【Heart】【核心】简介 / Introduction

[Rincewind]

简介 / INTRODUCTION

这款游戏的舞台设定在被称为心脏的地方——一个疯狂而变幻不定的、深渊与废墟的集群。一群又一群绝望的人们走进这里，以寻找某种重要之物：秘密，真相，赦罪，或是庇护。他们为了保护与陪伴团结在一起，在危险的无法地带之间穿行，寻求“庇护所(haven)”——能让他们在心脏中暂歇片刻的、足以栖身的场所，无论这些地方有多难以维持。
你就是这些被称作钻探者（Delver）的群体中的一员。你会深入心脏这一噩梦般的扭曲世界。它会在你周围构建自身，而你又会在它改变你的同时、在它的血肉中刻下痕迹。即使你活着离开了，也不再会是原本的样子。
如果你熟悉我们同一世界观下的前一个游戏《高塔（Spire）》的话，你会发现这本《心脏》与与它有许多共通之处。《心脏》使用的是驱动《高塔》的“抗力系统（resistance system）”的修改版，故事舞台也正是同名都市“高塔”的正下方。在设定与灵感上，这两本书也能够彼此影响。然而，《心脏》仍旧是一个完全独立的游戏，即使你对《高塔》一无所知，也同样能游玩它。

劇透 -   :

This is a game set in the mad, shifting chasms and ruins known as the Heart. Groups of desper‐ ate people journey into it looking for something important: secrets, truth, absolution or sanctu‐ ary. They band together for protection and com‐ panionship as they move through dangerous, lawless lands in search of ‘havens’ – places of shelter, however impermanent, that offer respite from the Heart.
You are those people: delvers. You will trek deep into the twisting nightmare world of the Heart. It will form itself around you, and you will scar patterns into its flesh as it changes you. If you come back, you will not be the same.
If you’re familiar with Spire, our previous game in the same universe, you’ll notice that Heart shares a lot with it. It uses a modified version of the resistance system that powers Spire and takes place directly beneath the eponymous city. Each book can inform the other when it comes to set‐ ting and inspiration, but Heart is a completely standalone game. You don’t need to know any‐ thing about Spire to play it.

基调 / TONE
《心脏》的主题是惊奇、恐怖、悲剧、以及面对非人之物时的人性。每一个玩家角色从根本上来讲都注定在劫难逃——大多数高阶能力都会在触发时杀死使用者。这个游戏的主线不是长期探索与成长，而是一群身怀缺陷而又痴迷不止的人做出糟糕的选择、探索可怕的地下都市，只因他们相信，他们所寻找的答案可能藏在其中。

劇透 -   :

Heart is a game of wonder, horror, tragedy and humanity in the face of inhumanity. Each player character is fundamentally doomed, as most of the high-level abilities kill the user when triggered. This isn’t a game about long-term exploration and growth. It’s about flawed, obsessive people making bad decisions and investigating a horrific undercity because they’re convinced that the answers they need might lie inside it.

保险措施
为了保证每个人都能享受游戏，准备些保险措施（safety tools）总是好的，恐怖游戏尤其如此。我们考虑过把这些建议放在后文里的GM部分，但还是放在了这个所有人都能读到的地方，因为它们实在是太重要了。
首先，在游戏开始之前，GM应当请求玩家们指出各自的“底线与余地（Lines and Veils）”。“底线”是玩家绝对不想在游戏里看到的主题或行为；“余地”则是只要描述比较模糊、就可以在游戏里出现的主题和行为。所有人都列出了自己的底线与余地之后，就轮到其他玩家来尊重这些，别让它们出现在游戏里了。
然而，也不是所有人都愿意把令他们不适的东西列成清单揭露出来——尤其是在与陌生人一起游玩时。在这种情况下，我们建议GM在桌子中间放一张画着大“X”的卡片，也就是由John Starvropoulos提出的“X卡（the X card）”。如果有人（包括GM在内）因桌上正在发生的事情而感到不适，他们就可以触碰X卡，而小组就应该停下来，把这一令人不适的元素换成别的什么东西。触碰了X卡的玩家没有任何必要解释这一主题让他们感到不适的原因。
除此之外，网上还有许多其他种类的保险措施，建议也都研究一下、决定哪一个最适合你和你的小组。

