Heartstone Codex

Sam's Fantasy Craft game

Currently: Set-up. Time: 664, the first snows are melting Location: Southern Sirdehaar

About the Game

Premise: Over the last few decades, some of the most important ideas of the age have been formulated into a series of iconic images and illuminated texts. At a remote abbey, a site for pilgrimage, they are to be bound into a codex and then copied, to be distributed by pilgrims around the Pashnaar Empire. However, the past two years have brought increasingly rapacious incursions of western barbarians. As the spring snows melt and the mountain paths open, an armed group of pilgrims arrives at the abbey asking for refuge. As always, the abbey opens its gates. But an ancient saying is remembered: When the spring snow melts, Death knocks at the gate.

Setting & Feel: The main inspirations (no more than that) are Europe in the Dark or early Middle Ages, the relation between East and West and in particular religious conflicts such as those over iconography. Invasions of barbarian hordes, usually invited to invade by political factions. The interplay between religious devotion and political expediency. Illiteracy is predominant, and knowledge is in the hands of a few. True Good and Evil do exist, but are very infrequently encountered; no temporal power has a monopoly over either. The intention of all of this is as coathangers for interesting characters, a scaffold for intrigue and for adventure. Not anthropowanking, or anything which might scare people off.

Intentions for the Game:

• Players who don`t have the rules – If I can drag good players in, ones who don’t a priori know chargen or the rules (people like Asen, Chalkline, Mr.A), then I am more than happy to put the extra effort in.
• Open-ended and long-running – I may use an episodic structure in order to introduce breaks.
• Character advancement and development – I see interesting characters as the centre for any game. So, characters must be rooted in the setting.
• Not railroaded – you are half-way through a ‘dungeon’; you get the notion that going back the way you came will confuse the hell out of the enemy – go for it!
• Participatory – (1) Please contribute to the setting, ideas for adventures, for NPCs. (2) this is the first time I run Fantasy Craft (I have mostly run Hero Quest) so I will need help with rules and with inevitable slip-ups.
• Occasional need for tactics. I love situations where players have to use their noddles to achieve some tricky objective, e.g. how to get across an open area of ground which is being watched, how to demonstrate to the local lord that his right-han man is a traitor, etc.
• Use of social and other skills as an alternative to bopping folk over the head (a major reason for choosing Fantasy Craft – there is crunch but there are also other options).
• Failure is Fun – if your characters tries something and fails, we try to make the result more interesting than if (s)he had succeeded (link to Mike Holmes’ essay).
• Friendly and with a lack of posturing – this comes from the choice of people to play with.
• Characters may have secrets. However, these should be made known to all at the ‘table’ except where short-term secrets add spice to a particular situation.

Characters and Crunch

• GM Action Dice (d6):
• Players’ Action Dice: A(d4): 3(3) / B(d4): 3(3) / C(d4): 3(3) / D(d4): 3(3) /
• Temporary Qualities: none

Player Characters

• Template Sheet played by
• Template Sheet played by
• Template Sheet played by
• Template Sheet played by
• Template Sheet played by
• Template Sheet played by
• Template Sheet

Non-Player Characters

• The Humble Man
• The Illuminator
• The Lord
• The Mourner
• The Priest
• The Prophet
• The Repentant

Organizations

Setting

• Permanent Campaign Qualities: Ancient & Miracles & Sorcery exist N.B. Qualities related to characters are with instructions for chargen, below.
• Creation Myth and History
• Races
• Races and Places
• Geography - the four edges of the world are ruled by fierce Giants and are impassable.

Chargen

1. We discuss your idea for a character. Please give some of the setting stuff a quick read – it is intended to inspire ideas (fingers crossed).
2. Choose origins. Human is the default race, but there are variants and other races avilable, on the races page. Your homelan will also be a very important choice.
3. Choose level 1 class. Note that some options will make little sense in the current game (e.g. Explorer – it is based on literacy an consulting public libraries all the time).
4. Why is your character overwintering at the abbey? Some suggestions:
   • member of a religious order (priest, monk, nun, knight), local or visiting – could be one of the abbey illuminators.
   • member of the local community, or visiting it
   • pilgrim, vagabond or refugee who has been taken in
   • spy (!)
   • other
5. Make character, using standard rules but taking note of the following “campaign qualities”:

Campaign Qualities Related to Chargen:

• Hyper-fast feats - Characters take an extra feat at each level (including 1st)
• Characters take a third feat at first character level, Blessed (i.e. one step along an Alignment Path). This will be determined by the month of the character's birth - I will roll a d12 twice and tell you the two options - you pick one of these. Nota Bene – the esult needn`t be something integral to your character just yet, and it could be something (s)he seeks to resist.
• Illiteracy: No-one is literate unless they have the specific feat, Literacy. Note that there will be alternatives to writing, where it is needed for magic, say. E.g. a fetish could substitute a scroll. My preference is that only one or two characters be literate.
• Iconic classes variant: No character loses action dice (or is otherwise penalised) for not taking an iconic class. Instead, they gain 1 action die if they take that class.

New Feats:

• Literacy. Can only be taken at character level 1. Available to: Keeper, Mage, Priest and Mage classes, or to Witch race.
• Lock of Hair. Some spells which are directed at an individual can be cast without the individual being present, provided the caster has in his/her possession an item belonging to that character, such as a lock of hair. Available spells are those of the following types: Curse, Blessing ...more? Trick: The caster can delay the spell so that it occurs only following some predefined trigger. This costs 1 action die and the associated spell points cannot be recovered until the spell has been triggered.