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DemonMage posted:
Thank you very much!
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Sep 23, 2017 21:33
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Don't think I've seen it mentioned here before, but another hack to keep your eyes on: A Nocturne.quote:The future of humanity was the spitter craft. It took us to distant stars, flung us out into the starry nothing. We formed the Panhuman Diaspora. We thought ourselves an evolved species.
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Sep 23, 2017 22:16
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So, a question. Does the Leech have one bandoleer or two bandoleers available?
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Oct 8, 2017 00:31
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Mors Rattus posted:So, a question. Does the Leech have one bandoleer or two bandoleers available? Two, but each bandolier is worth one Load. So, they can use up to 3 items for one Load and up to 6 for two Load. E: Load, the encumbrance keyword is load DalaranJ fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Oct 8, 2017 |
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Oct 8, 2017 00:38
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So how much do I have to rewrite from the base game if I drop the Engagement Roll?
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Oct 8, 2017 08:05
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If you drop the engagement roll then you're just arbitrarily deciding how the engagement starts. So... don't really have much to rewrite, but there's also not a compelling reason to drop it since it helps push play along and helps you frame how the Score starts.
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Oct 8, 2017 08:15
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I don't particularly like it myself. I'm all for a heist/crime game giving you tools to cut the planning part short, I like things like Flashbacks and GUMSHOE's Preparedness as a safety net to get people into the game faster, but the engagement roll is just that one step too far for me - at that point I feel like you're cutting into the actual gameplay, and those are a good few minutes I'd rather play out. Maybe as an optional thing as like a montage for long, boring approaches I'd love it, but as a default thing it bugs me enough that it's a major reason I'm much colder on this game than most people. So tonight I figured I'd see if I was missing something if I took it out, since then maybe I'd be able to reassess how much I like the game.
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Oct 8, 2017 08:29
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I'd probably keep it, everything snowballs pretty quick so the more obstacles, the hairier everything gets.
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Oct 8, 2017 08:37
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I feel like you're thinking the Engagement roll is something it's not. Prior to the Engagement roll: Discussion on who to hit. Likely they start discussing HOW they want to hit the target too. After a bit you go "sounds like you're trying to do an assault on the Iruvian's, what's the point of attack?" "Hitting their treasury cart as it drives on it's route." "Sounds good, let's do the engagement roll!" Without Engagement roll: You creep up on the overhang just as the Iruvian consulate treasury cart is driving by, there's two bored guards riding in the back. What do you do? With Engagement roll: 1-3: You creep up on the overhang just as the Iruvian consulate treasury cart is driving by, unfortunately the guards are armed to the teeth and looking ready for a fight. You can still jump on, but it's not going to be pretty, what do you do? 4/5: As without. 6: You creep up on the overhang just as the Iruvian consulate treasury cart is driving by, you're in luck that they're short staffed today and the guard is asleep. What do you do? Crit: You creep up on the overhang just as the Iruvian consulate treasury cart is driving by, you got a crit here, so narrate how you handle getting onto the cart and dealing with the sleeping guard. There's not much you're missing out on here. Roleplaying or gameplay wise. You're either coming up with bits of how the route is approached or asking your players to provide a bit more setting dressing (an overhang vs an alleyway vs a rooftop etc) or just asking them how they go about physically moving across a city which is rarely worth talking about. So what gameplay are you cutting out, especially with the Engagement roll vs just the whole concept of cutting planning short?
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Oct 8, 2017 08:51
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I might be mischaracterizing it, to be honest. When a heist or run actually starts, IMO, you start just a little bit before you get to the first major obstacle. You're not in the casino to rob it yet, you're in an unmarked van while everyone does a last minute check of their resources and syncs their watches (which is mostly to establish moods and have one last bit of RP before boots hit the ground). Then you actually start, people describe their different approaches, the GM describes any deviations from what they knew as complications if there are any at this point, and maybe there's a brief fast-talk past the guard or something. Once everybody's in place, then you get to the first major obstacle of that heist or run. The engagement roll seems to want to cut directly to that last part with everybody already at their stations and, more aggravating, potentially sticks you in a bad position that you can't possibly forsee or avoid because if you could, that would make the engagement roll pointless but it's still just "well, you're already on the backfoot because we hit the fast forward button". It's not a lot of gameplay, granted, but I see it as a lot of the opportunity the GM has to set tone, for characters to interact right before they plunge into the action, and maybe an opportunity for the players to do a quick thing or two before you're actually in the thick of things, and boiling it all down to one roll makes it feel rushed and somewhat artificial to me in a way that montaging the planning stages doesn't, especially since a general Good/Neutral/Bad outcome on if you start off on the wrong foot feels more impersonal than a less abstracted series of things where the GM goes "well, X and Y seem to be going to plan so far but there are a few extra guards at point Z as you make your approach, what do you want to do?"
