Listen to this episode here.
Heart: the City Beneath. It’s a surreal and bloody dungeon crawler full of so much to love… plus some bits that drive me up the wall. This week and next I’m devoting TWO episodes to it. Today, it’s everything I love about Heart as seen through the lens of zenith abilities: epic things that let players take control of the game and do something gigantic and fucking cool… before killing their character.
I’m joined by ardent Heart-lover Aaron Voigt, aka the guy who makes the indie rpg video essays on YouTube. We get into Heart’s spectacular setting, the act of handing story agency over to players, and the joys of playing to lose. Then come back next week for part two with more Heart and more Aaron!
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Further Reading
Heart: the City Beneath by Rowan, Rook and Decard
Spire: the City Must Fall by Rowan, Rook and Decard
Sanfielle by Friends At The Table
Agon 2e by Sean Nittner and John Harper
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Transcript
Sam: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop RPG mechanic and rocket it straight into the fucking sun. My name is Sam Dewald, and my co-host today is Aaron Voigt.
Today we're taking a little break from LRPs. We're pretty close to the end of the LRP series here. I got a few episodes to kind of wrap things up, but I, I'm tired of it. Let's do something else. Let's talk about some classic fucking games.
Today we're doing Heart: the City Beneath by Rowan Rook and Decard. Heart is the spiritual successor to Spire, a game about revolutionary drought elves in a high elf city. But instead of doing terrorism on colonizers, Heart takes us below this wretched city to a vast dungeon like space beneath ruled by dream logic: the heart. It's a dungeon crawler, but a really weird one with some of the most creative and spicy, sideways logic, fantasy ideas in it that I've ever encountered.
But I have a complicated relationship with this game. I love parts of it, while others really do not work for me, but I think it's really valuable to talk about what doesn't work in games, especially games where so much of it is firing so strongly. And heart is super popular, so I think it can take the criticism.
And I actually feel so strongly about both the good and the bad of this game that I wanted to spend two episodes on it, one today on what I think makes Heart so special. We're doing that through the lens of zenith abilities, basically gigantic, epic, ultimate abilities that do something incredibly fucking cool and then probably kill your character. And then next week it's more heart and more of what I struggle with, but we'll get to that when we get to it.
To do all this and to be a little more critical, I knew I wanted to have someone on with me who's a much more ardent lover and defender of the game, and I'd also been looking for an excuse to have Aaron Voigt on the show. Aaron is a game designer, but he's also one of just a few people on YouTube regularly making video essays about indie RPGs. He's got a wide back catalog with essays on games like Stewpot Triangle Agency and tons of other games like the kind feature here on Dice Exploder. So if you like this show, you may like his work too.
Before we get into it, thanks to everyone who supports Dice Exploder on Patreon. And with that, here is Aaron Voigt with Zinth Abilities from Heart, the city beneath.
Aaron Voigt, thanks for being on Dice Exploder, finally.
Aaron: Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Sam.
Sam: Heart, the city beneath. That's what we're here to talk about today by Rowan, Rook, and Deckard. It's Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor. Art by Felix Mial, which we will maybe we could take a second to talk about how fucking good the art is in this game. Just Unbelievable. But do you want to like give the initial pitch for Heart? What's the deal here? Where did it come from?
Aaron: Well, it came from Spire. So Spire is a game about revolutionary drows fighting an oppressive imperial high elf like system in their big tower city. And that was a published, I want to say 2018 by RRD. And then, Heart has its origins in Spire because they have like a little section in the original book of Spire where they're like Hey, so the the center of the city is called the heart and it's weird and messed up and we don't know what's going on in there. But it's making the city wrong.
And then after Spire was very successful Howitt and Taylor were like, what if we took that out of the big tower city and put it underground and then made it like it's own game and turned it into a dungeon crawling thing.
So that's where Heart comes from and I think they did a pretty good job of it.
