delves just feel a bit too theater of mind for how weird the Heart is, where I feel like I'd personally prefer to explore it with proper dungeon maps that get increasingly warped and horrific.
>>93922234Mostly delves, as explained. Other than that it's coming up with items and locations for people to explore in. There's a lot of pre-made stuff to work with, thankfully.Also, have a compressed version of the Callings! These are for printing out so that your players don't have to keep referencing the book.
>>93923586These are compressed player skills! It's only the main classes listed in the book.
>>93923586>>93923616Oh, a goodie. This way it is easier to translate from English.
>>93923639I only have one book, and playing in person made me miss how convenient PBTA playbooks are, so I made these.