劇透 -   :

It’s always a good idea to have some safety tools in place to make sure that everyone is having a great time, especially with horror games. We considered putting these suggestions in the GM section, but because they’re so important, we instead put them here where everyone can see them.
Firstly, before play starts, the GM should ask the players to share their Lines and Veils. A Line is a topic or action that the player doesn’t want to be included in the game at all. A Veil is a topic or action that the player is okay with including in the game as long as its description is vague. Once people have outlined their lines and veils, it’s up to the other players to respect them and not include them in the game.
However, not everyone wants to reveal a list of things that make them uncomfortable – especially if they’re playing a game with strangers. In these cases, we also recommend that the GM places a card with an “X” written on it in the centre of the table: the X Card (by John Stavropoulos). If anyone (GM included) is uncomfortable with something that occurs in the game, they should touch the X Card and the group should stop pursuing the upsetting element and replace it with something else. The person who touched the X Card is under no obligation to explain why the topic upsets them if they don’t want to.
There is a wide variety of other safety tools available online, so we recommend that you research them to work out which is the best for you and your group.

惯例用语 / CONVENTIONS IN THE TEXT
D12：十二面骰。
D10：十面骰。
D8：八面骰。
D6：六面骰。
D4：四面骰。
Dx：可变的骰子种类（*译注：也就是上面五种。Heart与Spire不同，有D4而无D3，还多了一个D12）。

场景：角色扮演里的一幕，可长可短（这不是个很精确的用语）。划分场景可以依靠空间（例如，在废墟里藏身等待、以暗中监视一支异教团体）、时间（例如，花上数个小时采集蘑菇）、或是目标（例如，追踪一头心脉野兽（heartblood beast））。

（*关于人称和骰子单复数形态的问题此处略过，因为中文不涉及这些问题。中文同样没有专门的“gender-neutral pronoun”，所以文中指代单数的“them”在这里会被全部翻译为“他”。）


进行游戏 / PLAYING THE GAME
（*译注：除了个别标点和用词变化之外，这一段的原文和译文都与Spire毫无区别。）
游玩《心脏》时，大部分时间，游戏都是以玩家们与游戏主持人对话的方式进行的。游戏主持人描述这个世界、玩家们描述他们的角色的行动、GM对此作出反应，诸如此类。你通常根本就不会用到规则或者游戏机制。
然而，当玩家们做出了冒险的、危险的或是重大的行动——或者，GM觉得让他们在这里挣扎一下会比较有趣——的时候，就掷骰子来决定这个行动的成败。除非确实处在紧要关头，否则GM不应该让玩家掷骰。
当你的玩家进行某个行动，而GM要求你掷骰的时候，掷至少一个十面骰（之后都将其称作D10）。投出的点数越高，你的角色就完成的越好，他因尝试这个行动而获得的压力值也越少。
压力是个坏东西，因为它代表着你的角色身上的种种轻微负面效果。你获得的压力越多，它们积累为严重问题的几率也就越高。好在，总有各种各样移除压力的方法，然而，更经常出现的情况是，你将不得不在你自己的安全与探索的成功间做出抉择。


重要概念 / IMPORTANT CONCEPTS

抗力(RESISTANCE)：衡量你能失去多少事物的指标。数值越高，你的角色承受恶果的可能性就越高。
（*这里的数值越高疑为“你记在某个抗力下的压力数值越高”。规则还是那一套，意思到位就行了。）

技能(SKILL)：在某一专门领域中习得的能力。技能能为相关掷骰增加一枚D10。

领域(DOMAIN)：关于某种环境以及居于其中之物的经验、或是某一宽泛主题下的知识。领域能为相关掷骰增加一枚D10。

诀窍(KNACK)：某个的技能或领域下一个高度集中的部分。诀窍能为相关掷骰增加一枚D10。

呼唤(CALLING)：你来到在下之城（the City Beneath）、并留在这里的理由。

共振(BEAT)：与呼唤有所联系的目标、场景或是结果。达成共振时，你的能力将会增强。

压力(STRESS)：代表角色所做出的行动的代价的抽象不幸。能进一步发展成恶果。

恶果(FALLOUT)：获得太多压力的具体代价；为角色带来的机制上的妨害或是故事上的影响。

钻探(DELVE)：两个地标之间的的危险旅程。

地标(LANDMARK)：不断变幻的在下之城中相对稳定的区域；用以导航的地点。

级别(TIER)：地点具有从0级到4级的级别。级别的数字越高，它离心脏的中心就越近。

劇透 -   :

RESISTANCE: a measure of what you have to lose. The higher the number, the more likely it is that your character suffers fallout.

