What I am supposed to be doing this week is wrapping my head around Mothership Players Survival Guide, but my head has been turned by the Heroes & Hardships Quickstart.
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Heroes & Hardships [H&H from this point on] is radically different from anything I have looked at recently. When I first saw the name in X&X format I thought d20 looky likey, but I could not have been further from the truth. H&H is a d10 dice pool game and I will be throwing buckets of d10s (8-10 dice per player are recommended) about.
The publisher of H&H is Earl of Fife Games. I first came across the writer on Discord. I talk to a lot of creators on Discord, and what I love about it is that we are are all learning by doing, we all make mistakes and try to learn from them and we all share experiences.
What I liked about sharing experiences here is that we started from opposite poles and yet worked towards the same end. For example, my work tends to be fast and basic, stock art or public domain, rules light and words brief. I would rather release four short adventures than one campaign setting, you get the picture.
Earl of Fife are the opposite. Their work is beautiful to look at, full of bespoke art, utmost care has been taken with the presentation and what they do publish is up there with the best.
Many of my books have got more substantial with more content and more art, and Earl of Fife have dabbled with shorter adventures.
…and so to Heroes & Hardships
I have not read the entire thing yet. The Quickstart Guide is 96 pages. I have read the system overview and it appears solid. Right now I am creating my first character. I have an idea for a character where the legends of Robin Hood were not all one person. I am the ‘other Robin’. I, of course, am the charming and good looking one. The other guy is Robin of Loxley and is a big of a knob, at times.
First Impressions?
The game is making all the right noises. Anything that builds well rounded competent characters and talks about scenes is always going to be received favourably. The look of the book is up to Earl of Fife’s usual standard. I don’t own 10d10, but my dice roller app serves the purpose. I mention this because my regular players like the d20s with 0-9 twice. Those things roll forever. If I took this to a gaming weekend, I could see us spending many hours climbing under the table to retrieve runaway dice.
Or is that just my group?
Tonight I will look at this game in more detail. Right now I am just starting to read up on Combat Basics. This is page 36, so I am over a third of the way through.
If you want to take a look at H&H, it is Pay What You Want on DriveThruRPG. Why not pick up a copy, but if you do, please toss at least 20¢ in the tip jar. It will make you feel much better about yourself, honest.