Speaker 1: Welcome everyone to the very first episode of Heart the Rhythm,
a role playing game actual play podcast based off of
the game Heart the City Beneath. This is a new
game for everybody here that's playing. None of us have
played it yet. If you get a chance, you should
be able to check out. There is an interview that
I did with the one of the two creators for this,
mister Grant Howitt, that should be available by the time
that this is out, so check that out if you
want to check that out. This is gonna be our
episode zero or Session zero. It's going to go through
character creation. We're going to talk about the rules a
little bit and kind of set the stage. By the
time this is done, we'll be ready to go into
episode one where everything starts. If you're not into that,
come back next week. If you're into it, buckle up.
We're about to go. So's go around first and introduce
everybody here. We got a cast of players that you
may or may not recognize. I'm gonna start off with CJE.
Speaker 2: Why would you do that to me?
Speaker 1: A CJ? Tell us a little bit about yourself. Why
don't you tell us who you are, what you like
to do in your spare time, your experience with role
playing games, your favorite food, your least favorite food, and
what temperature you like it to be in your home.
Speaker 2: That of information I've got to remember all that. I'm CJ.
Then uh, doing tabletops for a while, like I've started
out with dungeons and dragons. That's what was the That's
the gateway drug, as they say. And then Adam's my dealer.
He gives me more new crazy table.
Speaker 1: A dealer, call me a pusher please.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, and then the all the games I now
know have increased exponentially since knowing him. I don't know
any of these new crazy games that I play. I
know nothing about this game. Until Adams said, hey, you
want to play this? I'm like, sure, why not? Favorite
food I do love udan.
Speaker 1: Is the best noodle.
Speaker 2: Yes, I also like it's like okay, but like mud
on like that that chunky iced little noodle's.
Speaker 1: It soaks up the broth just enough to be like
super flavorful. Oh yes, yes.
Speaker 2: And then I don't know least favorite food.
Speaker 1: It's the grossest food, the grossest food you've ever eaten
that you can think of, one that makes you go h.
Speaker 2: I don't know because I don't eat them.
Speaker 1: Well, what's what's the number one food that you refuse
to put back in your mouth?
Speaker 3: God, seafood.
Speaker 2: I mean, if it's if it's any organ that's visibly
an organ, I'm probably not gonna eat it.
Speaker 3: I've had chicken her Have you had like something like that?
It's uh, that's always interesting.
Speaker 1: I think they freaked me out too much. I've eaten tongue,
that's the that's the weirdest one that I've had like that.
I don't think I could eat a heart. I think
I would if I didn't know maybe, but as soon
as you go like this is a heart, I'd be.
Speaker 4: Like eating chicken heart. I can't eat chicken feet. That
that's that's where I drow.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's gross too, Like that is there anything to
eat there? Or is it just like bones?
Speaker 4: And like no, you can eat the whole thing because
they like they like soak it in broth and like
it does taste good. The texture just throws me off,
but my but my wife loves them.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, c J, thanks for joining us. And I
was gonna ask you to tell us about a character,
but we don't know yet. We're gonna do that soon
no one knows. So, uh, what is your favorite role
playing game that you've played so far?
Speaker 2: I mean a D and D fivey bar that's like
my bread and butter. But I like my favorite magic
mechanics were a shadow on? Okay, that that has my
favorite magic even though it's complicated, and I didn't understand that.
Half the time we were we were constantly looking at
the book. I was like, this is fright? Is awesome?
Speaker 5: Is this?
Speaker 1: Have you tried to you? It might kill you, but
you can tell somebody's off that building? Nice? Okay? Cool? Well,
thank you CJ. Thanks for joining us again. And we're
gonna move right along to the next person, who is Oh,
let's see somebody muted, somebody put a cigarette their mouth.
Speaker 3: Let's go with Ethan, the muted one. How's it going, Ethan.
Speaker 1: Man, thanks for joining us. Why don't you give us
a quick rundown? What what's your first role playing game?
How long you've been playing role playing games? What's your
favorite role playing game you've played? And what role playing
games have you done on a podcast? And uh, what
kind of food do you like?
Speaker 3: So that's Plays in the Dark February Plays in the
Dark Blades in the dark. This is my second podcast
and tablet up role playing game, so I the experience
of one. So this is now no longer my first rodeo,
it is now my second. Then you're asking favorite food, Well,
I like food. I like a turkey dinner, like like
just that whole you know, it's the sort ofment that
you get. I think it's a it's a classic, you know,
ending with like a nice apple pie or something like that,
and you know you don't have it too often, but
it's like it's it's enough of a staple you get it, like,
you know, two three times a year, which is pretty great.
Speaker 1: What are your sides? What do you put with the turkey?
Speaker 3: Oh, stuffing is my number one. And then right after
that is cranberries.
Speaker 1: Okay, like cranberries, just like straight up cranberries, or cranberry sauce.
Speaker 3: Oh, cranberry sauce, yeah, ok. And then everything else just
you know, regular potatoes, all that fun junk.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite format of potato?
Speaker 3: Oh that's a that's a good question. Thank you for
asking that, Adam.
Speaker 1: Thank you. You can put them in a stew.
Speaker 3: I gotta go with mashed potatoes. But you know, with
that too. You know, there's a certain varieties and stuff
where like like some people had fine put too much
milk or it's too runny, and it's like there's oh,
it's probably like my family's mashed potatoes, you know. It's like,
you know, it's the type of mashed potatoes that like
my grandfather makes is probably the one, you know, or
something like that, which I couldn't tell you exactly how
to get there, but I can tell you when it's
not that nice.
Speaker 1: Okay, least favorite food.
Speaker 3: Oh that's a good one. So I will still eat this.
But I'm just gonna say hummus. And the reason being
is because hummus is actually great. But I had hummus
once and then I had food poisoning the next day
for the first time. So the first time I got
it was with hummus, and so I probably had about
five or six years when someone's like, like, you know,
it was there, and I'm like, I'm gonna eat around it.
Like it's just like just the essence of hummus, which
just not great. And I finally have moved past that.
But I think I have the most trauma from hummus.
Speaker 2: That was you have corn beef like one year on
like New Year's like I had gotten sick and I
was just like I feel a little better. Now, I'm
gonna eat this corn beef. And so I ate some
corn beef and then I immediately threw it up and
it was like I cannot eat corn beef.
Speaker 1: Now that's that's me with the Reese's peanut butter cups
I had. I for like every time I had Reese's
peanut butter cups, well I was growing up. Every single
time it was like three or four times I puked
and it wasn't because of the recent peanut butter cups.
It was like you got the flu, like oh you know,
like this thing happened. That thing like it just was coincidence.
And now like reese Peanut butter cups, I'm like, if
I eat it, I'll puke. I can't do it.
Speaker 3: You know what. That's that's a little that's kind of
good for your your body's making you a little healthier.
You know. It's like that's one less ice.
Speaker 1: No peanut butter cups, but give me a lot of
beer and ice cream and beer with ice cream in.
Speaker 4: It your ice cream float.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, all right, So next up, thank you, by
the way, thank you for joining us, Ethan And next
up Aeron, what's up?
Speaker 3: Men?
Speaker 1: Tell me all your things?
Speaker 4: Well, okay, my name is Aaron, also known as poetry Geist.
I was the GM on the last show that we
did hear Sits in Consequences, The Blades and the Dark
actual Play podcast, one of the editors over here at
Dragon's Creed, and I am playing in the bi weekly
streams that we do on Mondays. I believe that we're
going to be playing l Answer, but as of this recording,
we're gonna be playing the One Ring RPG. We're gonna
do a one shot and I'm playing as Billbo. I'm
playing with Frodo's mom's mom's name.
Speaker 1: I don't even know.
Speaker 4: I want to say it's Primrose, but I might.
Speaker 3: Mess this up. If you mess this up, there's gonna
be a lot of angry messages.
Speaker 4: Listen to the show. I'll know her name for sure then,
because I'll have.
Speaker 1: And Frodo. I would imagure name's got to be like
like Gojo or something.
Speaker 4: No, it's not. No, no, it is either Primrose or Asmarelda,
but I forget which one is which that there's pre
gen characters for the adventure we're doing. And it says
right on it that on protos mom. But yeah, so
that's what I'm doing. You're asking what, like, what was
my first one?
Speaker 1: What's your first role playing game? They played?
Speaker 4: Oh it was it was Dungeon and Dragons. I played
Dungeons Dragons with my ex and the GM kicked me
out of the game. Well they even kick me out
of the game, which was actually worse, but he was
actively trying to sleep with my girlfriend at the time,
so it was like not a pleasant experience. And it
was also fourth edition, and I was a source for
We rolled for stats and I rolled awfully. So my
highest my highest stat was a ten and it was
in charisma.
Speaker 3: That is rough all around. To have only good charisma
with a GM, but.
Speaker 4: No, no, that's not even good.
