Glitter Hearts
A downloadable game
Glitter Hearts is an action-packed RPG in a fun filled world of everyday people who transform into powerful super heroes that fight off the forces of evil. Your character will try to find the balance between their everyday life needs and heeding the call to save the world. You and your friends will create your own hero, your own team, and even your own special mascot. With over 150 different moves to choose from, you can build your ideal magical hero that is uniquely you!
Glitter Hearts rules are easy to learn and building your own character is a simple process of making choices that fit your vision. When building a character, you will choose:
- Your everyday identity – who you are when you aren’t your heroic alter ego.
- Your magical archetype – what type of hero are you? A warrior, witch, idol, defender, or tactician.
- Your mystical connection – which element or emotion do you draw your power from?
And then choose your actions from there until you’ve built your hero.
While based off many popular magical girls shows, Glitter Hearts can be set in any time, place, or world that you can imagine. All you need to play is 3-6 players, a pair of six-sided dice, and a few hours to play.
So hop in, transform yourself into the hero of your dreams, and explore the world of Glitter Hearts!
Find more resources and materials at leatherman.games
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $15 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Download demo
Development log
- The Mystery BusinessJun 07, 2023
- ResourcesJul 27, 2020
- Fixed fileJun 12, 2020
Comments
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I have a question about the mystical trait, what exactly is it for? Like I know it’s used by mystical identities and the witch but it doesn’t seem to be used for characters that haven’t taken anything from either of those? Like every other stat have basic moves that use them but other than one of the options for we can do this together! Mystical isn’t used, and that seems odd for a game about magic and magical girls?
Mystical stat represents the connection the character has to this outside power of 'magic'. So those that aren't naturally inclined to it, or choose to have it when they transform, have found more mundane ways to be effective. I wanted magic to feel like something that you needed to decide to take on and since characters can grow into the moves that use Mystical more, it felt natural to keep as a character choice and not something that every being on the planet can do which is roughly what all the basic moves are.
I know this might sound like a stupid question but how does exactly armor work? Does it reduce damage by the number of armor points? Or something else?
Yup, armor reduces the amount of damage by the number of armor points.
Purchased the book in Chicago Anime Central last year and I’m finally getting a chance to play it and my friends are excited. So far my favorite concept is as follows; An Intellectual Warrior who’s connection is… they’re still deciding on Anger or Fear. Their form however is the best bit… they turn into a human sized t-rex. I can’t wait to start playing!
love this so much
I've had this for years and just started taking a look at it. Wow! This is better than 90% of the TTRPGs out there! Great work! I love it!
thank you!
Hi Greg, love the game. Just ran session 0 for my group, and one of them wants to use the Accessory Weapon from Warrior. Looking at the traits, I'm a bit confused though. Is Wounding only available for Far/Close weapons, but not for Hand? Additionally, Is there any mechanical reason not to just choose Far, since its effective range is the full 300ft? From my understanding, Far/Close weapons simply do more damage and have more range than Hand weapons...
Wounding sets the damage at 2. Period. So it's good for people who have a low or negative physical trait. Where as sharp adds a +1 to their physical, so someone with a 2 in physical will do more damage at 3. You can put wounding on any weapon, keeping in mind that it just does 2 damage.
Far/Hand/Close are all narrative tags to cover weapon choice and will alter how the battle plays out. Hand weapons will put a hero directly in danger but also more in control. Close weapons means the monster might have to move, or choose a different target to threaten if they can't reach. Same with far. Since the conflict is a narration, the tags help inform and control what can narratively be done.
Does that make sense?
Hi there! I have a few questions if that's okay. One player asked how many times they are able to use their powers, and I can't seem to find the answer. For example, Life's Healing Touch allows you to heal a flat 2 HP each time you use it. Could you just keep using it until someone was fully healed? And for something like Death's Undead Minion, can you just summon it over and over in combat each time it's defeated? Or can you use your power multiple times and summon multiple minions?
Hello! That's totally ok. So, outside of battle, they can use it as much as they want. Inside a battle, keep in mind that everytime a player does an action, the world does a reaction. So if they heal as their action, the monster or threat will then react. So they could get hit, or part of the situation gets worse to pull their attention. But there isn't a limit on how often one can use their powers, it's all about what choices they need to make.
You can summon it each time it's defeated. You only ever get one. You can't summon multiples.
Thank you so much for your reply Greg! We are very much looking forward to playing Glitter Hearts for the first time this coming Thursday.
Absolutely! I hope you have so much fun!!
Hi again! Sorry, I'm a little confused how combat works, or I suppose, the Clash! action. If for example the player decides to Clash! using a ranged weapon and the enemy is far away, and the player rolls an 8 for example, would the enemy still inflict damage in return? If so, how? And if so, what does a far weapon change when it comes to combat?
