Hearts of Magic is a wonderful party game or oneshot system, a delightful repackaging of MF0: Firebrands.
The porting of the "three classes in conflict for a rare resource" to a fantasy universe offers a surprisingly different gameplay, with Anarchists, Bureaucrats, and the Fae behaving and interacting noticeably different from MF0's Revolutionaries, Mercenaries, and Nobles.
This clever repositioning of the classic formula is accentuated by three new games. Wizard Battle offers a spicy alternative to meeting Sword to Sword, providing rich textual prompts for psychedelic and emotionally meaningful magical combat.
An Oblique Discussion is a great social alternative, offering an opportunity to drive the plot while delighting in innuendo and misunderstanding. I'd love to see more Firebrands hacks make use of it in the future. It's a phenomenal contribution to the genre as a whole.
But the real magic at the heart of this game is Weaving a Spell Together. This minigame masterfully blends the sense of mutual sacrifice, thirsty eroticism, and psychedelic exploration of memory. It works at any time, but shines as a late game play, where characters can bring in items from previous scenes, sacrifice the lives of side characters already met, and burn their own future potential in preparation for an explosive finale.
Hearts of Magic is a great game in its own right, as well as a powerful contribution to the Firebrands hack ecosystem. Try it and see!
I don’t see the discussion forum enabled, so I hope it’s ok to provide feedback and questions in a comment.
A Chase:
it asks you to “throw”, but it never really explains what a throw is before this. One can infer it’s a coin toss, but it might be worth mentioning the lingo in Conducting the Chase.
Ending the Chase says “After a total of four challenges and admissions” - is that 4 of each, or 4 total?
If the hunter wins, are you supposed to fully resolve the outcome, or leave it as a cliffhanger?
An Oblique Discussion:
this specifically uses Scandal Tokens instead of coins used in other places. It might be better just to use coins here, saying they represent scandal.
Stealing Time Together:
a player may interrupt after the 3rd exchange, OR may choose to flip a coin after ANY exchange. I don’t know why, but it feels strange to have both of these rules at the same time
I didn’t do a side by side comparison with Firebrands or anything here, these are just notes taken on a full read-through.
no! the demo .txt here should be the same as what's going up on the Kickstarter, and the Kickstarter PDFs will be going up though itch! the only difference is it's cheaper though KS, and that once it funds there will be additional art in the book!
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Hearts of Magic is a wonderful party game or oneshot system, a delightful repackaging of MF0: Firebrands.
The porting of the "three classes in conflict for a rare resource" to a fantasy universe offers a surprisingly different gameplay, with Anarchists, Bureaucrats, and the Fae behaving and interacting noticeably different from MF0's Revolutionaries, Mercenaries, and Nobles.
This clever repositioning of the classic formula is accentuated by three new games. Wizard Battle offers a spicy alternative to meeting Sword to Sword, providing rich textual prompts for psychedelic and emotionally meaningful magical combat.
An Oblique Discussion is a great social alternative, offering an opportunity to drive the plot while delighting in innuendo and misunderstanding. I'd love to see more Firebrands hacks make use of it in the future. It's a phenomenal contribution to the genre as a whole.
But the real magic at the heart of this game is Weaving a Spell Together. This minigame masterfully blends the sense of mutual sacrifice, thirsty eroticism, and psychedelic exploration of memory. It works at any time, but shines as a late game play, where characters can bring in items from previous scenes, sacrifice the lives of side characters already met, and burn their own future potential in preparation for an explosive finale.
Hearts of Magic is a great game in its own right, as well as a powerful contribution to the Firebrands hack ecosystem. Try it and see!
I don’t see the discussion forum enabled, so I hope it’s ok to provide feedback and questions in a comment.
A Chase:
An Oblique Discussion:
Stealing Time Together:
I didn’t do a side by side comparison with Firebrands or anything here, these are just notes taken on a full read-through.
Is there any difference between this released and the one in the kickstarter campaign ? Thank you !
no! the demo .txt here should be the same as what's going up on the Kickstarter, and the Kickstarter PDFs will be going up though itch! the only difference is it's cheaper though KS, and that once it funds there will be additional art in the book!
cool ! Thank you ! I love Firebrands and Divine Mundane, I will buy your game on Kickstarter.
Curious: does this game use any mechanic like The King is Dead where you can ultimately "win"?
no! but in my experience, when you sum up at the end, it's usually pretty obvious who's coming out ahead after the dust settles, and who isn't.