Homebrew Heart Landmarks

UVG Locations

I have been reading Ultraviolet Grasslands recently (expect a post or three about this once I get done reading it.) I have been enjoying its format a lot. It tends to go into the big-ticket locations in the setting in some detail, maps, random encounters and occurrences, places of importance, how to get to and from the location. It’s usually built with enough randomness that your “Last Serai,” for instance, will be very different to the next party’s.

But there are a few locales described towards the end of each of these sections that branch out from the one central location, providing you with adventure spots in the surrounding area. Descriptions of these in UVG really depend on the type of area they are in. If it’s a heavily populated spot, you are likely to get a bunch of NPCs for the players to deal with, but in more remote places, it will probably mention more environmental hazards, enemies and traps. Importantly, it never goes into much detail on anything. The details, as with everything in the book, are left up to those gathered around the table. You just get a mention of a particular type of creature (and maybe a level and tag in parentheses beside it,) a monetary value for the treasure or resources you might find there, or a distance (in number of days’ travel) from the main location.

These really reminded me of something: Heart Landmarks. Not necessarily because of the format of the descriptions or the writing style or anything like that. It was mainly just due to the looseness of it. Heart Landmarks also provide you with a few sparks to light your imagination. They might tell you the type of haunts you have there and vaguely hint at a couple of NPCs, but it’s up to you to bring them to life at the table. I am aware this is not that unusual in modern RPGs but I have been reading and playing a lot of trad games recently, so the similarity really struck me here, in comparison.

Anyway, it got me thinking about something I started quite a while ago, before I even started my first Heart campaign. I have a file on my computer just called Heart Landmark Ideas. It had one entry in it, and even that was incomplete. So I thought I would make this a little series of blog posts.

DIY Heart Landmarks

What is a Landmark? In Heart, the City Beneath, the characters are delvers, idiotic adventurers who are compelled for one reason or another, to plunge into the red, wet heaven that is the Heart, the esoteric core of all weirdness. Nothing remains concrete or stationary in this underground “city” for very long, but, as long as a place has a sufficient number of sentients there to believe in it, to desire its safety, that will anchor it. These become Landmarks. Some of them are havens where delvers can rest and recuperate, some are terrifyingly dangerous lairs of nightmares and dark magic.

What does the Heart book tell us about making our own landmarks? Make sure your landmark includes one or more of the following:

• SANCTUARY: Haunts are places within a landmark where PCs can relive themselves of stress or fallout and can often involve a major NPC to interact with.
• MATERIALS: Resources can be procured here.
• ADVANCEMENT: Not every chapter beat is achievable on a delve. Sometimes, landmarks are the perfect places to hit your beats.
• EMPLOYMENT: NPCs, mysteries, required items etc. You get the idea.
• DANGER: Not every landmark is restful and commercial. Sometimes you need to endure them to achieve your goals…
• WONDER: Reveal something of the Heart of just dazzle the players with your imagination!

Other than that, the format of each Landmark entry is pretty much set:

• NAME: ‘Nuff said
• DOMAINS: These are broad areas of interest or influence: Cursed, Desolate, Haven, Occult, Religion, Technology, Warren, Wild
• TIER: The Heart is split into tiers designated 0,1,2,3 and Fracture. 3 is much stranger than 0. Fracture is a movable feast of rumness.
• HAUNTS: Places to rest and heal or people who will facilitate that. What kind of stress/fallout can be cured? Also, this should include the max dice size of healing.
• DESCRIPTION OF LANDMARK: Part history, part current state of affairs. Maybe some hooks to bring the PCs there.
• SPECIAL RULES: This could involve particular dangers or custom-fallouts.
• DEFAULT STRESS: What is the normal amount of stress to inflict for action failures? Indicated by a die size.
• RESOURCES: What type and die size of resources are available here.
• POTENTIAL PLOTS: Fuel for your PCs’ adventures.

Landmark Number 1 – Blister

Name: Blister
Domains: Haven, Religion
Tier: 1
Default Stress: d4
Haunts:

• The Blistered Basilica, a polyp on the inside of the blister. The devoted gather inside to worship (d8 Echo)
• Rose’s, a restaurant with a good reputation and a worryingly good chowder (d8 Blood)
• The Blister Pack, a general market that specialises in building and delving equipment (d6 Supplies)

Description: An enormous, fleshy blister on the inside of an enormous, fleshy chamber. Blister is pierced near the base by a hole that allows delvers to enter. From this hole there is a ramshackle wooden ramp that leads to a series of old platforms requiring constant repair. It has some residents, known as platformers, who are more or less permanent and mostly have no sense of smell.

At the base of the blister is a fetid lake of stinking pus. A whole ecosystem of pus creatures live in the lake. They generally leave the platformers alone.

The platformers worship the blister as though it were a god and as long as they do, they say the denizens of the pus will leave them be. But outsiders and heretics should not stay long, they say.

Special Rules: If you spend a bit of time in the Blistered Basilica in order to remove Echo fallout, make an Endure/Religion check. Consequences of failure as below:
Fallout: Pus Magnet (Minor Mind) You have come to understand the Platformers’ devotion to the Blister and you feel a kinship with the pus-beings. They are there for your protection and you are there for theirs. You feel an urge to descend to the lake, befriend one of them and take them with you on your travels (Ongoing.)

Getting too close to the pus lake will require an Endure/Haven or Religion check. On failure/mixed result:
Fallout: Blistering Barnacles (Major Blood) You’ve been infected by the pus. You are covered in hard, black blisters which hurt and stink. They make all social checks one difficulty rating higher (Standard becomes Risky, Risky becomes Dangerous etc.) (Ongoing.)

Resources:

• Gathering Blister pus (d4 Religion) can be dangerous. See Special Rules.

Potential Plots:

• Deacon Delicia of the Blistered Basilica has startling news for any PCs that visit. The Blister has revealed an existential danger to her. A stalactite-like calcium deposit has formed above Blister and a group of heretical pus-haters are preparing to climb up there and knock the spiky peril from its perch. This would spell the end for Blister, the Pus Lake and the Platformers. She is offering the church’s most prized possession as a reward to anyone who can stop the heretics. It is a wooden spike known only as the Splinter (Kill d8 Piercing, Debilitating)