Keep in mind that every action in combat has a reaction, and that reaction needs to make sense in the narrative. So a far weapon would stop them from being harmed by a monster that only does up close damage if that's what you want as the GM. Alternatively, the monster could choose to move to the person with a ranged weapon and hit, thus pulling it away from something else. Or the monster could hit someone closer like another hero or someone who is in danger. With clash, the player inflicts damage and the monster responds with damage in a way that makes narrative sense, and it doesn't have to be to the person who fired the far weapon. Does that help?
on the we can do this together! table, does "on a 12+" mean at least 13 or higher, since the level below is "on 10-12"? or does it mean at least 12 or higher? i'm assuming it means at least 12 or higher, to be consistent w/ the rules for "on a 10+" (pg. 7)?
At least 12 or higher.
thank you for the response! as for the behind the 8 ball results, when it says "choose n things that don't happen", is it saying to eliminate n options the gm can choose from the bulleted list below?
All 4 will happen. Their result allows the play to chose which options don't happen when they are knocked out. So on a 10+, 3 of the 4 don't happen. On a 7-9, 2 of the 4 don't happen.
thank you again! i have a couple more questions, so if you could be patient with me, i'd appreciate it.
1. Conditions can only apply once, but if you like them stacking, you can do that too.
2. You can always heal back to full health on a good nights rest or spending time with your friends. Rest and Relaxation is mainly to remove any conditions that you have. On a 6 or lower, you will not remove any conditions, break that relationship, but still heal back your full HP.
2. The person who called the attack makes the roll. Your comfort with meta gaming may allow the person with the highest emotional rating to make the roll. But I always let the person called the team attack make the roll. And they can always spend more power points than needed to gain advantage on that roll. So if there are 4 players, the need 5 power points among them to make the team attack. If they spend 6, the person making the roll has advantage on that roll.
For the Idol's Gentle Winds of Healing, the failed condition says they take +Emotional damage. How do you rule that damage is taken? My players and I were very confused as to how that worked.
You transfer your emotional rating in damage to yourself. Person A is trying to heal person b and they fail. They still heal Person B, by transferring those wounds to themselves equal to their emotional rating. If person A has an emotional rating of 1, they would heal 1 from person b, and take 1 damage to themselves. If they have a 0 or less, on a fail, they don't heal person B because they have no emotional rating.
Does that help?
That helps a lot! Thank you so much! <3
Hey, so I got this as a part of the racial bundle and the pride bundle, but for both I paid under 15 bucks. So, despite owning the game through two different packs, I have to pay another 15 bucks if I want to get the ruleset? I just want to make sure that's right.
You should be able to download the full rule set through either bundle. Is it not showing up as a download option? Do you not have a download next to the package at the top of the page?
Oh thanks! I disregarded the download thing at top and was only seeing the one on the page. I'm a bit new to itch.io.
Not my thing, D&D that is. Don't really have anyone to play it with but I do love the art. I got it with the Queer Bundle.
I buy the bundle but I can’t download the game all I see is the digital.pdf
Glitter Hearts is not a game, it's a guide and ruleset for playing a physical RPG ^^
man i really want to play this game it looks soo good but unfortunately i cant buy it :((((
It's still in the "TTRPG for Reproductive Rights" bundle for 5$
thankyouuu
Do you ever plan on releasing this on roll20 or foundry or the like?
Releasing for Roll20 has been a plan but I need to find a good coding person for sheets and the like and that hasn't happened it. It's on my wish list.
Just wrapped up a six month campaign using the Glitter Hearts system and it was SO MUCH FUN! Having grown up with magical girls, I'd been looking for a good ttrpg to handle that kind of atmosphere and it was just wonderful. The system is a nice balance of crunch and adaptable, with so many fun options to choose from for the character building. It was my first time being a GM and I felt really well equipped to run everything, even with my nerves haha.
I just wanted to say thank you for facilitating some great fun, even while my friends and I were apart due to the pandemic. I'm sure we'll come back to it again, and I can't wait to try out the player side of things myself sometime!
Thank you so much. I'm always happy to hear that people had a good time while playing. I hope it brings you many years of enjoyment and good memories.
I owe but I have not played this game...
...shame, shame, shame on me.
Hopefully, I'll create an opportunity to this year.
In the meantime, I can watch again and again the interview I recorded with Greg L.
Glitter Hearts is a PbtA magical girl (and optionally mecha) pen-and-paper rpg. It's waaaay lighter in tone than something like Magical Burst or Princess The Hopeful, but it's not without tension.
To put it another way, Cute High Earth Defense Club Love is listed as an influence, but so is Sailor Moon.
Glitter's PDF is 138 pages, with great illustrations and a supernaturally perfect layout, and this makes it really easy to pick up casually.
