The complete rules architecture behind Shadows of Desire — three tracks, two thresholds, the Four Doors, the HEARTS Protocol, and Les Cinq Aveux. Published in full so you can judge the design before you buy it.
Every system on this page is reproduced from the Module Mechanics chapter of Forbidden Love. Nothing here is a summary or a teaser version: this is how the module actually runs at the table. If the design does not convince you, that is worth knowing before you spend anything.
What the book adds is the adventure — five chapters of keyed scenes, fifteen NPCs, the Velnaris gazetteer, and the endings these systems feed into. The rules themselves are below.
Three Tracks
The module runs on three numbered tracks with strong narrative impact.
Heat
City attention on the party. Heat rises through public visibility, botched discretion, and association with charged events.
| Value | Name | Effect | | --- | --- | --- | | 3 | Whisper Storm | Rumors precede the party into rooms. | | 5 | Attention Monsoon | Named witnesses. Social DCs harden by 1. | | 7 | Recognition Hurricane | Reality bends around the party. Strangers know their faces. |
Heat carries a spin as well as a magnitude — noted in one word: favorable, mixed, or hostile. Spin shifts with PC actions: a public rescue tilts favorable, a botched confrontation tilts hostile. Spin determines the tone of the reaction, not its size. A favorable Heat 6 still draws a crowd; the crowd just brings flowers.
When scene text says Heat +1 without elaboration, magnitude rises by one and spin is unchanged unless the GM rules otherwise.
Trust
Lirael Trust and Alistair Trust each run as four named tiers.
- Stranger. Default. Politeness without access.
- Acquaintance. Names exchanged. Routine help, no secrets.
- Ally. Real cooperation. One secret held in common.
- Family. Chosen kin. Will lie for the PCs. Will die for them.
Both tracks start at Stranger when the PCs first meet the relevant NPC. They advance through earned moments — Velvet approaches honored, restraint witnessed, a personal risk taken — and crash through betrayal or violation.
Scene deltas read as tier movements. Trust +1 advances one tier, Trust +2 advances two, Trust crash returns to Stranger. Movement past Family holds at Family: the relationship deepens narratively without further mechanical benefit.
The House of Red Vows responds to Lirael Trust. At Ally or Family, corridors yield, doors open without asking, and residents acknowledge the party as kin. Below Ally, the building stays courteous but distant. The House cannot reach Family if Lirael has not.
Edge case. If the PCs earn the loyalty of individual residents while still standing at Stranger with Lirael, treat that as a scene-specific exception. Do not run a separate House track.
Redemption Chips
Bounds 0 to 3, starting at 0. Gains beyond 3 cap; losses below 0 do not track further.
At zero chips, Marna is past reach: dialogue will not move her, and the remaining beats resolve either through force or through a single named intervention by someone she still recognizes.
Past reach can still be answered. Each of the following restores one chip, once per source, when the fiction earns the moment:
- Lirael offering public forgiveness in Marna's presence.
- Brother Matthias pronouncing absolution.
- A surviving victim of Marna's compositions speaking on her behalf.
These unlocks are narrative, not rolled. They cost the scene's emotional weight, not a check.
Two Thresholds
Some events flip a single switch and stay flipped. Two such switches operate in the module.
Sanctuary Breach
Default Intact. Flips to Breached the first time any of the following occurs:
- A PC kills a thrall before any attempt at rescue or restraint.
- A PC abandons a named victim when extraction was possible.
- A PC publicly invokes Watch or Inquisition authority inside the House.
- The party leaves a named victim to die through inaction.
Once Breached, the House loses its sanctuary effect for the remainder of the module. Corridors no longer bend to shelter the party, and Lirael's reactions cool by one tier permanently.
This is not reversible inside the module's timeframe. The later altar confrontation reads differently with a Breached House: expect Lirael to fight from grief rather than from hope.
Doctrine Pressure
Default Resisted. Flips to Tipping when the PCs lose a major contest with Marna's doctrine — a failed group Persuasion check, a public moment where the party endorses forced revelation, or a Heat surge past 7 hostile during the first chapter. A second such moment flips it to Lost.
- Resisted. The city watches but does not yet agree with her.
- Tipping. Public opinion accepts that desire deserves exposure. Heat-driven social DCs harden by 1.
- Lost. Doctrine wins on the street. Certain endings become harder to reach, and others harden into defaults.
Doctrine Pressure is not tied to a real-time clock. It is tied to PC choices and public moments. The GM advances it, and the players see it after the fact.
Track visibly. For all three numbered tracks, keep counters in view of the table. Chips, dice, or note cards work; spreadsheets do not. Players who can see the cost of each choice make better choices. The two thresholds need not be visible until they flip — but when they flip, name them aloud.
