In this review, we are pleased to tell you about one of the most awaited titles in Italy: Heart – The City Beneath. We thank Luca Scelza of Isola Illyon Editions for providing us with a physical copy of the manual in its Italian version. We also want to thank Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor, the authors, for the work and care they have put into this RPG.
Anyone wishing to purchase the Italian version can find it on Isola Illyon Edizioni store. The manual costs 50 euros and includes the digital version, which alone costs exactly half. For 90 euros it is possible to insure the Vermissian Bundle, which adds the physical manual of Spire – The City Must Fall (always with PDF included).
The Bond with Spire – The City Must Fall
The two games are in fact closely linked. Someone considers Heart – The City Beneath an expansion of Spire – The City Must Fall, as they share the same game world and mechanics, the Resistance System. However, it would not be correct, because Heart is rather a spin-off of sorts. And if you missed our review of the original game, we advise you to retrieve it as soon as possible, because it is really a great game.
The themes that arrive at the table are very different, to the point that even the system undergoes adaptations. This changes the style of play as much as the options available to players. Ultimately, between Heart – The City Benearh and Spire – The City Must Fall there is a very strong bond, but they offer such different gaming experiences as to enjoy a certain autonomy.
However, it is worth noting that Howitt and Taylor also wrote Burned and Broken, a short compendium that explains how to transport your characters from one game to another without problems. For the players, if nothing else: the characters will have more than enough.
Review of the Magnificent Handbook by Heart – The City Beneath
The volume is a prestigious edition, like all those to which Isola Illyon editions has accustomed us. Large, solid format, with perfect graphic rendering; something extremely important for a game like Heart – The City Beneath. Every single page has in fact been designed to be an element of the setting. Flipping through the pages, as well as being a visually pleasant experience – or deliberately unpleasant, given the themes proposed – is a process of immersion in the Heart of Spire. This is possible also thanks to the artistic direction and truly superb illustrations.
The manual is moreover pleasant to the touch, like the whole line of Spire. Somehow holding it in your hands is fulfilling; here we really have to recognize that a great job has been done in order not to betray the expectations of the public. A manual that took more than a year to wait but makes it worth it for each of its 220 pages.
Review of the Setting by Heart – The City Beneath
Summarizing its setting is a feat that will never do justice to the game. This is because Heart – The City Beneath is made of suggestions. The same authors constantly avoid going into too much detail, to define the particular. And it’s a formula that works because they still manage to leave enough input and ideas to ensure that everyone, leafing through the manual, builds their own Heart of Spire without going off track.
For those who don’t know Spire – The City Must Fall, it is a huge city that develops in height, a tower driven into the ground that descends to unthinkable levels. It is not known exactly what its origin is, nor even less its meaning, but the Spire exists, and is the source of often malevolent prodigies, the scene of stories of misery, struggle and subjugation.
A Slow Descent Towards the Heart
Heart, as the name suggests, is the beating heart of the Spire. Derelictus, itself a talking name, is the lowest layer of the Spire, where the line between the two souls of the tower begins to blur. This is the border area between the tower and its Heart, where the crazy influences of the latter arrive only through a pale echo.
The deeper you go underground, however, the more these increase. There are four levels of the Heart; in the former, it is still possible to live a normal life, albeit with constantly changing references. These are becoming increasingly rarefied, to the point that in the third level, we are faced with simply impossible scenarios. In the fourth, it is the very fabric of reality that is missing.
Review of the Link between Themes and Mechanics by Heart – The City Beneath
There are various reasons that can push the characters to delve into the Heart. Ransom, penance, wealth, and knowledge are among the most common motivations; the Heart makes no difference, it welcomes everyone in the same way. It transforms them in the same way, and it is not certain that the lucky ones will have the chance to go back.
It’s not easy to make such a game. Howitt and Taylor hit the bull’s-eye, and managed to improve further the system Spire – The City Must Fall, which is now clearer and also more linear, to the point that the basic mechanics are collected in a single infographic!
It is a system based on a 10-sided dice pool. One basic, one if the character has the listed Skill for the desired action, one if he has the relevant Domain (i.e. knowledge of the type of area he is currently in), one if he has a Talent (i.e. a second specialization in the required Skill or Domain). Depending on the result, the action will be successful or unsuccessful and the character may suffer some Stress; potentially the two things can happen at the same time, so it is possible to suffer stress even when you succeed in your intent.
Stress, Engine of the Game
The Stress mechanic is central to how the game works. Each time you suffer from it, this affects one of the character’s characteristics, which effectively acts as a pool of “wounds”. Each time you suffer new stress, you also roll a 12-sided die; if the result is equal to or greater than the current stress, one suffers a Complication, which the game master can choose from a set of lists or customize.
Complications are why Stress is so important. In fact, undergoing them allows you to remove them but above all, it carries the narrative forward in an unpredictable way. Stimulating improvisation and the creation of an interesting story, which brings out the objectives and nature of the characters.
Character review by Heart – The City Beneath
Character building is a fundamental step in Heart – The City Beneath. This is because it not only determines what a character is but also how they will react to the variables that will be faced in the game. It becomes essential to underline how the slow descent towards the madness of this game is not left to chance or to the total freedom of the game master and the players but has precise rules. Which can be applied with a certain flexibility, but the point of the game is to have them as a reference.
