Dark Hearts: A Solo Wargame of Dark Elf Conquest & Romance

💜 Welcome to the Dark World Below!

Welcome to the Underrealm. You are the dark elven anti-hero Zelith, the eighth daughter of House Vhaelyr. In a society where only the most ruthless survive, you have just been handed a deadly mission by your cruel and magnificent mother. Your task is to conquer the Ten Realms deep in the lightless world below.

The Matron has provided you with a small warband and a collection of rather questionable advisors. The rest is up to you. You must recruit armies, seize territories, defeat enemies, and find a way to conquer ten underground realms. Succeed, and you secure your survival - and perhaps even find love along the way. Fail, and your head will decorate the obsidian spikes of your mother's gate.

From the creators of The Darkest Bond and Gods of Pleasure, we return to bring you a mature, dark fantasy experience like no other.

💜 What is Dark Hearts?

Dark Hearts is a unique mix of solo wargaming, choose-your-own-path gamebook, and dark romance. It is a printable/physical solo campaign game in a book, played across persistent campaign sheets. It combines resource management, strategic map-based conquest, and dark romantasy narrative. 

It is designed for one player. All you need is this book, two six-sided dice, and a pencil to mark your campaign sheets (or you can annotate it on your screen if playing in PDF).

Game Features:

• Solo Campaign: Play through 10 underground realms, each with its own Map and Force sheets.
• Simple D6 Combat: Manage your units' Strength (your timer and resource) as you exploit enemy weaknesses using Melee, Magic, and Stealth, choose which regions to conquer, and discover new allies.
• Mature Dark Romantasy Story: The life of dark elves is full of violence, scheming, and sex, and Zelith is no less toxic and arrogant. But her love is intense, and after the blood dries, it is time to decide who is worthy of your dark heart.
• ~150-200 pages of content, depending on the unlocked milestones. A story-heavy gamebook, presenting the dark elven society in all its glory.

Click below to download the intro PDF and see it now:

🎲 GAME MECHANICS

Dark Hearts requires no complex miniatures or massive boards. The entire game is managed using three Campaign Sheets per realm and a straightforward combat system. You do not need to memorize an enormous rulebook or assemble a miniature army to play Dark Hearts. The focus is on your choices and on the story you won't forget.

The core loop for each region is divided into three distinct phases:

1️⃣ PHASE 1: PREPARATION

The game is played across 10 sequential Realms (starting with The Black Reach). In the Preparation Phase, you will read story paragraphs, scout the realm, and make background choices.

2️⃣ PHASE 2: CONQUEST

Field your units to assault border regions and capture territory.

• Tactical Combat: Spend your units' Strength (your primary resource and timer). Match your unit's Ability Icons to the terrain, and choose your tactic: Melee, Magic, or Stealth.
• Roll for Victory: Roll 1D6 and add your unit's Combat Factor. If you beat the region's Defense Factor (accounting for hazards like river crossings), the region is yours! But beware: if your units run out of Strength before you meet the Realm's Win Requirement, you are defeated.

3️⃣ PHASE 3: ROMANCE

After the dust settles and the blood dries, it is time to decide who is worthy of your dark heart.

• Fill in a heart on their Romance Track on the Zelith Sheet.
• Read their story paragraphs. Deepening your relationships not only unlocks narrative encounters, but also provides boons for future battles!

💜 Romance in Dark Hearts

The dark kin are ruthless, arrogant, and merciless. But they are also sensual, refined, and seductive. Their love is intense, their jealousy as vicious as cutting blades, and their breakups often end in bloodshed. Loving a dark elf is a dangerous game, but what is life worth without fun?

Your advisors are your greatest headache and your potential lovers. The game will feature three love interests, and pursuing them will give you different benefits and endings.

🎁 KICKSTARTER BONUS: D&D 5E SUPPLEMENT!

As a special Kickstarter bonus, all backers will receive a digital Dungeons & Dragons 5e supplement featuring the three romanceable advisors from Dark Hearts, complete with D&D 5e stat blocks.

Bring these fascinating and dangerous dark elves into your own D&D campaigns as memorable NPCs, formidable allies, or deadly adversaries!

Whether your adventurers encounter them in the depths of the Underrealms, recruit them as allies, or find themselves on the wrong side of their ambitions, these three NPCs will bring a little of the Dark Hearts universe into your D&D adventures.

This digital booklet includes everything a Game Master needs: combat tactics, personality traits, and plot hooks and more, to drop these dark, complex characters directly into your RPG campaign.

The supplement will be delivered as a bonus PDF for Kickstarter backers!

📈 Stretch Goals

As the campaign progresses, more stretch goals will be unlocked. All unlocked add-ons will be included in the pledge. 

Stretch Goal 1: A Guide to the Dark World Below

The dark elves finally done right!

This ~12-page additional chapter will take you deeper into the civilization of the dark elves, exploring their daily lives, matriarchal society, history, religion, and customs.

Discover how their noble houses maintain power through intrigue, seduction, and murder. Learn about their devotion to the Spider Mistress, their decadent pleasures, and their ruthless politics.

From the magnificent palaces of their nobility to the temples and crowded streets of their underground cities, this guide presents the dark elves in all their sinister glory.

📖 About the Tome of Endless Romance bundle

Romance can make a game exciting and powerful. Love is an adventure, too. It can bring warmth and depth. It can add so much, providing characters that feel alive or maybe a dark intrigue with a dangerous but tempting foe. 

What if you could add a sweet plotline or maybe a risky affair with a charming enemy? How about a love triangle, a dark and forbidden romance, or perhaps a cold and calculated relationship? Passion, desire, jealousy, and intimacy are the layers of a romantic relationship, and they can be such a powerful part of any story.

