Help with "From hell's heart"

Hi,

I have bought recently From hell's heart RPG, written by Alan Bahr.

It is a narrative GM-less game about Age of Sail, intended to be played in a single session.

I see very good ideas and mechanics, and I am thinking of giving a try with my friends, or here in GP if people are interested.

But I don't understand 100% how it is expected the game to be played.

The rules are written a bit loose, and there are no examples of play to help to understand the process of playing.


- The Players shall make up out of the blue all complications or situations that arise and threatens the boat, without any beforehand preparation. That sounds very challenging, over all at table top. In PBP you may have more time to think and prepare something.

- It seems (all?) players shall roll to have control to narrate the outcome of every situation? Or when something happens only the player with the current narration control shall roll?

Anyone here has played it and can give me some support or advice?

Thanks!

GM-less games can easily flounder and get caught in the doldrums. This is especially true with random people on the internet. I generally recommend one player take on a facilitator role, and commit to doing GM-duty when needed, usually —if the group is mature— this boils down to someone taking on responsibility for making sure the story keeps moving.

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I don't know the ruleset (a link to the game might help others). The successful solo or GM-less systems generally have rules for creating drama, driving the story, or generating responses.

What does this game say about who rolls when? One would assume they have rules for this, but one common trope is for each player to roll for their character, but ask someone else to roll most other things their character is dealing with (it can get boring if you control both sides at the same time). You might take turns running the scene and the NPCs, handing them off based on which PC is active.

If the rules don't answer these questions... then either the system is broken or it expects you to use another system for this? But a game that calls itself 'GM-less' shouldn't need tools like Mythic GM Emulator to work without a GM.

Hi VagueGM, thanks a lot for your answer and advice.

I've used Mythic Emulator on my own (and tried some other solo-rpgs) a couple of times. We have never played in group gm-less.

I like the idea of a player taking the facilitator role or acting as GM if needed. In this case me as I have read the rules :-)

The ruleset is this one:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/303794/from-hell-s-heart
In this case there are no rules, suggestion nor oracles to create narrative during the game. That's all on players shoulders.

There are rules to roll to see if your PC (The player) gets the right to narrate the scene. Or rules to see if one PC gets an action done succesfully.
Not sure that the game is broken (but maybe). My impression is that the game/author is assuming that the reader is familiar with a narrative game style I can't figure well.

The game has two bowls on the table and some tokens. One bowl holds the story tokens, and the other represent the Threatening Sea.

When things go wrong during the game the tokens go to the Sea bowl, and viceversa. Once one player has narrated five times in the session the game ends and depending on the amount of tokens in each bowl you roll to see if the ship sinks or gets to harbor.

So, the game is about the boat in which the PC are, and the perils in their trip, and that's a great idea.

But everyting that happens must be made up by the players with zero preparation.

I may give a try in GP, because online each player has more time to think (prepare) what they are going to describe or narrate. Sometimes the best thing is to try something.

Ah, and I liked your suggestion of mixing it with Mythic GM, that may fill the narrative tools I am missing here to create a scene and narrate/play. Thanks for this.

It might be beneficial to read, and possibly play, some gm-less games that do provide some guidance, even if just to gain the assumed familiarity.

Many consider Ironsworn one of the premier examples of solo and gm-less play, and it is free [website]. They also have a nautical expansion called Sundered Isles, which may be of particular interest given the themes here.

Dream Askew/Dream Apart [website] is also a good example, and also uses tokens, though they are used differently to what you describe here, they replace the dice in a rather simple and clever mechanism. There are many, many games based on this engine (called Belonging Outside Belonging (BOB) or, sometimes, No Dice, No Masters) and I would be surprised if there were not a pirate/nautical version.
That is its purpose. MGME 2e has a lot of good tables that can be used to generate ideas, when needed, and is meant to be played with other systems and to get out of the way. Something like Ironsworn or Dream Askew have their own system/ruleset and don't combine so easily with other games.

Good luck with this.