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Message: <blockquote data-quote="robowieland" data-source="post: 9733492" data-attributes="member: 7026452">[ATTACH=full]416436[/ATTACH]Dungeon crawler games look to expand with new classes, new loot and new stuff for the players to acquire. <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/in-heart-the-dungeon-has-been-inside-you-all-along.712735/" target="_blank">Heart</a> is no different, with a new expansion full of fresh ideas currently crowdfunding called <a href="https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/rowan-rook-and-decard/ways-means-a-heart-sourcebook" target="_blank">Ways And Means.</a> I spoke with the head of the project about what fans can expect from the upcoming expansion.“Since Heart released back in 2019,” said Elaine Lithgow, producer at Rowan, Rook and Decard, “there's been a good amount of support for Heart GMs: sourcebooks with campaign frames, locations, and more. But there hadn't been much in the way of player options, things like new equipment, callings, and of course the weird and wonderful classes which made Heart infamous. With so many new people picking up the book, I was keen to tap into that energy and offer players and GMs a tonne of new options.”Much of Heart and Spire’s unique flavor comes from the creator Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor. On a project like this, most developers need to look beyond a singular author. Doubly so when those authors are designing an entirely different game at the moment.“I managed to tear Chris and Grant away from Hollows long enough to pen a calling and class each,” said Lithgow, “but we also wanted to make sure that we used the opportunity to let others play in the world of Heart, as "big books 'o stuff" are perfect for ensemble writing teams. I tapped some familiar RRD freelance writers who knew the setting well already and also reached out to Taylor Navarro to help us find some talented POC voices to contribute too. I'm really happy with the team we've put together and how the book is shaping up. I've taken to affectionately dubbing it "a big book of cool toys made by a small team of talented weirdos".Spire and Heart both exist in the same world but the games are kept at arms length due to their themes and focus. Ways And Means provides, if not full crossover rules, some ideas on what happens when the city starts to dig into the secrets underneath.[ATTACH=full]414938[/ATTACH]“We didn't have any major themes in mind when we initially set out to make Ways and Means,” said Lithgow, “after all the surface goal was to make a 'big book o' cool stuff for players and GMs' — not something which obviously lends itself to a strong theme. Once we started though, an interesting trend emerged in the writing which lends itself to the idea that Ways and Means represents a half-step forward in the ongoing narrative of the Heart. Certain concepts like hireling guilds, trade routes, art movements, and even journalism have started to bleed from the Spire down into the Heart as interest in this strange parasitic reality grows. How the Heart will respond to this gradual influx of new people and ideas remains to be seen.”Off-kilter classes are one of the big selling points in these games. The idiosyncratic spies and revolutionaries of Spire have all sorts of unconventional tools at their disposal. Heart looks at classic dungeon crawl tropes from wild angles. Heart doesn’t have a rogue riff in the core book but that’s changing in the expansion.“The Crawler class is a good example from my own work,” said Lithgow. “When looking for class ideas, I took the concept of an archetypal rogue or thief class, which wasn’t present in Heart at the time, and I asked myself a bunch of metatextual questions about their existence and function in a game.  Rogues pick locks, steal loot, and disarm traps. All well and good, but in reality most GMs only add locked doors and traps to their games if a rogueish character is present to interact with them in the first place. So in a strange way, does the presence of a rogue somehow fill the world with traps and locked treasure chests? That little thought exercise was the first speck of grit around which the Crawler formed – a cronenbergian nightmare who walks through the universe spontaneously spawning traps and treasure chests everywhere they go as their body slowly twists into the perfect dungeoneering tool, complete with 50ft of intestinal rope.”While new classes are a fascinating way to expand the game, the designers are also looking at how to look at classic dungeon concepts through the game’s cracked lens. This sourcebook provides rules for classic NPC companions. But unlike the ones that can be used and abused for a couple of gold pieces a day, Heart’s hirelings are useful…until they aren’t.“I’m pretty sure every TTRPG group out there slowly accumulates a menagerie of weird NPCs to drag along on their journey,” said Lithgow. “While fun, I’ve been the GM who has to scramble to create rules for Boblin the goblin, only for the party to forget they exist for 80% of the rest of the game – causing this allegedly beloved character to enter some kind of quantum superstate where they both exist and don’t at any given moment.”“Hirelings are our way of adding support for these tagalongs while making them interesting in their own right. Each one is a strange little creature with a simple statblock, and a single ability, and most importantly some noteworthy Fallouts (Heart’s way of providing narrative twists for failure). The Scapegoat is a great example. Its ability lets a party mystically burden the Scapegoat with all the injuries, curses, or ill fortunes the party have accumulated so far, before it scampers off into the wilderness. Seems useful! But doing so lets the GM trigger a Fallout at a later date which causes the Scapegoat to return, bloated with sin and ready for revenge. It’s a really fun way of taking followers which risk fading into the background and hardwiring them with fun little narratives. Just don’t ask about the Useless Worm…”</blockquote>

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