Speaker 1: That's completely app chrisma that is that is plus or
minus zero, like and everything is worse than That means
that that this guy and you need a lot of
charisma to be a sorcerer, and that that means that
this character you made was worthless. This guy, this guy
was trying to like elf underd you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was, it was. It was a little brutal
but that, but I gave it another shot a few
years later, and I I still played the Indian to
this day ivy, and I don't mind it. Right now
I'm playing as a as a lizard folk druid named
a lot Or used to look and he is awesome
and he is a circle of the Star strip. And
I mean for podcast stuff like obviously I was forward
onto the Shadow on pay Data podcast. For this, I've
done a couple of streams with Diversity Saves, which, by.
Speaker 1: The way, that's coming up again, isn't it.
Speaker 4: Yes, it is. Yeah, I don't know if I'll be
It depends on what days they're doing they're running it.
To be honest, I might hop back in. But I
did a couple with them, and yeah, I think everything
else I've done is with Dragon's creat So if you
go back in the catalog for about a year and
a half now, you'll you hear my voice from time
to time.
Speaker 1: Okay, what's your favorite food?
Speaker 4: My favorite food? I love Italian food, like just generally,
like I love pasta. But my absolute favorite food, and
it sucks because I never make it, is a German
dish called rouladen, where you take like beef and you
just pound it super thin. You fill it with vegetables
and then you wrap the beef around it and like
clamp it like a ravioli. And then you bake it
and you shave it with like a sour like not
quite a gravy. It's like a sour sauce like meat sauce.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: And spatzel, which is yeah, egg dumplings. Yeah, an a
a spatzel maker. I make it every year for Christmas.
Speaker 1: Oh nice, dude, that's awesome.
Speaker 4: Cool.
Speaker 1: I'm in German and uh by genetics, I guess, I
don't know. My family's been in this country for a
very long time, so I guess I'm you know, descended
from Germans. I've never had that food.
Speaker 4: Uh So it's it's interesting because my dad's not my grandfather,
but my dad's grandfather is from Germany, so my great
grandfather is from Germany on my dad's side. But also
my stepdad was from Germany. Okay, so that's actually where
I learned to really get into German food was from him.
So it's not necessarily from the people. I make hagas.
That's that's the kind of the thing that my family
on my mom's side makes and that's because like her
dad was from Ireland. Okay, yeah, I know it's a
Scottish thing, but pegas is yeah travels, yeah, but yeah,
yeah no, I like kegas. And the only thing I
don't really eat is onions. I hate onions.
Speaker 1: Really like none none onions.
Speaker 4: So there, it's mostly a texture thing. But also I
can taste it. So if if you like fry the
shit out and onions to like make a base, like
or like you caramelize onions and then you add a
bunch of stuff and the onions are very small and
I don't end up having to like crunch through them.
I can get through it. But I don't cook with
onions at all. And yeah, I really can't taste them,
and I don't like it at all, Like it's it's wild,
Like I think I might even like be like allergic
onions because like my body makes me like want to
kill myself every time I have an onion near me. Okay,
all right, yeah, And apple pies. Apple pies the other one.
I don't like it at all. Oh okay, yeah, that
one's also a time because I had the flu and
my grandma forced me to eat an apple pie and
then it went really badly for her, but it was
still my fault.
Speaker 1: So okay, well, thank you for joining us, and thanks
for doing the editing for this one. And I guess
that's me. My name is Adam. Hello, I'm gonna be
your game master. I started playing role playing games when
I was a wee lad with Hundreds and Dragon Surprise.
It was ad and D back when I was a tiny,
tiny fella. And I've been playing stuff on and off
ever since, and do a lot of Shadow Run stuff
and some other games here and there. And I've been
doing podcast stuff with Dragons Screen Gaming for a little
while and a couple other things the Fixer Files, and
it's a shadow run one, and I feel like there's
other stuff too, but I can't think of it. But yeah,
so I'm gonna be running this game. This is called
Heart mentioned that briefly. We'll get into the details of
that after I finished introducing myself. I'm a little bit
rambly here. So my favorite food, if I had to
pick one, it doesn't exist anymore. There was a place
called Pusta Kitchen that was enrolling Meadows, Illinois that had
tortolini alfredo that was just the absolute best in that place,
I am certain was a like a money laundering front
for the mafia. They only accepted cash and only twenty
dollars bills are lower, and uh, there were tables in there,
two specific tables that you weren't allowed to sit at.
If you go and you sit there, you be like, hey, hey, no,
not that one. You gotta move. That one's reserved. And
it was always reserved. It's real weird. I'm pretty sure
it was the mafia. Also, one time I went in there,
He's like, hey, you guys, get cash this dime and
I'm like, yeah, I got cash. He's like, man, if
you went over to the bank and I was working
there and I saw you boom boom in the head,
bam in the dumpster, and I'm like, holy fucking shit, dude,
I just want some tortellini. But that was the best.
The thing that I will never eat, it's mushrooms gross
me the fuck out, super gross. You're not supposed to
eat fungus. It's it's it's awful. It's death. It's death incarnate,
growing out of things, and it's you're not supposed to
put it in your mouth. That's bad.
Speaker 4: Oh, It's like it's like the perfect combination between It's
like exactly like every Omnoor's what dream, It's exactly half
eating an animal and half eating a plant.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's wrong, it's you know, it's like when
you have an omelet with chicken in it, Like, that's
fucked up. You're not supposed to do that, you know,
kill the chicken, you don't, you know, take the egg
out of the chicken, kill the chicken, cook the egg,
and then put the chicken into the egg. That's fucked up. Man.
I don't know how anybody ever thought that was a
good idea. That seems like just cruelty. Anyhow, us then, I,
you know, I didn't think about it.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: Also, there's like an entire French cuisine called Mother and
Son cooking, which is like chicken with eggs.
Speaker 1: It's fucked up France. That's fucked up. Come on, guys.
So anyhow, let's talk about this game. So the mechanics
for this game are fairly simple. So it's a dice
pool system detense. You get a couple of detense, you
roll them and you only look at the best one
that you get, so you will accrue stress if you
roll poorly. And stress applies to a couple of different
categories that determine what's going wrong with your character. There
is blood stress, which is like physical stuff, damage to
your body. Mind stress, which is damage to your mind,
your your mental well being. Echo stress, which is weird
stuff kind of like spiritual things or corruption, that kind
of thing. Body fortune, Yeah, yeah, things are gonna like
change you, not like necessarily your body, but it might
mutate your body. Fortune which is luck in general. It's
not like your money or anything like that. So once
you start getting stress in your fortune, things are just
going wrong for you. And supplies is the last one,
which is basically it represents you losing equipment, running out
of money, things like that. It's fairly abstract, but you'll
roll your dice and you're looking for high numbers, you know,
low numbers. A ten is a critical success. It means
that you succeed dramatically and increase the amount of stress
you inflict on your target, which will either be like
a progress track or an enemy. You can get a
regular success on an eight or a nine. You can
get a success at a cost on a six or seven,
which means that you succeed but you still take stress.
A failure is a two through five, which you don't
do what you're trying to do, and you take stress,
and then a critical failure, which you don't do what
you're trying to do, get stress, and it's doubled, and
it's on a one. Everybody starts with the dice pool
of one, and then you can add to it based
off of having the relevant skill or being trained in
the relevant domain, which is kind of a weird concept
that we'll get into in a moment. You're also able
to have a knack or mastery, which will add an
additional dye depending on how difficult, risky, or dangerous the
situation is. I will take away your dice so you'll
still be rolling them, and then I go like, get
rid of the two best ones, and then whatever's left
is what you got. Uh.
Speaker 3: And you'll let us know that ahead of time, right
like before we roll, you'll say this is going to
be risky, so you're gonna it will be one.
Speaker 1: Less die, yeah, correct, Yes, You'll also before you roll,
you'll also know what kind of which of your resistances
those five resistance tracks, which one it'll apply to. And
there's another cool thing we'll get into in a moment
about Fallout, not the video game, but you know, Mchanni,
but yes, I will you know ahead of time what
track it goes against and how risky it is. And yeah,
so fallout's another thing. Once you start accruing stress, you well,
I roll against your current stress level to see whether
or not you take fallout. Fallout is when something bad happens,
So just having stress doesn't do anything. You could have
a stress goes up to twelve, by the way, because
I roll the D twelve against you. If you have
ten stress and I don't get fallout for you, it
doesn't matter. You're fine. But when I roll that D twelve,
it compares against your current stress level, and if it's
lower than your current stress level, you take fallout, which
is something bad happening. So supplies fallout might be you're
out of water, or it might be with body, like
you've broken your leg. There's minor fallout, and then there's
major fallout, and the major fallout is bad, so like
now you don't have a leg, it gets real bad.
This could be pretty deadly. But you're also able to
recover your stress pretty pretty frequently. And we'll get into
that as we go on. So Heart is a essentially
it's a dungeon crawl game. It's a weird dungeon crawl game.
To give you an overview of what Heart is thematically.
In this world, which is called Desterra, there's gonna be
a test for there's a couple of games that are
said in this world made by Rowan Rook and to
card the people, they've made this lovely game Heart Inspire.