SKILL: learned competence in a particular area of expertise. Skills add a D10 to relevant rolls.

DOMAIN: experience of an environment and its inhabitants or a broad topic of knowledge. Domains add a D10 to relevant rolls.

KNACK: a high degree of focus on a specific skill or domain. Knacks add a D10 to relevant rolls.

CALLING: why you came to the City Beneath and what keeps you here.

BEAT: goals, scenes or outcomes associated with a Calling. When you achieve one, you grow in power.

STRESS: abstract misfortune that represents the toll actions take on a character .Turns into fallout.

FALLOUT: the concrete cost of accruing too much stress; mechanical detriments or story effects leveled against a character.

DELVE: a perilous journey between two landmarks.

LANDMARK: an area of relative stability in the shifting City Beneath; something to navigate by.

TIER: tiers rank from 0 to 4. The higher the number, the closer the location is to the centre of the Heart.

来自两位作者的话 / A WORD FROM CHRIS AND GRANT
（*两位作者的全名分别是Christopher Taylor与Grant Howitt。）
你好，主持人，这些是话是直接写给你看的。
你会随着进程的推进创作这个游戏。你将要读到的这本书里记载的，只是一系列可供使用的建议和支持材料。每个人的游戏都能被认出是 《心脏》规则下的游戏，但他们所创造出的在下之城都是独一无二的。这是有意为之的：从一开始，我们就把这一点融入到了规则与虚构内容之中。
你将在书中找到的世界，是会在角色探索时围绕他们自我构筑的。或许你早就知道，每一种角色扮演游戏在游玩时很大程度上都是这么运转的；但我们想把这一点也变成背景设定的一部分。
并不存在什么“官方设定里的”心脏，连我们两位作者的都在以不同的方式运作它：Chris的心脏是原生态的，是布满了石英、牙齿、血液与死亡的迷宫，其中的人迹稀少而又相距遥远；而Grant的心脏则是都市化的，是构建于先前的失败者们带来的废墟之上、在绝望中挣扎求生的场所，有着高高的天花板、异样的天空、以及呼啸的风。
所以，使用你想用的材料，舍弃你不想用的材料，并且创造出你自己的材料来。把它们缝合在一起，构成充满执念、不幸、悲剧与惊奇的可怕集合体吧。如果你对某个设定元素没有把握，就编些东西出来，把它带到团里；不存在什么正确或是错误的答案。你的心脏就该与其他所有人的不同。
你正在读的不过是个开头。去把它们统统搞乱、变成你的东西吧。

劇透 -   :

Hello. This is coming straight from us to you, gamesmaster.
You’re going to make this game up as you go along. The book you’re about to read is a list of sugges‐ tions and props for you to use. Everyone’s game will be recognisably Heart, but their version of the City Beneath will be unique. This is intentional: we’ve baked it into the rules and fiction from the word go.
Inside, you’ll find a world that builds itself around the player characters as they explore. You’ll note that this is how pretty much every roleplaying game works when you sit down to play, but we wanted to make it part of the setting too.
We don’t have a canonical Heart; we both run it differently. Chris’ Heart is organic, a choking warren of quartz and teeth and blood and death, and people are few and far between. Grant’s Heart is urban, a place of desperate survival built on the ruins of those who have failed before, and comes with high ceilings, alien skies and rushing breezes.
 So: use what you want to, throw out what you don’t like and create your own stuff. Stitch it together into a horrid patchwork of obsession and misfortune and tragedy and wonder. If you’re not sure about a setting element, make something up and run with it; there aren’t any right or wrong answers. Your Heart is supposed to be different from everyone else’s.
 What you’re reading is just the start. Go mess it up and make it yours.

