|
e: wrong thread
|
#
?
Feb 26, 2018 02:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 17:03 |
|
|
BetterWeirdthanDead posted:I saw it suggested (probably ITT) that letting players automatically recover all level one harms during downtime made things slightly more heroic and didn’t break the system. I don’t know if automatically lowering the tier of all harm by one (tier III to tier II, tier II to tier I, etc.) would be too much, though. I had a never healing black eye for like 3 months ingame time because we were at war and we didn't know you could spend rep to take more downtime actions.
|
|
#
?
Feb 27, 2018 23:58
|
|
|
I liked that idea, but it always seemed a little weird when you dropped a 2 harm consequence to a 1. Did it also just vanish? Another rule in scum and villainy I like the idea of is when you resist a consequence you drop it by two tiers instead of one. So what could have been two harm is just stress. E: started rewatching firefly, and it has not aged well. It's really just all the standard western tropes with a spaceship as one set and a smattering of Chinese for future color. What are some good Sci fish movies or books with a fighting against the man plot? I did not expect my players to chose that ship at all. Demon_Corsair fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Feb 28, 2018 |
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2018 05:04
|
|
|
My theoretical Harm house rule would be that a single visit to healer would automatically cure a Level 1 harm. No need to roll or spend extra Coin on it. You would still need to fill the Clock to reduce a Level 2 or 3 harm, but there's no need to worry about getting four ticks for low-level damage.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2018 05:49
|
|
|
Demon_Corsair posted:I liked that idea, but it always seemed a little weird when you dropped a 2 harm consequence to a 1. Did it also just vanish? Just make it so 1-harm consequences are healed at the start of downtime only, so if you drop a 2-harm down a level it stays until the next downtime.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2018 09:48
|
|
|
Pinwiz11 posted:My theoretical Harm house rule would be that a single visit to healer would automatically cure a Level 1 harm. No need to roll or spend extra Coin on it. You would still need to fill the Clock to reduce a Level 2 or 3 harm, but there's no need to worry about getting four ticks for low-level damage. This is how it works in Scum and Villainy. The clock is expanded to 6 segments, but when you fill them you remove all harm. And level 1 harms disappear with just a single visit. I've been experimenting with level 1 and 2 harms that go away on their own inside of a score, like "winded" or "gut-punched."
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2018 12:16
|
|
|
And what about people wanting to swop out characters because their current guy is stressed? It feels to me as if that really goes counter to the intended feel of the game, but that the player in question is expecting a game where you start each new mission fully refreshed. My take as I said in my original post is that if you don't go on a score, that character doesn't get downtime, and I also know that he's just going to get peeved when his stable of characters doesn't advance as fast as the people who stick with one.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2018 14:11
|
|
|
Angrymog posted:And what about people wanting to swop out characters because their current guy is stressed? In my opinion, stress relief should always cost because it has an explicit failure state. I let characters take healing downtime when they’re away from the team, but they don’t have access to the resources of the crew so they can’t do anything else. You could rule that they can pay from their stash for those actions though.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2018 21:51
|
|
|
Angrymog posted:And what about people wanting to swop out characters because their current guy is stressed? Imposing a further rule restriction isn't going to make this player any less shirty about the situation. If anything it will just make him gripe more. You have to talk to him about expectations and whether this is a game he actually wants to play, because it is working as intended. Picking between risking a less effective character on a heist to keep advancement pace up versus slowing advancement to make sure you aren't going in with penalties is a feature, not a bug here. That just may not be the game he wants to play right now. Plus, I think this restriction is, in the long term, going to create problems for the other players. BitD's harm rules can put characters into states that will just be fun to play. Being able to slide them to the side while they're on the mend is really to your and your group's benefit. In part that's because I don't think swapping characters this way really gets around the consequences. It just shifts them. As mentioned, it will slow advancement. Having to spend downtime healing up does that already, and not going on a heist means missing a lot of XP opportunities. Having someone heal up off screen has a significant cost already. Having a restriction that characters who didn't go on a heist can only heal with downtime makes sense