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Oct 8, 2017 09:30
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KirbyJ posted:The engagement roll seems to want to cut directly to that last part with everybody already at their stations and, more aggravating, potentially sticks you in a bad position that you can't possibly forsee or avoid because if you could, that would make the engagement roll pointless but it's still just "well, you're already on the backfoot because we hit the fast forward button". How many heist films do you know where the big heist goes off with absolutely zero deviations from the plan and no complications whatsoever? There are very few, because that's boring. The engagement roll skips past the opening few minutes of the heist where everything is going fine and makes you start playing at the point at which things have gone wrong - the cops drop by for a random inspection, the New Guy kills a hostage while trying to get the rest of them to obey, the teller managed to hit the silent alarm, etc. The entire point of flashbacks and this game's attitude to planning is to eliminate the bit where you meticulously plan every detail of a heist ahead of time, and instead assume your PCs have already done that, and present them with the twist immediately. Once play actually begins, they use flashbacks to retroactively have planned for twist and deal with them - and whether the plan worked or not will depend on the dice. They could roll well and the heist goes off perfectly despite the initial hitch, or they could roll poorly and it could all snowball horribly. You can still do the scene-setting, just do it immediately before the engagement roll - it limits you slightly in deciding what the narrative effects of a poor engagement roll are, but not a whole lot. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 09:58 on Oct 8, 2017 |
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Oct 8, 2017 09:56
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[quote="“KirbyJ”" post="“477170572”"] “well, X and Y seem to be going to plan so far but there are a few extra guards at point Z as you make your approach, what do you want to do?” [/quote] That sounds like a perfectly reasonable outcome of a (probably Neutral) Engagement roll, to me. If they roll Bad, both Y and Z have issues. Good means all 3 are on plan and maybe someone left a door blocked open when they went out for a smoke.
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Oct 8, 2017 14:39
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The TG chat thread made me feel nostalgic for my Werewolf: The Forsaken campaign from college, but the more summaries I read of the rules, the more I just want to cram that setting into the Blades in the Dark engine. The fact the the PCs and the Crew both level is part of why I love Blades so much. The only real challenge I’ve had with the system is adapting a scene with an obstacle course and multiple teams competing to reach a prize. I established the scenery, but left it up to the players to address how they handled the obstacles.
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Nov 13, 2017 15:11
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Was the SRD ever released?
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Nov 13, 2017 16:46
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Not yet. John moved a couple months ago and just dealing with Life so progress has been slower. He said a couple weeks ago he's still working on it and the website though.
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Nov 13, 2017 18:21
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This game is really really neat, but I always feel like I'm doing something wrong when I run it. There's some missing piece that I think is entirely on my end. I'm traditionally an extremely heavy prep-first DM and while I'm not bad at coming up with things and bullshitting on the spot, it's definitely my weaker area. Is there something I can do to mitigate this, or any advice on session structure so I can work to my strengths slightly better? I've been doing Engagement-Score-Downtime-EXP-Hook for Next Session made by PCs to accommodate this but I feel like I'm being too restrictive on the players by doing it. They're very short, no-more-than-two-hour sessions, so we don't usually have the time to do more than one Score. Like all of these things thrown together make me feel like I'm doing the best I can to play to my own strengths but also that I'm running the game wrong.
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Nov 20, 2017 00:51
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Stick to your clocks and established number stuff tight, it'll let you plan ahead without strangling your players. 'the red sashes are going to start a war with the gang, and I'd have them do x to y to start, so when they do poo poo that annoys them, add to the clock.' also when in doubt there's a lot of random charts.
