Heart Quest (Revised Edition)
Romantic Roleplaying in the Worlds of Shoujo Manga
Review by C. Demetrius Morgan
Synopsis
This review is for the revised edition of Heart Quest, published by Seraphim Guard, and available at RPGnow for $11.95. Heart Quest’s stated goal is to present a set of rules for establishing a specific style of role-playing, albeit within what some may feel is a narrow sub-genre of Anime.
Target Audience: “When I began the project one of my goals was to attract people, especially women, who were interested in roleplaying and who were not afraid to tackle some heavy issues. Female gamers are an underserved market that most people seem to have difficulty accepting.” -Michael P Hopcroft
Rating: Heart Quest is very well put together. However, despite the near perfect layout, as an introductory level role-playing game this needs some work. Too, while veteran gamers should be able to use this it is far from being a one-stop supplement cum resource. Yes, Heart Quest provides an in depth introduction to Shoujo, yes there are numerous campaign settings outlined, however Heart Quest leaves a lot to be desired in the game mechanics department. Even so based on effort, presentation, assumed usefulness to the target audience and segment of the gaming community that uses the Fudge RPS I would have to rate HeartQuest at six and one half golden apples.
When asked what the motivation behind Heart Quest was Mr. Hopcroft replied, “A love of the various shoujo manga genres and a desire to translate them into RPG terms.” I’ll be honest, my initial impression was: “show-joe manwich what?” The game, it appears, is essentially about “Teen Romance” with characters designed to be the type of rugged big eyed and small mouthed high school heroines (and heroes) common to genre anime. (Tenchi Muyo, perhaps?) My second impression was along the lines of: “Fudge? Why Fudge?” followed closely by “Oh man, now I’ve got to learn about Fudge!”. Hopefully this experience will turn out better than that fiasco with the microwave, way back in the day. That lump looked nothing like the picture in the cookbook! Ok, enough of that. So what are my impressions of the actual game material itself? What sticks out about this eBook for me is the numerous campaign starters with thumbnail world backgrounds. Sure they are barely longer than eight or nine pages, but there are well over a half dozen of them. Yes, I know, they are probably just bare bones outlines of setting types common to the genre but as I am not all that familiar with the genre that means, for once, I come to the review desk with very little baggage to slow me down. top
To be frank I was none too sure where to begin this review. Upon reflection, and faced with the obvious, I decided to find out just what shoujo manga is, or rather what is expected of the genre, and thus firmly establish in my mind what the “scene” and basic “setting” is supposed to be. Seemed like a good place to start as Heart Quest bills itself as a game intended to portray worlds of shoujo manga. As a reviewer I figured it was beholden of me to darn well find out what those worlds are supposed to be! Thus my long decent into Google torment began. To summarize my findings shoujo manga are comics. More broadly Asian comics targeted towards a female audience, meaning female as in girls and young women. Content wise the shoujo manga are primarily centered upon interpersonal relationships as developed, maintained, and expressed via social intercourse; meaning verbal conversation. (In relation to the characters, of course, as from the reader’s perspective this would be bubble text.) I would say that an example of shoujo manga, in Anime terms, is probably Sailor Moon. In Western terms I'd say the shoujo manga are probably akin to a comic book version of Harlequin Romance novels. Then again I am not a female, much less an Asian woman who grew up on a diet of manga, nor do I read romance novels, thus my knowledge of the genre is admittedly rather limited. That said the following quote from the preface is going to largely set the tone for much of what follows:
“The experiences you will have with this game are found in no other roleplaying game on the market today. As you develop your own campaign setting, adapt your favorite anime or manga series, or explore any of the half-dozen campaign settings offered in this book, you will find yourself stretched in new directions.”
Bold statements.
Granted the credits page lists 11 writers, 7 artists, and 1 person riding rough shot over art direction and graphic design but claiming Heart Quest is going to offer something “found in no other roleplaying game on the market today” is going to be a tall order to fill. I expect to be wowed, stunned, and left flabbergasted. But will 11 prove to be the lucky number for fulfilling the bold visionary game the quote above promises awaits within the contentious pages of Heart Quest? Let us review the actual contents and try to answer that question. top
Chapter 0: HeartQuest in a Nutshell - This covers 5 pages beginning with the requisite introduction to role-playing, which leads into an explanation of the Shoujo genre, and wraps up with a section on characters including an outline of the core attributes, character creation, and action resolution. A bit brief but functional.
