I’m new to GMing, but I threw myself into the deep end. Almost a year ago, a couple of months after playing D&D for the first time, I decided it was time to try my own hand at running a game.

The idea was great: A game mostly inspired by the new She-Ra series, with some cool elements of Narnia-esque travelling between worlds, along with a spookypasta-esque corporation keeping secrets in a middle-of-nowhere town.

Unfortunately, I jumped on the first genre-agnostic system I could find, Fate Core. I think with a different story and more experience, Fate Core could work really well. But it just didn’t work for us. The system of Aspects was really hard to integrate into gameplay and narrative, and the party was having trouble having diverse skill sets. Meanwhile, I was having trouble setting up opportunities for them to use any of the interesting Fate mechanics.

So a couple of months ago we decided to take a look at Glitter Hearts, a Powered by the Apocalypse game very clearly inspired by the new She-Ra series and incorporating a lot of inspiration from the magical girl genre and other 80s cartoons like Voltron. Instead of swapping over the main campaign to this system instantly, we decided to do a one-shot campaign set in the same world but with a different set of characters and plot.

Glitter Hearts

I’m pretty new to tabletop games in general, but I had played one PtbA one-shot before (Monster of the Week) and I expected it to be a much better fit for the kind of animated series vibe we were going for. PtbA games generally give each character class a playbook with a set of general and class-specific actions they can take, as well as flavor and custom character backstory. It makes it really easy to just jump in and play and reduces a lot of the decision paralysis that more open-ended systems (like Fate) can cause.

A quirk of Glitter Hearts is that you kind of get three mini-playbooks instead of one: your Everyday Archetype, which describes your character’s personality and base stats according to a standard fictional archetype like “Intellectual”, “Goth”, and “Athlete”; a Magical Archetype which describes your magical, heroic class; and a Mystical Connection which adds a bit more flavor and relates to an elemental or emotional theme. Each of the three has a set of moves you can use, and at the start of the game you get to choose one move from each.

A key aspect of PtbA games in general is that unlike D&D, you should narrate your character’s doing whatever they would do, and you only roll when you are trying to do something which fits into a standard move. This is a lot more difficult to get into the habit of than it sounds. Coming from D&D, you tend to decide what your character will do depending on what’s on the character sheet in front of you. But in this system, you have to decide on your own and then apply the mechanics to the story.

The standard moves were pretty difficult for all of us to get used to, but some of that was probably because of the set up and unfamiliarity with the game. There’s a pretty clear intended playstyle for Glitter Hearts: something is terrorizing innocent people, the heroes have a run in with the villain and try to change the villain’s heart, the heroes band together to fight off the monster, the heroes have a day off to relax and bond with each other, etc.. I do think that thinking about the game as a series of episodes in a show like She-Ra or Sailor Moon is necessary to make the game work well.

Designing a one-shot

This was my first time designing a one-shot, and it totally went over three and a half two-hour sessions. Part of that was definitely time spent getting used to the rules, so that’s maybe something to consider before running a new game in a one-shot—a single, long session might have been a better choice.

I knew that this would probably take place within the main campaign’s “history”, and since the only real piece of history is that the city they’re in rebelled against the Empire, I figured the characters should be participating in that in some way. But I already had a clear history for the coup, and I didn’t want to throw that out to make the one-shot the canonized revolution story. In retrospect, though, I wish I had. The revolution story doesn’t need to be so dear to me, and I think raising the stakes for the one-shot would have been an easy way to create investment for the players.

Instead, I decided to set up the PCs as revolutionary agents on a secret mission to get information. The information was crucial to making the big battle go well. I thought this would be a fun heist-type story that could go down pretty quickly, as the PCs just needed to get in and out.

I think that maybe a more classic magical-girl or superhero plotline might have worked better (a big monster is terrorizing the city!) but I don’t think this was a terrible idea overall. I do think, though, that a simpler plot would have been easier to learn the game with.

