A Broken Hearts System

I'm brainstorming ideas for a new game system. Initially, I called it the Hearts System, but that may change. I kind of like A Broken Hearts System or ABHS. 

I am starting to formulate ideas for mechanics. 

The first mechanic I created is generating characters using a standard (or custom) set of cards. I shared this in a post a while ago but I will recap it here. 

Aces are your abilities and they are laid out Spades, Diamonds, Clubs, and Hearts. I have retitled them Swords, Shields, Coins, and Hearts which correspond to: 

(Swords) Fighting ability, 

(Shields) Defensive abilities,

(Coins) Resources, 
(Hearts) Life points.  

Below them are the Kings, the Queens, and the Jacks. These cards map to three classes. Kings are Squares; Squares use brawn more than any other skill. Queens are Pures; Pures prefer to use their mental facilities over everything else. And Jacks are Semis, people who mix physical and mental facilities with ease. 

In the following examples, we are using just Kings to build a Square character. I will write about Pures and Semis in a different post. 

A starting player assigns one or more Kings to their four abilities. Once complete, the player looks down at each pile and totals them up, adding Kings and Aces together. 

Swords: 3

Shields: 2

Coins: 1
Hearts: 2

All starting characters have distributed 8 cards (or points) among 4 stats. 

Now, here is the first twist. Put the Shields over your Hearts, like so: 

It is always Shields on Hearts and the stats are adjusted like this: 

Swords: 3

Shields: 2

Coins: 1
Hearts: 2 (4)

Now this character is fit to fight. We need to talk about dice. This system assumes you'll use six siders and two. I took a poll and this was what the hivemind thought was best. Of course, the hivemind can make its own games, so I will modify this two-die standard later on. 

This is a roll-low game. The lower the better. Nothing special happens if you roll snake eyes. By the same standard, nothing special happens if you roll 2 sixes. 

One of the quirks of this game is we only have two cases where we modify the die rolls directly. We'll handle that later.   

If your Sword is 3, then you need to roll a 2 or a 3 to hit. Damn, that would be a tedious game. At this point, we need some modifiers on your character's skills. Remember, this is not modifying the die roll. We need the player to be aware of what they need to hit before rolling. 

You get +1 for having a weapon, say a spear, and another point for each skill in skill you have. Since you have 3 Swords, you can learn up to three combat skills. In this case, let's make them 3 points or ranks with a spear. Now we have a total of 3+1+3=7. 

See how we didn't add to the dice, but modified the ability to hit? The rationale behind this is all characters should know, roughly, their ability to strike something before they make that attack roll. Remember, I do have an exception to this no-modifier rule which will come into play later. 

You must roll equal to or under a 7. Now that is more like it, there is a good chance of rolling that. Here is my modification on using two six-sided dice. We're gonna use more. In the first step or interval of combat, you roll 2d6 and compare it to your to-hit number which is 7. 

We roll a four and hit. This removes one Shield or Heart from the opponent. There are only hits, we won't use damage dice. A very powerful creature might have 18 Shields and Hearts combined, but against a group of characters making a couple of attack rolls per combat turn, these defenses will go fast. 

The next mechanic is the duration of the combat turn. We're calling each cycle of combat a turn and each one is 12 seconds long, divided into 2-second intervals or steps. Every character may take one action per step. BUT they can only attack once per unit Sword and only once per interval or step of the combat turn.  

Our Square with a Spear can take three swipes with their weapon per combat turn because they only have 3 Swords. They are not skilled enough to do more. This is an inversion of D&D style rules as it assumes characters are pretty quick. 

What does he do with the rest of his time? He can move, open doors, duck, dodge, or whatever.  Basically anything other than sticking a spear in someone. He can move three times and attack three times. There will be cases where this particular character will move four times and attack twice, losing one attack because they ran out of time. Higher-level characters are entitled to swing every combat step or interval, but probably won't for... reasons. 

Now we get the exception on modifying die rolls. Remember when you put your Shields on Hearts? If you get hit, you lose a Shield point. When they are gone, you start losing Hearts. When your Hearts are gone, you are down. Not dead, but down and unable or unwilling to stand back up. 

Here is the modifier on die rolls. A character can choose to defend themselves instead of attacking. They can do this once per Heart, per opponent, per combat step, or interval.  This adds to the attacker's die roll. The cost of doing this is, if you get hit, you lose the Heart you risked instead of the Shield.

Ouch! You can go down by making risky moves. By the same standard, if you successfully defend yourself, you lose nothing but that one attack. This also slows combat, kind of like casting from hit points in reverse. 

If you are a numbers person, you'll realize that a minute of combat is 5 12-second combat intervals. Using our Square with the Spear, this could be 15 attack rolls in just 60 seconds. This would be really violent and quick, which is why I wanted to slow things with defense. 

To slow this down more, I'll modify the number of dice thrown per combat interval or step. The first time you attack in a turn, you need to get a 7 or less on two dice. Assuming nothing changes, the second attack requires rolling 7 or less on 3 dice.

That spear is getting heavy and you are getting tired.

Guess what? The third attack requires throwing 7 or lower on four dice. This continues for each attack, a high-level character could be throwing 7 dice to hit on that sixth swing.  

Also, it makes risking a Heart on Defense more worthwhile later in the combat turn.