Sam: Yeah, I think it is a really interesting take on what's cool about dungeoneering. Like dungeon games. Because it is much much closer to like Annihilation the movie or the book then to Dungeons and Dragons in my view.
It's super weird. It's super character based and like location based, environment based. It doesn't care like what room you are in versus the next room so much as it cares about the fact that you're in a cavern covered by clamshells or whatever, you know, it is just this weird, strange, constantly evolving place.
Aaron: Yeah,
absolutely. I think, it is explicitly, you know, inspired by Annihilation. In fact, you know, several abilities are just like quotes from that book. And like, yeah, I think, you know, the, the concept of the heart is that it is like a parasite reality that is trying to, you know, it is coming in from somewhere else and taking over.
But also it's like, it's benevolent question mark, like, because, you know, as they talk about in the designer's commentary uh, the heart wants to give you what you want. You know, that's that's the whole thing about the beat system is like you come down there seeking something and the heart's like yeah, sure. We'll we'll manifest something for you maybe that thing is, you know covered in scales and red and wet and hungry.
But like that's a really cool way to be like, yeah, dungeons are just, you know, a series of rooms that have weird stuff happen in them. And what if there's a whole game that, that gave you the excuse to make the weirdest rooms you can think of?
Sam: Yeah. It's really cool to externalize the inner lives and desires of characters in this way.
So setting for this thing is just full of weird shit. No one ever brings up Heart without also bringing up the deep apiarist. This is the law the deep apiarist is a playable class in which you are a person who is slowly turning yourself into bees. Or a hive for bees to live. I've never heard of a campaign of heart that didn't include a deep apiarist. People just love that bee guy, you know?
Aaron: Yeah. I mean, there's, if you're going through the character, you know, options, it's like uh, you are a living beehive. Like, it's hard to beat that. uh,
Sam: then the game kinda does, also. Like,
Aaron: yeah, I mean, there's so many great classes in this book. There's just a whole bunch of weird stuff that they create in that setting and they like just extrapolate to it's it's strangest degree In a way that really works.
Sam: What is your favorite weird fact about the setting?
Aaron: so a weird fun thing about the world of Spire and Heart is that, so the Elphir are like evil like high elf colonialists basically and they come from like a land very far north of where Spire is set. But because that land is so far north, you know, it's very cold up there, but Spire is like basically in the middle of a desert or, or at least much, much warmer from than where they are.
And like because they are. You know, displaced into a warmer climate , it makes them weirder and it cuts them off from their gods. And they have to like build special like ice rooms to go and like take ice baths to make them normal again. They're trying to create this like, you know, empire, but like in doing so they are destroying themselves which is I think a really fun detail.
that's like my little Spire bit, but actually my favorite bit in all of Heart is the disease that makes you build mazes.
Sam: The labyrinth disease. Yeah, the minotaur disease
Aaron: Yeah. No. I work in public health, and I would hate for one day there to be an outbreak of just like, ah, lads, somebody's gone through the Toys R Us and just summoned an unholy minotaur that needs to keep everything confined into its nightmare maze.
And that's that's just a fun bit of world building where you can just mash words together and create something monstrous.
Sam: Yeah, I love the way that setting feels almost like, Like, I think of Rick and Morty, the TV show, at being good at taking a, like, classic trope and pushing it two or three levels deeper. You know, like, We're gonna do the classic Matrix thing, of like, we're actually living in a simulation, but we're gonna go, like, four simulations deep or something.
And I feel like this is even better at taking the classic trope of Minotaurs in a labyrinth or whatever and pushing it not just sort of like stacking up the ideas of it like that but like pushing it in that weird new direction of like it's gonna be a whole disease. We're gonna go over the top with it. We're gonna build some new feeling mythology.
Like my favorite is the hydra, which is, grown so many heads that it has become a forest, and each tree in the forest is like a hydra head. And so, if you go into the hydra grove, slowly you'll figure out that the trees are aware of you and start trying to eat you, and if you cut them down, then two new ones will crop back up, and yeah. What an idea to take a Hydra and turn it into a location.
