Tragedy is a challenging theme for roleplaying games to explore. When pitching a game to friends, GMs often have an easier time evoking images of heroes and/or scoundrels gaining fame, power, and riches rather than offering up a literal descent into a turbulent , kaleidoscopic hellscape which will inevitably end in some sort of personal loss or destruction. However, I think GMs would do well to listen to my 5th grader’s teacher who was fond of saying, “you can do difficult things!” Rowan Rook and Decard agree and offer some enticing qualities in their Ennie award winning game Heart to help you make the pitch.
Set in the same drow world and literally the same zip code as Spire, Heart replaces the espionage and steampunk shadowrunning of its sibling for what at first glance appears to be a more traditional dungeon diving game. Players are a ragtag group of social misfits with dangerous powers and apparently no responsibilities to attend to beyond exploring, fighting, pilfering, and occasionally returning to society to recuperate and sell their questionably acquired goods. Like Spire, players have skills, areas of expertise, unique abilities, and questionable gear to help them overcome challenges while taking damage not only to their physical frame but to their sanity, souls, and credit score.
From the get go, this game departs from their well worn grooves of the mainstay of the hobby. First off, unlike most games, they are asked to explicitly state why they are choosing to forego the relative safety of uhhh not dungeon diving to their current occupation. This question of motivation is not just a fluffy one for drama majors to consider but has mechanical impacts, indeed it determines how you level up and gain new powers. It’s not enough to bash a requisite number of lizardmen, acquire enough diadems, or even just get to whatever chapter break your GM has written down; players have a laundry list of Beats and every session they give two of these beats to the GM like a sushi order. These can be to take a certain amount and kind of damage, to explore a particular locale, betray a loved one, undergo a ritual, etc. The GM is expected to take all these Beats and use them as guidelines to direct how a particular session or campaign goes. This means that whether the heroes are motivated by helping communities thrive, uncovering dangerous secrets, or because shady cultists are blackmailing them has huge ramifications on what happens in any given game and if they want to get the shiny new abilities that come with leveling up, they have to cooperate with the GM to reach those Beats.
The powers and abilities come with the player’s class which are a carnival mirror reflection of traditional fantasy games. Instead of Fighters you have Dogs who are sort of reincarnated members of a doomed regiment. Instead of Rangers you have Carvers who lust for the blood and viscera of the creatures dwelling in the Heart to imbue themselves with feral power. Instead of Clerics you have Heretics who can’t show their face in the City Above but are free to worship their seemingly indifferent lunar goddess in her various forms down here. Instead of Bards you can be a Deep Apiarist and just be full of bees. All of these classes have a tantalizing menu of powers that are unlocked by meeting the Beats. There are corresponding Minor, Major, and Zenith beats and abilities and deciding when you want to risk going after the higher powers is a huge part of the gameplay. In theory, players could swim in the shallows of minor Beats and powers indefinitely but the game breaking opportunities that always sing out from these lists prompt them to delve into deeper and stranger perils.
The process of delving is mechanically defined even as it’s given a lot of room for improvisation and on the fly storytelling. The game makes distinctions between Landmarks which are defined locations, communities, temples, dangerous and psychedelic abattoirs, etc and Delves which are the tunnels and passages and liminal spaces that connect them. Each of these areas are made of thematic Domains which provide color and also tie in to player expertise. Religious characters will be more adept at navigating Religious spaces while Wild characters will come into their own handling encounters in Wild areas and so on. The game suggests mixing and matching these Domains particularly in the connecting Delves which gives the GM the creative prompt of trying to imagine what a Wild and Religious space or Desolate and Technological corridor would look like. Another rule is treating the Delve almost as its own ongoing combat with the equivalent of hit points which go down as the players explore or overcome challenges, or use their ever increasing powers to blast short cuts. This is a clever way to abstract the travel process without having to map out every hallway or 10 by 10 room and let everyone have a sense of progress. It’s similar to the countdown clocks in Blades In the Dark which is a system I really like for making it clear to the table what’s at stake and how the pacing is ticking along.
Beyond the vivid setting and body horror, what truly gives Heart its unique drive is that commitment to tragedy and game architecture that takes you there. Characters can always give up and leave which is one tragic ending or they can continue to burrow deeper looking for what brought them down here and maybe even achieve it and that’s a different tragic ending. What gives it all potency is that, like all the great tragedies, it’s all built on the choices they make. What it loses in this structure is the potential for sprawling, long term play that often defines other dungeon crawlers. This is not meant to be a marathon but a sprint where players see the gory finish line practically from the start.
I like Heart and while I think it might be a hard sell for a lot of groups, the ones that buy in have the potential for an immensely rewarding experience. It’s an ambitious game that takes big swings and doubles down on its core themes over trying to have broad appeal and I respect its artistry and its passion and look forward to getting hot and messy with it.