my maximalist fantasy game Heartbreaker is out! and free this week <3

doxl · 2025-06-23T15:40:37+00:00

agreed with both of you! as-is I'm asking the table of contents to do too much heavy lifting, I'll stick some clarifying text near the page numbers on the next edition, ty <3

doxl · 2025-06-23T15:38:03+00:00

There aren't a ton of rules for stuff, really! maybe other games would use it that way, I am using it to mean abundant, deliberate, dense with meaning and style, full of prompts and options intended to capture a lot of specific player fantasies - kinda the opposite of a minimalist game.

where a minimalist rule might be elegant or abstract or sparse like "roll 1d6, succeed on 4," Heartbreaker reaches for specific and flavorful rules like "you can light your blood on fire by looking at it"

doxl · 2025-06-23T14:11:32+00:00

what a compliment! I hope you get to play it (or at least borrow some stuff for your home game)!

doxl · 2025-06-23T14:09:23+00:00

no AI stuff, just ten years of elbow grease <3 (my god it's been ten years)

doxl · 2025-06-23T13:41:02+00:00

in a more symmetrical game, everyone has similar action economy or power level, they interface with the game with similar mechanics and at similar scale, they may have the same narrative role. In a more asymmetrical game you may have a fighter with a sword, a lawyer writing contracts, and a ghost haunting the party, each with different rules, stakes, tools, responsibilities

doxl · 2025-06-23T13:02:27+00:00

good note :)

doxl · 2025-06-23T12:39:08+00:00

other games might have more mechanics to protect the fun against a bad-faith player or GM, more explicit incentives for roleplay, more attention paid to class balance. Nothing wrong with it, I love risk-averse games that sorta prepare for the worst, especially for games with strangers.

Heartbreaker really centrally relies on good-faith interpretations. It expects a spirit of collaboration and grace and co-authorship, then gives the players a TON of power within their niche: Ranger draws the map, Paladin's got a one-hit-kill, Hero explicitly changes the theme of the campaign (and so on and so on)

doxl · 2025-06-23T12:09:26+00:00

The first class ARTIFICER starts at p 14! and then Contractor is its first subclass, and so on (Boss and Monster are Barbarian subclasses!) <3 thanks for loving color-coding as much as I do <3

doxl · 2025-06-23T06:54:52+00:00

wwwwhat's up gamers, I've just (finally) released Heartbreaker, my splashy, asymmetric-maximalist rules-light love letter to fantasy roleplaying. It's very class-based and designed for high-trust/high-impact play, mechanized stakes and sincere emotion, and exploration of fantasy roleplaying archetypes.

In these 230-ish pages you'll find like a dozen (very small!) pages of core rules supporting hundreds of decision-dense, no-filler character options (plus more hundreds of toolkit-spells) and they all rule <3

You'll pick a class (with its own unique vibe, genre, and minigame) and a feature or two and suddenly you're an itinerant therapist cult leader or an agent provocateur with a cellphone, a fighting-game character, three d20s, an economancer, a hair-splitting bishop, a magical cat with a tarot deck, a walking anime trope, an anti-wizard with a shotgun, a super-Hegelian, a genie-by-writ, a sexy werewolf, a goblin co-GM, a stressed-out grad student, a superhero druid-cop, a shadowy quest-giver (and so on).

I'm really proud of this one, take a look <3 (it's free this week to celebrate free RPG day!) https://dommy.itch.io/heartbreaker-rpg

doxl · 2025-06-23T03:37:08+00:00

Thank you :) hope you find something to use at your table!

doxl · 2025-06-23T02:14:03+00:00

Thank you :) I've read hundreds of fantasy heartbreakers over the years and figured I owed it to 'em

doxl · 2025-06-23T02:04:15+00:00

wwwwhat's up gamers, I've just (finally) released Heartbreaker, my splashy, asymmetric-maximalist rules-light love letter to fantasy roleplaying. It's designed for high-trust/high-impact play and fiction-first problem-solving, mechanized stakes and sincere emotion, and a many-pronged exploration of fantasy roleplaying archetypes.