Aaron: I just went through and looked that up in the book, and it's not just a forest, it's the carotid forest, which is of course a reference to the carotid artery, and like, I think the visceral, anatomical basis of the prose of this game is really, really strong. I think Howard and Taylor absolutely know how to keep their language, I think the words red and wet come up probably more than anything else in this book because like, that's exactly what they're going for is like that visceral feeling. And I just love that.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, totally.
But that maybe brings us a little bit to the mechanics I want to talk a little bit about like my background with Heart here. I the book, I thought it was incredibly cool for all the reasons that we talked about, and I immediately ran two overlapping campaigns of it And so I GMed probably like 20 sessions of the game.
And my experience of it is that like, yes, indeed, the flavor was really cool, but I had so many problems with the rules being unnecessary for me, and being not unnecessary in that way of like, Sam loves minimalism, but clunky in a way that got in the way of doing the cool part of the game and sort of engaging with the setting.
And I wanted to have you on specifically to talk about that. Cause I know you lot of affection for the resistance system and these games.
Aaron: No, I mean, I think that's fair, right? The resistance system is very hard to get right. It is taking that like mixed success, lineage from, powered by the apocalypse, but also trying to, to bring in a new level of like narrative control both for the GM and for the players, right? That's what the, the beat system is all about.
But also, you know, there's no hit points, but there's like inflicting narrative consequences with the fallouts. And, and sometimes that can be a little bit you know, disjointed.
But at the same time, I am just like, so thrilled that it is trying to do that. Yeah.
And like, I think even if it doesn't 100 percent get there all the way, I think it is still absolutely a worthwhile. You know, system to look into and be like, okay, yeah, you know, instead of, you take, 10 damage, right? It's like, okay, now on the next scene, I'm going to make somebody, come up to you and say, we've been watching you and you owe us $9. Like, I don't know, right? Something weird like that.
Also, you know, my, my love for the system is absolutely based in the Friends of the Table actual play who did their Sangfiel season of Heart. And I think that's just like a stunning examination of the game. both, what it can do and what its flaws are.
But like they put it to such incredible, you know, and effective use. So I, I just, you know, want to give Songfeel a shout out.
Sam: Totally. So I want to start today by talking about. a mechanic that I think we both just think is an all around home run. And then next episode we're gonna have you back and talk about a mechanic that I struggle with a little bit more. And to begin with, let's talk about Zenith abilities.
So, abilities in this game, how does advancement work ? What is a Zenith ability?
Aaron: So, to advance in this game, you have to take what are called beats which are basically just like little tasks that you can get that if you, you know, start checking them off you get to take uh, character advances, right?
However, there are big beats that you can take, which are called Zenith beats and those are the ones that if you take them, they end your character. If you say, okay, I'm going to do this, this is going to be the end of my character arc. And like, because you, fulfill your character arc, they kind of lead to this, big climactic moment that usually give you an incredible ability that is absolutely, you know, devastating.
You know, that's why it's safe for the end of your arc, right? you can't just introduce that halfway through a campaign. But also
Sam: you.
Aaron: yeah, exactly right. That's the thing. Uh, You also die horribly or worse. You don't die.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, so some like examples of minor beats in the game are like spare someone's life or take minor blood fallout And then that kind of builds up into major beats which might be like betray someone who really trusts you or up into a zenith beat where each character has two potential Zenith Beats that are like, resolve your whole ass character arc, like, Be truly absolved of your sins by a higher power, right? Huge things.
And we'll be coming back to Beats later, but let's read a Zenith ability. What's your favorite Zenith ability, and how does it work?
Aaron: Oh, I don't know that I have a favorite cause they're all so fun and weird and unique
Sam: Yeah, they you cannot mess with these.
