Heart Games

[imepro]

What are Heart Games?

Heart Games are player run text adventures into a character's innermost psyche—think Persona palaces (but not always with exaggerated traits). CR (or non-CR, if you want) explore the character's mind (or more accurately, their heart) with, traditionally, the goal of reaching their core, or the True Heart.

Heart Games may range from light to dark and traumatic, either due to battles, environmental dangers, memory shares, or PCs being stupid because if there's one thing that you can always rely on, it's that PCs will be stupid.

Who can run Heart Games, and when?

As of Day 326, anyone currently in Tokyo-F can run a Heart Game at any time! Check The Gardens info page for more on how the IC side works. How the OOC side works is at the bottom of the page, but—first time imeeji Heart Game runners, please make sure to read everything here before you scroll past ♥

What kind of Hearts can I run?

Any kind, really—you're in control here! The only thing we ask is that there is a solid goal in the Heart, and that PCs are IC aware of the goal. Here are some types of Heart Games/goals:

♥ Find the True Heart

The True Heart is the ideal self, or perhaps the most honest self—whichever interpretation you want to use. It's common for the True Heart to be a meta-self, being aware that this is indeed a Heart Game and that they're just living in it, or otherwise being able to speak pretty bluntly about their problems, or whatever you want it to be. It's basically the super secret room that characters have to solve a puzzle to find (or maybe it's not—that's all up to you!).

♥ Change the Heart

Going back to Persona palaces, these physical text adventures can have ✨consequences✨—if a PC breaks the metaphor for your character's coping mechanisms, maybe they don't have that mechanism anymore. Ooopsiedoodle!

This is generally a standard mechanic in Heart Games (see Explore the Heart for otherwise) and not a goal, but maybe you want to get people to mess around with stuff as much as possible. Then you can make it a goal!

♥ Explore the Heart

What it says on the tin: explore it! It should be known that you do not need to make your character's Hearts changeable. Maybe you like your character's development, or maybe there are some aspects—or even most aspects—that you don't want changed because that'd make the character less fun or less tenable to play, but you really really really want to throw people into the trauma memory quicksand pit. That's just fine—live your best life!

♥ Purification: Remove the Foreign Influence

Also known in teamnesia as corruption hearts. A foreign substance has taken hold of a character's heart, and will start to slowly change the character from the inside out if allowed to stay. In order for the process to complete, the character will be forced into a deep slumber; it is at this time that other player characters can enter the character's heart and take the influence out before it can ruin everything forever.

The foreign influences come in the form of flowers that represent your character. You can have them do basically anything, but here are some ideas:

• Exacerbate or intensify a character's issues, personality traits, etc. In the heart, this may look like overgrowth.
  
• Diminish or remove a character's personality trait, emotions, etc. This may look like flower roots sucking up [emotion object].
  
• Introduce a foreign emotion, personality trait, belief, etc. This may look like a flower being where it shouldn't belong.

The only thing we ask is that the influence be represented by that flower in the heart in some way. This may mean the object was not originally a flower but upon discovery turns into the flower, or this may mean the object is the flower initially, and upon discovery turns into like, a final boss monster or something. Whatever floats your boat! You can have as many foreign influences as there are tattoos (so for the most part, 2).

Should the foreign influences fail to be removed, there are fun consequences you can play with! We ask that these show even a little bit, though if you don't want to play with it or if you don't find it fun you can have the effects be very brief. You can also have whatever the above effect(s) the flower(s) had continue to exist within your character.

PLEASE NOTE: The flower tattoos DO NOT MEAN that your character is running a Purification Heart! All Heart PCs will have it regardless, and the tattoos will disappear upon the character's Heart Game being ran. It's to look cool and ominous, OK. #aesthetic.

♥ Fix the Heart

Shit's broke, gotta fix it. Maybe your character is so deeply traumatized they cannot whatsoever move on until they get someone to literally scoop all the bads out for them, or maybe someone set fire to their Heart in a previous run and they need to get that fixed before shit get real bad. While it's A-OK to run multiple hearts though, we would ask that players try not to run more than 2-3 per character. They're your character's Big Moment, and they're kind of like weddings—one is great, two is just fine, three's OK, maybe reconsider life choices if they're having four of them?