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Nov 20, 2017 02:15
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Mighty Dicktron posted:This game is really really neat, but I always feel like I'm doing something wrong when I run it. There's some missing piece that I think is entirely on my end. I'm traditionally an extremely heavy prep-first DM and while I'm not bad at coming up with things and bullshitting on the spot, it's definitely my weaker area. Is there something I can do to mitigate this, or any advice on session structure so I can work to my strengths slightly better? I've been doing Engagement-Score-Downtime-EXP-Hook for Next Session made by PCs to accommodate this but I feel like I'm being too restrictive on the players by doing it. They're very short, no-more-than-two-hour sessions, so we don't usually have the time to do more than one Score. I spent some time random rolling up a few jobs that made sense for the crew, and cribbed a bunch of job ideas from some heist movies, just to have a few skeleton outlines to fall back on. Actually, just watching a pile of heist movies would be a good idea. Just keep an eye out for all the complications that come up and think about how they could be used in your crews heists.
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Nov 20, 2017 02:46
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I’m challenged by my players deciding to be Hawkers that deal in bio-weapons in our Star Wars hack of Blades. I’ve hooked them up with a supplier, turf, a rival gang, and a patron (through their chosen scores and advancements), but am not very familiar with drug/crime stories. It’s an opportunity for me to read/watch things outside my go-to genres, though. I make sure the PCs have opportunities to play to their strengths each session (some equipment in the environment to tinker with/blow-up, some thugs to track down and shoot, and some NPCs to Sway or Command, respectively), and that helps smooth-out some of my ham-fisted plots. A huge part of it is taking notes on what the players hint at or joke about and working it into future sessions. I’m not the best at the improv Blades requires and my group can throw some serious curve balls, so having notes to expand on before the next session really helps. We also have a group chat we ise to plan which score they’d like to do before the next session. It’s an informal version of the Gather Info phase that gives me another opportunity to prep in advance.
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Nov 20, 2017 16:21
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I've officially given up on any of the good hacks ever coming out, seeing as Harper hasn't fulfilled the main stuff (after almost two years now), and no word on any of the hacks coming out, which kind of sucks because that's the main reason I dove in on the kickstarter. I'll be spending the holiday break finishing up with my own cyberpunk hack that I starter about a year ago and never finished.
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Nov 24, 2017 23:31
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Glow in the Dark just came out. Scum and Villainy is waiting on the SRD for the final push but is largely complete. And the game was just finished in Feb of this year, that's nowhere near 2 years. Yeah moving and getting married definitely cut into his time the past few months, so the SRD/website are absolutely behind. Leech and Spider are long since done, Vigilantes is done. John has to deal with: Bluecoats which he wasn't happy with and went back to the drawing board on. The Ghost Lines: As of July " John has a new engagement roll drafted as well an initial playbook." Null Vector: "Playbooks drafted. Estimates to follow the release of Ghost Lines and Bluecoats." Blades of the Jhereg wasn't even mentioned, so that's a bit odd. Everything else is other author's responsibilities and also had some update in the July post. Most of which were supposed to have worked started in earnest this Fall, so I wouldn't expect anything until early next year. Given that they had to wait for Blades to be Done before they could really get to work. There's also far along playtests of: A Nocturne Copperhead County Girl by Moonlight Runners in the Shadows Just off the top of my head. Oh and U'Duasha is getting some form of digital release for non-Deluxe owners. But yeah, I mean RPG kickstarters can take a long time to fulfill. John's done a solid job for his first run at it, but it's no Kevin Crawford well oiled machine for sure.
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Nov 24, 2017 23:53
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Didn't even know Runners in the Shadows was a thing, it's actually pretty good!
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Nov 25, 2017 20:17
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https://plus.google.com/+SeanNittner/posts/SJTy9Ex2y1N 1. SRD seems to be coming any moment now; 2. Evil Hat is stepping forward and offering a hand as a publisher for "Forged in the Dark" games (a tentative name for BitD-powered stuff).
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Nov 28, 2017 06:20
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That's awesomeSean posted:I just sent an email to John about it. The SRD is done and we've got in on the blades site. We just need to do some DNS work and we can launch it. Some of the licencing bits will still be forthcoming, but the SRD is done. The things they're offering for hacks sounds fantastic as well. He explicitly says they prefer plain text, meaning you can focus your time on making an interesting game and less on the fiddly bits of making a product.
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Nov 28, 2017 06:28
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DemonMage posted:Blades of the Jhereg wasn't even mentioned, so that's a bit odd.
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Nov 29, 2017 15:07
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Oh wow, Runners in the Shadows actually looks really promising. Anyone here tried out the playtest at all? Shadowrun was the first thing I thought of when I was thinking of what I would love to run with the Blades in the Dark rule set.