[Rincewind]

心脏世界 / THE WORLD OF HEART

心脏是一个危险、疯狂而难以预料的地方。它位于德斯特拉大陆之中，高以里计的城市“高塔（Spire）”之下，是世界之间的空洞区域上的裂口。

心脏的起点，理论上来讲，在高塔的底层都市、摇摇欲坠的废城区（Derelictus）临近。让街边成群结队的孩子们的歌声远离耳边，将廉租房与棚屋抛在身后，爬进这座城市被遗忘的最深处，你就抵达了心脏。

心脏的终点，理论上来讲，并不存在。越是接近它的中心，现实就变得越发不稳定。诸如“起始”以及“结束”之类的概念，在它那血红而潮湿的噩梦正中间，都会变得不复存在。

心脏的边缘区域还是有人定居的：供奉被禁止崇拜的神明的异端教徒；护卫支撑高塔的毒品农场与实验室的有组织罪犯；向被掩埋的非人智慧低语的狂热法师团体；简而言之，都是些背离了在上之城 the City Above，为了寻找答案向着心脏内部钻探的人。这里有着洞窟、建筑物、以及数百年前就已坍塌而失去作用的基础设施。

往深处看，心脏就会变得不合理起来（或者说，至少对理性的人来说是这样）。这里有着由遭受屠戮的野兽亡魂主宰的深红迷宫；无数的高楼大厦，其中成群的幽灵在底层盘旋、人类则在楼顶聚拢、竭力维持着自己的存在；拥挤而扭曲的市集，其中的布料、卵石、雨篷全都是红色，疯狂的奴隶崇拜着他们神王一体的主人、如同咏唱颂歌一般吆喝叫卖。
（*译注：分别是后文中的Tier 2地区：Swinefall；Highrise；the Red Market。）

再往深处，心脏就会变得几乎毫无拘束。这里是有天空的——但却荒凉破败、从未有过太阳或是星辰。这里有着尘埃构成的湖泊，其中村庄栖于高架之上、人们用鱼叉捕猎鲨头野兽。这里有着森林，没有月亮、却被月光照亮，树木疯狂至极、并会主动猎杀。
（*分别对应tier 3地区：Ghastling Plain和Briar。第一个似乎是泛指。）

再往下？那就是心脏本身 the Heart Itself了。这是一个繁盛的现实裂缝，一个渗透进人与精灵的世界中的、由血与骨构成的寄生宇宙。
 
心脏能够感知到你，并会借着你的印象来重塑自己。那些定居点之所以在那里出现，是因为人们相信它们应当在那儿：它们是反复重复而得以成真的期望，是侵入者在心脏的血肉中留下的刻痕。然而，若是你离开既定的路线、向着未知之处进发，心脏也同样会在你的视野外无声无形地生长。它会听从你的梦想，用翻腾的精质 quintessense为你塑造奖赏、惩罚、以及世界。
（*quintessense：古代与中世纪哲学中虚构的第五元素，也就是以太。这里沿用现代物理学挪用这个名词时的译名（之一）。）

这就是心脏，而你知道，你所寻求之物就在其中某处。

劇透 -   :

The Heart is a dangerous, unpredictable, mad place. Located beneath the mile-high city of Spire in the land of Destera, it is a rip in the holes between worlds.
The Heart begins, in theory, in the undercity of Spire near the tumbledown settlement of Derelictus. Get out of earshot of the sing-song gangs of street children, leave behind the tenements and shanties, crawl deep into the forsaken bowels of the city and you’ll reach the Heart.
The Heart ends, in theory, nowhere. The closer one gets to its centre, the less stable reality becomes. In the midst of its red wet nightmare, concepts such as “beginning” and “end” come undone.
There are settlements on the outskirts: heretic churches worshipping forbidden gods; organised criminals guarding the drug farms and laboratories that supply Spire; cults of magicians who whisper to buried inhuman intelligences; in short, people who have turned their backs on the city above and delved into the Heart in search of answers. There are caves and buildings and the echoes of infrastructure that crumbled into use‐ lessness centuries ago.
Go deeper, and the Heart makes less sense (to a rational mind, at least). Here there are crimson labyrinths ruled by the ghosts of slaughtered beasts; acres of high-rise buildings with swarms of spectres haunting the lower floors and people scraping out an existence huddled on the rooftops; twisting market-warrens of red cloth, cobblestones and awnings where maniac serfs worship their god-king masters and chant their financial transactions like sacred mantras.
Deeper still, and the Heart is almost unrestrained. There are skies here – blasted skies that have never held the sun or stars. There are lakes of dust where villages perch atop stilts and people hunt shark-headed beasts with harpoons. There are forests, moon-lit by no moon, where the trees are utterly mad and will hunt.
Beneath that? The Heart Itself, a blossoming tear in reality, a parasite universe of blood and bone seeping into the world of man and elf.
The Heart can taste and smell you, and it makes itself anew in your image. The settlements are there because people believe they should be: they are expectations repeated and made real, scars carved into the meat of the City Beneath by invaders. But go off the beaten path, tread into the unknown, and the Heart will grow invisibly, silently, just outside of your view. It listens to your dreams and fashions your reward, your punishment, your world, from roiling quintessence.
This is the Heart, and you know that somewhere down here is what you need.

