Welcome back to the Ways and Means developer blog series. We’re picking up with our third entry as our crowdfunding campaign enters day 3 - we’ve already funded several stretch goals (thank you!) and we’re heading for more. We’ve already covered two of the brand new classes we’re including in the book (the Witness and the Blightborn) so now it’s time to take a look at the third: the Crawler.
So, rogues, huh? Weird little guys. Just as the Witness started with us looking at a Bard and the Blightborn a druid, the Crawler began life as a series of musings on what purpose a rogue or thief fulfills in an archetypical dungeon.
What does a rogue do? Well, they sneak around in the shadows, disarm deadly traps, pick open locked doors or treasure chests, and pilfer anything not nailed down. But here’s something any long term GM knows (but might not admit out loud): you probably won’t add lots of locked doors, hidden traps, and shadowy alcoves to your game unless you have a rogue-ish character at your table to take advantage of them. Poke at that logic for a second and you come to the metatextual realisation that the very presence of a rogue somehow litters your setting with traps and locked treasure chests. Talk about a perfect example of how the Heart works.
From that seed, the Crawler was born: a walking talking cautionary tale about delvers who are consumed by the overwhelming certainty that the Heart is a dungeon made just for them.
The Visuals
Once more Felix Miall took on the task of bringing the Crawler to life visually. The challenge of taking the iconic rogue aesthetic and twisting it into a distinctly “Heart” form was solved surprisingly quickly by one of my favourite methods: dumping a rotten bucketload of body horror on its head.
Crawlers crave the concept of loot, but don’t seek a specific reward. They live for the thrill of breaking into forbidden places, even as the Heart makes these places just for them. They want to become the perfect dungeoneer, but without the dungeon becoming too easy. As a result, Crawlers enter a twisted metaphysical feedback loop with the Heart, as if they’re a tired old couple who can’t decide what to order for dinner: “What do you want?” “I dunno, I’m happy with whatever you want!”
Over time, the Heart tries to mould the Crawler into the “perfect” dungeoneer, in mind and body – with eyes that pierce the dark, lockpicks for fingernails, 50ft of intestinal rope, and herniated pouches to conceal their coveted loot. After all… it’s what you wanted, right? RIGHT?!
Here’s what Felix had to add on depicting the Crawler.
Felix Miall:“I was looking at footage of the inside of a kangaroo pouch and I thought about that when I was making this (my youtube algorithm decided I would be interested in this and I'm embarrassed to admit that they weren't wrong). And of course her relic of choice is a little guy because I get very antsy if I don't get to draw a little guy.”
The Abilities
Now you’ve seen the Crawler take form, it’s time for me to switch into the third person and ask Elaine Lithgow what her thoughts were when designing some of her abilities.
Elaine Lithgow:“I love loot. Maybe it’s a lifetime of CRPGs and MMOs, but a fundamental part of me is hardwired to shoot a hot spike of serotonin into my brain whenever I see the sparkle of loot beckoning me from a fresh corpse, or hear a thrilling fanfare when cracking open a treasure chest. Inexplicable Loot is my love letter to loot in all forms. As the Crawler delves deeper, taking greater risks in search of some reward, ANY reward, the Heart responds by spontaneously sprinkling treasure around like candy, just for them. I simply love the idea of a canonical explanation for all those reinforced treasure chests containing a single weapon that somehow ended up in a dead end corridor in the bowls of the earth.
The steady stream of equipment and resources also acts as the foundation for a number of the Crawler’s abilities, including Every Tool a Hammer, which gives the Crawler a nice way to burn some of that extra loot, because nobody likes a messy inventory. Speaking of which…”
Elaine Lithgow:“Denizen’s Desires hits another trope I’m a big fan of, giving characters in games random gifts to try and sway their opinions of you and learning something in the process. Who knew that the town crier was a huge fan of rare bugs!
Denizen’s Desires encourages the Crawler to look at their resources and the people around them in a different light as they try to match their Domains with incomplete knowledge. This ties into another common theme among Crawler abilities, the concept of pushing your luck or taking chances. With this ability, the Crawler gets one chance to try to pick out a gift they think will suit the person (or thing) they’re trying to charm. Get it wrong, and they’ve wasted a resource, but get it right and they’re laughing. Social Link Unlocked!”
Elaine Lithgow:“I have a twisted love of traps, especially the old school kind. Some of my earliest memories of designing roleplaying games involved peering at crunchy black and white illustrations of traps which functioned like improbable Rube Goldberg contraptions. Counterweights, acid pits, spikes, sliding floors, each one meticulously designed to annihilate a little stick figure in the most contrived way possible. Yes the Home Alone movies were formative for me, how did you know?
Unfortunately, once I started playing and running games myself, I found that these kinds of sadistic traps are nowhere near as fun when the unwitting targets are some of your closest friends sitting within dice-throwing distance.
So the instant I latched onto the idea of the Crawler, I knew I wanted to put the power of traps into the hands of players. Finally! An excuse to deploy the most brutal and complex traps ever conceived, now with minimal friendship drama! (It’s all good when the targets are the GM’s mooks, after all.) Of course I couldn’t resist adding a crack of spice by letting players increase the complexity of their traps by also increasing the likelihood of triggering the trap themselves. You know, because GMs deserve traps too.
PS: Yes, I fully encourage people to combine Denizen’s Desires and Ambush traps to make friends with deadly ambush predators. What could possibly go wrong?”
Elaine Lithgow:“Zeniths are one of my favourite parts of Heart. Here’s something that might not surprise you: I’m one of those ‘forever GMs’. It’s a rare and fleeting chance that I get to sit in a player's seat. As a result, over the years I’ve tried to develop a GMing style which encourages my players to dip their toes in the GMing waters: describe the world with me, name that NPC, tell me what you find at the bottom of the well. It takes a bit of the weight off and my quiet hope is that I’m secretly preparing my players to one day kick me out of the GM’s seat and seize control.
Enter the Dungeon Master ability! One of the Crawler’s three Zenith abilities and the one I’m currently most proud of; because whenever I say to people ‘yeah one of their Zeniths lets you explicitly become the GM’ people always get wide eyed and very excited. It’s my hope that if people choose to go down this path, they might even look back on their time with the Crawler as a micro tutorial on how to GM and realise just how much fun it is.”
That’s the Crawler! Initially we had only intended to add three Classes to the book, but as fate would have it, before we’d even finished writing this blog series, we went and unlocked a stretch goal which added a fourth class to the book! This one is going to be a creation of Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan and while we don’t know what it’s going to be yet, you can bet we’ll be talking about it right here when we do.
For now, make sure to follow the campaign if you haven’t and come back next time when we’ll be discussing the new callings that Ways and Means has to offer.
