This is Lighthearted

Welcome to the magical 80s dream world of Lighthearted. You are a Prep, Jock, Geek, Rebel, or Outcast, like those kids in The Breakfast Club, except you are just about to start magic community college. Through play, we'll explore how you grow out of your high school cliques all while dealing with magical mishaps, college parties, vampires, and worse—finals!

Lighthearted is a complete tabletop roleplaying game that uses the language of film and television to reimagine the coming of age stories popular in 80s teen movies like Weird Science and Sixteen Candles, but with a modern fantasy spin. It's set in an alternate 1980s with fantasy elements weaved into the most outlandish bits of 80’s pop culture. There are fantasy religions mixed in with mall culture, dark magic cold wars, and magical glamours instead of plastic surgery.

How does it play?

Lighthearted plays out like a movie or TV show, setting scenes by describing the lighting, camera angles, and soundtrack then playing through the action and dialog. 

The game utilizes an original system, but draws inspiration from Savage Worlds and Powered by the Apocalypse games. The system focuses on the balance between the character’s motivation and their emotional struggle at any given moment, helping to create both external and internal conflict within the game.

Coming of Age Stories

​To help players tell their coming of age story, and help their characters overcome society's expectations for who they'll become, Lighthearted uses a system called Malfunctions.  

Malfunctions are sets of positive and negative choices. The negative choices represent the flaws society expects them to have and the positive choices offer a chance for the character to grow and change into something new. 

The Dice

​The game uses a roll and keep die mechanic. You roll a Trait die and an Emotion die and keep whichever is higher. Traits are determined at character creation and represent the character's physical, mental, and social attributes. Emotions change over the course of a scene to represent how the character's actions affect their emotional state. This brings the character's emotions to the forefront of the player's minds and affects how they approach their goals. 

Familiar with Savage Worlds? Trait dice function similar to skills, and the Emotion dice function like a variable wild die. You'll also find an exploding die mechanic to add a little excitement to every roll.

The Results

​Resolving rolls involves establishing what the character wants and what is at stake if they fail. Based on their roll they might get what they want, get what they want but lose what was at stake, or not get what they want and also lose what was at stake.

Familiar with PbtA games? This works like the banded success you are already used to where you can succeed, succeed at a cost, or suffer consequences.

The Music

​Music is an important part of setting scenes in Lighthearted. To help with that we've put together a Spotify playlist of some of our favorite 80s songs to accompany your games. Listen to the playlist here!

Try the Quickstart

A screenshot of the Lighthearted Quickstart

The Lighthearted Quickstart is a guided tour that teaches a slimmed-down version of the rules through a Spirit Week adventure. Get access as soon as you back!