though. The place giving an entire stable of characters two downtime each can really get abused is that they can do projects and training and "power level" offscreen to a certain extent. That's really the thing that needs to be taken away. In light of that, for the players who are already on board with BitD's tough choices, giving them the option to swap relatively freely gives you more room to tell the stories you want. That being said if you really just don't want to deal with character swapping for story or book-keeping reasons, that's perfectly reasonable. But it's much better to state that flat out and then talk to your group about whether that should be coupled with some other changes to avoid someone getting stuck unable to really participate in a session. For the other suggestions... I think auto-clearing or more easily clearing level 1 and 2 harm is perfectly reasonable. That's more about the kind of game you want to play. It's more likely to fix the core issue your problem player has, but it still needs to be coupled with a frank discussion about expectations. Handing out three downtime instead of two is going to have a similar effect, but wouldn't be too unbalancing either IMO. Again, the bigger impact here will be to training and projects. And it still won't solve the problem player's issues on its own.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2018 21:31
|
|
|
Ran my first session in a while, and christ I am rusty as a GM. One thing I like about blades is failures make it super easy to keep things rolling and escalating. What I really struggle with is what comes next when they start rolling well and handle the current situation. The gambit system in Scum and Villainy makes good out comes way more likely as there are a lot of available dice floating around.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2018 21:42
|
|
|
I had a second player intenionally max out stress and take a trauma last night. “My character is already reckless, so I might as well get XP for it.”
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2018 23:39
|
|
|
We finished our campaign by accidentally-on-purpose sabotaging the electroplasm fence around Duskvoll and destroying the city. Whoops.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2018 01:33
|
|
|
No real loss.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2018 04:39
|
|
|
How do you handle failures in flashbacks? Are the PC's out the stress and possibly out of luck on the flashback? Can they take injuries in the flashback that retroactively apply to the job?
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2018 05:39
|
|
|
Nude Bog Lurker posted:We finished our campaign by accidentally-on-purpose sabotaging the electroplasm fence around Duskvoll and destroying the city. Whoops. On the other hand, Doskvol being dead and gone and all its inhabitants killed means you win.
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2018 05:40
|
|
|
Demon_Corsair posted:How do you handle failures in flashbacks? Are the PC's out the stress and possibly out of luck on the flashback? Can they take injuries in the flashback that retroactively apply to the job? You're still out the stress, but if an injury happens it shouldn't be retroactive, it should be as a consequence of the flashback failure. so e.g. if you flashback to bribe some guards, failure isn't "they say no and punch you", it's "they take your money, but surprise they lied and they're here now and they punch you".
|
|
#
?
Mar 3, 2018 07:32
|
|
|
BetterWeirdthanDead posted:I had a second player intenionally max out stress and take a trauma last night. In our very first session our Cutter maxed himself out pushing to punch a Spirit Warden in the face. "I'm going to take Vicious." Yeah, no poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Mar 6, 2018 02:24
|
|
|
My crew also managed to have the Spider get a first session trauma. After leading a frontal assault on a Crow gambling den, blowing up some boats with Leech explosives, and then firing a gun into the air to get everyone's attention while she loudly claimed this was the work of the Grimalkin crew, she got picked up by the Bluecoats in the entanglement and worked over, knocking her up to max stress. When she said "I'm going to take Reckless" I made a very perfunctory "Mmhmm."
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2018 00:25
|
|
|
You guys have the best players.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2018 17:47
|
|
|
I credit the game design a lot. You look at a lot of the trauma conditions and a lot of players will go, "but... I already am this" and it's like... yeah, I know. And then the main effect of trauma is that you generate more XP when you do the dumb poo poo you were already going to do, and of course players jump on it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 7, 2018 21:08
|
|
|
Flipping through this as I ponder doing a write up for Fatal and Friends and I came across the prison sheet and rules for incarceration. And it struck me as not a really interesting or a useful addition. Another sheet to manage but the player has to sit out or roll a new character for the time they are locked up. Does anyone use it they way it was written or have people come up with better ways to reduce wanted levels?
