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Freudian slippers posted:Question: How do you guys handle a limited success on a yes/no roll? If the action didn't have a clock in the first place, and was a yes/no action, to me that shows any success should open it (except for a 'no effect' roll). Since a consequence shouldn't completely diminish the success of an action, you shouldn't lower the effect. Instead, pick a different consequence - ticks on alarm clocks are good. Also, don't start "open the safe" as a clock. This suggests a solution to your player, and makes them roll multiple times for one thing. Instead, describe an obstacle. In this case, if you wanted to model this with a clock, the clock would be 'Safe' and you should describe it as a mess of knobs and whatever. Then, your players are free to tick this clock with different actions, like "I lockpick the lock" for limited effect or "I flashback to me bribing a guard to give me the combination to the top lock" for great effect. Or they can surprise you with something "Ok, let's prepare a hook attached to a carriage outside in a flashback that we hook the safe onto" that has good effect and the rest of the clock is ensuring that it stays attached during the escape. Encouraging creativity this way is something the game does well. As a GM, give obstacles, not solutions. dex_sda fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Sep 20, 2019 |
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Sep 20, 2019 15:08
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Anyone know the name of the shadowrun hack for BoTD? I want to try running it with a few friends
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Sep 20, 2019 15:51
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Tibbeh posted:Anyone know the name of the shadowrun hack for BoTD? I want to try running it with a few friends There's Karma in the Dark and Runners in the Shadows. The latter is more traditional both to Shadowrun and BitD while the former is really cool but has some crazy modifications to your assumptions on both fronts.
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Sep 20, 2019 16:04
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Hack the Planet is just a shade off Shadowrun (subtract orcs & elves & magic and replace it with giant gently caress-off megastorms to pull capers in + nanomagic) and worth a look if you're not married to the SR setting. Also, I haven't got to play Runners in the Shadows or Karma in the Dark, but I've read both and they seem to need a lot more polish. HtP is a finished game with few rough edges.
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Sep 20, 2019 17:12
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Serf posted:I think a clock can work just fine in that situation. A very complicated lock might require an extremely fine amount of precision or it could be a multi-stage affair with getting through multiple sections of one lock. Or if you don't want to use a clock for the lock, you could throw in 3 ticks in the general alert/danger clock in lieu of having an immediate consequence. This could represent the lockpicking process taking a lot of time, or being noisy, or even tripping some sort of warning system somewhere else. The lock opens, but the general tension of the heist escalates. dex_sda posted:If the action didn't have a clock in the first place, and was a yes/no action, to me that shows any success should open it (except for a 'no effect' roll). Since a consequence shouldn't completely diminish the success of an action, you shouldn't lower the effect. Instead, pick a different consequence - ticks on alarm clocks are good. Great advice, thanks guys. I think the bolded part especially hits the nail on the head. You're also completely right in that the clock should be an obstacle with an open solution.
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Sep 20, 2019 17:28
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I'd rule it as them getting through the lock but a clock ticking up or equipment breaking. Anything other than "ooooh you're almost there, roll again!". I was making that mistake a few times in my earlier games and the players got frustrated feeling like they were just spinning their wheels trying to get past the same problem.
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Sep 20, 2019 18:21
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Got to finally play this game for the first time. Our GM surprised us with the game, until we actually showed up we didn't know what we were playing, so a big chunk of the session was creating characters and the crew. So, now the smuggling crew the Silkshore Saints has done it's first score, and it was pretty rad. The whole first score, stealing an artifact off a boat in the harbor, went shockingly smoothly. Love the narrative control you have over consequences with resistance, and our GM gave us some really interesting devils bargains. Loving it so far, everyone has bought in hard which is crazy for a new system.
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Sep 20, 2019 18:24
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But actually this makes me think, how would you guys handle this pickle: My players killed Bazso, I represented it faction wise as Lampblacks falling in tier (to tier 1 Weak) and being led by the second. They made peace with the player crew. Now the players want to make them their cohort, which I think is an interesting idea so I want to make this happen. Just trying to square it with the rules. I also wanted to incentivise players to interact more with the claims game, so my idea was this: the next operation I dangle the plot hook for a claim operation where they help the Lampblacks, and in return get to control their claim. Then, I tell them if they want them as a cohort they should spend the XP on that, but the Lampblacks will be willing to do it. Reason is I think getting the a free cohort AND the XP from operation is a big deal, while getting a claim and then spending the XP on an operation is a little less of a leap. What do you think? I know in the grand scheme of things to go with the flow, but the claim game is the last big piece my players haven't interacted with, so... dex_sda fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Sep 20, 2019 |
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Sep 20, 2019 19:26
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dex_sda posted:But actually this makes me think, how would you guys handle this pickle: Depending on your players’ crew tier, they can only get so many Lampblacks on to join their them as a cohort/gang (around 5 I think). Those people are in the crew full-time, beyond allies or favored contacts. The book says you need to pay a full upgrade on a new cohort but I’ve had players just fill out project clocks with scores/downtime to gain cohorts, too. Making the weakened Lampblacks allies who “share” their claims is a good idea, also.
