Review: ARCANA (for Heart: The City Beneath)

Work on NEW BLOOD continues! While I'm thinking about designing for Heart, I've been wanting to read as much as I can. Today, I'm looking at a cool little supplement, a collection of a bunch of character options, including what are called "Extra Advances," which were in Spire but not Heart (or the core book at least). It's called ARCANA, and it's by Eric Scott!

ARCANA has "three new Ancestries, two new Callings, a list of new questions to ask at Session Zero to help further focus your delvers and their relationships with each other, three new Classes, a set of Extra Advances for each of the nine Core Classes, six Universal Abilities, and six new Item Tags." Whew, that's a lot!! I'm most interested in the classes and extra advances, so I'll save those for last, and quickly run through the ancestries, tags, and then callings. It's entirely out of order, but I think it's for the best if I get the quick stuff out of the way first (or else who knows how long I'll go on).

The three ancestries are Falselife (a construct/golem/living magical essence), Gutterkin (mentioned in Spire and only barely expanded upon in the official text), and Satyr (the classic). I wrote two ancestries for NEW BLOOD and thought it was some of the hardest writing so far (second only to GM advice). There's no cool mechanical thing for readers to ponder or get excited about - the only thing is the concept and your execution. It's tough to live up to RRD's standard - they're doing some pretty fun and interesting stuff, and they also get paid to put it in big ol' books where they can spin out the details. They're not batting 1000 - Gutterkin, for example, are a miss for me (I think the idea got a little away from RRD and ended up past "funny and weird" into "eugenics hell zone"). Anyway, that's all to say that these are fun, but they don't do a lot for me. I did seriously consider putting in something like Falselife in NEW BLOOD, but I wound up going another direction. So I get it! And it is a lot of fun to write 20 fun trinkets.

Item tags! There are 6. A couple are real wins - Sapping, for example, prevents you from benefiting from Echo protection, and is immediately legible to me as a kind of item you'd encounter. Some of them are of limited utility (Mounted is one I'm not sure I have a lot of need for - Awkward already exists as a negative tag, and Brace, as a counterpoint to Block, doesn't entirely hit for me). On the whole, though, this helps me expand what I think of as the mechanical space for items! That's a big win, imo. With regard to tags in general - I'm playing ICON right now, and there are just so, so many tags in that system, that I'm growing to appreciate the anti-tag viewpoint. Tags are great if they immediately designate what they do without having to check the rules. "Flying" in Magic is the classic example - you can't block my bird, because it has flying! For the most part, Heart's tags are pretty good about this. "Ranged", "One-Shot," "Reload," and "Smoke" all do exactly what I want them to do. "Wyrd" and its ilk are a little finnicky, but not too bad. The biggest knock against them is probably that they have direct competition - is that the item tag that lets you take stress to do better (Bloodbound), or the item class that inflicts stress when you roll high (Dangerous)? The tags offered here are all pretty readily understandable (although I think if I used Hungry, it would do the opposite of what's written here).

Callings! The first is Fervor, which is about being devoted to a spooky god. I'm not a big religious-character-player (it's just not super interesting to me), but I think this could be cool. Heretic and Incarnadine are a little tricky, in that they sort of already outline your relationship to a deity, but this calling gives you a way to deepen that angle. I'm probably only hesitant about it for the reason I outlined above, which is that I'm not huge on religious characters! The calling ability is neat - you get temporary mastery flavored as divine intervention, but at the cost of risking greater stress. On the discord, I saw the charge levied that "all fanmade callings are just Forced" - it's funny, but I think a little too limiting, and this calling I think demonstrates the limits of that view. We could call this "Forced (by god)" but the relationship is quite different - even if they're divinely compelled, naming the calling differently suggests a different core drama, and the core abilities couldn't be more thematically opposed.

Second is Amnesia! This is actually playing in kind of a similar space to Doppelganger, one of the callings in NEW BLOOD - you're in the Heart because you want to find out who you were/are. The ability is a nice little emergency button (ignore one Mind fallout for the situation), although it's slightly narrow. The beats aren't quite as fun to me - they're a little more nostalgic or wistful, which is just a different mode than I think I usually go for in this game. 

I left it out of my overview, but there are also some character creation questions! I wrote a little bit about this when I wrote about Callings - I appreciate the work these do to jumpstart the fun part of the game and blow past the annoying boring stuff, like answering how we all met (I just played in a game where the GM had us play this out and it was excruciating).

Classes! First up is the Boneweaver, who gets Mend and Cursed, and has made themselves a guardian out of twisted flesh and metal and magic. They get a few abilities that interface with Bonds, which is a little strange to me, since it's hard for me to imagine a character with this class being very sociable. The major abilities are a little over-concerned with the mechanical side of things, and I think on the whole it falls a little into the D&D-y trap of "spells per day" or etc. Unfortunate!