Aaron: Right, I think a great one to start with is the one for the Vermisian Knight which is called Perpetual Motion Engine. Years of heart's blood radiation and forbidden knowledge culminate in your ultimate work, an engine powered by a throbbing heart seed, a source of wild and limitless power. Upon implementation of the Heart Seed into your suit's furnace, you become an unstoppable force within the city beneath. Indeed, you can never stop moving.
You turn into an evil train and you leave? And then like, later on, when your friends are in trouble, they can be like, Hey, remember uh, remember our old friend, Dave, who turned into a train? Uh, He's back now and he saves our lives as a demon train.
Sam: Uh,
I love I'm gonna read the rest of the ability, too. Like, you stamp off into the darkness, and your characters are removed from the story except for the Deus Ex Machina ability that is granted to all surviving members of your party. Deus Ex Machina uses this ability once per campaign by a single player character. When you are outside of a landmark and you or an ally suffers major or critical fallout, an inhuman collection of meat and twisted steel, the Vermision Knight, arrives. They've been watching you this whole time. They immediately inflict 25 stress, an absurd amount of stress,
Aaron: This is angel killing, like, amounts of stress.
Sam: like yeah, it's ridiculous.
On an adversary of the GM's choosing then disappeared the city beneath to protect other delvers.
So you get to be, you get to be a cool protector forever, you know, are you really that evil? I mean, I guess that's for context, right.?
There's an, I mean, even in the, I'm looking at the page right now, the next Zenith ability is, it's not that you turn into a train, it's that you summon a train that just runs over your enemies, right? Um,
Aaron: Like the last train specifically because that's a lore thing, right? The Vermision is the subway system that never got finished because it punctured the heart and like, that fucked it all up, but then there's like, so there is one train that made it through and now it's haunted and it's just, it's just around.
That's so fun.
Sam: you can just scroll to any of these classes and like pick a Zenith bead and they're cool as hell. A thing that we have not talked about is the Incarnadine is a class that I love who is a priest of the God of Debt. And The the Zenith abilities are like ultimate credit you can buy anything once. You own this physical, conceptual, or immaterial thing and have as much control over it as you do a knife, a suit of clothes, or anything else you own. Two sessions from now, the debt will be recalled and it will take your life.
But like, yeah, okay. You can just like control the concept of love however you want for two sessions and like that's pretty neat. Yeah, they're just, they're just absurd, over the top, they're so cool, they're so inspiring and so creative, right? That's the thing, it's a level of creativity that feels nearly unmatched in any other game that I've ever read.
Aaron: And I think that's to the resistance systems credit, right? Because they don't get too bogged down in numbers and they do just allow those like narrative possibilities to flow I think you're able to get away with abilities that do this. you don't have to worry that much about balancing because you're just like everything is kind of narrative, right?
Even when you're dealing with like, you know, minor, major and critical fallouts, like eventually that's all just going to come down to like how it plays at your table, how that works, fictionally within your story at the table, which like, you know, I, I think, again, for the resistance systems difficulties that is a big strength of it.
Sam: yeah. I just want to point out like, even when they are bringing numbers into it, they're doing so with reckless abandon, right? Like, you know, if a regular, like, dragon has eight hit points or whatever in this setting, they're like, you can just, like, run someone over and deal 25 damage to them. Like, they just don't care. You can
go as big as you want.
And why not like what this feels like the lesson to me of zenith abilities is like, Why not just go that big? There's no reason not to. You can just,
The only reason not to would be if it felt really out of tone You know like, in a really realistic down to earth spy game, maybe it doesn't make sense to go this over the top. But like the only limit is your imagination
Aaron: Right. Right. I mean, like, that's kind of the thing, right? Like, Zenith beats allow you to just go all out because you know that like, this is the end for your character. Um, they give the player permission to be like, I'm, I'm taking over, you know, I'm, I'm blowing up my character to achieve a certain end, and I'm going to just be able to, like, give, give it my all here in the last bit, and like, because I think, you know, heart is at its core, a bit of a trad game, right?