心脏究竟是什么？ / WHAT IS THE HEART?
心脏究竟是什么？有许多理论试图对此做出解释；但却没有确定的答案。下文是若干来自在上之城或在下之城的学者们提出的观点。

劇透 -   :

There are a wide variety of theories as to what the Heart is; no-one’s quite sure. The following ideas are postulated by academics in the Cities Above and Below.

顺从的末日装置 / AMENABLE ESCHATON
心脏是一支来自异次元的势力，想要扩张并吸收这片星球上的所有生命、把它们变成自己的基因复制品或是衍生物。它是一只善良的灰蛊（grey goo），其动机是它认为这样对世界、对其中的居民最好。它的智能同时与小孩和蘑菇相当。
它能复制闯入者的思维与记忆，也在尽力让自己在生物面前显得……平易？或者说舒适？它能复制埃菲尔、卓尔、以及猫头鹰、城镇、还有社会结构，但却只能用它所具有的东西——血肉、岩石、时间——来进行构筑。为了找出最为理想的形态，它在不断地迭代运算。
高塔则是尚不清楚的某人为了控制它而建立的。它曾经起效过，但现在已经失效了，而心脏也在这座城市中播散开来。废城区之所以还处在稳定状态，是因为这里人数众多，心脏可以复制出他们曾经见过、以及期望见到的事物；也因此，越往深处，它的构筑就越不合理。

劇透 -   :

The Heart is an extra-dimensional force that wants to expand and absorb all life on the planet, turning it into genetic copies or offshoots of itself. It’s a benevolent grey goo and is doing this because it thinks it’s best for the world and the people in it. It is as intelligent as a child and a mushroom at the same time.
It can copy the thoughts and memories of people who come in, so it’s attempting to make itself… approachable? comfortable? – for life. It’s copying aelfir and drow and owls and towns and social structures, but building them out of what it has to hand: meat, stone and time. It is iterating, trying to define what the optimum form is.
Spire was built to contain it by… someone? It’s unclear. It used to work but now it doesn’t, and the Heart is spreading through the city. Derelictus is stable because there are lots of people there, so it can copy what they expect to see and what they’ve seen; the deeper you get, the less sense it makes.

好奇的茧中之神 / INQUISITIVE GOD-COCOON
心脏是有着足以与丹缪 Damnou与太阳诸神 the Solar Pantheon匹敌的巨大力量的幼神（godling），而高塔则是它的茧：它将会在其中长大、并最终孵化而出。破茧而出之时，它将重塑整个宇宙。踏进心脏也就是踩进了原始的宇宙DNA汤（DNA soup）；现实在此处毫无意义。它拥有着足以重塑整个宇宙的材料，在这里却仅仅任由它们散布在四处。
（*Danmou是卓尔所信仰的月神。理论上来说Spire提到的光耀女士 Our Glorious Lady，隐匿夫人 Our Hidden Mistress，以及绯红夜卫 Our Crimson Vigil都是她不同方面的化身。太阳诸神是高等精灵信仰的神系。）
它还不够完善；远远不够。当你走入心脏的时候，它在你周围固化开来，奋力地尝试去理解现实可能的形态。它在试图从你这里学到何为现实。最为关键的是，它想要把你当作迷宫里的小白鼠，将你困在这里、用作实验。

劇透 -   :

The Heart is a godling of tremendous power – easily equal to the Damnou or the Solar Pantheon – and the Spire is a cocoon into which it will swell and eventually hatch. When it hatches, it will remake the cosmos. When you enter into the Heart, you’re stepping into raw cosmic DNA soup, and reality doesn’t make sense any more. It has all the building blocks to construct an entire universe, but they’re just sloshing around down there.
It’s not perfect; far from it. When you go into the Heart, it solidifies itself around you, trying to desperately latch onto whatever reality might be. It is trying to learn from you what a reality is. Crucially, it wants to keep you down here as an experiment – a lab-rat in a maze.