Second is the Sighted, a thematic inverse of the Deadwalker - the Sighted can see a realm of light, bursting with life and energy, called The Prism. They get Endure and Wild, the ability to cast spells tied to certain domains, and a teleport ability. That's kind of neat! It makes me think of a geomancer. There's a small theme in the minor abilities that let you declare things - I think this is a good space to be in (or at least, I think it's great to push against the idea that everything has to be a roll), but some of these declaratives are a little suspect to me - declaring that a place is from an ancient civilization, for example, is cool on paper but doesn't amount to much. You can unlock more geomancy-style domain spells by taking the appropriate major ability - I probably would have made all 8 available (or kept one missing) and split them across different major abilities. As it is, technology and religion are missing, which are probably the right two to miss (but I think you could do cool stuff with them). The core spells are themselves slightly underwhelming mechanically, particularly because your core teleport spell uses Occult, a domain that you can't pick up through a "cool" minor ability (and instead you have to get from the generic "pick domains from this as often as you want!" minor ability), AND the spell is Dangerous anyways! Tough break. But on the whole, I think it's cool, and I'm a big fan of using Domains this way.

The final one is the Watcher, an assassin-of-gods, waiting to pounce on any upstart divinity that might try to conquer the world again (which naturally the Heart is full of). I think the theming needs just a little bit of a tweak to work for me (the version I presented here is my most charitable read), but I'm interested. They get Sneak and Religion, and a cover identity...? and a Vermissian Knight-esque "eat a resource for various benefits" kind of core ability. It takes me until 3/4ths of the way through the minor abilities to realize that the whole thing is an Assassin's Creed reference. There's rather a lot of focus on establishing a home base for or otherwise interfacing with the resources of this group of god hunters - I think that's a cool angle, and I kind of wish it were played up more. The "I belong to a secret society" class is more interesting to me than the "I'm embedded inside a particular cult" class. On the whole, there's some stuff that works for me here, and some stuff that doesn't, but I do think it's the core that's the biggest offender - it's just not as flexible. Other pain points are a major ability that lets you try to cast a kind of counterspell, but is too fiddly, and a major ability that's all about helping you make cover identities more quickly (although it has a minor ability advance to make your explosives better, which is cool). Quick aside - one of the things you can get with a major ability is a cannon (which uses the "Mounted" tag to represent that, like, it's big).

Those are the original classes! Both the Sighted and the Watcher have some cool subthemes that I'd want pushed a little harder, and some other larger, load-bearing changes to make them a little more flexible and feel better to use, but cool ideas throughout. Up next are extra advances for the core book's classes - they're themed a little like prestige classes ala D&D, it looks like to me.

They're in alphabetical order by the core class to which they apply - so first up is the Cleaver's "Druid of the Living Heart! The name is a reference to the Druids of the Living Spire, but quite thematically and mechanically different - it's about having absorbed or imbibed a lot of heartsblood, and using your connection to the Heart to do cool things. Mechanically (and from that, thematically), it's kind of all over the place - you can "consume" your protection to inflict additional stress, or turn invisible, and the Zenith ability creates a new landmark that binds together places (despite the distances between them). Probably the other big "mechanical" piece is that it opens up the Religion domain (available through a Cleaver generic, but now comes paired with a little ability). That's pretty much it, thought! The Zenith is kind of a miss for me. I like the "consuming" of the protection for bonuses!

Next is the Deadwalker, and the Sympnuema advances. The idea is a greater bond with their Death... Sym for "together/with" and "pnuema" for breath? The extra skill here is Compel, which fits the theme of communicating with your death, but it's not really the one I'd be most excited for when I'm Deadwalking. There's a major ability that lets you construct a totem, but it's kind of costly for minimal benefit, and an ability that adds an "execute" spell, which you can cast to immediately explode someone who's at a certain stress cut-off. The Zenith has you and your death become paired psychopomps. This time I dig the Zenith, but I think the majors are a little rough. The totem one is not exciting enough mechanically or fictionally to me, and the combustion one seems like a headache. I like handing players big guns, and I don't object to making fights shorter, but I think the payoff is pretty limited here, and it requires weird math. Most enemies don't have more than 20 resistance - this ability lets you blow them up if they have 5 left (or 7, if you upgrade it). A whole ability for a new way to do 5 damage (or less) is actually kind of niche imo, and it requires you to pester the gm to reveal to you how much resistance they have left, something I think is not very fun! But to end on a high note, the minor ability to have a death mask that renders everything around you silent is great.

Third, the Deep Apiarists, with the Warrior Wasp! I love my lil bee wizards, so I'm hoping this one is cool. The idea makes me think of War Wizards (same initials even) - it's about belonging to a militant order within the Hive. The minor abilities each grant spells, and give access to Sneak (and a paralytic bee poison). I probably would have picked Kill, given the warrior theme! The Majors are both interesting. One gives you an insectoid transformation for various benefits (but you can only pick one at a time, which I think is a little too bad / more restrictive than I'd go). The other gives you a bee crystal sword that shatters. The Zenith has you break apart into particles, but each of your companions gets access to bees and Deep Apiarist abilities. That's very cool, and I kind of want to steal it for the Myco-Alchemist. I'd probably rework some stuff here otherwise - I like getting a bee toxin, but I'd probably make it its own weapon (or alter the swarm), and do something other than crystal sword (which is just not as cool as your unmaking touch).