Inspire came first. Spire is this giant vertical city that's
on the same world, and it's about Droo who have
been oppressed by ale Fear, which are like high elks
that basically came into their home and took it over
and make them do work and toil and treat them
like shit. And it's about those drough fighting back. So
you're trying to kind of take back the city or
at least fuck up the high elves that are making
your life hell. This takes place underneath Spire. Heart is
called the City Beneath. It is underneath and it's burrowing
deeper and deeper and deeper into the ground. At the
center the actual Heart itself, there's uh man, a lot
of people you don't really know what it is, but
it's basically like the nexus of reality, Like everything is
there and the world shapes itself around you as you
play real weird, and it's gonna get weird. It's gonna
get real weird. So I hope you guys are ready
for that. I was gonna give you guys one of
those those forms. What's it called is the consent in
role playing forms, but I forgot, so we'll talk about
that a little bit later on. I don't want to
cross any lines, you know, It's I'm not I'm not
trying to get like weird weird. You know, like nobody's
gonna be like, oh, that's gross. But like if any
of you guys are like, dude, if there's spiders, it's
gonna ruin my day. I don't want to put fighters
in there. But you know, there's not gonna be any
kind of like like sexual violence or anything that's gonna
be you know, directly harmful to people's uh real life traumas.
Hopefully there will be there will be violence, So I'm
sorry if you have a trigger with violence, but that's
gonna be here. There's gonna be blood, there's gonna be
some body horror stuff, but I'm gonna avoid as much
uh realistic stuff as possible other.
Speaker 4: Than violence, lines and veils.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and we'll we'll get into those off air
so that you know. Any of your dirty secrets so
leak to the internet. So oh yeah, got So we're
gonna be a wood. I can't touch wood. It kills me.
I'm like a like a green lantern. By the way,
do you guys know that green lantern can't affect wood?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a stupid thing. The color yellow and wood like,
I don't know. I don't know. They were silly back
when they were making comic books back then. So let's
build some characters. So in this there are four playable
I believe they're called ancestries in this one. Some systems
will call them races or something like that, but they're
called ancestries.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 1: There are four of those available. They each have their
own interesting flavor to them, but mechanically there's no difference,
which is pretty cool. So the Drow or dark Elves
I had mentioned briefly, there's the humans that you guys
might know one or two of those in real life.
We've got ale Fear or high Elves are the oppressors
from above, and then knowles, which are like hyena men.
So you got those, and then you're gonna pick a class,
and you're gonna pick a calling, so the class. Everybody
is listening to this. You've probably played D and D right, Yes, okay, cool,
so you know what a class is. Callings are totally
different and really unique, and I don't think I've seen
anything like that in any role playing game that's not
made by these dudes. So we'll get into that and
more specific as we get there. But first off, we're
gonna go through and we're gonna pick our classes and
then go from there. So the three of you, I
made everybody aware that we're gonna build these characters on air,
but everybody got really excited and picked stuff already. So
we'll just go through and talk about what class you
guys have picked and like a little bit of information
about them that from your understanding. You don't go You're
gonna have to do like a book report, just your
understanding of it, why you picked it, and what you
think is super cool about it. So I'm gonna start
top Tom or start with you, Aaron, What class did
you pick him?
Speaker 4: So I picked from a class. I picked Deep Apiarist,
which is underground b at a professional level. So like
lore wise, there's like I guess like these bees that
exist within heart that I think the bees kind of
work opposed to the hearts will like they're almost like
abhorrent like in this like really thing, like they're their
own thing and they have like a high mind and
basically my character or like anyone who fixed the deipiarist
has willingly allowed the bees to make a nest within themselves.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and are.
Speaker 4: A hive within themselves, and so you can control the bees,
and the bees like kind of work along with you.
But then they were also slowly taking you over. So
like the well, as you get more powerful abilities, it
becomes very clear that the bees have as much control
as you do. And that's kind of what I like
about it is it's like it can be something where
you start off like already kind of like you've given
yourself to the bees. You could start off and like
you could be like, yeah, it can you can tell
different stories with it, which is what I like, and
then you can with all the yea. But what I
really like about it is that surprisingly enough looking at
it it's very much so a support class in a
lot of ways. Like you can make it into like
a high damage dealing class for sure, but but like
this is one of the classes that has the ability
to do healing and and stress production on the fly
or even like other types of support by changing probability
and and like even managing your own stress. You actually
can't reduce your mind stress, but it clears every so
often when you allow the bees to kind of just
merge with your mind. It's just like a core bull.
Speaker 1: Out of all of the classes in this game, I
think the deep aparist is the most unsettling. Yes, and
excited that you picked it?
Speaker 4: Yes, I did. I was really a toss up between
this and Cleaver, to be totally honest, that which I
won't get too mentioned too the clear, But that one's
also very cool, a little bit more straightforward. Yeah, but no,
I'm just excited. I'm excited to be like a weird thing.
Am I keeping my ancestry to see picked for now
as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll come back to that.
Speaker 4: But yeah, that's all I have to say about the
deep Aviarist.
Speaker 1: Great cool. Next up, we got Ethan. What class have
you chosen?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I ended up going with the Hound. And
so the Hound is basically someone who has taken on
the badge from this old ancient regime, which they are
called the Thirty Thirds. And so they're this old group
of basically police officers, and you go and you take
a badge and you become part of them, and you
can kind of like pull in their power. And then
also it's kind of expected that you are somewhat of
the law enforcement from within heart, which is pretty darn
chaotic and I think just kind of interesting. It's I
kind of went in towards this one because it's one
of those it's a little simpler than things like the
Deep Apparitionists, which, like that one scared the heck out
of me, But then it also kind of sounded like,
you know, with this class, it kind of comes with
a sense of a story or a reasoning or a
drive or that type of thing. And that was definitely
you know, just reading through, it's like, you know, you
kind of go and you're like, I want a character
that like has a meeting to be here, and I
just kind of tell that and I'm like, oh, like
they're just they just decided to be or like you know,
it was put upon them that like, now they're an
authority and they're just like the police in the super
odd weard world. And I'm like, that'll be some interesting conversations.
So yeah, I thought that'd be cool.
Speaker 4: Because does everyone else agree with you that you're the police?
That's that's a.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, absolutely, it's I I would say it's more
like than just just the word police specifically. I would
say it's more like an old West sheriff more than
regular old police. You know, you got kind of a
frontier justice kind of vibe. But uh, well yeah, yeah,
it's gonna be an interesting character. And then last we
got CJ.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to be playing a vermission night.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: What I know of it is that long ago the
high Elms wanted to make a train highway underground and
then they're working on it, was they're getting progress, but
then they're like, hey, why don't we use the heart
to power it? Then they dug a little too deep
and then the heart was like no, and then it
completely corrupted the train system that they were making, and
now it's completely warped and fucked up, and they're like, yeah,
we're not touching that anymore. But there's then a whole
bunch of other people were like, Hey, there's cool shitting there.
Let's tear it apart and figure out this weird shit. Now,
now they explore it and use the scraps of metals
that they find around from the old building and use
it however they see fits, and yeah, that's my understanding
of them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I kind of just looked at that one.
Speaker 2: They're like, they're like beefy libraries. Librarians. That's my that's
what I imagine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like train paladins, so like you have armor
made out of train parts, like power armor made out
of train parts. It's it's it's pretty weird. But yeah, yeah,
that's already a lot of lore being dropped right out
of the gate. And I love that. I love it.
It's all integrated and cooked right into all of this stuff.
So then ancestries, So there's the four. Uh, we're gonna
go in reverse order. CJ, what an stressed ancestry?
Speaker 2: Did you choose gonna be a human?
Speaker 1: Why did you choose human? And what what's cool about
humans in the setting? Based off of your.
Speaker 2: Reading, I chose human because I don't know, just kind
of like with the like vibe of it, like I
usually do go trying to like I'm usually more attracted
to the more fanatical like races.
Speaker 3: Whatever, but like.
Speaker 2: Just because humans, to me see it are more like
nitty green. Let's like grab shitt tinger with it, Like, hey,
what's the thing? I don't know, Let's throw it at
the wall and see what happens. That Yeah, fails to
like suit the kind of vibe of the games, like
just because like the vibe of the character I wanted,
like the elves kind of have their own thing going on.
And then like Knowles was like it's cool little but
like that's that, you know, let's just go plain Jane human.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the Yeah, the humans are way more curious
than the other races are or their ancestries are in
the system.
Speaker 4: So that makes sense. And of the four, they're the
ones that are like from far away and people don't
know much about them. And because it's like this is
the one like Alfears and draw are kind of like
the base, like those are like the most too, most
common you'll see, and then noles are around and then
like humans come from the far east, Like I thought
that was kind of cool about humans.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, they're these weird, inquisitive uh strangers that like
to dig in the ground and tinker with stuff and
don't live long. Very interesting. Yeah, they dive real quick.