Mechanically, if you've played a Powered By The Apocalypse game, playing Glitter Hearts will also be super easy. Its biggest divergence is that when you roll a complication, you can simply give up on what you were trying to do instead of getting messed up by it. This sort of pulls the teeth from 'failing forward', but it's also a really nice pressure-release mechanism for the PbtA engine and gives players an optional break from having their lives relentlessly complicated.
Character creation has some nice crunch to it, without getting difficult to manage. Characters are built from three playbooks each: their everyday identity, their Magical Archetype, and their Mystic Connection. Your identity determines your primary stat, your archetype gives you a set of class-specific Moves, and your connection adds tags and modifiers onto your kit. It's really cool, and makes character creation feel very engaging.
Combat and conflict also have solid crunch to them---somehow without compromising the simplicity of the PbtA engine. HP isn't just 1--4 boxes. Tags have mechanical bite. Also, in addition to a full kit of powers, players also have access to a meta currency called Power Pool that can be spent to boost rolls or fuel super attacks. The super attacks do trivialize climactic battles a bit (a 12+ insta-wins, and if you have enough pool you can just boost into that range), so you may want to give significant enemies multiple phases (or make sure their battle is at the start of a session, before anyone has gained any pool) if you want them to do something more than eat an ultra on their first turn in combat. Still, the super attacks aren't *too* easy to charge up, so the GM shouldn't worry about them coming out every battle.
Speaking of GMs, the GMing section is great, and includes a lot of troubleshooting advice for different common scenarios. It also adds a full bestiary and a very short sample adventure, plus some alternate rules for modding the game to run in different genres.
Overall, Glitter Hearts is a fun, really polished game that tells magical girl stories without committing the group to a particular tone or subgenre. It has a lot of fun design, and I'd recommend picking it up if you like any of its influences.
Minor Issues:
-Page 36, Connections, does not specify that you only start with one Move from your Connection. The other sections (archetype and identity) are clear, but Connection isn't.
Thank you!
I don't know if you ever answered
this, but will there ever be another way to get
a physical copy of the book? Through Drive thru or like a Con..etc.
Yes, I'm working on getting a series of physical books run and will update my website with info as soon as they are available.
My group is so looking forward to trying this one. The only problem is everyone wants to play instead of GM because the character possibilities are so enticing. Good problem to have.
That's a great problem to have. Hopefully someone takes the GM spot and you call can enjoy!
Do you get a weapon to start in Glitter Hearts if you don't pick one as a power? Or can you do no damage on a Clash roll if your Physical is a 0?
You have to pick a weapon to have a weapon. If a person has a physical of 0, they do no damage unless they roll well on the clash roll. The GM can decide that they always do 1 damage if they wish, but I often say that there are so many other things to do, that it's ok for them not to do any damage unless they roll well.
I’ve been looking over the PDF and I have a question; I saw that stats are capped at +3, but does that cap apply to bonuses too? I can’t find anything about that and I worry that piling pluses will kind of break the system.
If you are talking about piling on plus ones from the We can do it move, a person helps and then the person they are helping should take the action they are being assisted with.
There are rare occasions where things can be constructed in a way to allow many +1s to happen at once, and I've seen it happen once for one roll.
In things like combat, I will usually allow 1 person to help, but I've talked to other GMs are fine with letting multiple people help. The thing to keep in mind is the narrative and that the world won't wait. So as each person tries to help, the world should be acting alongside those actions.
Hey. I'm running this game this Saturday and I'm planning on writing a review for it on my site. It's going to be the first RPG system I review there (the site is still very new). Initially the reviews are only available in Portuguese, but we're working on having them in English as well.
Would you (Greg L) be interested in reading it?
Also...do you have any interest in translating this book to other languages?
I would be interested in reading it and I'm interested in other languages.
Sorry for not getting back to you. These past couple of weeks were absolutely insane. Is there any way I can get in touch with you to talk about translations and to share the review?
(btw...people absolutely loved your game and we're planning a campaign now)
I'm actually working with a company in Brazil for translation right now. But you can reach me at gleather@gmail.com
This game is so good and fun to RP with that, after picking it up in the BLM bundle, I bought it three more times so I could convince friends to play with me. Not sure there is a stronger form of recommendation I could give it than that lol
Thank you so much! I hope you all have the best time.
I've wanted this game since I first saw it on kickstarter back when it was first launched! Forgot about it until I bought the BLM bundle - was SO ecstatic to find this gem in it!! Seeing all the inclusive art is a real joy! <3
I've never played any ttrpg's before, but I'm having a great time just creating characters atm. (Cannot seem to figure out how to get just the character sheets to fill/save; I'm probably missing something, but if not, it may be a good idea to add them as a separate, fillable pdf file? IDK.)