Fourth, the Heretic's Crimson Vigil. This is something I dimly remember from Spire, a sect particularly devoted to the rage aspect of the tripartite goddess - that's a cool crossover! No special skill or domain this time, just +1 Fortune protection, which is kind of too bad - I think Hunt would have been a pretty cool pickup. In general, this one has a much tighter theme! You can also get flaming weapons and wreath yourself in a flame aura, and summon spirits of revolutionaries (upgradable to pick from among specific Spire classes, which is cute). I like it! There's some cool mechanical throwbacks to Spire, too, in casting spells by taking stress (but ignoring protection, since it works differently in Spire).

Fifth is the (Blood)hound! The writeup references the "deep continent" which I do not remember at all. This one picks up Wild, and it kind of seems like is themed around, like, colonial soldiers? The abilities are cool but just a little weirdly themed to me for the Hounds. Eg, an ability to make an explosive. I absolutely think Hounds should have an explosive! But the structure of it is like casting a spell, which feels wrong to me. One of the Majors is also bomb-like - you construct a lure which calls a Heartsblood creature. I dig it (but again think it's just a little off of my Hound expectations). The other major turns your body into a conduit for the spirits of the dead soldiers - that whips, and the abilities for it are also fun and exciting and seem useful! The Zenith is turning your badge into a bullet that can kill one person you name, at the cost of forever reducing the hounds' number by 1 (and also you die). Good!!

Six! The Soul Merchant for Incarnadines. The standout here is a major advance that lets you trap the souls of debtors and ask them questions (but fallout can let them escape, even as a horrible ghost to attack you). This is good stuff, and the writing for it has sharp edge that's perfect for Incarnadines (like a minor upgrade that lets you torture the soul to recover Mind stress - grim! awful!). There's another about trapping souls - I think I would have liked something about bargaining with peoples' souls, or taking them as payment, mechanized to give it a little weight.

Seven! The Interstitial for Junk Mages. This is all about Elsewhere, the city of doors (ala Planescape's Sigil). The Junk Mage's vibes remain immaculate, but the execution being the classical four elements at major are a disappointment to me - I want weirder and weirder entities to steal power from! I think the interstitial / the darkness of Elsewhere is a cool get, but it plays out a little too same-y for me to be totally excited. It doesn't have the feel of a cobbled-together spell, I guess is what I'd say. I do like the mechanical effect of a spell that summons shadow copies! Two zeniths this time, one for the sky court (who didn't get one in the core book) and one for the interstitial. They're pretty cool ways to die! The Sky Court is notable for being incidentally very similar to a Splinterhead zenith.

Eight! Getting close. The... Vermissian Illusionist for the Knight? Huh. The description references the Vault and using it to traverse the otherworlds opened up by the broken train network. They get the Sneak skill... I'm torn. On the one hand, this kind of thing is exactly the purpose of a funky prestige class! On the other, though, why did you pick the V. Knight if you wanted to sneak around? Notably, this is the first time that these extra advances gave access to a "blocked" skill - in the core book, V. Knights can't get Sneak through any means, not even the generic advance. There's a Major for casting spells (?) and one for opening a window into the Vault - both are big misses for me. They don't engage with what I'm interested in about the Vermissian.

Which brings us to the Witch, and the Vampire! That's a cool thing to call your subclass. They get the Hunt skill (I like this choice - Hunt is called out in the Witch's core, but there's no specific Minor ability to get it), a vampire bite, and blood magic-y stuff as Minor advances. The majors are for blood puppeteering and establishing yourself as the head of a coven. Neither does a lot for me! I probably would have had something interface with the True Form. I like the idea of abilities that put the player character in the social fabric of the world, but they have to be pretty sharp I think - otherwise, they either fall to the wayside (because they're forgettable or not impactful) or bog down play (because they're too complicated or time-intensive to get working). It's a delicate balance!

The final section is just a brief page of spells that anyone can pick up. I like the idea! The Torment spell is a fun one - it makes me think of Dungeon World's Cause Fear. These kinds of effects can just do what they say they do in lighter games like these. The mechanical touch that it's tough to Sneak up on someone suffering from Torment (because they've been made paranoid) is an additional little cherry on top, pointing the GM to what the effects of the spell could be like. Others are more suspect - Charge has you take Blood stress and then immediately launch yourself into someone else, dealing the same amount. It's funny, but why not just a spell that gambles blood stress and launches you a commensurate distance? Otherwise it's just a goofier but less flavorful version of the fallout that is mechanically identical. The Spew spell granting Evade is also a little suspect to me. But on the whole, I think this is a cool thing, and exciting to me - NEW BLOOD might offer some spells as "rewards" (ie, stuff you find in delves and landmarks to make you excited to look for more stuff).

That's ARCANA! I knew I would go long. Frankly, I'm proud of how quickly I moved through the class-specific extra advances. I could have gone much longer! In general, I really appreciate what this supplement is doing! I am pretty picky though, and I think I'm mainly going to use this as a springboard for my own ideas (although there is some stuff in here that I simply adore, and want to steal at the nearest opportunity).