Uh So let's go in reverse order, Ethan, what ancestry
if you chosen?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I went with a drough and so I really,
I mean it's it's interesting as far as Aaron lent
me his Spire books. So I read a little bit
into that trying to get a little bit more lore
that kind of was hoping to get somewhere into there.
And the drought we're interesting one. It's uh, you know,
it's it's the common folk, you know, And so there's
kind of that of like, you know, I like the
idea of starting as anybody and then having a story
kind of drive out from there. And so there's definitely
that hook. And then also there you know, this oppressed
kind of group as well, right, and so there's kind
of this whole you know, if you go and aspire
like probably all sorts in the heart, there's very much
like you know, the afer are like these you know,
high and mighty better than thou living a great life
that you know, like the kind of it's cool. Kind
of the book here talks about how like the drought
or you know, and the aphert are positibly the same race,
but then they could have been like it's it's said
that the drought might have been cursed so that they
can't go and like explore sunlight, and so it's just
it's it's it's just it's a really sad it's a
sad class to kind of start with. And I'm like, oh,
that sounds fun.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, that's a unique thing in this setting, is
that the drought cannot go out in the sun. It
hurts them. So it's a little bit different from you know,
D and D or or whatever else you've got. Cool
And then Aaron, what have you chosen?
Speaker 4: So I am going to be out theeter or high
Elf because yeah, like I just what really appealed to
me about that is like, because we're in Heart as
opposed to Spider, it's someone who's not only kind of
bad from an objective standpoint as an outside of server,
like we look at out Fear and like they're the
bad guys. But on top of that, it's like he
did something like weird or chose to go into Heart
and like you get to think about, like, well, what
would make that who would make that decision, whether it
was me or whether it was somebody made it for me?
And why like what like what like there's a lot
of story there about why someone who would generally be
like basically like a barn or something, you know, like
a typical medieval fantasy is slumming it in like this
scary underground world. And then yeah, I thought it paired
really well. Oh yeah, and I thought that would pair
really really well with with the Deep Apiarist as well.
Like I just kind of yeah, like like yeah, I
had a few different like kind of class ancestry combinations
in mind, but I think I'm really happy with the
Alpha Deep papers combo.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you sent me like five or six character
concepts ahead of time.
Speaker 4: I sent you one for everyone but missing innate. Yeah.
So yeah, like I don't know, I was just really
excited about that, like yeah, because sorry I got distracted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry, that's okay, that's okay, I just gotta it's
got a message for an interview thing for John Harper. Hey,
thanks buddy, I know you're listening. Thank you.
Speaker 4: Well, there you go. That is exciting stuff. But yes, yeah,
I think more than anything, I'm kind I kind of
like playing bad guys in in RPGs, like bad guys
who are heroes as well, like like if that makes
any sense, like they're not evil, but you don't want
to be their friend.
Speaker 1: Like that's the heel. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's kind of my favorite archetype of character and play.
So cool.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, like I said, the ancestries have no mechanical
impact on the game. They just kinda give you more flavor,
which is the best part. So the last.
Speaker 4: Would it be worthwhile? Because it says when you generate
a character, roll twice to create some trinkets and keep
sakes they brought with them to the city beneath, would
be worthwhile. Okay, not bad.
Speaker 1: We will, we will, We'll get there. I want to
go through the choicest the third thing, the third core
element of your character. It's totally unique to this game.
Uh and I think I'm not sure. I don't remember
if it's inspired or not, but I think it's inspire.
It might not be inspired, I don't know either way.
Is your calling? So the calling in this is the
the reason that you going into the heart, and the
calling is what gives you your selection of special abilities
as well as your selection of beats. Now, beats are
a super awesome, very interesting system that help progress your character.
That basically what you do is you pick, like, hey,
these are the things that I want to happen in
the game for my character. These are the story things
I want to happen. These are the mechanical things I
want to happen. And you tell me what those are
and I adapt the game to those and once you
achieve those beats, you get more ability. So that's how
you advance your character. And you basically flat out tell me,
this is what I want to do, and it makes
it so that I can build a story that's specifically
what everyone sitting down to play it wants to do.
It's super cool, super interesting and a very it feels
really natural, while it's also very mechanical at the same time.
So I looking forward to that. So we're gonna go
through We're gonna go through everybody's callings and talk about
why we chose him, and don't give us too much
on the character's backstory or anything like that. I want
that to come out organically. But starting in reverse of
the previous reverse Aaron, which calling did you choose forced?
Speaker 4: So I did pick forced, And without getting too much
into why that's the case, just yeah, he is not
here of his own polition and is being forced to
here against his will. Yeah, and a lot of that
kind of comes with like I I just a couple
of reasons as it fits into the story I wanted
to tell. But also I love the special ability you
get with it.
Speaker 1: Which is the special ability you get with it?
Speaker 4: So I get what's it called. I'm just gonna look
at it real quick. It is called collateral. I have
a knack for getting behind someone else when things kick off,
so I can allocate stress to other PCs or NBCs instead,
I'm working itself at the beginning of combatsh like when
bad things go up, go down because I don't want
to be here, So why would I take the vantage?
Speaker 1: So good? That is hilarious.
Speaker 3: Have the ability, it's great against someone else's problem, like, hey,
I work for.
Speaker 1: Future me, so yeah, that's great. So forth, So somebody,
somebody is compelling you to be down here. You're not
here because you want to be here, And I can
already tell without I know which a character's backstory is.
But as as a detective, a casual detective. I don't
get paid to be a detective. Don't be fooled already
knowing you're an al fear and you're here, you're forced.
It makes perfect sense, Like you don't want to be here,
you want to be up there, you want to be
up living the high life, but for some reason, you
have to be here, and I like it. Next up,
we got Ethan, which have you chosen for your calling?
Speaker 3: I went with adventure, and so to me, it just
kind of lined up with the crow Pound, like that's
one of those like you start putting the puzzle pieces
in and you're like, oh yeah, like that's the next one.
And it was very much just like okay, like I
see my character, you know, hitting the front line or
being like oh we should go do this or that,
and it's like, oh, like there it is. They're an adventurer,
like they're looking to do things or help people or
get money or I don't know, but like that's you
know the calling card is there?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I mean it's it makes perfect sense. And
what's the core ability for the adventure calling?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So there core ability is called legendary and so
you strive to live up to the stories that they'll
tell of your exploits. So when I gain a minor advance,
I refresh D six, and when I gain a major advance,
I refresh D eight. So my sense from that is,
and I don't know how often I'm gonna be gaining
minor major advances, so a little less. But it's just
one of those you know, it's if you go and
you kind of get a little into some thicker action,
if it happens right before level up, you can kind
of recover a little better and be faster back out
on the streets doing stuff again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the way I see it is like, you know,
you've achieved something that you want to do and you've
gotten stronger, and that reinvigorates you. You're like, fuck, yeah,
I am awesome. I am a legend. And then that
allows you to remove some stress, so you're you know,
you push yourself back up, you know, spin out some
teeth and get right back into it, or you know
you're mentally refreshed or.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I like it. I like it a lot. It makes sense,
And I got a question I'm gonna ask all of
you guys once we're done with this CJ. Which one
did you choose?
Speaker 2: I chose Heart Song.
Speaker 6: Uh guess the general description of it is that something
about the heart just pulls you a little one just
the mystery of it, or perhaps it the very heart
itself is just drawing you in a little just a
little more, just look a little around a little more.
And I thought that went with a Vermission Knight really well.
Speaker 2: That's like I also have the like, oh, this kind
of works really well, we'll just go with that, like
the because the Permission Knights they're like searching around, they're
looking around through the heart, and so like if you
get a little calling from the heart while you're searching around,
that's that seems like a really easy cause and effect.
Speaker 4: And I think it pairs well with the spiritual connection
that you probably have to the trains and the fact
that the trains are corrupted by the heart too, so
it's like they're like kind of one and the scene. Now,
like I don't know, like that's just how that's my
first thought when I hear that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so there's there's there is some lore that's
baked in, but they have this nice thing at the
beginning where they're like whatever it's your game, use it,
don't use it whatever. So kind of similar to how
Blades in the Dark was, where there's some lare built in,
but a lot of it we're going to be establishing
as we play, so that that connection there isn't necessarily
part of the books version of reality. But if you
guys decide it is, it is and I love it.
So what's the core ability? The first ability you get
automatically for having the heart song as you're calling, well, core.
Speaker 2: Ability is in the blood, so you move through the
heart as if blessed. I have plus one echo protection
and once per situation, when you take stress to any
resistance other than echo, you can allocate it echo.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what that means. The protection is basically like armor.
It like soaks up stress. So you have plus one
echo protection. That means that anytime that you're taking echo stress,
you take one less so you're able to once per
situation shunt something over to echo instead. So if it
were going to be for one point of stress, you
can like put an echo and then you take nothing.
