Harmony Drive
A downloadable game
Ready to design your own adventure TTRPG?
This is Harmony Drive, the system behind Heroic Chord. If you want to build a campaign-style adventure TTRPG, one that lets players express themselves, work together, and make difficult choices, this is the system for you!
Harmony Drive is a toolkit anyone can use to make a game with a medium level of crunch but a huge level of depth. Let your players make whatever spell appeals to them! Let them use their skills in inventive ways, and risk making things more complicated with Edge Successes! In a Harmony Drive game, the players have the power to choose what happens - and the GM is there to make sure the choices aren't easy.
Three Pillars
Harmony Drive games revolve around three concepts.
Self-Expression: The spells are free-form. The combat is abstract and versatile. Players can engage with their problems however they want to, without being penalized, having to take special abilities, or being left behind by their team. They can play the game however they want, and express themselves through their choices.
Teamwork: Players succeed and fail as a team. They can put their heads together and cast enormous combination spells any time they like. They build advantage for their allies, and use that advantage to weather devastating attacks or grueling circumstances.
Difficult Choices: Will you make a stronger attack at the cost of being separated from the rest of the party? Will you create a masterpiece that will be the perfect home for a wandering spirit? Will you use your advantage in combat to defend against attacks or will you push forward to end the encounter? Players are free to make their own choices, choices which can make things more complicated later on.
Make it Yours
Harmony Drive has examples pulled from fantasy, space opera, and horror genres, but the game is yours to modify as you see fit.
Workbooks are included to help you put your thoughts together, and there's even one for your world and its lore! If the process seems daunting, just load up a workbook and answer the questions. How do people in your world relate to magic? What kinds of power sources exist in your world?
Make something that's truly yours, and then hand it over to your players so they can create characters that are truly theirs.
Join Us
Tweet at me and share your progress! I want to know what you're doing, and help in any way I can!
Join the Heroic Discord and post in our Harmony Driveway to share your projects with our community! I'll be there, and so will other designers eager to share in this process with you.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Harmony Drive - Strike Your Own Chord!Jul 21, 2021
Comments
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This is such a gorgeous SRD. It's a work of art in its own right. While every other SRD I've read treats the process of breaking down the mechanics as perfunctory, this SRD relishes in its own aesthetics. Truly marvelous.
I do have a couple thoughts/suggestions that would be quality of life improvements:
1. I'd move character advancement up to be alongside Lessons or I'd move Lessons all the way down to be with the character advancement section. Having those two split up across the actual entirety of the document is a truly sad thing.
2. It isn't clear what Scatter is and how that relates HP and MP. Are they interchangeable? Could I replace Scatter with HP or vice versa? Most 90% of the SRD you talk about magic having a Scatter cost and then on one page you talk about HP and it makes the reader scratch their head and say, "Wait, what?"
3. Assist Pools being so far away from the section on Spell Pieces makes it difficult to understand what you use them for aside from narrating spell effects. You get a better sense of what Spell Pieces do and how spells function mechanically (not just narratively) once it's brought up in facing Encounters.
That said, these are just my opinions as I went through the SRD with a fine-tooth comb and made notes for my own contribution to the Harmony Jam.
Even if you don't think you'll use it to make something, you should pick up a this SRD, read it, and imagine the possibilities. It's a great SRD, easily the best looking SRD I've ever seen.
Thank you for sharing this with us.