You can find all of this in Tome of Endless Romance (now a series!), the RPG supplements focused on romantic quests and NPCs.

If you didn't pick up the previous volumes from Tome of Endless Romance, you can get a total of six books in a bundle! Here's what's inside:

Tome of Endless Romance 1: (Female characters)

• 50+ Female NPCs: adventurous girlfriends, caring companions who worry about you, and dangerous but tempting villains.
• Oracles and NPC Generation Tables: For romantic encounters with female NPCs.
• Artifacts of Love: Magical items with a romantic and sexy twist.
• Ange: A minor, but rather passionate goddess of love.

Released in 2023, Tome of Endless Romance provides a full roster of 50 Non-Player Characters, along with their soft spots, moods, personalities, romantic backgrounds, and quests, each focusing on love – and much more. The volume I is centered on female NPCs.

Here's a short overview of Tome of Endless Romance by Cheeky Chapters.

Tome of Endless Romance 2: (Male characters)

• 20+ Male NPCs: Tender and kind boyfriends, loyal but troubled husbands, and ruthless but sexy enemies.
• Oracles and NPC Generation Tables: New oracles and generation tables, focused on male PCs, to use with regular and solo RPGs.
• More world-building elements: More romantic story hooks, including the Amber Glow, a reputable establishment that promises pleasure and intrigue.

Tome of Endless Romance 3: Metal & Lace (Cyberpunk Romance setting)

• 20+ Cyberpunk Romantic NPCs: More than twenty love interests: some of them are damaged, others dangerous, glamorous, lonely, obsessive, sincere, and all impossible to forget.
• Cyberpunk Clubs: This chapter is about places and provides the sensation of the nightlife. See where the city's inhabitants go to drink, relax, hook up, make bad decisions, and if they're lucky, fall in love.
• Pleasure Tech: Cybernetic body implants designed not for murder, but for sex, intimacy, and amplified sensations. But every upgrade comes with inevitable consequences. If you modify your body, there is always a price to pay.
• Cyberpunk Romantic Random Tables: Use these tables to generate tension, a place for a date, romantic traits for new characters, and keepsakes to generate romance plots.

Random RPG Tables: Romance & Relationships and The Red Book

Random RPG Tables: Romance & Relationships is a curated, expanded collection of quick-roll generators to design such a plausible (or at least colorful!) NPC who will fit in any romance plot.

The tables you can find in this book are centered on love and romance, so you can quickly build up your own drama by rolling just a couple of d100s. And at ~140 pages, there are a lot of tools here!

Random RPG Tables: The Red Book is the adult-content companion to the Romance & Relationships tables book. It is intended for mature players & GMs. 

It is packed with tables that will help you set tone, create hot scenes, and handle intimacy. 

Gods of Pleasure

12 deities of lust, passion, intimacy, and excess, written for 5e. This 150-page supplement contains new spells, wonders, factions, classes, relics, quests, and solo-play tables, giving GMs and players the tools to include godly temptations and dangerous desires into your games. It is provocative, lush, and classy.

• 12 Carnal Deities: Complete with lore, dogmas, and plot hooks.
• New Player Options: Wield divine powers with new spells and wondrous items.
• New Class: A sacred path of pleasure, power, and seduction.
• Ready-to-Play Story Hooks: Quests driven by divine desire and temptation.
• Solo Play Support: Random tables made to power solo campaigns related to gods of romance & desire

The Darkest Bond: Adventure for Couples

• A duet adventure for two: Built for one GM and one player. Game Mistress also plays the Sorceress, and her partner takes the role of her reunited ex-lover who tries to save her.
• An dark fantasy romance story: A sensual quest centered on a demonic mark, dangerous power, and growing closeness.
• A couples-first experience: The thirst of the demon must be quenched. Intimacy rituals take the game from the table to the bedroom.
• ~150 pages adventure: Sensual, classy, and tasteful, with mature themes and rules for D&D 5e and narrative play.

Romance RPG supplements previews

Want to take a look inside? Download PDF previews for each book by clicking the links below:

• Tome of Endless Romance 1 preview
• Tome of Endless Romance 2 preview
• Tome of Endless Romance 3 preview
• Random RPG Tables preview
• Gods of Pleasure preview
• The Darkest Bond preview

📃 Rewards

We've kept the reward tiers focused and straightforward. You can choose between print and digital versions of Dark Hearts, optionally bundled with Tome of Endless Romance 1-3, 2 Romance Tables books, Gods of Pleasure, and The Darkest Bond. Here are the available rewards: 

• Digital Copy: Digital copy of Dark Hearts in PDF format.
• Print Copy: Physical copy of Dark Hearts + PDF copy. Free worldwide shipping included!
• 8 Digital Books: Dark Hearts + Gods of Pleasure + Tome of Endless Romance 1-3 + Random RPG Tables: Romance & Relationships + Random RPG Tables: The Red Book + The Darkest Bond, all in PDF format. This pledge contains all the romantic RPG supplements released by us.
• Print Copy + 8 Digital Books: Physical copy of Dark Hearts + 8 Digital Books.

📦Shipping

All physical book pledges INCLUDE free worldwide shipping. There are no additional delivery costs after the campaign conclusion, to make it as simple and straightforward (and inexpensive) for the backers.

While we cover these expenses, please note that you remain responsible for all fees related to transit, acceptance, and delivery completion. This encompasses, but is not limited to, import duties and any other costs payable to relevant authorities, as well as VAT and GST.

This project is shipping EU-friendly. The physical books will be dispatched from the EU warehouse, so buyers in the EU will not be subject to VAT.

❤️ Final Words

Thank you for supporting Dark Hearts! Have a great time conquering your enemies. Try to keep your pretty head on your shoulders, and falling in love in the lightless world below!