Heart: The City Beneath RPG
A red wet heaven slumbers fitful under the city of Spire.
Stock note: Heart is currently out of stock in most places. The fastest way to get hold of the new printing is likely to be to pre-order it through the Dagger in the Heart campaign here.
Heart: The City Beneath is an award-winning complete tabletop roleplaying game about delving into a nightmare undercity that will give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of – or kill you in the process.
It is a dungeon-crawling, story-forward tabletop RPG from the designers of Spire that focuses on what characters have to lose in pursuit of their dreams in the chaotic darkness beneath the world.
Sharing a setting with Spire, Heart expands the unreal world beneath it. It uses an expanded and updated version of the Resistance system, the mechanics that power Spire, to help you tell stories of desperation, hubris and adventure in the City Beneath.
Stock note: Heart is currently out of stock in most places. The fastest way to get hold of the new printing is likely to be to pre-order it through the Dagger in the Heart campaign here.
WHAT’S IN THE BOOK?
- Full rules for playing and running games of Heart
- Nine strange character classes and five dangerous callings
- 21 Zenith Abilities – the ultimate expressions of power – almost all of which kill the user when activated
- Over 50 landmarks to explore such as predatory pubs, entropy machines, community centres in churches devoted to forbidden gods, cursed underground stations, vast subterranean forests and portals to multiple heavens Â
- Over 30 adversaries to avoid, put down or get killed by such as the cannibalistic Butcher, the pathetic Feral Psychopomp, mad trees, train worshippers, burnt-out occultists and Flightless Owl Hives
- Over 40 gorgeous full-colour illustrations by Felix Miall
- An extensive gamesmaster advice section with guidance for all experience levels
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Complete the Collection
Looking to get the entire Heart Collection?
Critical acclaim for heart
In 2021 Heart: The City Beneath won a total of seven ENnies, including golds for Best Setting, Best Writing and Best Layout. This is the highest number of ENnies for a single product in the history of the awards.
Reviews
Niall (verified owner) –
It’s sick bro
Brendan McLeod –
A whirlwind of blood and good ideas. Come for lively, horrific dungeon crawling, stay for the soulful catharsis of self-destruction.
Alex Rinehart –
The first time I played heart, my best friend vomited up a load of eels so evocotively, it caught on. Became the chic thing to do. Soon everyone was vomiting up eels, just for kicks.
I'm not going to lie to you. My copy of Heart is a leatherbound tome that implies it's made out of lipskin. I have no reason to disbelieve it, except that I specifically asked for it to be labeled that way.
You can be a lady made of bees or a man wearing an entire train in the belief that it will transfer some…
The first time I played heart, my best friend vomited up a load of eels so evocotively, it caught on. Became the chic thing to do. Soon everyone was vomiting up eels, just for kicks.
I’m not going to lie to you. My copy of Heart is a leatherbound tome that implies it’s made out of lipskin. I have no reason to disbelieve it, except that I specifically asked for it to be labeled that way.
You can be a lady made of bees or a man wearing an entire train in the belief that it will transfer some of its steam-powered magic unto you. And that belief? It’s not entirely wrong!
You want to play Heart. If you can’t trust me, a guy you’ve never met, who CAN you trust?
aaronsxl3 –
Heart gave me brainworms. If you’re reading this, it’s already too late.
alex.r.valente (verified owner) –
In Heart, the dungeon crawls you – and you like it. You love it. You crave and yearn for it to graft onto you and pulsate in horrifying synchronicity with, well, the Heart.
Jordan R (verified owner) –
Heart has cursed my existence in the best way possible – its one of my favourite games to run and probably my favourite system just generally.
It gives you just enough juice to start spinning off your own version of the Heart – no two campaigns are gonna be the same.
My kickstarter copy also showed up on Halloween, so you know – there’s that.
Get it!
DocRimbo (verified owner) –
True to form for all RRD productions, Heart is a gobstopping masterwork of a system and setting. It takes familiar fantasy horror tropes and sends them through a meat grinder to make something brand new, and my players are still talking about the two sessions we’ve had so far, barely scratching the surface. Subversive and visceral, no pun intended.
Wil –
I strangled the incarnation of my god that I had summoned into place specifically so I could strangle her. 10/10 one of the best therapy sessions I’ve ever done
Angel (verified owner) –
Heart is an outstanding game and the book is an outstanding product. I have not been mind controlled to say this. The art is stunning, the ideas and monsters and places within are all thoroughly engaging and thought-provoking, and it's a joy to flip through and read, let alone play. I am definitely writing this of my own free will. The calibrations to the Resistance system that Chris & Grant &co. have done here jive perfectly with their vision of doomed adventurers tumbling down a red, w…
Heart is an outstanding game and the book is an outstanding product. I have not been mind controlled to say this. The art is stunning, the ideas and monsters and places within are all thoroughly engaging and thought-provoking, and it’s a joy to flip through and read, let alone play. I am definitely writing this of my own free will. The calibrations to the Resistance system that Chris & Grant &co. have done here jive perfectly with their vision of doomed adventurers tumbling down a red, wet hole towards their own demise. These are solely my opinions and not those of any malicious entities beyond my puny human comprehension that have been loosed upon me and thereby the world due to my reading this product.
So if a game filled with tabletop fun, eldritch obsessions, and gloriously dramatic deaths sounds as enjoyable for you as it was for me when I definitely didn’t lose my free will and my sanity to a force beyond all reckoning, then please do purchase it. Join us now, and we shall perhaps deign to take pity upon your weak forms of flesh and bone instead of effortlessly tearing asunder your soft, pliable meat. Fun for the whole family, 10/10.
Justin Sachs –
Heart is without exaggeration my favorite RPG of all time. Of the dozens of games I’ve read this was the first one that I just consumed cover to cover instead of just looking up the stuff I thought was relevant. Do yourself a favor and have a look at even one of the classes it’ll make you want to buy the book more than any review ever could.