Either way, even on my own I adore this game!! You did a great job and I'm super excited for this to be my entry game into ttrpg's!! Just gotta find some people to play with, lol!
I'm so glad that you found my game! There are many support files including character sheets at https://www.leatherman.games/games/glitter-hearts
Thank you so much for the link! I feel dumb for not noticing your site. >3< The printable Move lists are awesome! Much easier to look up than going through the whole thing. tysm again!!
I just saw an image of a physically restricted muslim woman in the pdf and man i just want to thank you so so much. Im not physically restricted or a woman but i love that your representing them. I never ever imagined that there would be art of a restricted muslim woman in a table top game. So on behalf of me and my friends thank you so much.
You are very welcome.
Hey, anyone here interested in setting up an online game? LGBTQA friendly a must, reply to this comment if interested
yeah sure im down but i haven't played this game tho (however I do have experience with D&D and i love tabletop games)
I'm dying to play this game. Count me in. I play RPG on Roll20 every week, so I strongly recommend it
Out of the gate I just want to congratulate the creator on the incredibly diverse art of the book, picturing different genders and ethnicities. Thank you for this.
You're welcome. It was important to me that as many people as possible could see themselves in my book.
My good sir, you are awesome.
I'm also creating my own system and I hope I get it just as right as you did,
Gorgeously illustrated tabletop roleplaying game for creating stories in the 'magical girls' genre... Or rather, magical heroes, since it's got fantastic gender diversity throughout. It's Powered by the Apocalypse so the 2d6 mechanics look pretty solid and straightforward. There are also variant rules for 'vehicular heroes': think Voltron or Power Rangers. 5/5 stars – outstanding.
Thank you!
To be honest this is more of a general question about the tabletop games in the bundle, can you play these online? Are there communities where people play these tabletop games together over the internet? I don't really have anyone to play them with but a lot of them in the bundle sound really interesting.
There are a few online communities that make role playing games easy.
https://roll20.net/ is one example. Also, I'm working with a company that is making Role, for online game systems. They are kickstarting now.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/role/role-a-new-kind-of-platform-for-the-rp...
Wait I found this game in the bundle and I loveee it. However, can you mix elements and mechanics of this game to make a dnd homebrew campaign. Or can you make this game a long term campaign??
You can certainly set the game in a D&D type world and I think most of it will work just fine. Several people have been making long term campaigns and I think you can run the game for a full campaign.
Cant believe i bought the bundle not knowing this was in it, because this alone would have justified the bundle. a magical girls ttrp with easy mechanics and gorgeous art! I especially appreciated the section that talked about power scales for the gm in reference to the creatures the PCs will have to defeat. even a monster thats very weak to the heroes can do a lot of damage to the general population which is important to keep in mind for a game like this.
Thank you for the kind words! I'm glad that you found my game in the mix. I hope that you have so much fun playing the game.
I'm so happy to have found your game in the bundle, I just rediscovered my love for the magical guardian genre and actually started to adapt some stuff from the PbtA system myself to use before I found Glitter Hearts!
I'm loving the art direction and the clear attention to providing a diversified look and feel to a genre that's dear to my heart!
I'm excited to start playing!
Awesome! I hope you really enjoy the game and have fun with it.
I’m unbelievably happy and thankful that I found your game in the bundle. I’m also a contributor, and I wanted to let you know that this means a lot to me. Especially in terms of art direction and inclusion. The non-binary bear witch is someone like me haha! But the other characters are fantastic as well. Hey, if you wanna come over to Turnaya and the Immergrummel woods, we’re having a cake with you!
Georg the Hamsterpunk
I'm so happy that you found my game! I'm still trying to go through the bundle cuz it keeps getting bigger and bigger! I'd love to come get some cake.
Thanks for reaching out!
I got this bundle yesterday, and I was delighted to find this gem in there! I'm already a fan of the Powered By The Apocalypse system, and I love your spin on it! I think you'll love to hear that this game will be my first time GM'ing, and the first tabletop for a couple young nieces of mine!
That's so awesome! I hope you all love it.
I got this in the bundle because it looked so damn good and omg, it looks super good! Tragically im terrible at reading rule books, but the art and what I saw it's fucking fantastic! I wanted a magical girl rp game for so long!! ;_; I would love to watch a campain on youtube or listen to a podcast about this. The edition its also super cool
Thanks! You can go to Leatherman.games and I've listed the youtube series that I did with Nerd Immersion. Also, we did a mini-season for my podcast Very Random Encounters - vre.show
Yes! I found a vid on youtube! Thanks a lot! I'll check it out ^_^
I'm having trouble with the bookmarks in the pdf. The table of contents links work, but the bookmarks themselves are just technical jargon.
I will have to look into the file and see if something went wrong. Thank you for reaching out.