As I’ve mentioned many times before, I absolutely love the beat system in Heart: The City Beneath. Being able to take the choices my players make about where they want their character to go next and spin them all up into a larger plot for us to run through over however many sessions it takes is truly a gift, especially when I’m playing with five other players who are more closely aligned than they realize. I try to avoid calling attention to the beats each of them are picking, since I know some of the players want to be able to surprise each other and I don’t want all of my players thinking about the best way to build up each other’s beats or whether or not something has come up is for them or for a different character. I have no problem talking them out, of course, since we’re playing a horror game and good communication is key, but I generally don’t prompt my players to do that. At the mid-point of our last session, though, as we came back from everyone’s mini-sessions and the party reunited after being separated for almost in-game two weeks, I had my players read out their beats because it turned out that not only had several picked the same beats as at least one other player (with one major exception, but his journey is very different from everyone else’s right now), but they all picked beats that complimented each other. As it turns out, everyone (even the player with unaligned beats) wants to burn down the city they’re in or otherwise destroy the massive corporation at the center of said city, and they’re all picked beats that aligned with that goal.
Continue readingHorror
Sleep Paralysis
Robyn’s mind drifted to the surface of consciousness. Something heavy was draped over them. Unfortunately, since they slept on their side, they couldn’t see what it was. They couldn’t turn to look, either. They were paralyzed.
Trying to stay calm, they slowly worked through their insensate body. Knees wrapped around a pillow, left arm curled into the corner of the sheet, torso propped up by pillows, and head supported by more pillows. Only their right arm was unaccounted for.
Pushing against the numbness, Robyn tried to raise their right arm.When nothing happened, they pushed through the building fear and realized the arm wrapped in the sheets was holding them in place.
When they managed to shift their left arm enough, the blankets loosened and the numbness began to fade. Feeling began to return to their body.
Just as they were about to try moving their right arm again, Robyn felt a light, puffing wind on their neck. They froze, paralyzed by panic, as something warm and wet fell onto their neck.
Fear took over and they wrenched free of the blankets. They sat up and fumbled for their lamp. When the light clicked on, their room was empty. Their bedroom door was still closed and their oscillating fan gently puffed at their hair as they panted. There was nothing in the room.Nothing had been sitting on them. It was just the fan and their sweat.
They rifled a hand through their hair as they breathed a sigh of relief. A moment later, they realized they weren’t actually sweaty. They raised a hand to their neck and it came away wet, a few viscous drops of liquid clinging to it. As they stared at their hand, they felt the frame of their bed shift as something beneath it moved.
The First Descent Into The Rotting Heart
One of the things that got me through this past week of exhaustingly busy days at work was thinking about my game of Heart: The City Beneath. I admittedly did not have much time to let my mind sit idle or even concern itself with anything other than the project I’ve spent thirty-six of the last sixty hours working on, but what time I did have that included free conscious thought was directed toward that game and the fun place we left it after our last session. True to form, we spent a lot of time roleplaying and only a little time on an adventure. We did get some major fallout, though, since the one player who’d managed to avoid any kind of fallout the first time around wound up getting a wee bit stressed the instant the party started their adventure. It worked out pretty well, though, because I got to do something super fun for me AND the character who got the major fallout had an ability that allowed them to make progress in their delve despite the horrible failure that resulted in said fallout. Everybody won!
Continue readingCubicle Fields Forever
Darryl rose and left his office. He paced past the dark cubicles and down a dim hallway, looking for the one coworker he knew would be around this late. Greta usually visited him but, today, he thought as he counted rows in the next cubicle field, he’d visit her.
After turning down the seventh row, he found an office belonging to “Tim” that he was certain should’ve been Greta’s.
“Weird.” Darryl turned and found himself in the middle of the cubicle field again. The office behind him had vanished. Darryl rubbed his eyes and headed toward a looming office wall he could follow back to the hallways.
When he got there, he peered at the sign on the nearest office. “Regie? Z52BQ?” Darryl reached out to touch the plaque. It was real but, when he pulled his hand away, it said “Reachme.” As the hairs on his neck rose, Darryl spun to find himself in the middle of the lightless cubicle field again.
Darryl took off running and, when he finally reached a wall, sweat pouring off him, he glanced behind him to find nothing back there but endless dark cubicles.
Darryl looked forward again just as something loomed in the shadowy door of “Meatgyre’s” office. He screamed as a blazing light erupted from this figure.
When his vision cleared, he saw the tall, solid form of Greta holding out a hand. “Oh my god, are you okay?” Greta hauled him to his feet. “I was just about to leave and you startled me!”