It is precisely the initial choices that determine how the character will react to the Heart. And vice-versa. First of all there is the choice of Ancestry, between Aelfir (the high elves), Humans, Gnolls and Drow. Attention to two fundamental points: the Gnolls are not wild and warmongering creatures, and the Drow are not the perverse inhabitants of the depths of the most famous fantasy game in the world. In the franchise of Spire, nothing is so direct and never so trivial.
At Heart We Are All the Same
It is also important to note that although a character’s bloodline determines the culture in which he grew up, it does not bring any particular modifiers or bonuses. This choice makes perfect sense in this context. To use manual words:
“In the depths of the Heart, people may hate you for what you believe in or for the settlement you live in, but not for where you came from.”
This passage is also fundamental for the distinction between Spire – The City Must Fall and Heart – The City Beneath. In the first, it is possible to play only Drow, and one suffers a very strong racism on the part of the Aelfir. In the second the various races see their own differences canceled by the descent into the heart, and that of racial segregation is a theme that no longer finds any place.
After the Bloodline is chosen the Calling, or the one that pushes the character to descend into the Heart. What he wants to find you. Adventure, Heartsong, Enlightenment, Penitant or Forced. There is also the possibility of readjusting one of these basic motivations, to personalize it according to one’s taste. The important thing is that what pushes the character to go deeper and deeper into the Heart is determined. What does he want to get out of his journey, and how will this goal transform him?
Class Review of Heart – The City Beneath
Finally, the character’s class is chosen, the series of abilities that allow him to influence the world around him and to resist its influence. Classes of Heart – The City Benearth are, needless to say, particularly specialized and very, very unusual.
- The Deep Apiarist is capable of manipulating reality by controlling a series of bees that literally inhabit his body
- The Vermissian Knight is a heavily armoured guardian (precisely) of the Vermissian, the crazed transport network that crosses the Heart connecting it to Spire
- The Heretic is a follower of Damnou, the goddess of the deep moon exiled from the surface
- The Junk Mage is a spellcaster whose addictive relationship with the occult has put him in contact with the alien entities that live in the Heart
- The Cleaver is a hunter; comfortable in the Heart, it is transformed by it as it feeds on the creatures it preys on, absorbing their traits
- The Hound is a mercenary, carrying on the tradition of a company that has been lost for centuries
- The Witch is an occultist infected from the heart itself. It carries the infection inside, which remodels its body more and more deeply
- The Deadwalker is a creature suspended between life and death
- Last but not least, the Incarnadine is a priest of the Debt divinity, one of the most ruthless ever between those that exist and those that do not exist in this world
Progress through Objectives
The Calling determines a basic perk of the character, but above all his own Beatings; that is, the set of impulses, desires and objectives which, if satisfied, will allow him to advance. The Class determines the starting Abilities and Domains of the character, as well as his equipment, but above all the Skills. They are the new skills you will acquire with the progress you make in reaching the Heart.
This highlights one of the most interesting aspects of Heart – The City Beneath; the advancement of the characters is not linked to the accumulation of experience but to the achievement of objectives. And not of goals chosen on the basis of the whim of the moment, but of something specifically linked to what led them to enter the heart.
An element closely linked to the master’s work. Each time the character reaches a Beat, he selects a new one. And the game master cannot study a plot in advance, because his job will be to make the story evolve in a direction that allows the various characters to satisfy their Beats.
Review of Heart – The City Beneath: Comparison with Spire
Heart – The City Beneath is an extremely dynamic game, which evolves with its characters. A game made of choices, in which the substantial setting section describes factions, locations and bestiary purely according to the development of the fiction. It is not a game designed to have its own pre-written narrative to offer to players, but the exact opposite.
In this Heart – The City Beneath marks a step forward from Spire – The City Must Fall. The underlying idea is less powerful; the descent into the abyss, although developed in an absolutely original way, cannot be compared to the impact that the game of the enslaved Drow had. Even if the term terrorist with which they were sold is improper, the concept on which it hingesSpire – The City Must Fall it’s completely revolutionary.
A Dynamic Game Management
Heart – The City Beneath however, it manages to develop a game that has not only been refined but has taken it to the next level. There are not only the mechanics to play, but also to carry out an entire campaign. In particular that of the Zenith Skills, those of the highest level that a character can reach.
This is the pinnacle of mastery over a class, the peak that, as stated above, can only be reached by reaching one’s Greatest Beat. And using them leads to the death of the character. Or at least to its disappearance, its transition to a completely new state of existence; in each case to his loss in play.
Conclusions of the Review of Heart – The City Beneath
Heart – The City Beneath it’s a self-destructive game, in some ways. Intense to the point that it hurts, because you take every layer of your character and pull it away. Until its most fragile and powerful nucleus is brought to light, to make it reach its apex – its zenith – and see it disappear absorbed by the Heart once its quest is completed.
Heart – The City Beneath is not a game for everyone. It doesn’t require who knows what skill, other than a willingness to adapt to a system that drives the game. It requires though the sensitivity to go along with it while at the same time trying to resist the searing effect it has on the heart; that of the player, this time. Heart – The City of the Deep it’s not a game for everyone, but it’s a game that everyone should try.
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