What makes Heart the greatest dungeon crawler in years? RPG Review 

This channel isn't good for me. I just ordered the book and YOUUUU made me do this 3 times already.

Another great review. Clear, thorough and no nonsense.

I have been on the fence about buying Heart for a long time. It's pretty much Schrodinger's RPG for me. It shows up at my LFGS once in a while when I'm not thinking about it, but when I do want to pick it up, it's conspicuously absent, and I sincerely question whether it was ever real in the first place.

I have only read this book on anyflip so far and I will 100% buy. Alone the classes look soo fun.

I considered Spire because of your previous review, but Heart interested me enough to purchase the book. Thanks for that.

Wow! Mind blown with all the rpg stuff created these days. Your review once again really brings out the creative genius of this book.

Love this I got heart recently and loved your breakdown of it, I’ll definitely dive deeper into the landmarks and adversaries section now!

Great review! This game is REALLY evocative. Might have to pick it up

I've gotta say it again - this is an excellent review. Music in the background is also a nice touch.

I've had this game for a year and your video has made me want to Campaign to get my group to play it all over again!

RR&D is such a powerhouse of a publisher at this point, they even have Minerva McJanda and Zachary Cox on staff now.

Stumbled on to this. Very clean presentation and concise review. My buddy who's big into 5e, Blades in the Dark, and Into the Wyrd and Wild will love this game.

You are the best rpg reviewer of youtube

Also quick correction! A landmark is jist defined as a place where things are more stable but it doesn't always need to be populated by people to be more stable than a delve!

I like the sound of the vibe and unique classes. Might have to give this a go

Great review, as usual. Heart/Spire game engine is fantastic to run narrative cessions, adapting it to dungeon crawl is kind of weird. I wonder if the game plays as well as it reads. The tone is bit too serious for my taste though.

Hate being that guy, but Best Cover Art and Best Interior Art were Silver awards not Gold. Still very impressive. Hard to believe any product can have so many awards and not be product of the year.

While I loved the setting and art, I just don't find the book to be that useful. For a game that's meant to be based off improvisation from the GM's side, there's a huge lack of random tables and other similar tools to make it easy to come up with stuff on the fly. The only way I see this game played is by a GM that dedicates a huge amount of time to carefully crafting their own version of The City Beneath. I wanted to love this game and got all the supplements and material released to it, but I just don't see myself ever playing it. I say this as the forever GM though, I'd LOVE to play in a campaign ran by someone else.

Ran a Heart campaign. I would *not* recommend it. Their conflict resolution system is not robust enough. I suspect RR&D's forthcoming title, Hallows, presents a better system for something like Heart. I love what Heart wants to evoke, but the designer's advice to run a game (suggesting folks not prepare in advance, for example), the narrow conflict resolution system, and the end of play always being death makes Heart feel like a half finished concept piece.

I’ve owned this game and all of the main expansions as well as the ichor drowned home brew ((yeah go look that expansion up it’s dope, you’re welcome)) and this is the most helpful like, clarification and easy to digest break down of the rules which are pretty lose to start with. Will be sharing this with new players going forward haha

Support the channel by joining my Patreon! www.patreon.com/thaumavore Sign up for my newsletter! bit.ly/ThaumavoreNewsletter ERRATA: A landmark is defined as a place where things are more stable but it doesn't always need to be populated by people to be more stable than a delve.

Like and comment for the YT algorithm. Thank you for your work, Dave.

This has a huge Darkest Dungeon energy to it, I love it

Don't act it out? Nah. Imma do it. That beautiful Gimli/Legolas style dynamic of begrudging respect and character growth can't happen if settings keep bowdlerizing themselves.

Such a good and (mostly) spoiler free review I used it as a primer for my players 👍.

Nice review, Dave. Is this the video you said you ended up dunking in the OSR a lot? I didn’t pick that up if you did.

Not a fan of the dice system. But the overall theme and aesthetic is pretty cool.

There is nothing more metal in an rpg than an ability that says “to activate this ability, die.”

Need to run Heart and Spire some day. So many games, so little time.

Wait, is this using the Darkest Dungeon artist? Great review!

It's like Darkest Dungeon but a TTRPG, dope.

You have to try In the Company of Delvers. It's really something when the players realize the dungeon is just there and the real game is the Company Intrigue.

Great review! However I'm running this on my channel and find it difficult to reward players. There are no magic items table or artifacts, which I'm taking from Mork Borg.

What other games do you recommend where you have a pointcrawler starting from a base and also have a detailed world? My mind goes to UVG

Awesome!

Please do a video on the landmarks 😉

Nice, I heard of heart but never got into reading whats its about. Thank you. Out of curiosity where I should I go to ask for you to review an rpg? I'm assuming its your patreon.

Dave you need some sound dampening panels vocals are unusually echo'y

Amazing.

Sounds like real a cool game!

Definitely deserved awards for their art and stuff, but I agree with other posters below that it really falls flat once you get it on the table. I too was very inspired by reading the book, but it just isn't a good game. It doesn't offer the GM any of the tools neededed for the game they expect you to run, and while it leans in on horror elements it has watered those down with zero consequences for the player characters. Where's the horror then? Basically, I love the book but hate the game. And in a way it's making me seriously reconsidering if I should give any weight to the Ennies in the future. Do they even play RPGs before they hand out awards, or do they read the book in their salon?

