Hi~! It’s me, Cat, your Choirmaster! I’m here to talk to you about my game Blazing Hymn, since we won’t be taking a lot of time during the podcast to explain the game and its mechanics. Hopefully this will help you get your bearings as we play, and maybe even inspire you to pick the game up yourself!

- Angels

o Blazing Hymn takes place in a world besieged by the armies of Heaven – faceless crystalline Angels that shine in iridescent light. They have come not to save humanity, but to wipe it out entirely. Of course, we can’t let that happen.

- Hymnals

o To save humanity, heretical arcanists have created the Hymnal units, small mechanized battlesuits powered by Gain, the emotional force of music. While wearing a Hymnal, a human being has three stats:

§ Volume, which dictates how good they are at brute-force actions like tearing an enemy apart or punching through a concrete wall

§ Tempo, which dictates how good they are at fast, graceful actions like grabbing a civilian out of the air or racing along the surface of the water

§ And Harmony, which dictates how good they are at measured, deliberate actions like calculating a missile’s trajectory or convincing terrified onlookers to flee to safety.

o A Hymnal type is based around a weapon – for example, the sturdy Katar Type is built for powerful hand to hand blows and the elegant Archer Type is built for careful ranged attacks.

o Songs

§ A Hymnal unit is powered by the singing of its wearer and the emotions they pour into their songs. The song a character chooses at the beginning of a combat will give them special powers – for example, a Love Song will let them put up barriers around someone important, and a Violent Song will let them deal additional damage.

§ Once a player has chosen a song, they are locked in unless they take a hit big enough to stop them from singing, or they have a power that lets them change it.

§ When the game starts, every character knows three songs.

o Powers

§ A Hymnal unit can use the Gain it builds up by singing these songs to use Powers. These are big, dramatic actions. The Tsurugi type can use a Power called Blade Wall to stop an attack against another character, and the Xyston type can use a power called Daring Descent to drop down from the sky on an enemy.

§ The players can rename their powers, by the way, so don’t expect them to just use my names!

- The Player Turn

o Combat is divided into two turns, the Player Turn and the GM Turn.

o During the Player Turn, every player does three things. They add Gain to their total depending on the song they sing, they take an action (that is to say, they do something that requires a roll, like a normal attack or an evacuation attempt), and they can move once to anywhere on the battlefield.

o In order to make a roll, players decide what approach they are using, and pick up that many six-sided dice. They roll them and let the GM know what the highest value is. 5 or 6 is a complete success, 3 or 4 is success with consequences, and 1 or 2 is a failure with consequences. Usually, a consequence means a nearby enemy gets an attack, but I can do just about whatever I want with these rolls!

o Players don’t have to wait for their turn to use powers, and they can use them whenever they have the Gain to do so! So, you’re going to be hearing Roar to Heaven players acting on each other’s turns or even on my turn.

- The GM Turn

o On my turn, I take actions for all the enemies on the battlefield. I also roll for “drops” – because the Lumen system is based on video games, enemies have a chance to drop Health in the form of Angel Scraps, usable pieces of Angels that heretical technology can use to fuel a Hymnal’s self-repair sequence.

o Next, I Change the Battle in some way. This might be introducing a new wave of enemies, or it might be introducing some other major threat that makes the players change their approach. This is my time to get