It was pretty railroad-y, but I don’t think that’s a huge crime for the first time using a new system. The basic outline of the campaign was:

- A scientist who used to work for the evil Empire, but now works for the revolution, knows a way to disable the city's defenses, but in order to do it she'll need the notes from her old lab. The PCs needed to sneak into the lab, get the notes, and get out.
- The lab is in the city's catacombs, and there's a secret entrance somewhere in the mansion of an entrepreneur and all-around rich guy, who's hosting a party soon.
- A fellow rebel, Niki, hopefully convinces the PCs that they should tag along because they know the upper city.
- The butler at the mansion, Leyla, needs some staff to serve food and drinks at the party.
- The PCs search for the entrance while being waiters.
- Inside the catacombs, Niki separates from the group to get the notes for themselves, planning to lock the PCs inside so they can steal the glory by caving in the exit.
- The cave-in awakens an ancient holographic cobra-shaped beast which the PCs have to fight.
- Destroying the beast causes the catacombs to start crumbling, and they have to escape.

There was a lot of potential here, and I think with some tweaking it could be a great little adventure with the spirit of She-Ra in it. It’s a heist with the plan laid out (though with some more effort, this could also be presented as a heist that the players plan themselves), with some opportunities for puzzles, NPC interaction, and combat.

I divided the campaign into 3 acts: the exposition (getting their quest, figuring out a plan, having an initial test combat), the celebration (serving drinks at the party, searching for the secret entrance), and the catacombs (everything else). I created 3 NPCs for the exposition and 4 for the party, following this video by “How to be a Great GM” to give myself a rough outline of the characters for improv during the session. I also gave myself a rough outline of tasks to hit—providing plot info, tasks to complete during the party, Niki’s plans.

For the enemies, I worked from the list of example enemies in the Glitter Hearts rulebook and reskinned them. I created two basic enemy types–some small spherical robots that roll around and shoot lasers with 3 health, 1 armor, and a 1-damage attack that causes stun; and some humanoid robots with 4 health, 2 armor, and 1-2 damage attacks depending on if they’re melee or ranged. For the big monster at the end I reskinned the T-Rex from the book as a cobra: 40 health, 2 armor, a 7-damage bite attack, and a 4-damage tail whip. I also gave the big monster a hypnotism ability to stun the players.

These numbers were way overpowered for first-level players. During the session, I had to remove all of the armor on all the enemies, reduce the snake’s health to 20 and reduce its bite attack to 5 damage. Even so, the snake was a tough fight for the PCs, and one of them just barely avoided being taken out.

GM mistakes I made

Before talking about the gameplay generally, I want to mention some of the mistakes I made during the 3.5 sessions we played which definitely affected the gameplay.

  • I played Niki without much motivation or acting, and that made it very obvious that they were going to do something like betray the players. This made it a little awkward that they took Niki along at all, and lost a big opportunity to use Touch their heart.
  • As a GM running the combat is a little confusing, and I defaulted to a D&D-style turn order, which is not the way this game is intended to be played. When players use Clash to attack an enemy, the enemy attacks back as part of that same move. Combat should be played just like the rest of the game, and not like D&D.
  • At the beginning of the party sequence, I ad-libbed another waiter telling the players not to touch the owner’s Port wine. When I realized that I didn’t have an actual secret entrance figured out (I knew that I wanted it to be below the fountain, but I never figured out how the players would get into it) I improvised the Port being a key part of that, and it waterfalled into the Port bottle deactivating the robot guards. This meant the humanoid robots were never battled with, which actually ended up being ideal, because combat was taking us a long time to get through and those battles would have added a lot of extra time. During the final escape sequence I kind-of forced that a PC dropped the bottle, causing the robots to activate again for added danger—but I don’t think it was too slick.
  • I totally borked Niki’s whole thing in the catacombs, forgetting that they should have stolen the notes first, and letting the players find the notes in the lab…it worked out okay though, because a PC used Touch their Heart on them and it turned into a nice moment where Niki explained what their plan had been.

Thoughts on Combat

It’s really unintuitive for me to do combat without turns. For the players this means just shouting out what they want to do, when they want to do it. For the GM this means also just…deciding when to make a move as an enemy. It definitely takes some getting used to.

There are a few moves which make sense to use during combat: Clash is a standard attack, but you can also Thwart Peril for avoiding danger or you can Protect Someone if you’re doing anything to defend something or someone. The game also encourages PCs to use Touch their heart to avoid combat altogether.