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2018 03:44
|
|
|
Demon_Corsair posted:Flipping through this as I ponder doing a write up for Fatal and Friends and I came across the prison sheet and rules for incarceration. And it struck me as not a really interesting or a useful addition. Another sheet to manage but the player has to sit out or roll a new character for the time they are locked up. I think the game is kind of set up that you start rolling up more characters over time to switch in and out, since naturally you're expected to trauma-out some of them over time anyway. So you might introduce in the story some new character anyway when someone is in jail, or needs some extra time to recover, and whatnot. The 'crew' as a whole is the focus, not any individual character. The balancing feature to "why don't I roll a new character every heist" is: 1. They're fresh instead of having XP and more moves. 2. You don't get a chance to get more attached.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2018 04:28
|
|
|
Demon_Corsair posted:Flipping through this as I ponder doing a write up for Fatal and Friends and I came across the prison sheet and rules for incarceration. And it struck me as not a really interesting or a useful addition. Another sheet to manage but the player has to sit out or roll a new character for the time they are locked up. Frame an NPC patsy through a score or a long-term project? I don't mind rolling up an alternate character for a few sessions though. With vices and traumas and such where a PC's personality changes in the course of play, blades plays very well with the "drive your character like a stolen car" style where players treat their PCs as bold, daring, and expendable. I don't think I'd have as much fun if I got overly invested in one PC the way you do in other RPGs
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2018 04:32
|
|
|
I actually really like the prison system a lot. Having to turn one of your own guys in because your Grand Theft Auto level mayhem is bringing the Heat down on your small gang is pretty reasonable. It helps with keeping a grittier tone, and also is a pretty easy way to introduce new story elements based on what went on off screen while you were doing time to help your Crime Brothers out. Blades in the Dark works so well when there are constantly consequences for all the extremely ill-advised actions the players will take!
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2018 07:43
|
|
|
I recently bought the Scum & Villainy playbook, and would love to give the game a shot once my group gets to a satisfying pause point in our Dungeon World campaign (at our current rate of play that could well be 2019). Other than the core pdfs for it or Blades, is there a good game mechanics tutorial or reference anywhere for the forged in the dark games? I imagine it's a do it by trying thing, but the current DW campaign is basically the extent of our collective tabletop experience so anything could be helpful! Position and effect, and by extension potency, quality and tier are a little daunting to me as probable GM.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2018 15:28
|
|
|
poor life choice posted:I recently bought the Scum & Villainy playbook, and would love to give the game a shot once my group gets to a satisfying pause point in our Dungeon World campaign (at our current rate of play that could well be 2019). Other than the core pdfs for it or Blades, is there a good game mechanics tutorial or reference anywhere for the forged in the dark games? I imagine it's a do it by trying thing, but the current DW campaign is basically the extent of our collective tabletop experience so anything could be helpful! Position and effect, and by extension potency, quality and tier are a little daunting to me as probable GM. There is a pretty decent tutorial for base Blades that goes into nearly every aspect of the system in-depth: Let's Learn Blades in the Dark I would also recommend watching Scum and Villainy Stardancer which is an AP by the writer of the game as well as some really good players. It is an earlier build of the game but does a drat good job of showing it off in action and it's how I learned to run it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2018 16:21
|
|
|
Serf posted:There is a pretty decent tutorial for base Blades that goes into nearly every aspect of the system in-depth: Let's Learn Blades in the Dark This is exactly what I’m looking for, thank you!
|
|
#
?
Mar 20, 2018 17:39
|
|
|
So is the Scum and Villainy PDF that's downloadable through the Blades website really the real final version? Because it's missing an index of any kind and the page citations throughout it are still "page xxx".
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2018 12:52
|
|
|
Nuns with Guns posted:So is the Scum and Villainy PDF that's downloadable through the Blades website really the real final version? Because it's missing an index of any kind and the page citations throughout it are still "page xxx". Nope. They're still adding art, bookmarks, an index etc. e: It's actually really annoying to use that PDF at the moment, and the Player/GM sheets are far more handy to have instead. Adding bookmarks will be a huge help and I can't wait.
|
|
#
?
Mar 26, 2018 12:56
|
|
|
Serf posted:Nope. They're still adding art, bookmarks, an index etc. Cool, glad I'm not crazy and somehow not downloading the right thing.
|
|
#
?