You are still doing dungeon crawling. You are still managing resources. You know, you are still getting into, combats. But like, when you compare this to, to other similar trad games, it is hard to give your character a satisfying arc in a game like that, because like, you know, I mean, obviously I'm thinking of Dungeons and Dragons, right?
But like. When you die in D& D, like, you usually don't get to have a cool last stand moment. You just kind of eat it. And I think it is so important just to be like no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna beef it, but I'm gonna beef it in the sickest way imaginable.
Sam: yeah. I think there's several really, really interesting things going on there.
If your goal is to tell a cool story and to, like, get into emotions and feelings and character, then I think a really, really underrated, underexplored, undermechanized, undervalued thing is to think about character arc well in advance. To sort of set up at the beginning What is my character's arc gonna be about.
And not necessarily how is it gonna resolve, right? like I think it's it's telling that every calling, every character has two different potential Zenith beats that are sort of diametrically opposed to each other. They are two different answers, yes and no, to an underlying question that your character is going to be about. And like, establishing that question up front is super powerful. Because then the whole time you get to play towards answering that question for yourself.
Aaron: Right.
Sam: But it's, it's also the case that, the zenith abilities are an incredible carrot to get you to do that. Because I think not everyone understands or feels up front that, like, playing towards a question like that is gonna be a reward unto itself. That, like, when you pair it with this reward of And when you do answer that question, you're gonna get to turn into a train. Is really cool.
And then the last sort of like revolutionary idea, I think, is that it's actually a carrot to die in this game. Like, people are so ready to fucking die. Like, players come into Heart, like, I cannot wait to die by turning into a train.
And, that's something that feels really counterintuitive to, like, what we think of normal Dungeons Dragons being, where people are so precious with their character.
Aaron: I mean, like that's kind of tying into that annihilation touchstone we talked about earlier, right? Which is like, if you think of heart is like kind of a horror game, right? Then, okay, yes, you go in knowing that your character is just a bag of, of meat and bones that is going to be, you know, rent us under you know, at the end of this narrative.
But like, if you are going in with that intention and being like, okay, but I can make that choice about when that, meat gets put through the grinder. And like, I can do it in a way that is fantastical and fits the tone of this strange world. I think that's a really big, incentive to be like, okay, yes. I'm gonna, I'm gonna beef it, but like, I'm gonna do it, and I'm gonna make it weird and that's, that's so fun to be like, you know, this is a horror story, but I am in control of when the slasher finally cuts my throat.
Sam: Yeah, and like, guarantees that you're not gonna simply beef it in D& D terms, right? We're not gonna just like get a series of nat 1s and then like I guess I'm dead now and like that sucks. Like you're always gonna get to go out with a bang and or a steam whistle
Aaron: Mm hmm. Heh
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A thing I want to talk about with this is the process of handing control over the narrative to the players, like, as a Dungeon Master. I think people are nervous to do this.
Like, I remember being early in my DMing, like, Dungeons Dragons career, and just, you know, players. I, like, I have this very vivid memory of being in college and playing in a game, and my girlfriend at the time wanted to narrate, like, running over the tops of pews in a church and, like, using some special elven ability to treat difficult terrain of pews as, like, not difficult terrain. And I was like, you can't do that, because that's about nature, and, like, pews aren't nature, and, like, whatever. And then, you know, we had a little fight about it, and I was sitting at home being like, but that rules actually. Like, why would you not just, like, let them do that's such a cool little action moment. Like, why wouldn't you do that?
And I think D& D doesn't encourage that, right? Like, D& D does say, like, you have to do these things at the right time. And it's sort of, like, cool to be able to turn into an animal. But also, you can only do it a couple of times per day because balance. And also, like, the DM and the rules get to say all these restraints around how you do the thing. And I think that there is something really valuable and energizing to players about just like allowing them in on that process, of like letting them take ownership and like get in there and fucking rock it and take over the game.
