Hiria: the Eternal City by Peter Eijk is a role playing game published by Monster Mind.
The supplement is available as a 28-page PDF from DriveThruRPG for $10 but was purchased at a reduced price as part of a special bundle. Two pages are the front and rear covers, four are blank, one the front matter and one the Table of Contents. There is an alternate, spreads, version of the PDF and a one-page Tracker PDF.
Hiria the Eternal City explains that Hiria is a city that exists on all worlds and that you have tracked a quarry to it but they escaped to another manifestation. This is a journalling game in which you try and track someone through different versions of the same city. It requires something to journal with, one or two d4s, a d8 and a d20. The Tracker sheet requires four game pawns.
Most people know only their own version of the city, and may accidentally shift to another version, but a few can travel through the versions at will.
The Game in a Nutshell explains that the quarry, the background of the player and the initial version of the city need creating. Fron the second Turn onwards, the Step die and optionally the Chaos die are rolled to determine the changes to the city and the Tracks are updated based on this. Events, background prompts and traces are rolled, a journal entry is made and the Track is checked; if either Track is full the End Game is reached. The End Game determines what happens.
Game Setup starts with eight types of Quarry, explains how to use the Tracker sheet and has eight predefined quarries. Following this is a d20 table of background prompt questions, two of which are answered to define the character, followed by d20 tables to determine the city’s colour, flavour and weird.
Taking Turns explains how the Step and Chaos dice are rolled and what these do, followed by d20 tables of events and traces, and then how to write a journal entry.
End Game has what happens when one Track is filled and different prompts depending on which was filed.
Hiria: the Eternal City in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and has enough sections that these would have been useful. The Table of Contents covers the various sections and some errors were noticed in it. Navigation could be better. The text maintains a single column format and apart from the Table of Contents issues appeared to be free of errors. There are a variety of colour illustrations, up to full page in size. Presentation is okay.
This is really expensive at full price, even for a journalling game. As a journalling game, it won’t be to everyone’s taste. Though it has some more complexity than the easiest types of journalling games, thanks to more prompts, it is not that complex a game and is easy enough to learn. Hiria: the Eternal City can be found by clicking here.
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