未来环境改造器 / XENOCHRONSTIC TERRAFORMER
与星球上的所有其他古卡塔科斯遗迹一样，心脏也来自未来。某人建造了这些遗迹（包括高塔）来保证这个星球的宜居性，然后把它们送回到了过去以确保他们的文明能够出现。（但是：把环境改造器送到过去时、他们的文明已经出现了；然而：这也是因为他们将环境改造器送到了过去。）
高塔负责生成大气；其他遗迹则是分别负责水、基础生命形态，诸如此类。正是因为有了它们，这座星球上才能够出现生命。心脏的职责是为高塔这一仪器——不管它的用途是什么——提供燃料（心脏确实是原生的……呃，某种东西）。每个遗迹都有某种类似心脏的结构，但别处的“心脏“被保护的更好；另外，也没人试着在里面建造公共交通网络。
高等精灵建造维米西安的时候，本质上来说就是往微波炉里钻了个洞，然后启动微波炉、贴着那个洞往里看。心脏原本没有被设计成这样；它是未经控制的世界辐射，未经过滤就直接渗入了尚未做好准备接受它的现实世界。也就是说，或许，你们能把它修好？
最终，古卡塔科斯文明将会演变成型，而它们也将再次出现……或者说初次出现？

劇透 -   :

The Heart, like all other prokatakos arcologies on the planet, is from the future. Someone built them (and Spire) to make sure that the planet was habitable, and sent them back through time to ensure that their civilisation would happen. (But: it had already happened. But: that’s because they sent the terraformers.)
Spire is responsible for atmosphere generation; the other arcologies were for water, basic life‐ forms, etc. They’re the only reason that there’s life on the planet, and they’re using the Heart as a fuel source for whatever tool the Spire is. (The Heart is raw… stuff.) Every arcology has a Heart of some kind, but the others are better protected; also, noone tried to build a mass transit network in them.
When the high elves built the Vermissian, they essentially drilled a hole into a microwave oven, turned it on and then stared point-blank through the hole. The Heart isn’t meant to be like this; it’s uncontained world radiation bleeding out into a reality that isn’t ready for it without being properly filtered. Which means, presumably, you can fix it.
Eventually, the Prokatakos will evolve and they’ll exist again. Or: for a first time?

又或者说…… / OR, ALTERNATIVELY
• 心脏是一头沉睡中的巨大生物，其中的区域则是它的梦境；
• 心脏是一架引擎，为不可知的世界机器提供能源；
• 心脏是位于星球中心的世界物质团块，而这个星球正在走向死亡；
• 心脏是高塔居民们的罪恶的显现；
• 心脏不是什么荣耀之地——它是在亿万年前被掩埋的古老魔法径流 magical runoff，而容纳它的器械正在裂开；
• 心脏是由数千埃菲尔组成的秘密结社所创造出来的艺术杰作；
• 心脏是唯一的真实死后世界；
• 心脏是所有魔法的源头；所有的宗教、异教、以及秘传教派对它的理解其实都大错特错。

劇透 -   :

• The Heart is a giant slumbering creature, and the areas within are its dreams;
• The Heart is an engine, powering an unknowable world-machine;
• The Heart is the mass of worldstuff at the centre of the planet, and the planet is dying;
• The Heart is the manifestation of the sins of the people in Spire;
• The Heart is Not A Place Of Honour – it is ancient magical runoff, buried aeons ago, and the container is cracking;
• The Heart is the artistic masterpiece of a secret society of several thousand aelfir;
• The Heart is the only true land of the dead;
• The Heart is the root of all magic, and all the cults, religions and occult orders have got it very wrong indeed.