Heartwood is an online tabletop RPG game (a fork of the D&D 5th edition ruleset). Heartwood is not a fully visual video game and it's also not a traditional tabletop gaming experience, it is a combination of the two.
Our goal is to make online tabletop RPGs more accessible. We want an easier way to get started, learn the game, and have fun without spending hours configuring complicated online tools. Heartwood will have everything you need to play an epic roleplaying game online with your friends. A full ruleset compendium, drop in monster encounters, 3D on-screen dice, world lore, and so much more. To really simplify things, access to the entire world of Heartwood, the core rules, monsters, magical items and more will be included in a single monthly subscription. Your party does not need anything else to get started. No previous knowledge of other tabletop systems is required. All of the information you will need will be right at your fingertips the entire time.
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The strange and exotic world of Heartwood, hidden for centuries within the mists of the Ethereal Plane, has revealed itself. Nestled within the wild and alien jungle are bustling cities with diverse citizens, including the mysterious natives born from the jungle itself. Outside the city walls, feral beasts roam, vines slither with a mind of their own on the jungle floor, and massive bioluminescent flora illuminate the darkness below the canopy. Deep below the earth, Heartwood harbors another secret—a sprawling sunken city teeming with hostile guardians protecting a place with no one left to protect—as well as bizarre reclusive creatures that prey upon the lost and vulnerable, dragging them deep into the subterranean realm where they are never seen again. The world is fraught with peril, as well as great rewards for those strong enough to seek them. Heartwood awaits.
Update 9/23/2020
Hello from the Heartwood team! We are excited to release our first ever devlog update to keep all of you, our community, informed about what we are up to. We have been hard at work developing the Heartwood platform into something that we will be proud to share. Most recently we have been spending most of our time focusing on game mechanics and ways that we can improve upon and add to what already exists from 5e tabletop RPG rules, and how these mechanics will work within our system. Here are a few of the highlights of what we’ve been working on:
Intuitive Inventory System
We are developing an interactive inventory system that will allow players to easily equip and unequip gear on their character and have all necessary player stats changed automatically. By providing a visual representation of inventory and equipment, similar to how most modern RPG video games handle inventory, players will be able to easily, and at a glance know items they have available to them, as well as what they are currently equipped with.
Shop Menus & Inventory Lists
Have you ever had the experience of playing a tabletop game with friends, only to have your adventure interrupted as the entire party shops for gear in town? Instead of flipping through pages of items or having the GM handle each player one at a time, we are implementing interactive shop menus that players can buy and sell gear and items through on their own. Players will be able to see the prices of all items for sale in a shopkeeper’s inventory, as well as the value of items in their own inventory. This will allow an entire player party to take care of their individual shopping needs all at the same time with minimal assistance from their GM.
On a more technical note, we have made a major transition to Keystone 5, a new technology framework that allows us to better access and serve up the massive amounts of information generally involved with tabletop RPGs. Keystone is a fantastic project developed by the Australian software agency Thinkmill and open source software contributors. If you are interested in the tech stack that powers Heartwood, let us know and we will continue to include these types of updates in future devlogs.
For our non-technical crowd, this just means that we are investing heavily in using the latest and greatest technology so that Heartwood is as innovative behind the scenes as it is in our world development and gameplay features.
(UI screenshots coming soon!)