Kickstart Your Weekend - Hearts Blazing

Hearts Blazing

Type: Table Top Narrative RPGFunding End Date: June 1, 2016Funding Status: Pending

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gamesbyplaydate/hearts-blazing/[yasr_multiset setid=10]

The Story

The story is what you want it to be. Saddle up and traverse the Galaxy as a Military Unit. Fight Aliens during Mankind's First Contact, or defeat a Dictatorship in a Post Apocalyptic metropolis. The Choice is yours as you play through a story of your own design.

The Gameplay

In Hearts Blazing your group of 3-5 players will tell an episodic story set in a Sci-Fi environment.At the start of the game, you will first come to a consensus on your setting. Figure out simple rules of the Universe as well as where you are starting out.For the World, The idea is to create a trope heavy environment so that the Role Playing comes naturally. Each player should come up with one of the world's major Tropes then keep track of the details and limitations of that trope. Once the World is created, come up with the Technology and Abilities of it's inhabitants. Again, the use of Tropes to accomplish this is encouraged in Hearts Blazing. You could have a fantastical setting like Shadowrun, or a more realistic setting like Star Trek. Finally, come up with major factions or organizations for your setting. Every major Sci-Fi setting has them, and so should yours. Are you part of the Galactic Empire? Maybe the Doomscape Conglomerate? Or you're a lonely crew just trying to get by. Either way, this gives you access to easy motivations and groups to interact with.When creating your characters, you will turn to the Cards. Each player is dealt an Archetype: Ace, Leader, Rookie, Engineer, and Veteran. This will give you access to a Cliche Deck, which helps you mold your characters performance in the plot. Finally, you will be given a secret Motive; this is something that you will be trying to accomplish throughout the game in order to "Win". Finally you will flesh out the rest of your character with your appearance. This should not make or break the character as it should be kept malleable enough to change with the plot.Finally you will build the plot-line. This is the deck that will determine where in the story you are and help progress the overall plot.Now you're ready to play.You will start by revealing an "Episode". Each "Episode" has a Threshold value that you must all add up to in order to complete the Episode. Once this is completed, you then play out the episode, using the cards played as a framework for the Episode. Once you complete the episode, you will move on through the Season until you get to the Finale.In the Finale, you will then reveal your character's Motive then count each Keyword of cards they are still holding at the end. This determines the order of how players will recount their Epilogue. The "Winner" or final player gets to wrap up the plot of the whole series which may or may not include hints that lead into a Second Season, if you decide to continue with this World.

The Aesthetic

Hearts Blazing comes with 126 cards, all of which can be downloaded and viewed on their Kickstarter page. You can even print these out and play now if you wish! They don't mind at all.Backing the Kickstarter will get you high quality card stock, and a nice box to keep it all in. Neither of which have been revealed.

The Perks

$2 - You get their thanks and access to updates!$20 - You get the game!Beyond this, they've added price points to buy the game in bulk for Stores.

The Verdict

Fund!

The game plays like a more structured version of Fiasco. Each game of Hearts Blazing is going to have a different feel and storyline as you progress and leaves you open to long narratives if you find a Series that you really enjoy playing. You can Roleplay as much or as little as you want using this system, making it a good starter game for people that may not have experience in a Tabletop RPG.While they did state that their reasoning for not having stretch goals or tier lists is to make it simple, I feel they're selling themselves short when they could be providing more to the backer. Kickstarter is a good platform to raise a lot of money for your project, but if you just treat it as a pre-order platform, there's really no reason to be using it outside the publicity you get.Kickstarter Backers love the options of getting more elaborate packages. We like the community effort to unlock higher quality card stock or an Expansion deck adding a 6th player. We don't always need tee-shirts, or art prints, but having higher tiers, even bundling your other games together would be a good way to A) Meet your funding goal, and B) Incentivize your backers to become invested in your project.I'm backing it at $20 for the game. I want the official prints and box instead of printing it out and cutting it up. I wish they gave me a way to throw more money at them so they could create more than just the base game. But from reading the rules and playing out the game in my head, this will be fun for any gaming group.Happy Funding!