So if you're able to keep your echo stress low,
it's like a backup. It's an interesting mechanic Heart's Song
is in my mind, the weirdest of the callings, and
it's the most I feel it's the most interesting. Just
just from a narrative standpoint. It's if I were making
a character, is definitely the one I would pick because
it's it's like a I don't know, man. It reminds
me of the movie Jacob's Ladder, even though it's got
nothing to do with it. But it makes me think
of Jacob's Ladder. So we've got the bones of the
characters already. It's pretty quick. The classes come with automatic abilities,
and then you've got your beats to choose. You've got
your automatic ability that you get from your calling. Your
ancestry does not have any mechanical impact. But we have
a couple of more things that we need to define
with the characters before they're done. Some of these things
there's narrative stuff. We're gonna go through the questions in
a moment. But looking at your classes, it shows you
what skill you start off with your domain, So what
the domain is. Every different place you go to will
have one or more domains associated with it, and if
you're in a domain that your character has, you get
an extra die. So for example, we've got the deep apiaris.
Your domain is a cult, so if you're in a
place that is a cult, you're more profficient with doing
things there. Things there will make more sense to you.
You've got the skill again for your character is men,
so when you're using the Men's skill, you're getting an
extra dye. You've got some resources stuff you start off with.
So it says heart bloom rose in a glass jar.
That's a piece of equipment that you've got. They're not equipment,
but a resource that you have, excuse me, which has
tags associated. This is D six occult and this is fragile,
so fragile. If you look at this home screen that
I set up for you guys, you got all the
tags are laid out there. I hope you can read.
It's not too fuzzy, but fragile should be on there.
Speaker 4: You can also click on the tags in the world,
like if it has If it has a tag, you
can click on it and it'll open up the page
that tells you what it says.
Speaker 1: Oh nice, so nice will be destroyed if dropped or
damaged exactly, so keep an eye out for that. You
can use the resources to if it makes sense narratively
to inflict stress on things, whether it's an enemy or
a situation, or you can use it to recover stress.
So and then you've got equipment. So for your guy,
you've got hive tool. I'm not exactly sure what that is,
but you can define it. You use it for killing,
so it gives you it does a defour stress with killing.
And it's got the brutal tag, which says when you
roll for stress against an adversary when using this item,
roll two dice and pick the highest multiple instances of
this tag stack. If you manage to get it three times,
you'll roll four dice and pick the highest wind calculating stress.
Then you get the choice. It says pick one of
and it gives you three other things, which are a
dimensional barometer. I mean obviously you know obviously what it does,
a hunting rifle or a smoker. Yeah, you get to
choose one of those.
Speaker 4: I did go with the dimensional barometer. I feel like
it's a it's basically like a compass in this world
that's like so nebulous and stuff. You're just kind of
following the path of least resistance. I feel like that's
what it does.
Speaker 1: That yeah, yeah, it's like that. It's it tells you,
you know, the pressure of reality, uh, which whatever that means.
It does that, and it helps you find the path
of least resistance. It's beautiful. I like the way you
phrased it. I didn't need to rephrase it beautiful.
Speaker 3: So you just say exactly what Aaron said again exactly.
Speaker 4: It was like He's like, damn it, that was good.
That was good.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful, beautiful. Feel free to edit out anything from
this podcast or leave it in. I'm gonna, you know,
I'm just going to remove that hands off.
Speaker 4: Completely.
Speaker 1: It'll be hilarious. I will do that for the patrons.
You get the Adam free track because I know you
on it, so then we don't like I shut up, right.
So the hound, your skill is hunt, your domain is haven.
The resource you have is a bottle of rock Cup
liquor which D six and Haven. And then you've got equipment.
You get to pick one. So, looking at the equipment options,
which thing would you choose?
Speaker 3: So I had the option between a standard issue the
Grand rifle, a repeater side arm and knife, or a
well stocked haversack and cudgel, and so I ended up
going with the repeater side arm and knife only because
or explicitly because it had the brutal tag and that
just sounded really cool and metal, and so I really
liked the idea of that, and like, I don't though,
I just I had in my head where like you
if you're taken like the three options are like, if
you want the rifle, you're probably looking for more long
range things, and you know what, like, let's be more upfront.
I think it's easier to have a fight when you're
like three feet away. And then the other one for
like the well stopped haversack and and cudgel. It's one
of those I was starting to lean on men just because,
like you know, there's the different areas of the skills.
But then I realized kind of looking at it, that
both of the characters that Aaron and CJ Are playing
have some amount of mend and so I don't know,
it's one of those I was like, maybe I'll be
a little different than that, because it's like, I don't know,
maybe if I had gone men, there could be a
point in the story where, like, you know, we all
fix a house together, and good for us. But I
didn't really think that it would be going in that direction,
so I figured I'd try to mix things.
Speaker 1: Up a little bit cool, okay, and then CJ, you've
got the deep Aavier is a weird last, but the
Pharmacy Unite is also very weird. So tell us about
what your character's got.
Speaker 2: Uh. For resources, there is spare capacitors and wires. That's technology,
I'll tell you I do. I don't know about the equipment.
I haven't looks too much at that.
Speaker 7: Well, the skill you have is delve oh, which lets
you That's the skill that you'll use to navigate and
basically trailblaze between locations, which makes sense for this character.
Speaker 1: And then the domain you have is technology. Then you've
got three options for equipment, and each of them is
kind of weird, and I meant.
Speaker 3: That they're so cool. They're so cool, Like the Vision
Nite has got such cool weapons.
Speaker 2: A nomadic camera does sound pretty cool. I do have
a question, what the hell's a mage light rig?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's whatever you dream to be, But what does it?
Speaker 1: What do you think it is?
Speaker 4: I don't know, Well, what's the tag beside it?
Speaker 3: Say?
Speaker 2: It says?
Speaker 4: So it could literally be something like like a mine
cart if you want it to be like special or yeah,
like it could be like a thing you put on
your head so you can see better.
Speaker 1: Okay, I would imagine in my mind it is like
the like a headlight from a train that comes out
of your chest. But it could be whatever you want
it to be.
Speaker 3: It could be a train because some information train that
guides you in the right direction.
Speaker 1: No, but you know, well maybe you know what, why
not fuck it. I'm not gonna say no to you guys,
So there you go. Okay, don't make me regret it.
Speaker 3: It's really cool though, like I love with the Verbisian knighte.
How's It's really like there's almost this like do you
want like DPS? Do you want more tag like like
or like those options they're like it's I love the
variety you have on that character.
Speaker 1: Really to an extent. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's like
like Ethinn was talking about his is basically like how
how far away do you want to be? Essentially, Uh,
this is way way more like like DPS, tank or utility.
Like it's like flat out you know which of those
do you like? You could pick based off of mechanics
or the thing you think is the coolest, which is
the way that I always recommend people go.
Speaker 2: I'm between the combo of scrap sort and major let
rig and the steel door shield.
Speaker 4: Okay, I mean oh damn.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So looking at the mechanics rules wise, both of
them provide you with kill at a D six, So
you can just disregard that because it's the same either way.
One of them gives you an extra D six for
delving and the other one gives you block and Block
says that it's plus one blood protection, so it makes
you harder to physically harm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So do you want to spend more time talk
about how you're exploring or more time being a badass
in a fight?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a hard question.
Speaker 4: Is a hard question if it makes it any easier
over time. Like my plan is to become more and
more useful as a support character. It's like something I'm
excited to do in this one. So like if you're
finding that like like oh okay, like I really want
to get into like standing and bang, then I might
start taking options that help us explore and finding directions
and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Because I don't want to steer you in any direction,
but I do want to point out that there is
a very clear synergy with the shield and the hiding
behind the person that's got a shield characters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I'm just gonna go this. This, this
is the shield, I think.
Speaker 1: Okay, cool, So you've got some dress steel door shield
drag it cool. So we've also got minor abilities you get.
I forgot how many this is it three or is
it two? I think it's two.
Speaker 3: I can't swag it.
Speaker 4: If you click the eye beside your class name, it'll
open up a list and then you can just click
on the like toggle for stuff you want. Okay, thank you, Sorry,
let's make that easier.
Speaker 1: Thank you. By the way, we're gonna be using Foundry
Foundry Virtual Tabletop for this. There is a module available
or game World wherever they call it available for heart
and it is pretty solid, pretty clean, and uh it
is visually fairly appealing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was super simple. Like, I so my one resource,
the bottle of rocket liquor that I had it was
it said D four pursed, but in the book it's
D six haven And so it was super simple to
go in and click the view and edit the fields
just saved. Yeah. No, that's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good Okay, cool, So we will because it looks
like CJ is looking at stuff. We're going to start
from the top and work our way down again in
reverse reverse reverse order, which I believe is the original order. So, Aaron,
you've got as the deep apiarist. You've got three You've
got well, you've got your core abilities. You've got two
core abilities. You get to pick three minors one major. Now,
if you look at the majors, they do include like,
uh like advancements that are minor.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Now, I so I I cheated, and I've already
done all this for myself because I just love this
book so much. I read it like one hundred and
fifty times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why we're starting with you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'll just very quickly go through like core
abilities and then and then what I added. So the
core ability that you start off with, or there's two,
but you start off with the hive. The sweetlings nest
within your body. My organs are replaced with complex copies
made from wax by industrious bees, and they live within you.