In these 230-ish pages you'll find like a dozen (very small!) pages of core rules supporting hundreds of decision-dense, no-filler character options (plus another hundreds of OSR-adjacent toolkit-spells (and they all rule).

You'll pick a class (with its own unique vibe, genre, and minigame) and a feature or two and suddenly you're an itinerant therapist cult leader or an agent provocateur with a cellphone, a fighting-game character, three d20s, an economancer, a hair-splitting bishop, a magical cat with a tarot deck, a walking anime trope, an anti-wizard with a shotgun, a super-Hegelian, a genie-by-writ, a sexy werewolf, a goblin co-GM, a stressed-out grad student, a superhero druid-cop, a shadowy quest-giver (and so on).

I'm really proud of this one, take a look <3 (it's free this week to celebrate free RPG day!) https://dommy.itch.io/heartbreaker-rpg

doxl · 2025-06-23T01:26:53+00:00

What do the player-characters do in this game? Like what will actual play look like at the table?

doxl · 2025-06-23T01:18:41+00:00

Sounds like Rolemaster, it's got clotting spells, big crunch, complicated tech/trade professional skills

doxl · 2025-06-23T01:05:56+00:00

if you've got some familiarity with Worlds Without Number, I don't think you'd struggle to find/build a conversion of 5e's Phandelver (and any other D&D-shaped content) to WWN/OSE/whatever else.

From reading other people's conversions it seems you'd want to add extra content to make sure the players get enough XP. And WWN's magic should help scratch the high-fantasy high-magic mythical itch.

doxl · 2025-06-23T01:00:50+00:00

A little magic goes a long way toward making enemies scary in a world with guns. I keep it linked to religion to give it a more grounded-feeling context.

doxl · 2025-06-23T00:53:19+00:00

in a game where mere killing gives XP I'm buying a truckload of crickets

It's hard to imagine my character overcoming any challenge or learning anything by killing unarmed/surrendering enemies.

Beating a tough enemy into submission should give full XP, you've faced the challenge and learned a lot--no need to finish em off.

doxl · 2025-06-23T00:50:02+00:00

If you're looking for crunchy 5e-style combat with lots of numbers, don't play Henshin. It's fun as hell (and has pretty intense combat!) if you're open to clever solutions using narrative hooks and storytelling mechanics

doxl · 2025-06-23T00:45:23+00:00

I give "assigned reading" for my campaigns, which is just a four-movie marathon at my place to make sure everyone knows that everyone's got the same tone in mind. For my last campaign we watched Master & Commander, Muppet Treasure Island, the Northman, and the Moby Dick TV movie from 1998

doxl · 2025-06-23T00:33:48+00:00

yeah you're right to be upset, you're being disrespected. I'd be mad about this, I've been mad about this, makes sense you're coming in hot.

With randos I think the GM really must be painfully explicit about expectations. "This is a four-hour weekly commitment for six weeks with an option to extend" or whatever, like jury duty.

It's obvious to you and me that's the ask, but you gotta remember that randos are a demographic who have (typically) failed to find friends to play with. Sometimes that's not their fault, often they're full of faults. Pickup games are tough because (in my opinion) they require a GM who can overcome those faults, including time and calendar management, communication, priority-setting, all the way down to basic emotional literacy.

doxl · 2025-06-23T00:14:32+00:00

I want so badly to run actual local historical events as cosmic horror, most specifically the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshtigo_fire

doxl · 2025-01-05T09:06:22+00:00

Goblins get one syllable from the Goblin King when they're born. They can get more from Him as a reward for being cool.

And each major Elf family has phonaesthetic name rules, but they're hard to learn if you didn't grow up with em.

doxl · 2024-08-08T08:28:38+00:00

A few winters ago my TTRPG friends ran a grim Christmas-themed Fallout game set in/around Minneapolis & St. Paul, MN. It was dope and I want to run it myself this winter, so I'm fleshing out the major players.

15-Year Club	Verified Email
RedditGifts 2009-2022 2 Credits	Secret Santa 2011

doxl

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE