#callings

But my one Mormon Mom Friend (that's also the Primary President) asked if I'd be up for being the Primary Pianist or at least would be okay with giving the bishop my name for the calling.

I'd told her I'd think about it, and y'know? I can play piano. I have a piano that I can practice on at home. I can borrow my mom's copy of the Primary songbook.

One of the things I really, really enjoy about Heart: The City Beneath is the advancement/calling system. It feels … so explicit? You just straight up say, directly to your GM/the game, what you want to happen to your character, what you want them to accomplish, the kind of situations you want to see them dumped in. And you’re rewarded for it. That is directly and literally how your character advances. By getting yourself into your chosen situations and playing them out.

When you make a character in Heart, you pick a class, and you pick a calling. Your class is your set of abilities, what you can do. And your calling is your reason, what you’re down here for, your goals and desires. You get an ability with your calling, and then you get a list of minor, major and zenith beats. Which are, functionally, a list of goals and situations you want your character to wind up in. You pick two before you start, and two more at the end of each session, and give them to the GM. You can only have two active at once, and you can only use each beat once. When you accomplish a beat, you get to pick a new ability of the corresponding level from your class, minor, major or zenith. The major and zenith beats are obviously more difficult and might take longer to accomplish, so you can have a major beat running for a few sessions until you manage it.

And the thing about the beats is, they’re not necessarily good. It’s not necessarily ‘I want to do a cool thing and be rewarded’, although those are options as well. You can ask for something horrible to happen to you, to earn something from it. Or you can ask to do something vicious towards your goal that is a horrible thing to do but makes for a very interesting story. And you pick them, although you can ask your GM/party to pick beats for you if you’re so inclined either. But normally you pick them. You are choosing what arc you want this character’s story to go on.

Okay. Some examples. Say you pick the Adventure calling, and you want to be famous. Some of the beats you could pick for your character include: have a cocktail named after you (minor), have 3 havens know your name for good or ill (minor), have a landmark named after you (major), catalogue your exploits for an extended period either yourself or by hiring someone (major). But to spice it up and put some curveballs in, you could also pick: refuse to back down when it would be beneficial to do so (minor), take major blood fallout (minor), slay a beast that’s at least five times your size (major). Hey, you would be famous for them! And some of those add complications. How does your hireling biographer manage during your adventures? Did your party agree to go hunting building-sized monsters so you can get famous?

Or say you picked the Enlightenment calling. You’re looking for forbidden knowledge. And like all good mad scientists, you want your character to go mad from the revelations, because that’s just how you want this to go. You can choose, actively say to the GM, I want to take Mind damage from this. I want to end up with Mind fallout. I want you to put things in front of me that will break my brain. So you pick ‘take major mind fallout’ as a story beat.

Of if you want to interact antagonistically to your calling. Say you took the Penitent calling. You’re down in the Heart to make things right with someone, person or organisation, that you did wrong. But you decide fuck them. Or, you genuinely do want to make things right, but you want your character to be put in a situation where that’s a hard choice. You can choose to put your character at risk to do things against your order. You can pick things like ‘perform an act that, if your order discovered it, would undo your penance’ (major). You want to make things right, but you want the game to put you in a position where that is narratively at risk.

Some of them, they just get you pieces of the setting to interact with. For example, if you pick the Heartsong calling, as a major beat, you can pick ‘Visit three Vermission Stations’ and just straight up tell the GM that you’re here to explore a weird-ass mass transit system, could they please make that happen for you?

And you get rewarded for it. This is how you advance. You gain more abilities by picking a story you want to go on and playing it out. Which I just really enjoy as a concept? As a mechanical way of advancing, of ‘leveling up’. You directly say to your GM ‘hey, do something really bad to this shiny dumbass of mine, I want her to learn how to transform into a hideous monster’. Or, ‘hey GM, can we explore some fucked up locations, I want my dude to learn how to coalesce reality around him’. Or ‘hey GM, throw something mind-melting in front of us, I want my gal to go batshit insane and develop the ability to glare so viciously at people that it does actual damage to them’.

Like, obviously there’s some balancing to be done here when multiple people are playing, you want to try and balance the story beats a bit between them. You probably want to talk it out a bit when you’re all picking your beats. But still. So fun. And so direct. You’re straight up telling the GM what you want to be doing. And on the GM side, you get told things like, okay, pick adversaries that cause mind stress, or they want a quest to a particular location next session, or they want their NPC interactions to get messy next time. Cool. Good to know.

Had a dream about a goddess I was interested in working with. Not a good dream and it felt like she was telling me to fuck off. Haven't heard anyone else talk about this kinda thing. It's kinda funny lmao