Fucking biz more and more of them as I grow
a more powerful. But they're curious buzzing a lines your
mind with the hive at the beginning of each situation
clear all mind stress. As in seven madness flows through
you and into the hive. You can never benefit from
mind protection or remove stress from mind in any other way.
Speaker 3: It's so interesting. It changes like the mechanics.
Speaker 4: So anytime anything bad happens, I immediately heal on mind.
So it's like taking mind fallout is not a huge
deal for me.
Speaker 1: And what do you take the fallout? The fallout still there?
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, sorry, but no, but if I take the stress,
it will all clear eventually. But yeah, like, but I
can't heal, So it depends on how often. I guess.
I'm not certain what the what a situation is for situation,
but we'll get to it.
Speaker 1: But that's that's built in. So you get that one.
You also what's the other one?
Speaker 4: And I get released the swarm. I send out a
swarm of be's eager to defend me. So I get
a weapon. Basically, it's a it's a spread range to
D four kill weapon.
Speaker 1: Okay, so uh, well we know what D four is.
Kill is the skill that it applas you. Range means
it can be used at range, very very intuitive. Spread
says anyone standing near the target on a successful use
must roll evade plus the domain or another applicable skill
to avoid marking stress as well. So it's basically a
bee shotgun.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, which means I can though is what my
bees do not discriminate on who they kill other than me?
Speaker 1: Indiscriminate bees.
Speaker 4: Yes, And then you get three minors and one major
ability that you get to choose. I've for I picked
three separate minor ones and one major without getting into
any of the miners underneath just yet. Okay, so I
picked perfect machine. Basically I start to see things like
kind of like as the connect I'm like that math
meme where the ladies like. But then also I gained
the technology to mean I'll given time. I can repair
technological devices even if I don't have the right parts,
because I can make them for wax and extruded bone.
Speaker 1: Bone, yes, like.
Speaker 4: Replace parts of my body, right, so like I can
actually my bones to the cos.
Speaker 1: And then bone comes out to replace the broken key.
Oh my god, it's bizarre. I love it.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And then I took one called intoxicant, which I
have pheromone glands that pucker and blossom on my wrists
and neck. I am alluring, irresistible, and almost soft horrific.
I gained the compel skill, and once per session, when
I talk to someone for five minutes or more, I
can convince them to revert to their basis impulses. I mean,
they're completely driven by lust, hunger or I need for shelter,
whichever they desire the right now, man and then eat it,
eat it, eating my last miners. I took intrusion, which
gives me the wild domain.
Speaker 1: And then so you got you got a decent spread.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And then I basically it gives the ability to
control a wild animal by rolling compel and wild at
the same time. And then I can direct the animal
to perform basic tasks. But the swarm's control is imperfect.
My body goes unconscious as I basically possess this animal.
And then the bees eat the animal and it always dies.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's awful. It's awful. I love it.
So that raises a very interesting question. Are you the
bees or are you the vessels?
Speaker 4: Think about it, don I don't know. And then and
then my major is called unchaos. The heart is a
chaotic place. You seek to undo that with ancient magic.
I can roll, mend in a cult to cast this
bell and then basically what it does is for the
remainder of the situation, I picked either myself or an ally,
and they treat all risky or or or they treat
all risky actions as standard actions as I control probability
around them.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, that's weird. It's real weird. I love it.
Have you got a chance to look through and make
your choices on that stuff I have?
Speaker 3: I also somewhat cheated, I would some of it was excitement.
Some of it is, you know, a fear of you know,
jumping on this podcast and going, oh geez, I don't know,
let me commit to something that I'm going to try
to roleplay for the next you know, one hundred hours
and like, great, this skill I hated.
Speaker 2: Don't worry, leave that to me.
Speaker 3: You're like, all regrets come in my way. But yeah,
So first and foremost, the one skill I know I
absolutely well, I guess, I guess I'll go through. So
as the hound, I have the core ability of in
the thick of it. So I have a knack forgetting
myself into just enough trouble to find the truth. So
once for situations when you would mark stressed to any
other resistance than fortune, I mark it to fortune, and
then when I suffer fortune followed, I roll with mastery
for the remainder of the situation. So there's this amount
of as the Hound where it's like you want something
bad to happen, great, now that something bad has happened,
you're gonna do a little better. So that's kind of
It's an interesting It kind of reminds me of like
the Litch class in Wow, where it's like, you know,
you kind of one of those things, but one of
those MMO type characters where you kind of like you
suffer in order to do better.
Speaker 4: And I always find lots they take damage to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of in a way. I just I feel
like this guy is like, oh, man, have you ever.
Speaker 4: Seen the movie Goon, like with Sean As.
Speaker 1: I think it's not Sean Aston Scott. I think it's
Sean something else. Yes, Stiffler, stiff Yeah, forever Stiffler. Sorry,
Uh yeah, dude, Goon Like We're I remember if it
was the first one or the second one. Spoilers for
the movie Goon. It's old enough. You should have seen
it by now. If you haven't seen it, watch the
movie goon.
Speaker 3: It's it's really good.
Speaker 1: It's really really good. It's really really good. But we're like, dude,
he like breaks his ankle and then like stands back
up and he's like spits out some teeth and then
he just like beats the snot out of it, and
like that's what that is. That's what it's like. It's
like everything that's everything that could go wrong has gone wrong,
and it's out of the way. And like now now
I'm clear. Now we're gonna go.
Speaker 3: It's all down. Let's go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And dude, I I already these characters and we
haven't even started. I'm excited.
Speaker 3: That's so interesting, right, So with that, going into the
minor abilities, I decided to kick off with with kill count.
So your weapons are cross hatched with kill marks, a
testament to what you've done to protect others. So I
gained the kill skill, and whenever I kill a person
or creature, I remove one stress from any resistance. So
I think that's cool, right, or it just it starts
for boarding you for just like messing people up, which
you know, I don't think this could have existed in
the last session, last game that we played Blaze in
the dark, but boy, that would have been great or
really chao.
Speaker 4: Like no kill spilling what else?
Speaker 3: Yet? Yes, after that doing the better part of valor,
so you get everyone out alive if not intact. So
I gained the evade skill. So and if you succeed
on an evade, you on an evade role all nearby
Ally's role with mastery when trying to evade until you
next stacked. So it's kind of this. I wasn't too
sure about it, but I mean Aaron also just mentioned
like this b shotgun or something like that, and just
kind of this idea of like getting into like generally,
when there's a spot where I think my character would
need to evade, I imagine other people are also going
to be doing the same thing. Of it's like, you know,
here comes the fire, here's the spike trap. Here's like they.
Speaker 4: Basically attack you with bees so that we all get
better at evating.
Speaker 1: You know what. This is a little gaming, but we'll
see how it goes.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And then the third minor one was looking
at quartermaster training. So you have studied under the Quartermaster
of the Hounds, learning the valuable skill of creative acquisition.
So I get plus one huge supplies protection. Okay, cool,
I just I love that description too. It's just like
it's like, oh no, no, no, no, it's like here's a
lunch bag in a backpack and you're good to go, exactly.
So yeah, plus one supplies protection. You don't like to
be unarmed, you still build and improvise what you need,
so your unarmed attacks become D six brutal unreliable, which basically,
so usually unarmed is D four. And so what unreliable
is is that if I roll and fail, basically it breaks,
and so I no longer have it for that session
or that delve or I don't quite know what the
reset point is, but yeah, so just kind of an
interesting spot where you know, the D six is as
good as the knife. So really it's just like there's
three different D six items, so always gonna have something
to attack with.
Speaker 1: Nice, nice, nice nice, And then you're major.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So for Major, I went with the option of
it's forewarned and fore armed, so never get into a
fight you can't win once per session. Whenever you have
an hour two to spare in a landmark, you can
make preparations for the coming challenge. So pick one of
the benefits for the list below and all of the
other characters who choose to partake and preparations gain this
benefit until they next enter the landmark. So basically, it's
a general buff that we can do before going and
doing a delve, which involves like whetstone and weapon drill.
So one piece of equipment gains one piece of kill
equipment gains the brutal tag and checkered yeah, and so
there's another one for delve and getting something that's trusty,
or there's like a buff for blood protection, mind protection
or supplies protection. So it's kind of like before we
go into a delve, it's like, you know, playing the buff,
It's like, all right, this is gonna suck for mine,
so let's all stack up on mind protection and go it.
Speaker 1: It's awesome, very very helpful, very team oriented. I like it. CJ.
You are playing the Vermision Knite. The I can't say
the weirdest because there's a lot of weird one of
the weirdest classes in here. So what have we got
for your abilities? What's the one that you start off with,
your core ability, and then what have you chosen to
supplement yourself?
