I’m designing a Wicked Heartbreaker

In a Wicked Age is a blast. I’ve played it a bunch over the years, but never really the long campaign I feel it deserves. However, there were always a couple of things I felt were a bit… rough about it. The whole back-and-forth of scene setting and dice-rolling have felt restrictive to several of my players, and that has always led us towards other games. But particularly the Oracles and the Owe list is something I’ve always wanted to incorporate in other games.

Now I finally have a playtest document that I think actually works. It takes the same concept, and the Owe List wholesale, and frames it basically like this: These are the tales that are told in the world of Heirs of the Leviathan. When they unleash their imaginations, these stories are what emerge.

In some ways it’s simpler, in other ways it’s more complex than In a Wicked Age. The structure of the entire game is more complex – the Oracle doesn’t only determine the elements of a particular session, they also determine the Moods of the session. Is it tale of Blood and Wits? Or is it a tale of Romance and Silence? These moods in turn determine what happens when the dice are rolled.

On the other hand, each scene is less complex. It’s about who holds the dice – they get to roll the dice at the end of the scene. Yielding the dice to another character gives you a token, which you can use for stuff. One of the Moods is “active”, but the moods flip when doubles are rolled – stolen from Swords Without Master. When Dice are rolled it’s basically Otherkind Dice, with different outcomes depending on the Mood. There’s so, SO much theft involved. (I know it’s not theft, I just like calling myself a thief)

There’s some more stuff, but this is the core of it. The Owe list remains a fixture, and determines who appears in future sessions.

Essentially, this does much the same as In a Wicked Age, but in a pretty different way – that’s how I feel about it, at least. The mechanics of In a Wicked Age has haunted me for the better part of a decade, and it is close, so very, very close to what I want it to be. That’s what makes Tales of the Leviathan a proper heartbreaker.