The Four Doors
The Four Doors are a way of reading the approaches player characters take: a shared vocabulary for the kinds of move a scene tends to invite.
Players act as players always act, in their own words and on their own initiative. The Doors are the lens the GM uses to recognize what kind of approach is on the table, and to answer it with some consistency. Each name marks a posture, not a button. A scene block may present its options already sorted under these four headings; that sorting is a convenience and a set of worked examples, not a menu that closes off anything unlisted. When a player does something the scene did not anticipate, the GM asks which of the four kinds it most resembles and proceeds from there.
Why categorize at all
The categories earn their place by keeping the GM's responses coherent. Once an approach is recognized as Velvet-like or Iron-like, the GM has a sense of what to ask for, which way Heat and Trust will lean, and how the House should answer. The Doors turn a hundred improvised player actions into four readable patterns. They are a sorting tool, not a constraint on what players may attempt.
The Access Guarantee
One principle holds across all four kinds.
The approach a character takes shapes how they enter the House. It never decides whether they enter. Whatever Door an action falls under, and whatever a roll produces, the House opens. A check that fails is not a locked door; it is a rougher quality of arrival, and the House remembers the difference.
Frame failure as a different kind of entrance, never as a wall.
The four kinds
Velvet covers approaches built on open vulnerability. The character offers a true fear, a real shame, a need they would rather keep private, and lets it be seen. An action of this kind usually calls for Performance or Persuasion, and what the check measures is not eloquence but the courage to say something honest aloud. Velvet approaches tend to draw the lowest Heat and the warmest Trust. The House softens, and the professional masks of its residents tend to slip.
Silver covers approaches built on named desire. The character admits, plainly, to wanting something the world condemns. These actions most often call for a Charisma save, the difficulty being the saying itself — though a scene built around investigation may instead reward the patience to read a pattern. Silver approaches draw modest Heat and tend to earn the personal interest of the House. Corridors answer the stated want.
Iron covers approaches built on defiant declaration. The character refuses shame and asserts a right to exist without apology. Depending on what the defiance is aimed at, the check tends toward Performance, or Religion when the target is doctrine rather than a crowd. Iron approaches earn respect more readily than trust, and draw higher Heat than Velvet or Silver. The House opens to them slowly, the way a wary person warms to a confident stranger.
Hidden covers approaches built on strategic concealment. The character engages while keeping the real self out of reach. These actions lean on Stealth or Deception, though Hidden does not always resolve on a roll, because the House reads rather than checks.
Hidden is the cautionary kind. Its returns diminish as the module deepens: a concealed approach can serve an altruistic purpose at the threshold, becomes a manipulator's tool in the information market, and hardens into a trap by the confession ritual. Against a person who has already exposed their own grief, a Hidden approach does not land at all. Where a player leans on concealment as a fixed habit, let the fiction show them it is not a uniform strategy. The only late concealment that recovers ground is the kind that admits the concealment itself.
At the table
The GM may name the Door aloud once an approach is recognized. This is shared shorthand offered to the table — a way of saying I see what kind of move that is — not machinery worked behind a screen.
The Heat and Trust an approach earns persist through the chapter. They are not scratch values wiped at scene's end. The module's tension is accumulated commitment, and these four patterns are how the GM keeps track of its shape.
The HEARTS Protocol
Shadows of Desire uses HEARTS, a shared vocabulary for managing intensity in intimate scenes. The protocol is minimal by design. The entirety of HEARTS fits on this page; nothing more is required to run the module.
The four states
Four words used aloud at the table. Any player or the GM may call any state at any moment. The GM honors the call without delay or negotiation; the fiction adjusts.
- Bloom. The beat builds. Intensity increases by one notch.
- Steady. The beat holds at current intensity.
- Wilt. The beat softens. Intensity decreases by one notch.
- Pause. The beat stops. Time is taken at the table. The scene resumes only when the player names a new state.
Intensity levels
The GM names the starting level at the beginning of each intimate scene.
- Bloom-low. Light intimacy. A hand on a wrist, breath shared, deliberate touch. No nudity, no explicit register. Default for first meetings, public confession rituals, and witnessed beats.
- Bloom-medium. Moderate intimacy. Partial disrobing, sensual touch, kissing, desire spoken aloud. Used at thresholds where vulnerability is chosen.
- Bloom-high. Full intimacy. The body in foreground, explicit register, completion possible. Used only at the deepest invitations, and only with all players' active consent confirmed before the scene begins.