Chapter 1: Character Creation - Here we have 39 pages of what I’d call a crash course in basic role-playing. From a veteran gamers perspective this entire section seemed pedantic and plodding. However, for newbie gamers I’d say this section is written at just the right speed not to overwhelm them with unfamiliar concepts and terminology. However noticeably lacking are sample characters and examples of what to do with a character once you have created one.
Chapter 2: Supernormal Powers - This is just one big guide on how to create kewl powers. I avoided mentioning my loathing of systems that harp on “concept”- to me systems that rant on about how I am supposed to be conceptualizing something smack of being incomplete- and basically that is what we have here. An entire chapter that begins with telling me to conceptualize. In other words: make something up. I need a set of rules to tell me how to do this? Granted these 7-pages actually do present sample powers, however I’d totally re-edit this chapter so it jumps right into the examples, and then talk about conceptualizing, as even a newbie gamer first needs an understanding of what is expected of the game in order to imagine it.
Chapter 3: Playing the Game - 3-pages. Playing the game, the most important aspect of an introductory level role-playing game, and all we get are 3 paltry pages? To call this inadequate is an understatement, especially considering 2 of those pages are dedicated to talking about task resolution. There are no examples of play, no sample characters, no words of wisdom; indeed there isn’t even the first inkling of the briefest outline of what should be expected from a role-playing game! Looking at the pages now I have to ask, why bother to include them at all? Those three pages feel like chaff that was rescued from the cutting room floor. Not helpful.
Chapter 4: Combat - The combat rules takes up all of 6-pages. It’s almost laughable. Combat is outlined as having four steps as follows: 1. Determine Initiative; 2. Resolve first character's action; 3. Resolve second character's action; 4. If both participants are not incapacitated continue to the next round. Uhm, hello, what about actually covering actions before resolving them? As a veteran gamer I could probably make this work. In an introductory level game this shabby presentation is inexcusable, especially since the main text has sections for Initiative followed by Actions. Sure it should be a no-brainer. But I’ve been a GM and I know that you can’t rely on players to have the common sense of a rabid monkey.
Chapter 5: Gamemastering - Your basic 6-page explanation of what it means to be a Game Master. Functional but also misleading. Viz. the suggestion to “Be Sensual” should have read “Be Sensory”. Look the words up in a dictionary if you don’t understand why. There is also some redundancy, as explanations seem to merely be repeated from their chapters, rather than expanded upon, which isn’t to say the odd insight isn’t given. But it’s like trying to sift flour with a comb of honey.
Chapter 6: Teen Romance - These 6-pages begin with a statement so profound that I feel it bears quoting, “Since the target audience for shoujo manga and anime is young girls, it is natural that many shoujo stories are about young girls and boys.” Heart Quest should, if it doesn’t already, have a bright pink sticker on the cover that flatly states who the target audience for this game is. That said, this chapter pretty much outlines how to play Japanese teens. All I can say, based on the memories of my own teen years, is. . . Why? Then again maybe I am missing the point.
Chapter 7: Magical Girls - I would have lead in with these 3-pages, or at least incorporated them somehow into the previous chapter. (Which, as an adult, just felt too creepy to read all the way through.) Also I can see role-playing potential here as this section outlines the sort of campaign that I could envision fans of Sailor Moon wanting to play. Something lacking in the previous chapter, in my opinion.
Chapter 8: History & Out of This World - These 10-pages are pretty much the standard “how to create an alternate fantasy history” kind of thing you often find in fantasy role-playing games. Which is the problem. This section talks about Imperial Rome, the Dark Ages, the Three Musketeers, and a bit about Feudal Japan that seemed like it was an afterthought inclusion. Overall this section feels like it was originally written for a vanilla Western fantasy game and just block copied here.
Chapter 9: Sendai Academy - These 9-pages provide a tantalizing gold coin at the end of the rainbow. This is a sample “Teen Romance” campaign outline, which begs the question: Should this have been appended to chapter 6? Yes, yes it should. Which doesn’t change the fact it is worth reading.
Chapter 10: Ghost Tamer Miyaki - These 10-pages of a sample “Magic Girl” campaign now have me convinced that the editor is either a diabolical sorceress who has ensorcelled this PDF to channel frustration to some blood crystal in a dank dark crypt, or was just trying to pad out the eBook by breaking things up into chapters to make the game look bigger. These are things that don’t need to be broken up! This should have been part of chapter 7. Yes, it is good, but right now the editor has put me in no mood to write about it. Black mark.