Because Clash on repeat is boring, and the game encourages a different playstyle altogether, I think in the future I will always make combat a secondary goal. Instead of just being attacked, the PCs will be trying to do something (protect someone, get something, escape, break in, survive, etc.) and interacting heavily with the environment. This is probably good GMing anyway, but I think it’s really necessary with Glitter Hearts, because combat for combat’s sake isn’t encouraged by the mechanics. That’s probably fitting for the genre as well. You don’t exactly expect the magical heroes to go around murdering everything in sight.

Another way I plan to be doing combat in the future is to generally act for the enemies reactively. Instead of waiting for the enemy’s turn, the enemy will do things after a PC does something — the PC punches the snake, the snake rears up its head; another PC throws a spear, the snake dazzles them. There’s definitely some tweaking to do, and I think the key there is to design enemies the same way you might design one in a video game, with an anticipation action that sets up what the big attack will be, then the action itself, and then a recovery. So if we imagine a giant gorilla in a cave that can pound the ground to make stalactites fall, the flow might go something like:

1. A PC *clashes* with the gorilla, dealing and taking some damage. The gorilla stands tall, lets out a big howl, and raises its fists.
2. Another PC *clashes* with the gorilla, but takes no damage in return because the gorilla is busy. The gorilla pounds fists on the ground, and giant stalactites begin crashing into the floor.
3. All the PCs try to dodge the stalactites with *Thwart Peril*. The gorilla breathes heavily, hunched over.

We’ll have to wait and see if this kind of thing can work well, especially because it means the enemies act as often as the PCs, but I suspect it’ll run more smoothly than just waiting for the PCs to attack and randomly inserting special moves.

It’s also interesting that almost all of the magical abilities are related to higher-level narrative actions, but I suppose so are all of the basic actions. There are a few “use your gentle spirit to heal” and “manifest a sword of fire”, but generally the actual thing that the character does is left up to narrative and roleplay. The things you actually roll for are about the intention and effect of whatever your character does—do you save them, do you get out of danger? The how is up to the players and the GM.

Thoughts on Non-Combat

That last point–that the how is up to the players, not the dice–also applies to the rest of the game. Generally, though, I think outside of combat a lot of things are left up to roleplay. Some of the actions–Glimpse the truth, Convince Someone, Rest and Relaxation–make sense and are designed for use outside of combat. But that’s about it.

For example, I wanted the PCs to have to complete tasks while catering the party, and it’s a little strange trying to fit that into the moves available. My goal was that to masquerade as normal waiters and generally be unsuspicious, the PCs would have to roll to successfully serve drinks, set tables, and chat with the guests. During the session I just let them succeed and had them roll for Glimpse the truth while they were searching around, but in retrospect I think the best options that Glitter Hearts provides would perhaps be eg. Thwart Peril to avoid arousing suspicion while collecting dishes around the room.

The problem with this is that Thwart Peril is a roll +Physical, and we had a buff but destructive character serving this dinner! She would have had an advantage on Thwart Peril where other, narratively less-clumsy characters would have had a disadvantage. That doesn’t feel right.

I’m not sure how to handle this kind of situation yet. One idea is to just throw in a roll and use the narrative situation to apply some +1 or -1 to it. Another idea is to take a note out of Dael Kingsmill’s book and start creating minigames for things I can plan ahead of time (by the way, if you haven’t seen her videos yet, Dael Kingsmill has some great homebrew stuff for D&D).

I think that’s probably the strategy I’m going to take for the time being—if the PCs need to do something like serve drinks at a party, a minigame for that is the way forward; if a situation comes up I didn’t plan for, we can roll with a relevant skill.

Final thoughts

Glitter Hearts is fun, and it’s definitely better for our game than Fate was. Overall, though, for our game I think there’s going to be a fair amount of tweaking with the rules and adding mechanics where they might fit. One example: if you fail a We can do this together roll, you risk having a broken relationship with another PC, and this is a pretty harsh consequence, so we might make it two failed rolls instead.

Doing the one-shot was a great way to change up the pace of the campaign, and I’m really excited to get back into the main campaign with this system. I’ve also learned a ton about GMing in the last couple of months that I’m hoping to put to the test. One big benefit of a PtbA game like this, with a pretty simple system, is that I don’t need to learn a ton of technical mechanics in order to design a campaign and all the enemies.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and I hope this has inspired you to try this game!