The tabletop RPG genre is home to any number of strange twists on tabletop roleplaying, from Achtung Cthulhu! to Dungeons & Dragons parody FishBlade. There is truly something for everyone, even if that includes a Harry Potter-free wizarding world or an officially licensed Avatar: The Last Airbender game. To these ends, TTRPG creators have devised remarkable tools to build characters within the confines of any given world.
However, the importance of regulation is also somewhat of a handicap for TTRPGs. A player must abide by the rules in order to truly play the game as it is meant to be played. In this way, every character is generally required to be made for the world of the game. Genre-bending must be intentional, and this is the objective of Linksmith Games' Interstitial: Our Hearts Intertwined. Inspired by Kingdom Hearts, the system blends original and favorite characters from across different IPs to create a game involving multiversal traversal that bends the rules of what a TTRPG should be.
Interstitial Taps Into Kingdom Hearts' Core Concepts
Interstitial is based on the Apocalypse World system, which is more rules-lite than Dungeons & Dragons or other "crunchier" systems. One of the defining aspects of Powered by the Apocalypse (PBTA) games is that they tend to focus more on the story than the mechanics, with interaction between players being the principal goal of the game. This is evident in Interstitial's mechanics, which modify PBTA to include a relationship map for the characters.
As Kingdom Hearts revolves around characters' relationships and how their love, respect and friendship influence the world around them, Interstitial brings to bear the relationships between player characters, NPCs and their environment. Given Interstitial's objective of relationship building, it only makes sense that it feels very reminiscent of Kingdom Hearts' relationship-focused storytelling.
Interstitial Uses PBTA & Kingdom Hearts to Make Something Unique
Interstitial uses the PBTA system to structure its play. This introduces a rules-lite and easy-to-approach playstyle, but also means that the player characters use playbooks based upon narrative tropes. In this, the impetus lies with players to create or source characters from the IP of their choice to fit the character trope they choose. Pokémon trainers can arrive in the form of The Familiar, and Arthur Fleck can travel alongside with The Discarded playbook. As Kingdom Hearts melds worlds and sees Disney and Final Fantasy characters meeting and growing together in strange ways, so too does Interstitial allow that growth between characters from across different genres.
As the world of TTRPGs grows, so too do the unique twists on the traditional formulae. As is expertly demonstrated by Interstitial, taking a unique premise and applying it to a tried-and-true system allows for players to create a narrative that not only spans the whole of a world, but also entire multiverses. Interstitial is an excellent way to explore the worlds of different IPs in a way that is both unique and, most importantly of all, fun.