Another design blog! This time I'm digging into the Splinterhead.

Design Story: When I started with the idea that would become Myco-Alchemist, I also was looking for other openings that might be in HEART's design space. The Myco-Alchemist picked up first, when I noticed an open mechanical space (someone who cares about Supplies fallout / interacts with Resources differently) that combined really neatly with an open conceptual space (mushrooms/"Wild" domain resonance seemed like a big inspiration without a home, and Alchemists are a cool fantasy trope that I think other people enjoy, not just me). The Splinterhead wasn't quite so lucky - I thought that "psychic powers" was an interesting space to explore, especially through HEART's horror-leanings, but the mechanical space wasn't there yet.  And unlike the Myco-Alchemist, I was not immediately struck by three fun ways to die.

So the Splinterhead languished for nearly an entire year, while the Myco-Alchemist was going through some iterations (and while I was working at a full-time job). Somewhere in there, I remembered to check SPIRE for inspiration, and found what would turn out to be the crucial piece - The Information, the ancient magical crystal computer / secret society that puts shards of it in their heads to communicate telepathically. Bingo! In SPIRE, this mechanically translated to getting access to domains you didn't have, so for a while that was the Splinterhead's core ability. But that felt too similar to SPIRE's Vermissian Sage, and it wasn't a very gripping core. (Quick aside, I actually think that's ok; some of my favorite classes in HEART don't have really catchy core abilities, and instead just have a density of really juicy minor and major abilities, so you're always excited about something about your character - but I thought it would be cool if your psychic powers actually meant something). Back to the drawing board.

The answer came in two parts. The first was re-examining the core premise, rethinking what it meant to have "psychic powers" in HEART. One thing that's really fun for me is that HEART takes classic dungeon fantasy stuff and tilts it - you don't just have a fighter, you've got a Hound, who's channeling the ghosts and history of a legendary army; you don't just have a ranger, you've got a Deadwalker, whose "companion" is a manifestation of the way they (almost?) died. The outputs are very similar - the Hound is pretty trusty and durable in a fight, the Deadwalker can take you places, etc. But the path by which they get there is skewed. What would that look like for psychic powers?

I'm not sure how this became my answer, but something about the image of "physicalizing" the mind really spoke to me. What if you could move stuff with your mind - because your mind was actually slightly outside your body and could pick it up? What if you could read peoples' minds - because your mind physically overlapped with their brain? This started clicking stuff into place for me - it was a great jumping off point for the abilities. The fictional conceit stuck - you got a shard of the intelligence hammered into your brain, and now your mind leaks out of it, unable to connect to the network, but you can't put the toothepaste back in the tube.

But the core remained unsolved! It wasn't until summer 2023 that I went back to plug away at this. I considered several angles, and finally going back to SPIRE cemented it. There was one other thing that The Intelligence did in SPIRE - you could ask it questions, and it would answer.

I love asking questions in games - I think it's both fun (you get to either find out more about the thing you want to do or tell everyone about the cool stuff you came up with) and useful (since playing games is a social activity and we can't actually read each others' minds, asking questions is a good way to clear up what everyone is thinking). And I thought it made perfect sense for a psychic character, too. And if you're playing a psychic character, you're probably interested in investigating stuff, looking for hidden secrets, generally knowing things. 

But what does that actually look like "mechanically" (or otherwise put into game text)? In PbtA games, there are often lists of specific questions you can ask, to help prompt asking and answering (and to help fit the genre expectations). HEART doesn't have those, so the Splinterhead couldn't get an expanded list (a favorite, and pretty easy and effective way to make it feel powerful). I settled on making answers a kind of resource that the Splinterhead could collect. This had a nice resonance for me with d&d's "psionic power points," and I think it makes asking questions feel valuable, in a game that's otherwise pretty action-oriented.

That meant going back over all the abilities I had already written and seeing if any of them wanted to be tied into the new "Information economy" that I'd ended up in, but actually the biggest effect was making it so more abilities gave you additional ways you could ask questions. The major abilities came together a little more slowly, but I'm pleased with how they navigate between the expected and unexpected. The zenith abilities happened somewhere in the middle there - I had finally come up with a sketch I had confidence in when I'd hit on connecting to The Intelligence, but it took until the final alignment around question-and-answer for me to write something that felt complete.

There was one other design piece that I forgot to mention! In the first draft, I'd identified a design space that I thought was interesting - what if players had a limited ability to choose their own Fallout? I liked it, but I couldn't think of an interesting thing to do with it for the Splinterhead until I hit the questions angle. I think it's a really cool idea, and if I ever design another HEART class, I'll probably use it again!

Mechanical Considerations: Adding a new resource economy into the game always carries with it the danger of upending the old one. Like the Myco-Alchemist, I wanted to be a little careful about what Information could be spent for, and how easy it was to obtain. The Vermissian Knight made my most useful baseline - their core ability lets them spend resources to do a lot of really powerful things! But of course the opportunity cost is that you can't spend that resource for anything else. Information should be weaker, since it doesn't have a similar opportunity cost, and it does have an additional cost - it has to be relevant to the thing you're spending it for. That answer you got about the Gnolls' machines probably can't help you on a delve through the woods. There's one final counterbalance, which is that the Splinterhead doesn't get access to the Kill skill. Now, both the written rules and clarification of the rules suggests that Kill is not the only skill you can use to reduce the Resistance of your adversaries - but Kill is probably the most straightforward way. So the Splinterhead will have a little more difficult time tackling problems head on, unless they spend their Information.

Assorted Inspirations: the Energy mechanic from MtG's Kaladesh (and its difficulties); that illustration of the shirtless psion who shows up when you google search "dnd 3.5 psion"; talking with the skills in Disco Elysium; an assortment of philosophers, particularly philosophers of mind; Transistor, which I don't think I had clocked at the time, but which seems pretty clearly in here in retrospect. Of the three classes, the Splinterhead is the one that emerges the most out of the source material in SPIRE, being of course inspired by The Intelligence, but other special shout outs are called for: To ICHOR-DROWNED, whose Somnajac and their dream delve ability was an interesting counterpoint with which to sharpen the Splinterhead's mind delve ability; Jeremy Strandberg, who suggested the name "Splinterhead," which was much better than any of the names I was coming up with; and CODEX OF THE DEEP SPIRE, which details the Katakos Delvers, which are super cool and which I bounced off of for one of the major abilities.

Favorite Ability: This is the hardest part! I'm really proud with some of the writing in this one. My favorite ability text I think has to be EPISTEMOLOGICAL SOLUTION, which states "With your focused attention, you can render your opponents into empty information, gradually shearing layers of property-bearing matter into bare particulars." I get to reference the bundle theory of metaphysics! What game is complete without that? But I think I'll cheat and also include the Major fallout that you can choose to take, which lets you propose answers to the questions you ask, at the cost of making nearly all of your skills Risky, which I think is a fun way to sell the psychic powers / precognition angle.