So what’s the deal with those Realm Starters?

I recently put up the following “collection” on Itch (I mean, it will be a proper collection eventually), where the first additional “Realm Starter”, namely Unceasing Winters, is already included. It will eventually be filled with these little two-sheet packets of inspiration, but what exactly is their deal? I am currently putting the finishing touches on the next one, named Kingdoms of the Red Planet, and I figured I would go through what they are and why I make them, by using examples from this one.

The Inspiration

The obvious inspiration for these are the Dungeon Starters made for Dungeon World- I absolutely love these, and have had great success using them as a springboard for playing World of Dungeons. So, if they can be used as a springboard for playing WoDu, I figured that Heirs should have something similar. And then it turned out that they were really fun to make.

The first one, Shadows of the Ancient Citadel, is inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire, with a bit of gothic horror flair. Unceasing Winters is inspired by The Left Hand of Darkness, with horrific seasons and an absence of war. The third, Kingdoms of the Red Planet, goes a bit wild, and is inspired by the Barsoom novels – none of which I have ever actually read.

I have… 20 of these listed in my on my whiteboard. So, what’s their deal?

An opportunity for focused game design

Heirs of the Leviathan is a very loose game – a lot of stuff you’re supposed to figure out at the table, but Realm Starters give you ways of focusing a campaign in a particular direction. Shadows of the Ancient Citadel will steer you towards a classic fantasy intrigue, and Unceasing Winters will steer you towards a campaign where nature, the seasons and material conditions are vital for survival.

And Kingdoms of the Red Planet is all about WAR.

The Colour

These are pretty simple: Impressions are just scenes to describe when envisioning what the world is like, Realm Moves is stuff the GM can do that are particularly suited for this realm, and questions are for asking the players, and jogging their imaginations. It’s classic colour.

The Class

Each Realm starter has a Class, with a Source and 4 special abilities to choose from. This one is particularly weird, because Adventurer fundamentally changes how the Class operates – it basically casts this particular Heir as a John Carter or Conan the Barbarian type figure, (but my primary inspiration was John Crichton from Farscape), and remove them from the game of Hubris which Heirs usually play.

Of course you can create your own class, and mix and match these abilities, and I’m really looking forward to seeing people’s cool combinations.

Characters and Locations

These are characters and locations which you can use at your leisure. Cha Zen in this one is the archetypical market town, with a focus on elitism and political commentary – probably a bit of satire!

Ithed is one of three warlords from the Red Planet, and each of them has a move associated that changes how they do war. I like to make each character mechanically distinct, not with stats but with weird little abilities.

The Threats

Threats are, in my opinion, the meat of the Realm Starters, and the ones I enjoy making the most. Some are relatively short, but most have a good chunk of text associated with them. This is just a little piece of the Republic of Amathousia, which consists of a string of moves that emulate the presence of a powerful, aggressively ideological republic.

They change the game a lot when introduced, simply because they introduce a bunch of fixed mechanics that typically make them more difficult to deal with than just another warlord. The ones in Kingdoms of the Red Planet include The Million Nations, which is pretty much just a way of managing a sprawling tapestry of diverse nations, the aforementioned Amathousia, and of course Artyaktes, the God of War, who, well, rouses their acolytes into a war-crazed frenzy.

Each of the Realm Starters can be remixed, reworked and adapted in various ways. You can easily put Amathousia in a Shadows of the Ancient Citadel game, or play an Outsider in Unceasing Winters. My personal ambition for them is that people (maybe you!) start making their own. Once there is a bunch of them out there, I might get motivated to write the setting book of my dreams.