Chapter 11: Steel Heidi - Roughly 8-pages of sample campaign setting that should have been left in chapter 8.
Chapter 12: Masterless Hearts - 7-pages about some college campaign setting.
Chapter 13: Future Shocked - 9-pages attempting to outline some sort of future era science fiction campaign. By this point the editor’s choice to divorce these campaigns from their sections (where they could have illuminated the concepts outlined therein) has turned me totally off to caring to read them. That says a lot.
Chapter 14: Sample Characters - Oh, look, it’s the appended afterthought! Don’t think so? Well I have years of experience with games as a GM and I can tell you that the ones my players actually wanted to play were those that dispersed character examples throughout the main body of text. Why? Such examples serve two purposes, 1) they draw you in, and; 2) you are being taught the mechanics basics as you read. This entire chapter needs to be incorporated into the main body of text, or at least provide an explanation of how these characters came to exist somewhere.
Chapter 15: Bibliography - Just plain excellent. Sure I could gripe or complain about a lack of ISBN numbers or URLs to be able to track down the material but, you know what, if you really want them that’s what Google is for. *wink* top
Setting: Technically none. Caveat: Potential for a whole lot of different types of shoujo styled campaigns that can be built within three primary “supported campaign settings”. These settings are: Teen Romance, Magical Girls, and Fantastic Adventures. Furthermore there are a number of thumbnail outlines for campaigns with telling names like: Teen Romance, Magical Girls, Sendai Academy, Ghost Tamer Miyaki, and Steel Heidi, to name a few, that are given dedicated chapter length write-ups. So while there is technically no world setting, there are well-defined generic genre settings outlined. top
The Game: I would suggest this game as an introductory level RPG for Junior High School, or perhaps older elementary school girls, and maybe even boys. Though I’d suggest parental supervision for young males wanting to play this game, preferably from a mother or other female relative to ensure that the game is not misused for salacious journeys into the shadowy realm of misanthropic male misadventure. top
System Mechanics: The system uses Fudge. In all honesty, try as I might, I just could not move myself to care enough to sit down and force myself to learn this system no matter how many times I tried. **sound of frustration and gnashing of teeth** This is not Heart Quest’s fault. There is something intrinsic to the Fudge system that makes my brain want to make like Ash and take a chainsaw to things. That and I never understood why Fudge couldn’t just stick to normal dice. More to the point, why should I have to go out of my way to deface perfectly good six-siders just for a niche generic system that really isn‘t a full fledged RPG and is going to make me jump through hoops as a GM to do most of the work? Anyhow that’s what I’ve always thought. Thus that is a major obstacle that Heart Quest has to overcome. No, it’s not fair, but then such is life. Otherwise, Heart Quest looks good. But the real proof, as they say, is in the pudding of character creation and conflict resolution. top
Character Creation: You build characters in Heart Quest with the following abilities: Physique, Mind, Willpower, Cool, and Appearance. At the start of play these attributes all are set at a default level of “Fair”, except for Appearance, which starts at “Good”. Also most skills are stated to start with a rating of “Poor”, though the player has thirty free levels to allocate. What does that all mean? I have not a clue, and that’s the problem with Fudge. Every implementation sets out to redefine or tweak what the adjective parameters mean, thus I have no objective way to tell you what that might mean in relation to other Fudge games without having those games in front of me. top
Conflict Resolution: Also known as combat, conflict resolution is, in typical Fudge fashion, a confusion of adjective descriptors and numerical charts. Essentially I have always viewed Fudge as a poorly implemented homebrewed dice game masquerading as a “generic” core system mechanic. I can‘t stress enough how little Fudge’s presentation makes me want to care about it, or its implementation, even so I will do my best to outline conflict resolution in relation to Heart Quest. **much time passes**
My opinion?
Without sounding like I am bashing Fudge there is very little I can say save the combat system, indeed perhaps the whole underlying Fudge foundation, should be ripped screaming from this material and replaced with a system custom designed to capture the feel and style of the setting. I am sorry but based on what I have read Fudge just does not do this material justice. Everything has the feel of being confined and underdeveloped, yet there are moments when you sense that the authors were fighting these very constraints. Thus, having nothing objectively positive to say, I will just say that if you like Fudge, if Fudge works for you, then the action resolution and combat systems outlined herein are excellent by Fudge standards. And that is how I will rate this material. top
The first thing you notice is the art on the front cover. Going into this game I was not sure what to expect, and at first I thought the artwork seemed out of place (for an Anime inspired RPG) until I read up on what shoujo is. With that in mind I’d say that, in retrospect, the artwork sets the tone rather nicely. Let’s see there is also an excellent Table of Contents- in addition to bookmarks, hoorah! - And an extensive bibliography (which listed Sailor Moon much to my relief), which are all good things. No index though. Not sure if the print version has one, but it’s absence from the PDF is only of marginal concern. If you were looking for a PDF with an eye toward later on looking into a POD print version this would be as close to perfect as you can get. The format and layout are very well done. Also the “Introduction to Shoujo” is vastly more informative than most of the sparse articles I found on the subject via Google.