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Nov 29, 2017 19:10
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 The SRD is live!
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Dec 6, 2017 05:28
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So I finally got around to playing this game a few times over break, and while I love it and things actually work well in play, there's a few minor things I would change for someone who wants it a little less deadly and with a little less of a stress spiral if things go wrong. 1) One option I'm kicking around is reducing the stress of pushing yourself to 1 instead of 2. 2) During downtime, all minor wounds are cleared automatically. This allows characters to still take some harm during a score, but it doesn't feel like they have to spend 1/2 their downtime actions or all the coin they got from a score to heal up or get screwed on a bad roll with nothing to show for it in downtime. It also isn't a huge deal if they take some harm during a score rather than racking up insane stress that only goes down on average 3 points after each score AFTER they indulge their vice, building up rather quickly. The fact that 90% of the time even after a bunch of scores and advancements you're still only rolling 1D for vice (taking the lowest rating of all 3 attributes) is pretty rough. 3) Increasing the coin for each score. Right now a normal score is like 4 coin, which for 4 players is 1 each which can't go into savings, and is often used for needing to increase the effect of a downtime action or take a third. Doubling coin seems like an okay idea because even if someone wants to do something extra then it still leaves 1 for the stash, or 1 being used in a mission for bribery or something like that. I personally also like the optional rule in the book where 6's or criticals add 1 gambit to the crew sheet, which lets anyone use it for an extra 1D.
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Dec 22, 2017 19:54
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Does anyone know how to download the additional hacks for Blades, I bought the backer level that gets me all of them, but I don't think I have anything about them?
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Dec 22, 2017 23:07
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Josef bugman posted:Does anyone know how to download the additional hacks for Blades, I bought the backer level that gets me all of them, but I don't think I have anything about them? Same for me, I know there's a Dropbox link but it's password protected, I can't find anywhere where that password is and Harper hasn't gotten back to me. Edit: unless you mean the only two that are sort of done and in beta, blades against darkness and scum and villainy , those are Google doc links in the updates. I'm talking about the one with raw sheets for hacking.
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Dec 23, 2017 00:14
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The raw sheets are in the SRD.
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Jan 1, 2018 19:43
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I've got a fairly elementary question - I'd love to get into this game, but being in Australia, can I find anywhere that'll sell me the fucker? Of course not.
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Jan 2, 2018 12:51
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Shockeh posted:I've got a fairly elementary question - I'd love to get into this game, but being in Australia, can I find anywhere that'll sell me the fucker? Of course not. Apparently the DTRPG PoD book's availability is imminent, and there's a Lightning Source office in Melbourne. So maybe that?
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Jan 2, 2018 12:58
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Shockeh posted:I've got a fairly elementary question - I'd love to get into this game, but being in Australia, can I find anywhere that'll sell me the fucker? Of course not. Just get the PDF, the printable reference sheets will cover you for rules checking.
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Jan 2, 2018 13:12
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Heads up to backers: John just sent out the links to the finished Scum & Villainy, as well as where the stretch goals stand.
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Jan 4, 2018 20:39
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Shockeh posted:I've got a fairly elementary question - I'd love to get into this game, but being in Australia, can I find anywhere that'll sell me the fucker? Of course not. I grabbed a print copy at PAX at the Aetherworks booth, and they've got copies on their webstore.
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Jan 5, 2018 12:19
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Thanks, bought it from Aetherworks (That postage, oof.) Next step - Finding out if there's any way to gather a group for it in Brisbane!
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Jan 16, 2018 01:27
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Shockeh posted:Thanks, bought it from Aetherworks (That postage, oof.) I apparently bought the lone copy of it in Melbourne when there was a sale on. (Melbourne only has like two stores that sell anything beyond DnD, Pathfinder and Star Wars RPGwise, and they're both the same company)
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Jan 16, 2018 01:48
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Vault Games up northside in Enoggera seems to be running it, they've got a big print out of the map on one of their RPG walls.
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Feb 6, 2018 03:54
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Cassa posted:Vault Games up northside in Enoggera seems to be running it, they've got a big print out of the map on one of their RPG walls. Yeah; I've been a part of that game so far, but at an hour each way it's a bit far just for an RPG session. (Hello QLD Goon!) I'm trying to get a game up North Lakes / Redcliffe way, but apparently nobody will play anything that isn't 5E D&D.
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Feb 7, 2018 00:03
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