Wary Explorers!

It has been an absolute tornado of a week (if you know you know) as we have all just returned to our respective homesteads from Gen Con. We are tired, sore, and hoarse, and we wouldn’t trade it for anything. Before anything else, we want to extend a HUGE thank you for the humbling response that you all gave us at Gen Con 2026. Your excitement for of Hearth and Horror was unmistakable and absolutely made our Con! Gen Con was an absolutely incredible experience that we can’t wait to talk about it further, but for today, we want to go back to the start of the weekend, when all three of us were spinning our gears around one thing:

The Pitch

*The Writhing Hunger sneaks up on an unsuspecting hunter*

Throughout our 12-hour drive to Gen Con we were rolling Stay Cool Unfavored because we were in our own heads about how to best present of Hearth and Horror to you, let alone how you would receive it. How could we sum up our passionate work over the last six years in a way that would spread our excitement throughout Gen Con? In between claiming and killing each other’s cows, absurd word games, and a few snacks here and there, we ended up spitting lines about our game to, and at, each other in attempts to land on what makes of Hearth and Horror unique and worthwhile. After myriad serious, and some downright silly, attempts we ended up identifying our “Founding Factors”

Fresh, Flexible, and, of course, Frightening!

Diving into of Hearth and Horror’s first Founding Factor – FRESH – As lifelong gamers, we have been seeking something new at our table in our pre-pandemic days. One fateful Friday evening, all but one in our gaming group cancelled, leaving one player and one GM to their devices. As we sat down at the table, we said, “Let’s start writing our own system, and see where this takes us.” Well, we now know exactly where this has taken us… Directly into our flintlock phantasmagoria and black powder revolution of The Uncharted!

The bedrock to of Hearth and Horror’s fresh design is its 2d12 dice outcome threshold system. We were sick and tired of rolling 18s on our d20s only to have our GM tell us, and to have to tell our players, that it didn’t quite make the mark. As a result, we created our system to be immediately understandable and consistent for both sides of the table, allowing players to know how well they succeed or fail, while allowing Conteur’s to maintain their autonomy to describe what that success or failure means to them and the rest of the table. While we could talk about the dice system forever, we will dive deeper into these systems in another Dev Diary.

Fresh doesn’t stop at the dice in of Hearth and Horror, either. We strive to bring something new to the market, leading to the inception of new formats for Character Creation, Combat, Spell Casting, and Wounding mechanics, to name a few.

The second Founding Factor behind of Hearth and Horror is FLEXIBILITY. To keep our Character Creation System flexible, with near-limitless options, we created a classless system, where you get to build your own road map using our a-la carte system. You will be able to build your Characters by choosing from over 30 different Character Origins, over 60 different Skills, and over 100 different special abilities we call Talents, to create something that is uniquely yours.

In early playtesting we have already seen such creative builds such as bare-knuckle boxers, pacifists, war medics, and a personal favorite, a non-combative therapist who took on a major support role. Flexibility also extends into our combat, which utilizes a Combat Action economy that allows players to make, and potentially repeat, choices in a given round of combat, so long as they have the Combat Actions (CA) to do so. Some examples of this are moving or attacking multiple times in a row, or even firing your rifle, reloading, and dishing out that final coup de grâce.

*A lone Surveillant attempts to end an onslaught wrought by a frenzied Grizzly Bear*

The question we received the most during Gen Con was ‘is of Hearth and Horror rules-light or -heavy?’ of Hearth and Horror is meant to be a mechanical sandbox that allows groups to choose which level of mechanics they want to engage with, providing further flexibility to the game system at large. In general, we would say the game is ‘crunchier’ than a rules light system like Blades in the Dark, however, we wanted the ‘crunch’ in of Hearth and Horror to be clear and approachable to new players venturing into the survival horror or TTRPG spaces. In many cases, crunchier components within of Hearth and Horror are provided alongside lighter counterpart options, such as our Food & Drink system, which ranges from “Realism” that is based on your Vitality, Body, and Sense scores, to “Don’t Worry About It,” for those who, well, don’t want to worry about it during their expeditions. While there are certain parts to the crunch that we highly recommend engaging in to maintain the horror, we wanted our system to be flexible to fit each table’s preferred gameplay choices.

Our third, and personal favorite, Founding Factor is making sure that of Hearth and Horror is FRIGHTENING. As we set out to design a survival horror game, we knew that we need to ensure that both its gameplay and setting were going to live up to our horror-filled hopes and nightmares. of Hearth and Horror’s setting does this by focusing on the challenges of survival in this proto-industrial era that is beset by folkloric, eldritch abominations that have once more arisen due to the Homeland’s colonial dredging of the continent for their own, industrial benefit. However, this frightening factor is also shown through the gameplay, as each die roll requires you to take stock of your equipment, assess the risks, and determine what you’re willing to lose if you fail. You can learn more about how we bring horror to the table in our previous Dev Diary.

So there it is: Our Pitch.

Once again, for those who spent some of their time with us at Gen Con, and decided to huck some absurdly large d12s at our EXP table, thank you! Gen Con is an enormous and loving community, full of fun distractions and intentional excursions, and we were continually humbled by everyone who chose to devote some of their time to us and of Hearth and Horror. After some much needed rest and reflection, we are looking forward to talking more about our experience at Gen Con! Stay tuned for more Dev Diaries, follow us on Kickstarter, and get ready for some playtesting near the end of August. We have so many more horrors to share with all of you as part of our First Expedition.

Until then our next diary entry…

The Founding Factors

Horror at Your Table