This is a neat mechanic as new players will swipe at opponents very quickly while learning the combat system until they realize that maybe they should hold back a bit once they master it. The mechanic itself is simple, just add a die but your chances of hitting are plummeting. It also encourages players to work together, say having three guys up front taking turns at attacking an opponent, rather than everyone hacking away wildly. 

At the end of the 12-second combat turn, there is a reset moment. Shields are restored at the start of every combat turn, but Hearts are not. If you started with two Shields and lost them to two blows from an opponent, you get them back for the next turn. This restoration isn't repairing a bit of armor or picking up a shield, but making an adjustment to the item itself or modifying their use against a specific opponent. 

I hope you found this interesting. Next time I will get into missile combat and magic. Let me know what you think in the comments. 

Polling Data In...

I'm doing this thing where I create a new game system. Over on MeWe, I ran a 24-hour poll, polling seems to be the way to collect user data nowadays. Click the link to follow me there. Even WotC tried it right here. 

It's surprising what you can get from a little consumer feedback. I did two polls, one for my friends on MeWe and a duplicate poll in the Sandbox gaming group. I felt these were the two places to find "generic" gamers, not necessarily system-specific gamers. The Hearts System is created with fantasy gaming in mind but should be pretty adaptable to other genres. So, if swords and blasters are your thing, this could work for you. 

My poll size was rather small with only 32 respondents. The question I asked was about the number and type of dice. As I originally pictured it, The Hearts System would be a single 1d6 game. However, at this point in the planning, I could totally change that. 

The nice thing about the MeWe polling system is it allows for both a choice of responses and comments. That is really helpful. 

Here was the question: "For a quick, easy-to-play RPG, I need to roll... 

The choices were: 

1 six-sided die. 
2 six-sided dice. 
I need more dice. 
You can't roleplay with just one type of die, freak!

Both groups came down pretty heavily on the 2 six-side dice option at 18 of 32 votes. Next up was "I needed more dice" followed by "1 six-sided die" and "freak". 

People were more likely to call me a freak than select "1 six-sided die", but only just barely. 

A full 50% of responders wanted 2d6 and 25% wanted more dice. Based on these responses, I need to retool The Hearts System. This is exactly the time to do so, as nothing to too hard-coded to change. 

Many commenters mentioned that one die is too "swingy". And they are right. The funny part about this is when I hear the word "swingy", I immediately hear this: 

Now for the sales pitch and favor. 

What brought on this impetuous to create a completely new game was my goal of writing a system-agnostic campaign setting called "A Handbook for Travellers on the Peninsula of Plenty". Being ruleset agnostic, theoretically, I can completely ignore the whole OGL Version RND#" debacle. But where I can't is that when you play a game for so long, like I have with D&D, your headspace is locked to certain ideas. To be completely system agnostic, I need to start having new ideas and new ways of thinking about things that have nothing to do with D&D.  Hence, The Hearts System. 

This is tangential to my "A Handbook for Travellers on the Peninsula of Plenty" project, but it would be great if you came over to Ko-Fi and followed me. It would cut down on the number of times a week I'll have to crosspost. It would cut down on the number of things I have to keep track of, social media vs. ko-fi, vs. Blogger. 

You might just get some great ideas for your table over there, too. I have three backing options, but without backers, I am limiting myself to open posting to just followers which is the free option for you.  

I have this wonderful vision of not having to post every blog post to every kind of social media out there. So, go ahead, follow me here on blogger, and over at Ko-Fi, MeWe, and even Mastodon and Dice.Camp if you would be so kind. Go pick a place where you are going to get the content you like, I would really appreciate it. 

The Hearts System

 In my last post, I spoke about creating a whole new game system. I think I have settled on the name "The Hearts System". At least the abbreviation, THS doesn't spell out something too horrible. 

One of the advantages of B/X games is the speed of character generation. Everything you need is on 4 pages, class on one, equipment on another, saves on the third, and special details someplace else, if even needed. I want an even faster system. 

So here we go: 

Step 1: Lay your cards out. I wanted a simple graphical way of displaying information with a low entry cost. So a standard deck of cards works. As soon as I find my Rider-Rider Deck, I will start using Tarot cards for fun. 

The Aces are your abilities and there are four: Swords (Spades), Shields (Diamonds), Coins (Clubs), and the titular Hearts. At this point, you can probably guess what each means, but you don't need to know. 

(I am also playing fast and loose with the suits, I will probably make my own deck of cards so that doesn't happen.) 

Down the left side, the King, Queen, and Jack represent your class. Ignore that for now, we will just generate a character using the Kings. 

Step 2. Place a King on the matching Ace. 

This is an average starting character, each attribute is two. Every living creature has an attribute of at least one. 

Step 3. Customize. A starting character can only move one card as a choice. In this case, Coins as been reduced by one to increase Swords by one to a total of 3. 

Step 4, (not shown) Record your attributes on the character sheet I have not yet created. 

Step 5. Rally your defenses, place your Shields over your Hearts and add this to your character sheet. (Again, not shown as the sheet hasn't been created.) 

In this case, we have created a warrior. He has 3 Swords which is his attack strength. He has two shields, which is his defense. He has one Coin, which is a measure of starting resources. He has two Hearts, which is how much damage he can take. But we put the Shields over the Hearts meaning that the character can take two more hits than someone with just two Hearts, thanks to the Shields. 

In the next post, we'll talk about the difference between King, Queen, and Jack or your class choices. 

This game is going heavily featured in my new Ko-Fi Project, and there is going to be a time when I stop double posting. Why don't you follow me over there?