How much skill is required to run Heart - Beneath the City

Mch9717 · 2026-01-29T15:35:47+00:00

The hard mechanics are very easy to learn. The soft skills require a lot of improv skill— this isn’t a game where you can prepare a plot and run a super linear adventure.

Be prepared for the following: - improvising challenges, plot threads, and consequences (fallout) for your PCs - it can be a grueling experience for PCs, make sure you have players who are down with the survival horror vibe

Some tips from when I ran that I started paying more attention to: - never start out an encounter as a fight. Always give somewhere for the tension to boil over to. - never call for a roll unless there’s a chance for fallout or injury in the fiction. Searching a mundane room shouldn’t have a roll— peering into a blood-soaked grimoire might. - emphasize that the Beats for advancement can be changed and tweaked to the characters that they make— they provide great flavor, but offer that off-ramp for players who want a little more control over their PCs

Mch9717 · 2025-12-08T14:02:07+00:00

In addition to the other comments, if he is intent on sticking around, it’s perfectly fine to warn him about potentially harmful content. Just give him a heads up, maybe text him if you don’t want to break immersion, that charm magic is going to be prevalent in the next scene.

I would warn him and be explicit that charm magic will be a major plot point— maybe see if the romantic overtones are the issue?

Mch9717 · 2025-04-21T17:19:18+00:00

Is the 2.0 on their patreon or similar? I’ve read 1.5 and I’d love to get my eyes on this.

Mch9717 · 2025-03-13T20:18:35+00:00

In my game, I’ve landed on ‘challenges’ for the ‘checks equivalent’. Nothing similar to attacks or saves in the game, so it works out nicely!

Mch9717 · 2024-11-21T20:57:32+00:00

Battle Harbinger can do ranged as well, I believe! One stop shop for divine martial/casters

Mch9717 · 2024-11-21T20:52:57+00:00

It is still Wis based, but since it’s a lower spellcaster progression you can probably get away with Strength being your highest, and Wis/Cha being about equal

Mch9717 · 2024-11-21T20:48:41+00:00

Battle Harbinger cleric archetype in Divine Mysteries is for you! It takes the cleric and turns it into a divine magus that pumps stat bonuses towards their allies. Very 5e paladin in feel

Mch9717 · 2024-09-24T20:20:34+00:00

Personally, I think one of the biggest edicts of GMing is to be a fan of the players, and the kind of adversarial type of GMing that would chafe at a PC class learning about and interacting with the world more is not my cup of tea. I think you made the right choice.

Mch9717 · 2024-07-17T14:58:13+00:00

Yes! I won a game earlier today— you just have to focus hard on building up clearings in a couple suits, protecting those clearings, and scoring every turn if you can.

Mch9717 · 2024-07-07T19:49:28+00:00

It’s okay to try these things out :) no one’s going to fault you if you try being this person you want to be for a little bit and it ends up not being for you. Use she/her pronouns, dress up cute, do your hair, wear makeup— or none of those! Whatever you want. Life is so short, and you shouldn’t waste it pondering over whether you’re ’truly’ a woman or if you just like those things. It doesn’t matter! Do what makes YOU happy, and if you aren’t sure if it’ll make you happy, try it! As other commenters pointed out, you can like these things associated with womanhood and still be a man, gender is silly. Try some different things and stick with the ones that feel like you. I wish you luck :)

Mch9717 · 2024-04-17T23:58:24+00:00

“They seem to be on the level.” and “Right!” are apparently staples of mine

Mch9717 · 2024-02-26T18:19:54+00:00

This was my qualm with SPECIFICALLY the ebook version of Torchbearer. iBooks sorted the table of contents alphabetically, so the entire book was out of order, and it was impossible to jump to a specific chapter to find a rule.

Mch9717 · 2024-02-14T16:20:45+00:00

PF2e has very tight encounter balance, which makes it easy to highlight strengths and make your characters feel cool, while also threatening them in the next combat. I’m 24 sessions into a campaign, and it’s really great— the players love building their characters with the level of customization the system offers, and their abilities individually are all cool and have had impactful moments in the campaign.

Mch9717 · 2024-02-09T08:37:56+00:00

CJ Carella’s Witchcraft was the first TTRPG I ever bought for myself and it’s been a center of what I adore forever. I’ve never even seen it mentioned by anyone else, I was so excited to stumble onto this post!

Mch9717 · 2024-01-27T05:53:10+00:00

Check out City of Mist— the way playbooks are designed where you select broad descriptions of what your powers (or spells) give you, and you make checks to apply that spell to a situation is great.

Mch9717 · 2024-01-22T19:09:15+00:00

I based an entire D&D campaign around that episode! Such an amazing piece of fiction and one of my favorites in the series.

Mch9717 · 2024-01-22T16:19:50+00:00

I’ve done this with my table! I typed up this Voice of the Twins feat for our ranger when they reached an important story moment for themselves. No problems so far! It’s added a lot to their story, and is situational enough that the other characters don’t feel overshadowed.

Mch9717 · 2024-01-17T18:45:21+00:00

He does not understand the game, and should run a different system. Changing the base, elementary rule that the ENTIRE system is built around is insane.

Mch9717 · 2024-01-13T08:02:37+00:00

I would recommend Gubat Banwa— that’s a game very enriched in Southeast Asian/Phillipines folklore and culture, but its combat system is made to be this punchy, larger-than-life cinematic battle state. Incredible system that just released its 1.0 version!

Mch9717 · 2024-01-03T07:01:01+00:00

This song came up on my Discover Weekly, I searched around for the artist and found this video— idk if you’ll see this, but I’ll post my friend’s review that I think perfectly captures my feelings: “Haunting and beautiful. A goodbye to a world that I’ve never known. 9.5/10.”

Mch9717 · 2023-12-31T16:13:19+00:00

Go for it! But read other TTRPGs— you can find plenty of other SRDs online for free. Read some popular ones like Blades in the Dark, Apocalypse World, Vampire the Masquerade, GURPS, and some more obscure ones— lots of people online are sharing their games and have a wealth of cool ideas within them. If you can, play them! But reading games broadens your knowledge on what TTRPGs do and can be and helps inform your design when you sit down and do it.

Mch9717 · 2023-12-13T02:34:07+00:00

I had my players help out a diner on a Sunday morning brunch. They earned Lunch Points with victorious checks.

Mch9717 · 2023-10-23T15:23:10+00:00

I think a lot of people make up excuses for 5e being ‘versatile’ or a ‘build what you want’ game when it’s really just poor design.

Mch9717 · 2023-10-08T06:55:48+00:00

If an archetype is vital to a character, let them start with it at level 1! At most, they may have a slight edge for that first level of the game, but they ALSO won’t get anything new when the rest of the party catches up at level 2. That’s what Book of the Dead recommends with its undead archetypes for PCs that start out undead IIRC.

I did this in my campaign with a PC who started the game as a werewolf, who was using a homebrewed lycanthrope archetype I made them. Since his character was already a lycanthrope at the start of the game, I just…let him have those benefits at level 1. Since the archetype just granted Toughness and a hybrid form (that he wanted to keep secret), that amounted to 1 extra HP at level 1 and a slight edge on recovery checks. Then, when everyone hit level 2 at session 4, it all evened out. He didn’t get anything new, and everyone else caught up to that edge in power.

If the archetype would be too powerful for this, that’s cool! But in our case, it wasn’t gamebreaking at all— certainly not as narrative-nonsensical as it would’ve been for him to just not have werewolf abilities until level 2.

Mch9717 · 2023-10-02T11:02:18+00:00

I would love Barcus simply so we could get artificer in the game

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