Aaron: Right. And I mean, part of that is just like Dungeons and Dragons play culture is always like DM, you know, is, is God, et cetera. And, you know, in our sphere it seems like we're definitely getting away from that kind of like refereeing. But yeah, you know, at the end of the day, right, I think, for people who know that, like, they want to tell a certain kind of story it absolutely lends it to that more like cinematic lens.
And I think that's great, right? To be like, okay, hey, I, I trust you enough with, culmination of your character arc that I'm going to hand you the big red button. I think that's really useful. And I think it is, as a hobby, you know, a great, habit to be like, yeah, it doesn't have to be that deep. The GM doesn't have to be the person who you know, makes all those calls.
I think, resistance system games come into conflict in that they are still very prep heavy games in that way. So like, then it is kind of like the GM being like, but wait, I made all this stuff.
Uh, but like, you know, still, I think, I think it is useful for the hobby to. To, you know, create those cultures of play where it's like, eh, it's truly fine if the GM isn't, isn't in control of narrative arcs and even if dice rolls seem to be tending one way, you still get to have say over the final cut.
Sam: Yeah. I think that being in conflict with prep is a really interesting observation there that one of the reasons it feels bad to turn over control to players is because you put all this work into prep and I I don't think prep is bad. Like I think prep is really good in a lot of ways, but just something to be aware of and to like design around I think.
Like I think there are ways to design games in which You're doing prep, or the game itself has done prep, right? The designer has done the prep for you and you're sort of accounting for what are the players given control over and what is gonna sort of remain canon?
And like players I think appreciate that too, right? Like You've it's easier to be given narrative control when you are given bumpers guidelines a box to have that control inside.
Aaron: Right. And I mean, that's, that's what I like about prep, is that like, it does allow you to constrain the story in some way. And I think that's useful, right? It kind of helps keep you, on rails, parenthesis, positive because it's like, okay, here's the realm of possibility that this story is taking place, you know, whenever I've run a game where I haven't prepped as much, I do feel like I tend to, get into the sillier aspects and, and, you know, not, not stay within the, narrative tome that I want to stick in. And I think that, you know, especially in a game that is as horrific and, you know, moody as heart. It is useful to have those constraints.
But yeah, you know, like there is just enough, fictional strangeness in, in this world that like, you can kind of get away from that and be like, yeah, okay. I know we can improv, the heart can do something weird and it still makes sense.
Sam: Right. There's a flexibility to this setting in that it's elastic before it breaks.
Aaron: Mm hmm.
Sam: I wanted to also talk about this in There's like a mechanic, the core mechanic in Agon 2nd Edition is a resolution mechanic where basically every action is a group action. Everyone is probably participating. And then anyone who fails at the action narrates first how their failure goes. And then you like culminate into the successes. And then whoever rolled best gets to sort of like put the cherry on top of succeeding at the end. And narrating how this goes is always turned over to the players.
And my experience there is that people Fucking love narrating their fuck ups. Like, they love their own failures. And that felt like a huge lesson to me that I also see present here, right? Like, even as you have this giant moment of success, right? We talked about this, it's exciting to then die afterwards. And I think that's surprising. Like, I think people don't realize that until they're at the table, like, just how much fun it is to take your character and be like, Oh no! Trouble! But when you have control over it, you get to sort of be the arbiter of that trouble. You get to make sure that nothing doesn't happen to them that you are not really excited about. that feels counterintuitive and worth saying.
Aaron: Yeah. And I mean, I think that's also useful in a way, especially when you are the GM and like oftentimes, right, because of the way that fallouts work in this game, you are the one who is penalizing your players. And sometimes those fallouts are constricting. away the verbs that you can, do, which sucks to be in a position where it's like, well I'm inside out for three hours, so I'm just going to like get on my phone for a bit while my organs leach into the dirt.