Speaker 2: The core ability is the vermission plate. I have armor
that is made up of scavenge barely understood technology from
the alternate realities inside the permission network. Once per session,
when I consume a resource with the technology or cult
domain by augmenting or repairing my armor, roll a resources
dice and then choose one of four things to happen,
so it can either remove stress marked against blood, mind
or echo equal to the amount rolled, inflict stress on
a delve, or adversary equal to the amount rolled. If
I am using a D eight resource style or higher,
I can gain access to a skill or domain for
the rest of the session, and then also with the
D eight could increase blood protection by one for the
rest of the situation.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's cool. So you're basically putting other stuff into
your armor to boost yourself.
Speaker 3: It's oh, your armor is like a train then, right,
it's made out of train parts. Well, but it's like
the whole Like instead of like putting in coal, it's
like you put in like an artifact into like this
like engine thing, right, that's so.
Speaker 1: Cool, or you like like like like attached it to
it in a way or like stuff like that, Like, oh,
so weird. I'm into it. You got three miners one major.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Have you had the opportunity to check these out, because
I just.
Speaker 2: Skimmed through all of them. Okay, so currently the ones
that I marked off were Arkane, re Breather, armor plating,
Night Protectors, Stalwart Protector's Gauntlet, or steel Bones.
Speaker 4: Are those all minor?
Speaker 2: Those are all miners because there's a there's a lot, yeah,
a few as No, Yeah, I get three. So that's
why I wrote.
Speaker 3: Down I don't know if you need night Protector. Aaron's
already gonna be hiding behind you, so that one get redundant.
Speaker 2: I would gain the kill skill, and then once per situation,
if an ally is within arms reach, uh and they
were gonna take blood, I can take the blood instead.
Speaker 1: He's gonna make you do that situation. So yeah, all right,
we'll knock that one off.
Speaker 5: I can do it to NPCs too, so like oh yeah,
like steal bones because I could just jump off with
three story building and be cool.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that one says your armor bolts, it's a
special implants or a powerful energy and distribute it through
your body, getting the endure skill, and you can follow
this and stuff up to three stories. So that's it
literally says what you said.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think the endure skill like is something that
nobody else has too.
Speaker 1: I think that I don't think so, yeah, that would
be something that.
Speaker 4: Would be useful.
Speaker 2: Well grab that guy again.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of the movie Goon where he
breaks his ankle and then he keeps going by the way.
I think about that scene in Goon a lot.
Speaker 4: I haven't thought about the movie in a while, but
I love that movie.
Speaker 1: I think about the movie a lot. Uh Marv from
uh since the consequence is just partially based on the
movie Goon. Nice where he's just like like I'm proud
of you, Like I'm proud of you too.
Speaker 2: Protector's gauntlet was one that can give plus one blood
protection and plus one fortune protection.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, like to you or to an ally to me?
So yeah, yeah, I mean that sounds pretty solid. And
you are the block already gives you one blood protection.
There's two blood protection. That means that you're you can
soak up a lot. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Block.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the block, Yeah yeah, making a pretty tanky,
pretty tanky character.
Speaker 2: Then I was I was thinking about the arcane re
breather because as echo protection and then like, if I
can keep the echo clear, then I can think you
guys were talking about have that as a pool for
later plus.
Speaker 1: Two echo protection?
Speaker 4: Yeah, wow, which would mom make you plus three echo
protection overall? Because of the heart song ability?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's yeah, your character is going to be really
durable awesome.
Speaker 3: Also that pool ability that was like that was Aaron's
specific thing though with echo right because or or did
I miss that?
Speaker 1: No, that's that's CJ's special ability from the heart song.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh that if I take damage from somewhere else, I
can throw it into echo instead.
Speaker 1: And then so and soak a bunch of it.
Speaker 2: Yes, I have echo protection. Then I can leave that
open so I can throw ship into echo.
Speaker 1: Love it beautiful, Major.
Speaker 2: I was between two get behind me and Trailblazer.
Speaker 1: I like the idea of you you go and get
behind Me's like, I'm already behind you.
Speaker 2: Done, don't.
Speaker 4: I'm a coward.
Speaker 2: Uh any ally with an arm any alley with an
arms reach of you gains plus one blood protection thanks
to your interventions. Once for situation, you can bellow and
ordered and removed D four blood or mind stress from
a nearby okay um it has a few miners attached
to it.
Speaker 3: You had to unlock those with your base, your super tanky.
I love that. That's super that's cool, incredibly, And.
Speaker 2: Then the Trailblazer was uh leading teams of explorers last
size today even know the cost of your health. When
you lead a party on the delve, you activates ability.
When active, it increases the stress dice inflicted on the delve,
and that and that the dell influts on you by
one step okay faster.
Speaker 3: It's like like a delve stress is like once we
it's like a clock that once we finished, the delve
is completed.
Speaker 4: So the trail you're finding shortcuts that are maybe a
little bit more dangerous, but they're way faster. Okay.
Speaker 2: So that's that's the one too on between.
Speaker 4: I mean, I like both of them a lot, but.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 4: Well, okay, do you see, like, do you want your
character to be like a knight or do you want
your character to be like an explorer and like eager
to like explore explore.
Speaker 2: So well, Golf Trailblazer coop.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we've got all that stuff out of the way.
The only things that are really left there's a couple
of questions that you should be resolving, and those are
all from your ancestry. I believe. I don't think the the.
Speaker 4: There's some questions all your calling, does it?
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's go through and do calling questions and
then come back to ancestry questions. We're gonna start with
CJ and we're gonna look at the heart song question
says when you create your character, answer these questions. So
which three images symbols, people or creatures do you repeatedly
see when you dream? And I'm going to crack outen
minoutes and put these down.
Speaker 2: Okay, I know two do I have?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: The third.
Speaker 3: I'm like question to you, Adam is uh I'm sharing?
Speaker 1: Uh No? I mean it could you could? You could
tell me it's like a gar Funcus and like you
just have to tell me what a gar Funcus is.
Speaker 3: You're a mushroom person.
Speaker 1: Like there we go, and then I will put those
guys in there. So let's see, uh c J player
notes boom. Okay, So what do you see when you dream?
Speaker 2: My wife?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 1: Okay, my wife, okay, my wife. You've got full boring
you never go full more.
Speaker 2: Matcha okay, and I don't know. The third thing, oh
the place, the unspecified place.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know the place? Adam? Do you do you?
Do you like the thing that I said? Or do
you want to come up with something different that up?
If you don't, it's just yeah, okay, so a place
called shell Beach. Cool? Uh. So the next thing says,
what signs do you look for to recognize where the
heart is strongest?
Speaker 2: Are you looking for like like certain kind of like growth.
Speaker 1: Or growth, Yeah, like moss growing on certain like whatever,
whatever you like? Whatever you're like, the hearts that way
get like.
Speaker 2: A certain like chemical composition in the rocks. It's like
like the the way like a certain informations.
Speaker 1: I think, So what is what? What is it? What
is it that tells you that you're going towards the heart.
Speaker 2: Like that like a kind of salty coppery scent.
Speaker 1: Salty coppery scent. Love it?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 1: Uh? You recently witnessed an unearthly site that another player character? What? Nope,
you recently witness an unearthly site with another player character?
Who was it? What happened? And how did they react?
So this is you guys all have had at least
some experience with each other before the game kicks off,
and you get to determine how someone reacted to something
and what it was.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: What was the weird thing that you witnessed unearthly? And
this can be anything, anything that you imagine. It could
be as as not weird, as like I saw a
dude start floating in the air to like weird, like
the walls turned into a giant butthole and it was
pooping out rainbows like whatever.
Speaker 2: Like uh, I was We'll go a little weird. Well,
like we're kind of like faces kind of like molding
out of like the walls and weird.
Speaker 1: Whispers faces whispering from the walls. Nice and who were
you with and how did they REACTA.
Speaker 3: Pup a coin?
Speaker 2: But I don't have a coin?
Speaker 4: Roll a detis? Who do?
Speaker 1: Should you have one of those? Actually you can flip
a coin in.
Speaker 4: Foundry slash our one D two will flip a coin.
Speaker 2: Uh even Ethan Aaron, Yeah to Evan, so Ethan, you're good.
You're a guy. Uh, he's an adventure. I'm sure he
was just like, oh what's that?
Speaker 1: So he was interested? Okay, okay, Nile, how do you
pronounce it. Yeah, Nile, Nile, Okay, cool, Nile was interested. So, uh,
let's see your connection to the heart was touched up. Nope,
I can read. I swear to God your connection to
the heart has touched you in some way. How does
that manifest.
Speaker 2: I think it manifests in like kind of like sleepwalking
kind of visions.
Speaker 1: Sleepwalking visions. That sounds very dangerous. Roundstairs.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's why I got steal bones.
Speaker 1: Maybe there you go. Yeah, you can fall down three
flights of stairs and have no trouble. It says that
we're here in the rules. Love it. Okay, cool, there
we go, and then we're gonna do all of yours.
We're gonna do your ancestries as well as a human.