And what about those bold statements quoted earlier in this review?
First, does Heart Quest provide for “experiences you will have … in no other roleplaying game”? Uhm . . . I’ll give Heart Quest that one. However there is one problem, I don’t think I would ever actually find myself playing this game. Second, assuming I did find myself playing this game, would I find my role-playing experience “stretched in new directions”? That’s a tough one. Considering the style and genre of the game I’d have to say yes, it would probably be a new direction of role-playing for me. More to the point I do feel a bit stunned and rather flabbergasted, though not necessarily in the way I meant. And the layout does wow you; it’s almost too good for a game using Fudge. But why I have that impression I couldn’t say. Certainly it’s some unfounded (?) visceral reaction akin to the negativity channeled by some toward all things D20? top
PDF Issues: The PDF is neat, well formatted, and the text does not present overt eyestrain when read on screen. For a 15 MB file there is no appreciable load lag between pages. Copy and paste works without font issues, pages printed at random are crisp and clear, though some illustrations display some minor pixellation. Otherwise there appears to be few problems with the PDF. There are bookmarks keyed to chapter headings and the search function is fully enabled and works. All told this is as perfect an example of how to put together a PDF as you are likely to see. top
Negatives: I knew too little about the genre for this game going in. This despite the fact it was my review of games like Cloak of Steel and Live Action System that led to me reviewing this quality product. Too, Fudge grates on me. I don’t know why, but from the first time I tried to sit down and read through the free files of the system yarens ago I’ve just not resonated with it. Also I am male, and despite the pallid stereotypes of my gender the media likes to propagate like bacteria in a petri dish during sweeps week in their lurid tabloid stories, I have no desire to play young girls in love or pretend to be a young woman gossiping about interpersonal relationships, much less a member of some Teen Sailor Force Armageddon wielding mystical magical moon baubles. Nor do I foresee playing a character that ever says, “I kiss Kasumi.” Which leads to my next painful disclosure of honesty: this game just does not appeal to me. (Which is probably a sad statement about the sort of things that appeal to jaded male role-players. Explore character depth and have silly gonzo fun? Sure, but where’s the bloodletting, where’s my mech, when do I get to bombard something into submiss. . . Bleh!) Then again I don’t think my demographic is Heart Quests target audience, so take that with a grain of salt. top
Positives: The layout shows that a great deal of thought has gone into this game. At 160 pages this has to be the most complete set of rules using Fudge I have ever seen, and I have seen quite a few Fudge rule sets by now! Most Fudge rule sets you can find online seem to be little more than spare lists of skills and attributes with poorly defined parameters of usage, not so here. My qualms about Fudge aside it is my opinion that Heart Quest might make a perfect introductory role-playing game for young adults, especially since they should be unhindered by bias about game systems. Then again I can also see some young adults finding this game aptly suited to tickle their offbeat funny bones, regardless of native system. You know the sort, those hardcore Anime fans that don‘t have to go Googling to find out what Shoujo means. top
Rumors: If you would like to purchase a dead tree edition of this game the grape vine says that a “book should be on the shelves by the end of the year [2004]”. Curious about supplements and support material for Heart Quest? Mr. Hopcroft’s fervent reply when asked was, “We currently have three heartQuest supplements on the market now: "Steel Roses: the HeartQuest Guide to Mecha", "Livin' on a Dream" and "Musical mistresses". We have more books in the works. heartQuest is .. going to continue to support the line.” I have Steel Roses in my review queue and it does look interesting. But you are probably wondering what batter is being readied for baking in Seraphim Guard’s ovens next, right? According to Mr. Hopcroft, “We are working on a mecha game, an anime-style fantasy game and a game about anthropomorphic cops-and-robvers. [sic] We also have the RPG license for Bill Holbrook's online comic "Kevin & Kell" which we are very excited about.” top
Happy gaming!
Copyright © 2004 C. Demetrius Morgan