Dive, Fade and Threshold
Some scenes use a poetic alias of the HEARTS vocabulary. Dive corresponds to Bloom: commit fully, step up the intensity. Fade corresponds to Wilt: soften the beat, close on suggestion rather than completion. Threshold corresponds to Pause taken at peak: stop at the moment of greatest tension and depart, the unfinished beat held in suspension.
A player who has learned HEARTS does not need to learn Dive / Fade / Threshold separately. Same protocol, different register.
Aftercare
Any beat at Bloom-medium or above includes a brief aftercare moment built into the fiction: water, a blanket, a check-in question, a soft conversation. The aftercare is part of the beat, not an afterthought. Skipping it is not a time-saving choice; it changes the meaning of what happened.
At the table
HEARTS works because it is light. Four words, easy to call, no negotiation. A player who needs space says Wilt or Pause, and the GM does not ask why. If a beat escalates in a way the GM judges unhealthy at the table regardless of player consent, the GM may call Wilt or Pause the same way.
That is the protocol. That is enough.
Les Cinq Aveux
Les Cinq Aveux ("The Five Confessions") is the module's scaffolding for intimate scenes: a five-beat structure that lets erotic content do narrative work — reveal character, hand the party a clue, deepen a relationship, or seed a future ending.
When the table wants intimacy, the structure keeps the scene from pausing the story. When the table doesn't, the Aveux scenes can be skipped without losing any required information; the plot beats they carry are also available through other channels.
Core premise
Three principles govern every Aveux scene.
Consent is the engine, not a checkpoint. The first beat is permission, not foreplay. Either party can pause, redirect, or close at any later beat. Withdrawal carries no mechanical penalty and changes no downstream consequence beyond losing the scene's own payout.
The scene must do work the story remembers. Every Aveux closes with a concrete result: a Trust shift, a Heat shift, an Inspiration, or a tactical edge. If the only outcome is "they slept together," the structure was not used.
Fade is a valid register. Three intensity options — Dive, Fade, Threshold — are offered at the second beat. They are mechanically equivalent. The fiction shifts; the payout does not.
The five beats
The scene moves through five named confessions. None requires a roll. Each beat is roughly two to four minutes of table time.
- Permission. The NPC names what they are offering, in concrete physical or emotional terms, and asks what the PC wants from the encounter. The player answers in fiction. No mechanics yet.
- Threshold. The player chooses a register — Dive (explicit, on the page, the camera stays in the room), Fade (the scene cuts forward; the table returns at aftermath), or Threshold (sensory and suggestive only: breath, warmth, fabric, what is not said). The chosen register sets the camera, not the outcome.
- Revelation. The NPC offers something specific: a piece of information, a memory, an admission, a warning. This is the beat that carries the plot. Without a real revelation, the scene is decorative and should be cut.
- Aftermath. Mechanical consequences land here. Trust with the NPC typically +1. Heat +0 if private, +1 if discreet gossip is plausible, +2 only if the scene was played as public spectacle. Inspiration may be offered in place of Trust if the player prefers it. Scene-specific payouts land here as well.
- Echo. A single sensory image, line of dialogue, or unanswered question the PC carries forward. Echoes are designed to resurface in a later flashback, in dialogue with a different NPC, or at the climax. Note them.
Where the structure is used
Three scenes are written against this scaffolding, and played in order they form a deliberate arc: witness, leverage, mercy. The first yields an early warning and a felt sense of how the House reads its guests. The second is a tactical exchange yielding a concrete clue or advantage. The third is a redemption seed that can ripen at the climax.
Played in isolation, each stands as a complete scene. Skipped entirely, the module loses nothing it requires.
Safety at the table
Before the first Aveux scene, the GM checks in with the players: any lines or veils, any registers off-limits, any opt-out signal.
The HEARTS Protocol applies inside Aveux scenes exactly as it does outside them. A player who shifts from Dive to Fade mid-scene is not penalized. The camera moves. The scene continues.
Every Aveux scene also carries a non-intimate variant in its scene block: a conversation in the same chamber, with the same revelation and the same mechanical payout. Tables that prefer to skip the layer entirely lose no plot information.
About this page
These systems are reproduced from the Module Mechanics chapter of Forbidden Love (Shadows of Desire, Volume One). Two deliberate departures from the book:
- Endings are not named. Where the chapter refers to specific endings by letter, this page says "certain endings" instead. The systems are unchanged; only the spoilers are withheld.
- The Seven Branches are not included. That section covers how individual scenes are wired rather than how the systems work, and belongs with the module itself.
Everything else — the thresholds, the tiers, the checks, the payouts — is as published.
Ready to run it? Forbidden Love is the complete 187-page module, and the free preview includes the introduction, the first scene and a full NPC profile at no cost.