But like, if you are able to turn over that control to your players, they will often, be like, okay, I'm inflicting this on myself. And also they will often go harder than the GM um, would, normally do because, you know, you don't want to make your friends have a bad time at the table, but maybe if they're willing to opt into that themselves, they're gonna be like, Okay, this is a little bit , easier to swallow because I'm in control, I'm making that choice.
Sam: Then it's like my idea that I get to share with the table and not something that is sort of unfairly happening to me.
Yeah, another sort of piece of this I wanted to talk about is the connection between Zenith Beats and the like, basic dungeon delving fantasy, like the power fantasy that I think comes from D& D of like, I want to become a level 20 wizard and be able to turn myself into a train and then run over my enemies, or like, wish and bring people back from the dead or whatever kind of nonsense. I think that's sort of baked into D& D. That's baked into the dungeon crawler and is so rarely realized in like proper Dungeons and Dragons.
And It's really cool that heart does get you there and in like an achievable number of sessions, like six to ten sessions and then, like, has this Annihilation style commentary around, was that good though, actually?
Like Um, but even, even without that kind of commentary, I think it's just great that the game lets you play that part out instead of letting it just sort of hang over you as an aspirational future thing that you'll never get to unless you buy more books.
Aaron: Right, yeah, like, because you don't have to play, a hundred real life sessions to get to that level 20, you know, threshold I think that's really smart like on your episode about prestige classes, you talk about how, like, there is, like, an aspirational level to being, like, even though this is, like, many, many, many sessions away, there is still an opportunity for me to, to have this, you know, there, there's text in the book that says I can do this cool ability that's really hard to get to. I'm gonna start working towards that.
I think this is a much more efficient way of being like, yeah, here's an aspirational thing you can do. It's in here. You can reach your absolute, power maximum. But being able to do that in, like you said, you know, six to 10 sessions super nice.
And it does let you, you know, get through the like, baby adventurer phase where it's like, ah, I have a stick. I'm going out to go fight crabs for, you know, a day until you get to that final god killing, you know, like, Sepheroth final battle where you get to, do your ultimate move or whatever. That's really cool. And I'm glad that they've designed that way in a way that lets you actually make use of all of the, the phases of your character's you know, leveling.
Sam: Yeah, even taking out the commentary on what it means to get to this power fantasy it's fun to just get to the power fantasy and like there's something special and nice about that.
The commentary around it is also explicitly commentary about power fantasy, right? And it, like, is this, would you actually want to be able to get here? And I feel like that is a much smarter and more reflective take on this sort of classic I want to get as powerful as possible so I can kill God kind of story. Mm
Aaron: get to that level 30, you are leaving the bones of a hundred thousand goblins in your wake, right? And, and, I mean, I think that thematically works with Heart very well, because, like, the whole game is like, you're gonna lose yourself in pursuit of your, your dream And like that is a very fun way to realize that thesis is like, yeah, you can do it. And it also, you know, ruins your life.
Sam: Yep. okay. As much as we like, love Zenith beats, are there problems with zenith beats? Like are there drawbacks? Do you see anything here that you need to be careful about or that is not functioning at a hundred percent?
Aaron: So this is an insight that comes from the Sangfielle post mortem and one of the things that they were talking about in Songfeel is like very rarely did they get to fire off those Zenith abilities because nobody had taken Zenith beats ahead of time, right? If you're reading the text, rules as written, you have to be like, okay, hey GM, I'm getting ready to die, essentially. I'm taking a Zenith beat in your prep, in our storytelling. Let's kind of, funnel me into that. And, that's kind of hard to do. Like sometimes you know, a Zenith beat will be difficult to achieve. Let me find an example.
Sam: Yeah, we had that example Be truly absolved of your sins by a higher power.
Aaron: Yeah, like, that's not like something that can randomly happen, right? You kind of have to work for that. Another one, become one with the heart and bind your essence to it. Like, you can't just be like, Hey, I'm gonna bind myself to the heart and then after that we could all do like a downtime.