Mar 27, 2018 00:47
|
|
|
Actually, another thing I noticed: the Scum and Villainy rules mention the Cohort rules in passing, but it doesn't actually list how to generate experts/gangs. Is that going to be added later or is it just something that'll have to be pulled up from the vanilla Blades rules if someone decides to hire a gang for a job or whatever?
|
|
#
?
Apr 2, 2018 03:07
|
|
|
A few questions, settingwise, on BITD: 1. The Dagger Isles are all imperial, right? 2. Deathlands presumably aren't immediately fatal but are perilous. If you were planning a mission outside the city walls, just how bad is it? Is it just dark and full of demon-wolves or is it actively toxic? 3. Reading, there's no public recourse to governance at all, is there? This is partly from the Radicals playbook, but having a friend on the council means you've swayed/blackmailed a noble family; there's no way of getting one of "your guys" on the council?
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2018 14:43
|
|
|
spectralent posted:A few questions, settingwise, on BITD: 1. Presumably. As far as I understand it the entire known world (besides Tychoeros) in Blades is ruled by the Immortal Emperor. 2. Nothing I've seen suggests instant fatality but I was left with the distinct impression it's Mad Max without the sun and a fuckload of roving hungry ghosts, huge dust storms etc. 3. Never seen anything about democracy in the materials.
|
|
#
?
Apr 7, 2018 17:46
|
|
|
spectralent posted:2. Deathlands presumably aren't immediately fatal but are perilous. If you were planning a mission outside the city walls, just how bad is it? Is it just dark and full of demon-wolves or is it actively toxic? You could do a quick read of ghost lines on John’s website for a little more clarity on this. I think the main thing is that the spirit wells outside of cities can get totally out of control.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2018 03:18
|
|
|
DalaranJ posted:You could do a quick read of ghost lines on John’s website for a little more clarity on this. There's mention of "Choking fog" and the fact Bulls wear breather masks, so it seems likely that the deathlands are actually actively toxic even if you feel like trying your luck outside the walls.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2018 09:29
|
|
|
It's a fairly obvious, pretty hand-waved 'Look, you can go out there, but in general, players are not supposed to, so explain to them you can expect to probably die out there'. Like, it doesn't really matter whether it's Mad Max roving bandits, clouds of deathfog, horribly mutated wildlife or demons, it's a general 'You need to deal with the poo poo you cause in the City' area.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2018 09:35
|
|
|
Shockeh posted:It's a fairly obvious, pretty hand-waved 'Look, you can go out there, but in general, players are not supposed to, so explain to them you can expect to probably die out there'. The thing is it is relevant to the Smugglers and is relevance-adjacent to Cults and Hawkers.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2018 09:48
|
|
|
I mean, it's intended to keep play in the city (it's a toxic, barren wasteland so you can't actually escape the city for long), but we also know enough about the deathlands that "find a maintenance gate to deathwalk from neighbourhood A to B via the outside" is a totally viable plan. The ghosts and the toxic air that requires pressurised, powered breathing apparatuses are just things that you can make clocks out of.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2018 10:13
|
|
|
Lemon-Lime posted:I mean, it's intended to keep play in the city (it's a toxic, barren wasteland so you can't actually escape the city for long), but we also know enough about the deathlands that "find a maintenance gate to deathwalk from neighbourhood A to B via the outside" is a totally viable plan. The ghosts and the toxic air that requires pressurised, powered breathing apparatuses are just things that you can make clocks out of. Yeah, for sure, I just wasn't sure from reading if it was a case that it's literally toxic or if it was mad max. I got my answer to that from Ghost Lines, I just couldn't find out much in the book.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2018 10:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 17:03 |
|
|
spectralent posted:Yeah, for sure, I just wasn't sure from reading if it was a case that it's literally toxic or if it was mad max. I got my answer to that from Ghost Lines, I just couldn't find out much in the book. Honestly? The book doesn't say and even Ghost Lines is vague about it (they might just be wearing them because they work on top of moving trains, which makes it hard to breathe), so it's entirely your call as a GM. Though yeah, the more you make the deathlands like space, the more you have interesting elements that might potentially fail at a crucial moment to make into countdown clocks. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2018 10:32
|
|