I wanted to build something completely weird and gonzo and that’s Heart in a nutshell. It’s a weird dungeon delving game into a dungeon that wants to give you your heart’s desire but isn’t very good at it. The world is just deeply weird. Let’s mess around in it.
Characters are built on a Class, which is a class, you know how those work; and a Calling, which is their reason for delving. I’m gonna start with the latter in hopes of a clear throughline for my weirdness. My dude, who is gonna be a gnoll, is in it for — agh, I was gonna say Enlightenment but I just made a smart thinker type. Calvin is in this for Adventure, dangerous pleasures that he can’t get anywhere else.
As a gnoll, I have three questions and must pick one to answer. I travelled to the Heart in search of something specific. Was I part of a team, or was I on my own, and did I find what I was looking for? Yeah, aha, there was a wedding and I was part of the bachelor party and the lass I’ve been yearning after for a while said if I came back with something that surprised her I could earn a date. That works for me. Calvin is treating the Heart way too casually and he’ll probably pay for it.
Gnolls also have a table for trinkets they brought with them. Calvin has a painted dog skull and a zither inscribed with vine leaves. He plays the zither, cool. Although he stole the dog skull from his romantic rival, who may be angry about this.
As someone into Adventure, Calvin carries something oriented towards his Calling. It’s expensive kohl eyeliner and a pocket mirror. He’s a dandy, yeah. So I choose two active Beats, which are signals to the GM about what I want. Mine: “Make a dramatic entrance that’s a Risky action” and “Win an unarmed brawl in a haven.”
He also picks up the core Adventure ability, Legendary. It gives him a free refresh when he gains advances — sort of like leveling up. Momentum is everything.
OK, let’s look at classes. Cleaver is kinda fight-oriented which I like but also wild and feral, which is not Calvin’s thing. He’s also not really a mystic type which rules out a lot of options. Nah, he’s an Incarnadine: he owes so much money that he’s attracted the attention of Incarne, the Crimson God of Debt.
Core abilities: The Cost of Doing Business, which allows Calvin to set aside a piece of his luck for use at a future date — basically holding good die rolls for later. (Heart is not a mechanically trivial game.) He also gets Mutually Assured Destruction: when he dies, he explodes, hopefully taking people around with him.
For his Minor Abilities, I want A Red and Bloody Business, which gives him the Kill skill. It’s a good skill. And Creative Acquisitions, which provides the Sneak skill. For his Major Ability, the most in-theme is Crave, which allows him to make people want things super-bad. Mind control is not ethical, y’all. Calvin isn’t a great person.
So skills are:
Compel (from the class)
Kill
Sneak
And he has the Haven Domain. The rules here are a d10 dice pool, 1 d10 for starters, plus 1 for having a relevant skill, plus 1 for a relevant Domain. A 6 or higher is success. Not too bad.
Pleasingly, Incarnadines have a Zenith Ability which allows them to retire to a normal life, so Calvin may actually get what he wants if he still wants it when he gets there. I will play to find out. He is likely to get messed up on the way to his heart’s desire; his awful powers of debt will see to that.
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