What is OSR? Thanks.

Apart from inspiration, what is the relationship between Spire/Heart and Darkest Dungeon (video game)? Did the artist come from that studio? The flavor is uncannily similar, and one of the classes is directly taken from DD.

Hi Dave Thaumavore, I need you help. I really don't understand how to build a Delve. I've found the rules at page 133 and 134 not as clear as I would. At page 73 are indicated the Stress values for each Tier but which would the suggested amount of Resistance be for each Tier and Number of Players in your opinion?

Are Spire and Heart combineable, Dave, guys?

Here's the link for Dave's Spire review: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RlCLTwpzUCQ.html

Another great game setting and framework and idea ruined by abysmal dice systems. Absolutely fantastic review, it’s a shame they are better writers than they are game mechanic designers. That being said, this book will absolutely make its way onto my shelf, it has value and great unusual ideas. Side Note: The Delve system is absolutely genius for the point to point crawl type game. They do that extremely well.

Well my hording of books was suposedly stoped... until i saw this video... i guess just one more :D

As I understand it, the player is the one who can decide to make 2 major fallouts into a critical fallout.

Are Beats an extension of.. Keys? ... damn too many indie games. I can't remember the name of anything.

I like the concept of spire but it pigeon holes it’s players into a single perspective and that’s egregious in my opinion.

4:20 They made high elves racist but don’t want me to make a racist high elf character?

I actually got to try out HEART and was thoroughly disappointed. This was an award winning system and it was just kinda... meh. In my opinion, it has a few core problems. Let's start with the biggest one. Fallouts and death: The fact that fallouts can stack infinitely makes them a bit silly, if your character keeps gathering them. And getting the same fallout a second time makes it feel very boring and artificial. And you will, because there aren't that many. Because fallouts stacking doesn't put you closer to a limit or anything like that, it never feels like your character is in any danger. And they aren't. Only you can decide for your character to die. It's a giant dungeon of death, where you never feel like anything is actually at stake. A horror game where nothing can actually threaten you. Depending on how lucky or unlucky a character is, you can end up with someone having about 8 fallouts and it's a joke, rather than a burdening consequence. Customization: Once you've played a playbook/class, there is really not much mechanical difference if you pick it again. At most you can change the order in which you take the same 20 or so abilities. And even then, many of them are just "Gain +1 on X". So mechanically, there is very little room to customize your character. Setting: There isn't one. This is the biggest problem: the Heart has everything in it. Everything. And this makes it difficult to connect with anything, because you know that it's all just random stuff, anyway. Not to mention how much the horror of a setting can suffer, once you encounter the "hairdresser spider", "mirror dimension", "people eating houses" and stuff like that. Strategy: There is no strategic gameplay. A very, VERY basic form of resource management is as good as it gets. Other than that, the only strategy in the game is: "let others approach challenges, so they get to suffer stress instead of you". Beats: Possibly the biggest hit to replay value and restraint on storytelling in general. There are certain story beats that have to be met and this means that the story HAS to involve these story elements. And since you usually have almost all Callings in a group, get ready to have the same plot points repeat again and again and again, with each group. All in all, it's an okay game, it can be fun and its dice system is at least a bit more complex than a PBTA one, allowing for more difficult challenges, but I definitely wouldn't consider it award winning or even all that good. I played it in several groups and have no desire to play it again. And judging from the Discord's LFG section, that seems to be the experience of most people. A whole bunch of GMs trying it for the first time, running it for a few sessions and then never coming back to it.

I wonder if they like Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon 😆

this game has major made in abyss vibes

While the setting seems interesting, I think it’s too outside the norm for my players. Also I don’t like that prejudisms as acknowledged but never acted out. I mean, why? It’s a game, if these things are true to the setting- why not make prejudices something to be addressed and overcome?

nobody said that, but I see some HUGE "Made in Abyss" vibes there. Unfortunately is a narrative RPG and that kills most of my expectation, but it would be nice to run the settings in a more "classical" way.

Darkest Dungeon the TTRPG

I've sent this video to my group chat and we had the best dialogue of that day. Me: >you can play as a racist elf >developers ask you to not roleplay racism at the table thanks Obama My friend: Fuck devs Ima be racist out of the table too

Honestly how did this win the awards? Seems like the took the art and gameplay conecpt from Darkest Dungeon and sunless sea and other the video game and TT games in this genre like Blades in the Dark and made a TTRPG book out of it... Which personally I don't like the sound of all... Love it's setting and might love the lore what little of it there is... Art in a TT game for me only matters if it impacts gameplay like cards in Blood red skies or Pokemon... How does the art matter at all in a game where you only the GM will read all of it? Which the game seems to mechinics light to win a award for machinics especly when you can find rules like this is so many other naritive focused books. Like what I'm a missing that makes this game the best in 2021?

I would struggle to call this a review, but it is a solid summary of the core mechanics.