We've got a couple of questions here, says answer one
of the following questions. When you make your characters, so
you get to choose either you were from the Eastern Kingdoms,
you were kicked out of retro engineering or magical college,
or your third third generation heartborn, which means that your
grandparents were born down in the heart. Which of these
things is your characters origin?
Speaker 2: Third generation?
Speaker 1: Third generation? Okay, says you your third generation heartborn and
not at all like the humans on the surface. What
incorrect assumption do people most often make about you? What
do they think about you based off of that you're
a human that's totally wrong?
Speaker 2: Is there a list or am I just coming up with? Is?
Speaker 1: Now? Do you make it up?
Speaker 4: Just know that my character will make this assumption about
you and everybody.
Speaker 1: Everybody will like it will be a.
Speaker 3: Lot, It'll come up a lot.
Speaker 4: So I will argue with you.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure you're taller than you are. You were
six foot four before.
Speaker 4: I just think rocks or.
Speaker 3: Something like pretends to sleep for half the time that
they're asleep, Like.
Speaker 4: I think you might just be at the fact of bell.
Speaker 2: Uh they can they have they can? Well, that'd be
a no.
Speaker 3: I mean humans are pretty remote. You can say whatever
you want.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think of a good one.
Speaker 1: So think of something something that is true about most
humans in this world that you get to make up
that is not true about you.
Speaker 2: Humans can't taste spicy food.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, all right. Most people think that you can't
taste spicy food, but oh boy, you can't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a bird kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Birds can't taste spicy food.
Speaker 4: No, can I offer a suggestion because I think it
might be it's that humans don't have taste buds at all.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that's yes, that's what that's that's the line
I want to go with.
Speaker 1: Thank you, all right, So just goca give her of
the word spicy. There we go. Humans can't taste food,
but you can, nice and you're gonna be judging.
Speaker 3: So most humans don't taste food. Then in this world, No.
Speaker 1: Most of them can't taste food, which.
Speaker 4: Is because she's their generation heartborn. She can because she
always wanted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, something something weird like that has happened. We're gonna
go now to Ethan. Ethan, your calling was adventure. So
we've got a couple of questions in here. So what
drove you out of the city. Well, first let's start off.
You're a drought. We're gonna start there. So you've got
three things you could choose from. Either you were born
in the city above, you were born in the city been,
or you're a traveler from a distant land.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was born in the city above.
Speaker 1: Okay, born inspire. Now it says, oh, you served a
durance which inspire. There's like a mandatory slavery period. Essentially
for drout you have to serve a certain I think
it's like four years. It says right there, four years
of indentured servitude. Look at that. It says it right
in front of me. So you spent four years of
indentured servitude under the rule of the cruel ale fear.
What were you forced to do? Like, what was your
task while you were forced to work for these guys
out there?
Speaker 3: So I want to say that I served a durance
under Kindred Bright of the unmarred, which is Aaron's ill for.
Speaker 1: Character and you for his servant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for years? Yes, I would like Aaron, if you're
cool with that, like that like the connection there? Uh
oh okay, that creates that thing which I don't actually
fully understand what Aaron's character would do or do things
in the spire. So maybe you can talk to that
a little bit more.
Speaker 1: It's you you are being asked first.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you can decide to make a decision what
I got up to while I was partying.
Speaker 1: You get to decide what he forced you to do?
What was your task? Your main service for him? Were
you like the chauffeur? Were you his foot washer, Like,
what kind of did he make you?
Speaker 3: A I had to clean wax out of all of
the rocks around where he lived, And so Aaron's character
continually drips wax.
Speaker 1: Oh does that make so much more sense? Because he's
a bee guy.
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm.
Speaker 1: Like, what the fuck is going on? How gross are
your ears? Okay?
Speaker 3: So course.
Speaker 1: Of wax scraping gross?
Speaker 4: Oh okay, I'm gonna elaborate on that a bit. I
was a candle maker.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I never knew what was alright.
Speaker 4: Because I didn't until I came down to heart like
that's the thing too, Like you, I.
Speaker 1: Don't think it was meant to be. It was meant
to be, Like you got down here, it's like, well,
now I'm made out of wax, Like, what are the odds?
It's it's it's it's very interesting already. Okay, So here
are your questions. What drove you out of the city above?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I would say that A being getting somewhat
involved with some of the coupes that happened amongst the drought,
and getting just a little bit involved, and then being
geared off, and then being exiled out of spire itself,
and so yeah, Like there's so much of spire, which
is just like the rebelling and that type of thing.
And I don't think that they got particularly too deep
into it, but enough to go in trouble exactly.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, so very interesting, And then you got kicked
out instead of just straight up murder, which is nice.
It says you and another player character barely escaped from
a dangerous situation recently. Who was it and what happened?
Speaker 3: Uh? So it was roth, So I'm gonna pick CJ's character.
And we were in a warren that was collapsing because
of the time of year that it is. Gosh, I
don't think I have up right now. So it was
the watery time of year. In fact, it still is.
So like there's different pulses in heart and one of
them is where it just like swelters and there's more
water and things become more and more difficult to traverse
in that. And so we were in a warren and
kind of that whole cave diving type situation, got lost
and then just made it out at the end.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, so barely made it. Okay, then we've gassed recently. Nope,
we just yep. Recently, you and another character returned from
a delve with an item for a wealthy patron. They
wouldn't give it up. Why and what was it?
Speaker 3: Oh? So it was my previous partner. We're no longer
partners because of this. And it was a searing crystal.
It was a fractured searing crystal that was the partner
looked at, kind of similar to like Lord of the
Rings type of deal where the hobbit goes and looks
in there and sees some kind of vision and then
just does not just decided to leave, didn't want to
hand it in in order to get paid, and just
left me with nothing.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, okay, very interesting. All right, what's the most
dangerous beast or individual you've heard tell of? And why
haven't you defeated them yet?
Speaker 3: So that would be scrag Jaw. Scrag jaw Yeah, s
c r a g okay jaw, which is a giant,
blind dog like demon that is roaming in some oh
gosh uh, I don't know, a cult area, and I've
not defeated him because it is too risky. It's not
worth the reward.
Speaker 1: Okay, and not worth the money. Yeah, cool, got it?
All right, So we got you out of the way,
and then we got one more. Let's get you in here.
That's me, that's you, and let's go. You have chosen
forced Yes, Who or what are your masters?
Speaker 4: So they are my former peers of the I forget
the name it's and I think it's called like the
Winter Court. I was kind of like upper echelon, like
pleasure palace kind of okay, and I was hanging out
with them, and they are the ones who are forcing
me down.
Speaker 1: Okay, what do they want?
Speaker 4: They want to see me suffer, maybe even die while
attempting to atone for a crime I committed.
Speaker 1: Okay, they just want to see your life suck, got it? Ogus,
let's see. Uh, how are your masters maintaining power over you?
Speaker 4: They have? So I'm kind of back and forth between
two things, which is they'll desecrate my family members graves masks,
grave masks if I don't comply, or they'll erase my
family history from the ledgers of history.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they're going to besmirch your family in some way.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, So like it's it's a legacy thing, like
where it's like all the people who have like existed
before me or whatever, like my family is important to
me obviously, because I'm important as an open every one
should remember who I am even after I die eventually.
But they're threatening to basically erase my entire family's existence
and contributions to Spire.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's what. How do they contact you?
Speaker 4: So I have a a music box that only works
when they're trying to send me messages. Okay, and so
it sends broken messages over a music box by Okay.
Speaker 1: Very weird. I love it. Uh see, choose another player character.
They have history with your masters too, Okay, let's see
their relationship.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So given that Ethan's character worked for me, and
I think this makes sense, So Niall worked under me Inspire,
he witnessed the crime that I committed, and he was
the one who reported me to the masters, M.
Speaker 1: Brutal.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 1: That is very interesting. Okay. And then we've got your
ancestry question, which as an alfearer is you got three options.
You can choose you still wear your mask, your family
name was ruined, or you still cling to one luxury.
Speaker 4: I still wear my mask.
Speaker 1: What does it look like? And why do you wear
it still?
Speaker 4: I wear it because it's my true face, okay. And
what it looks like is it used to be one
solid piece of marble, but after I committed my crime,
they attempted to break it, and so they cracked it.
So it's it's like a cracked marble mask with like
blackened eye holes that I can see through, but like
you can't see in.
Speaker 1: Okay. So it's like there's sunglasses that have when I
was a kid that had the Cubs logo on them,
and I can see through them, but you all even
see is the Cubs logo? Got it?
Speaker 4: Yeah? And so yeah, but yeah, it's it's basically just
like a mask me, not a marble, but it's been
like shattered and cracked.
Speaker 1: Okay. Cool. So that's character creation. You guys are all
built and raid a rock and roll. Oh yeah, we
got three characters done and I went over the rules
a little bit. I think we're good to call it
year for this session. So thank you guys for being here,
Thanks for listening. We'll catch you guys next week for
episode one of the Rhythm Have a good
Speaker 4: Night, who don't Lave