It’s really nice to have an opportunity to run some of my Heroic Fantasy for the Thursday Nighters. We chew through a range of games on our shelves to get some interesting variety of games for short form play. The game is very light, based on a Black Hack chasis and then embelished by me with a rich D&D fantasy wrap.
We have:
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| Adelheid – Dwarf Warrior |
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| Tarakos – Half Orc Barbarian |
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| Aeryndel – Elf Paladin |
Character generation takes about 15 minutes once you know what options you wish to select. The rest is just copy and pasting fromt he text onto the sheet.
Our first session was pretty much straight into the action with a montage of encounters at the Free City of Carse, made up on the fly, trying to find out more about their artefact target: the Eye of J’karaa. With some contacts made we moved straight to the ruined city of Heresgeth, on the border of the haunted remnants of the Helux Dynasty. The terror inducing soul-winds gave all the PCs an Unnerved condition, (initiative and first action roll is hindered). There are a number of conditions in the book, but I made this one up on the fly as a lesser fear effect.
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| Our initial setting |
Getting everyone onto Foundry through Sqyre was comically difficult, and then I had some technical issues with Foundry, one of which was solved by the player swapping out their browser. Clunky and disappointing. Once it was working I really enjoy using the VTT.
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| Battle across a chasm |
My main worry is that my players will find the game too light, without the mechanical grit provided by other games that we enjoy, such as Pathfinder and Warhammer Fantasy. There seems a certain charm to the game in play, with combat moving along at a decent pace, despite the Manes Demons multiple attacks. The Barbarian red mist beserk ability was great fun, causing Tarakos to surge forward, even when all immediate foes were vanquished.
Here’s a
second session with George and Kevin (the Dungeon Muser himself). This further stretched the game’s ad hoc tactical rulings, some of which will form part of a short supplement that I’ll publish sometime.
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| Heroic Fantasy in full flow on Foundry VTT |
I have enjoyed the brevity and directness of the game. I may be the noted clunkmeister, able to run any rules laden brick with an airy lightness of being, but the limited rules in this game hit some good notes without any cognitive effort. It was fun to play in FantasyCraft, a full D&D 3.5 OGL based game, in the afternoon, and Heroic Fantasy in the evening. I loved both, and seem really happy to stradle the complexity/detail/involved to light/focused spectrum that deliniates some. I think I just have a broad appetite.
I’m making some side notes about the way the game performs as we play, to see if there is anything I want to add to a short expansion document that I have already started. A larger consideration would be to publish the setting, which would be great fun, but something maybe for next year.