You should also be aware: if there's a Heart development you don't like, or maybe something you can't quite reconcile with, it is okay to drop it like a hot potato. Think of it like a status effect, or like the character's heart is repairing itself; fix-it Hearts should be a last resort kind of thing.

♥ [Insert Goal Here]

Maybe your Heart is Phantom Thief themed, so the goal is for characters to successfully commit a heist—or maybe your Heart is a mystery and the goal is for characters to solve the crime! Maybe it's just a really long gladiatorial tournament of fighting monsters, or maybe other PCs. The world is your oyster!

♥ Any combination of the above!

Heart Games are pretty much your own personal art project and exercise in how much you want to hurt your CR and also yourself, both IC pain and OOC pain. You can do whatever you like, however you like! Please note too, that these are simply goals for characters to be given direction—you can have a Purification Heart that also has elements of fixing your disaster character's disaster psyche, or exploring everywhere, or doing a specific goal of your choice.

I've never run a Heart in imeeji before! Is there any advice you can give me?

Absolutely (and maybe when Youji's had more sleep they'll rearrange this part of the info but hush):

• Traditionally, as Heart Games have normally been—well, actual Games with rewards—Hearts would be scored with a time limit: how close a character can get to the goal in 5 OOC hours. This was for fairness, but as of Day 326, Heart Games are no longer actual Games, but more like plotty Eventstuffs. However, we strongly suggest to aim for about 5 hours of content, even if you're running it for longer or over a longer period of time.


• Consider that one full room = 1 hour of runtime. The unexpected happens, players are slow to move, or maybe players are really engrossed in whatever they're doing in that room—players will be players, and even if you don't think you put that much in that room? Players will find a way to spend as much time as they can in it.


• It's okay to have less than 5 hours of content. Always err on the side of "I wrote too much" rather than "I wrote too little"—it's very easy for us all to fret over whether we have enough engagement, but 99.99% of the time the post-mortem thoughts of Heart Games is "I wrote too much" instead of "I wrote too little". Besides that, having a smaller Heart doesn't mean it's less engaging or less fun—players will find their own fun, so don't worry!


• PCs may take home souvenirs from Hearts. Please follow these guidelines:
  
  • Items may not be complex—machinery, electronics, guns etc are not allowed.
    
  • Items may not be weapons, in general.
    
  • Items must be light.
    
  • Only one set of clothing is allowed, if any wardrobe was changed.
  
  
• Consider, when you finish the bulk of your running, Whether injuries are full healed, healed with scars, half-healed, or not healed at all, and let your players know so they aren't timelocked!


• Because these are primarily ~dreams~, characters may not fully remember their romps in other characters' hearts immediately. This is to avoid players getting timelocked! We'd additionally suggest any IC posts made of Hearts be out of time, just so that you can get all that squared away without worrying about timelocking.

When can I run Hearts?

OOC, you can run a Heart Game any time you like! Just post the following copypasta claim to the OOC comm under the Heart Games tag and fill out the relevant information:

Character:
Days/Times: You can also just put a spreadsheet link here if you have one!
Open/Limited/Closed: Is this open to everyone, limited to CR, or closed to specific people? If it's open/limited, how many players will you take up to?
Content Warnings:
Additional Info:
<b>Character: </b> <b>Days/Times: </b>You can also just put a spreadsheet link here if you have one! <b>Open/Limited/Closed: </b>Is this open to everyone, limited to CR, or closed to specific people? If it's open/limited, how many players will you take up to? <b>Content Warnings: </b> <b>Additional Info: </b>

Additionally, pick up the heartgames role on the Discord; once you do, you'll have access to the #heartgamerunners chan, where there'll be some notes for you on the logistics of running (like getting a Discord channel set up and a ping role and stuff).

If you feel shy and/or self-conscious about running a Heart, we encourage players to post a Heart Games interest check to see if there are multiple people who would like to run Heart Games at a general time that you want to run. As a note, we would ask that actual sign-ups and such not be entirely coordinated on Plurk, as that information can get easily lost or difficult to access, though of course initial herding is A-OK.

We're hoping that by putting this in player hands, you guys will be able to run Heart Games at times that work better for yourselves, and are ultimately less stressful—however, if we see there's still a need for mod-established Heart Game periods, we'll do that as well so that everyone can get time!