Like, no, that's kind of a, a long, kind of work your way up to that. Uh, And in that way, right, again this is a game that does kind of implicitly ask you to do a lot of work to build into that moment. And like, you know, I think that Howard and Taylor would be like, you don't have to do that. Just say, hey, I'm gonna be ready to die. Go ahead and take that zenith beat and fire it off. Like, I think they're probably much more, relaxed based on the tone of their designer commentaries. Like, I think they're probably pretty chill with you just picking and choosing what works for you.
But you know, rules as written. You do have to do a lot of, you know, work to build up to it. I understand why you make that choice. I understand why you would want to stick to those rules. Because you do want it to be satisfying. You do want to have earned that climax. But can be hard in a campaign. Like, you said you've played multiple of this.
You know, how many people did end up firing those Zenith moves?
Sam: know, it's been a few years, so I don't remember the details exactly, but my recollection is that a lot of them did get to go off, but they all kind of went off, like, all at once in the last 45 minutes of the campaign, right? And like, while you're fighting God, right?
It's sort of, the other thing I would say about the sort of connection to the Zenith beats is like Once you bind your essence to the heart and become one with it like then are you turning into a train? Like come on, man Like you're you're one with the heart like now you're a part of the heart and like your character's done. I guess now we have a cool little epilogue where you turn into a train? like a lot of times it feels like Zenith ability is the thing that wants to happen right before the Zenith beat or to happen literally at the same time, like immediately afterwards.
And I think that was often how things resolved. It's like, oh, you've come face to face with your god, and you've decided to kill them. Okay, you do so by turning into a train and immediately running them over.
Aaron: yeah, and I mean, like, I, I understand why. I think that's still a good mechanic. I think it is still, you know, nice to be able to be like, it's the end of the campaign. I've been thinking about this all day. Like, I come home from work and I'm like, alright, yes, finally, I'm going to unload all my debt onto this motherfucker and make him owe everything in the whole world and harvest his, his sins.
Like, I think that's a fun thing, like, as an anticipatory, moment. But yeah, feel like it does kind of get packed intoit's the RPG effect of like, well, I've saved up all these potions throughout the entirety of the campaign, and now I have 12 million Phoenix Downs here when I'm fighting, you know, the last boss.
It's like, that's too many, actually.
Sam: Yeah. But I mean, it is actually, it's fucking cool to be like, okay, we go into the fight with the last boss, and then like, instead of a long four hour grind session it's just like you turn into a train and I dump all my debt on him, Right, like we're gonna do all these things like back to back to back to back and then it's just kind of fucking over
But like it's not just kind of fucking over because you get to do all those cool things I don't know
Aaron: Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, that's true of any game that gives you abilities that are limited. You're always going to save them until the end.
Sam: Yeah.
Aaron: But yeah, I still think they are, they are providing that structure to get to that point, which is really useful.
Sam: Yeah, really like I think Zenith abilities just rule. Like any kind of skepticism from the past like minute of us talking is like more I think connected to the beat system. And maybe that means that this is a good time to sort of transition into talking about the beat system and some of the skepticism and trouble that I had with it there.
So let's get into that next time on Dice Exploder.
But thanks for being here for part one and we'll have you back next week, Aaron.
Aaron: Yeah. Looking forward to it.
Sam: All right, everyone. I think I'm gonna stop doing homework assignments here. This was a fun experiment, but the practice hasn't really felt inspiring to me. If you miss them, let me know. Or maybe I'll just throw 'em in here occasionally.
Better yet, Come up with your own homework assignments. Come on down to the dice, explode discord, and tell me all about 'em. Thanks again to Aaron for being here. You can find his video essays on YouTube at AA voit. You can support his work on Patreon, and he's on Blue Sky at AA voight.
As always, you can find me on Blue Sky or on the dice exploiter discord. You can find my games@sunal.itch.io. You can follow Kiss Me if you can a new rom-com game. I'm proud funding this summer on Kickstarter now.
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