“What?” Darryl looked behind him and saw the ordinary five-by-five of cubicles with offices on each side. “I was…”
“You shouldn’t wander around here in the dark.” Greta patted him on the shoulder and led him away from her office. “You might get lost. Or worse…”
Telling Human Stories In Heart: The City Beneath
I’ve now run two sessions of Heart: The City Beneath and I think I definitely picked the right game for this group. We’re moving at a glacial pace, compared to how the game is built to run, but that’s because we’re doing some pretty heavy roleplaying. We’re also still getting used to the game and I’m still introducing my players to the various systems and rules involved it, along with carefully setting expectations as we go, so I’m really not that worried about our pace. I’m making sure to separate the game’s mechanical concept of “a session” from the actual runtime and pacing of our gaming sessions since it would really undercut the utility of several moves and the pacing of the beat system if we completely abandoned our rate of play and strictly adhered to the period of time on specific days that we gathered to play the game. I mean, I had a powerful figure in the world give my characters “An Answer” as part of their payment for the tutorial mission (meant to help them all solidify their character’s goals and provide them with a bit of information they could use to kick off their character’s journey) and we spent almost half the session roleplaying through everyone’s answers. A quarter of the session went to talking about how the game worked and translating the things we were discussing into more concrete terms for the players and the last quarter was smaller bits of roleplaying and the final stages of the tutorial delve. We filled almost four hours in the blink of an eye and we were even down a player.
Continue readingWorldbuiling Without Building Anything
One of my favorite parts of preparing for the start of a new tabletop game is the moment when everything crystallizes. Whatever errrant thought, subtle influence, or bright flash of inspiration you needed arrives and suddenly it all makes sense. You can see the strings the world dances upon and understand the way everything moves within it. It is the moment when you go from wondering what might be and pondering unknowns to knowing what is and looking for what might change. In the world I ran in a few Dungeons and Dragons campaigns starting back in 2019, this moment came as I was taking a break from my then-panicked preparations to do something fun and relaxing. I was watching Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse on Blu-ray not long after it was finally available for purchase and the whole campaign setting crystalized around the idea of missing heroes. It was a fairly simple idea, but that last piece of information fitting into the puzzle meant everything else clicked into place as well. Suddenly, I knew what was going on and what everyone was motivated by. It was a relevatory moment and something I’ve enjoyed every time something like it has come up any time I’m considering a story, be it something I’m writing, a tabletop game I’m putting together, or even just a video game I’m playing.
Continue readingA Little Bit of (the Fun Kind of) Horror in My TTRPG Campaign
This upcoming weekend (the one following this post going up), I’ll have my first session with a group of people playing a game of Heart: The City Beneath. I’m pretty excited to play it, since I was so inspired by the game (and the seventh season of Friends at the Table, Sangfielle, where they played it) that I wrote an entire setting for any number of games full of cool decay and horror themed stuff. This group will be playing that setting and we’ll be doing our Session 0 to talk through what adaption work we’ll be doing to get the base game to fit the flavor of the world ni which we’ll be playing. This setting is one I’ve written about here (or at least shared the introductory short story for the Dungeons and Dragons 5e Heoric Tragedy version of it), so I’m excited to get to use it with a group interested in exploring the more creepy, horrific side of things. Don’t get me wrong, I’m absolutely delighted to eventually continue the Heoric Tragedy game when all the players are available again, but I wrote this setting with mild to moderate horror and dark fantasy in mind, so it’ll be tons of fun to explore those a bit more directly with a game designed for horror like Heart.
Continue readingI Could Write A Book About Why I Love Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Spoiler Warning: Here is your one and only warning that most of this post will talk about Fire Emblem: Three Houses and a whole lot of spoilers for the game. Anything below this paragraph might include spoilers for the various paths, choices, and secret of the game. While it has been out for three years already and that’s probably plenty of time for everyone who is going to play it to have played it, adding a spoiler warning doesn’t cost me anything and I want everyone who might become interested in the game to experience it. So stop reading if you don’t want spoilers because I’m running out of junk to put here so you don’t accidentally see a spoiler in one of the paragraphs below.
Continue readingChuck Wendig’s “The Book Of Accidents” Was An Amazing But Emotional Read
Content warning for discussions of abuse (non-specific) and cycles of abuse. While this post contains many of the elements of a review, it is also about my own experience with cycles of abuse and what this book means to me as a result. If that’s not something you’re interested in, or if it is something you’re going to struggle with, I suggest avoiding this post. Pretty much every paragraph includes some non-specific discussion of abuse and cycles of abuse, so there isn’t anything below this paragraph to read if you’re thinking of just skimming past those bits.
Continue readingMy Horror-ble Need For Tabletop Music
Trying to find the right music for a tabletop roleplaying game is a pain in the ass. You have to find something that evokes the right emotions in people other than just yourself without asking your audience since that would risk revealing something. You need to figure out how to incorporate it for the right dramatic tension if it applies to what you’re doing. You need something that either no one will recognize or that will evoke the right feelings even if it is still recognized. Not to mention finding enough music in the first place, equalizing it all so a song never comes on that completely interrupts the tension you’re building, and knowing the songs well enough that you can time things out. Or just finding stuff that can repeat endlessly.
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