"Trudging through the bog, your boots sodden with freezing murky water that comes up to your waist you feel something brush past your leg, could be another catfish, could be the serpent you have been hunting for the last 3 days."

Travel and exploration of fantastical worlds is a core part of the HEARTH experience, with players scouting for useful information, navigating around hazards, tracking monsters and recovering at camp all part of the game. Whether you encounter perilous terrain, tense negotiations, ambushes, friendly merchants, safe havens where the party can rest, or mysterious women in ponds distributing swords. Each exploration hinges around something of interest happening to provide short term stakes that the heroes have to deal with before arriving at their destination, closing in on their prey, or being caught by their pursuers.

Turns are taken where each player will get to take an action to further the parties goals, working in tandem to complete them.

“You grit your teeth and take a deep breath, the wound on your arm sending waves of pain through your body. Another volley of arrows hurtles towards you only to be stopped by your allies shied. Together you stand and face the tide of enemies before you.”

Hearth’s combat is based on a 2 Action system to allow for quick and snappy turns so you can take your actions, make an impact, then pass it on to the next person weaving a collective narrative rather then a series of disconnected actions taken one after the other.

Hearth’s combat system relies on two other resources at the player’s disposal, Stamina & Mana.

Stamina:

Stamina is the resources utilized for martial abilities. Be it bashing the vile necromancer with your shield to break their hold over a swarm of zombies, pinning a raging berserker to a wall with a well placed crossbow bolt or cleaving through ranks of demons with a whirlwind attack, you can give your imagination some narrative punch to back it up.

Mana:

Mana is the resource which fuels magical abilities, be it turning a hoard of zombies to ash with a ball of fire, transforming yourself into a tiny beast to scout out an area, or rejuvenating your allies with a touch, you can bring the magic to your table.

Finally, In HEARTH you are not the sole hero of the realm, you are part of a team, a family, a group of heroes who together will accomplish great things. To reinforce this we have introduced the Invoke/Imbue system, this allows one person to set up an enemy for a devastating follow up attack. Be it covering the lumbering giant with burning embers and letting your brick wall of a tank shoulder check them, causing the flames to ignite and smoulder, or slicing the thick hide of a dragon with your keen blade so the storm mage can blast off the wing with a well placed thunderous detonation. The ability to do cool combos with your friends on big monsters will be a core part of the combat in HEARTH.

“The guards begin reaching for their weapons, your friend’s not so subtle threat turning the atmosphere tense. But a quick joke and witty retort breaks the tension and your party is allowed to pass into the city beyond”

Not all problems need to be solved with violence. In HEARTH sometimes words can cut just as deep as a sword, with a full ruleset for social encounters you can give those charming, suave, or threatening characters a time to shine.

HEARTH provides Narrators the tools to make a variety of social encounters ranging from convincing the shop keep to give you a deal, to convincing the dwarven clan lords to provide aid to the war front. Built with freeform roleplay in mind the social system begins and ends with conversation, with skills and abilities providing a foundation of rules.

And for those of you who aren’t totally comfortable with roleplaying, don’t worry, the system works just as well with descriptive play, no funky character voice required.