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Sep 23, 2019 18:56
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Sizable backer update today. Delivered: Blades of the Jhereg play test material Blades against Darkness pre-layout text Coneycatchers pre-layout text The Doomed pre-layout text A bit of Rail Jacks material So that’s cool! Haven’t read any of it yet.
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Sep 24, 2019 21:23
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Yeah, holy poo poo Blades of the Jhereg looks like it's actually happening. It's set up so you play the button men for a small-time, up and coming, boss with the GM being/playing the boss. Advances on all the playbooks are nicely Dragaeran-themed, and look right for their type. You can play a witche's familiar without someone playing the witch. That could be fun. Someone not-me should run a PBP of this.
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Sep 26, 2019 06:36
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We got kinda lucky — the author piped up on the community forums talking about his reskin a month or so ago, and John Harper noticed. No objection here, it’s pretty good stuff.
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Sep 26, 2019 19:24
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Band of Blades is so loving good and I'm very sad I'll probably never get to play it.
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Oct 14, 2019 18:10
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i was looking over the newest stuff in the backer files and the doomed looks like its gonna be a lot of fun to play, based on the playbooks. i just wish progress was being made faster
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Oct 14, 2019 19:56
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last night i ran my first session of Blades Against Darkness, the dungeon-crawling fitd game. it has some pretty interesting ideas, including a novel gear/inventory system, an elegant way to deal with resistance, and some flavorful (if rough) playbooks. we went with the provided scenario in the quickstart and it went pretty well! the players delved below the sands of the chimeran wastes in search of an ancient temple through which they could receive a message from the doomed planet of their interstellar wizard patron. along the way they dealt with an enemy sniper, confronted and disabled the fractal serpent, loaded their pockets with the crystalline data repositories of the witch-kings and made it in time to receive the message. the materials are still in rough shape and are badly in need of editing and proofreading, but you can play with what's there and i think i like the changes the hack makes to blades' core resolution system. position/effect is still there, but now the positions are trivial, daring and insurmountable. you only roll when the situation is daring. trivial is generally an automatic success, while insurmountable is a failure. there's more emphasis on drilling down into positions and what is risked with each roll, and there are some interesting decisions to be made as the gm when it comes to offering positions and determining possible outcomes. i'm looking forward to running more of the hack
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Oct 29, 2019 04:42
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More and more I think that Goblinville was a rejected BitD hack. The positioning is so critical in GV that I can't help but see an influence.
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Oct 29, 2019 08:20
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So trip report after a mid-season break. My players are doing great in Crow's Foot, expanded a little bit past with the claims game - I found that to be a great fallback when you can't make something organic happen. Just run a claim op and prep for next time, it works. One of my players is a girl and plays a girl and decided to start being all friendly like with a member of the Red Sashes. Now they're kind of a cohort (they did stuff to make him the leader) except contingent on the guy not realising he's being used by the lady, for which I have a tug of war clock. It makes for a lot of cool things happening. Last sesh, one of my players went to talk with Lyssa and ended up trapped in the spirit world in their HQ (he asked for it, and rolled 1 1 2 2 3 on five dice). This sesh, they staged multiple operations to get him out and kill Lyssa. Obviously, I made it difficult, and a bit of a dungeony ascent, and they ended up having to abandon the score. But one player ended up with level 3 harm on floor 10 of the tower with 8/9 stress and 3 trauma, so he instead went out with a blaze of glory. Taking up every single Load left - 4 - with explosives and blowing Crow's Nest sky high. This game loving rules. 
dex_sda fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Nov 28, 2019 |
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Nov 28, 2019 03:12
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Hello there! There was one aspect to this system which I wanted to see how other individuals handled, mainly pertaining to Scum & Villainy. Namely for those who DMed the system, did you run the opening quest for whichever ship your players picked? They're naturally designed to immediately get you into the game whilst fitting theme of the vessel and crew of course, however I found it a bit narratively abrupt (or at least, the Smuggler vessel one was). My past experience was running D&D so it's probably just a case of acclimating to a new system, particularly one which is working actively to be engaging at every moment; avoiding wargame like encounters in the process. Beyond I am also wondering about the potential for this system to handle one shots. I tend to use them as an introduction to systems, and from what I've seen it should be doable with S&V? Player generated characters could work but pregens absolutely could work too as a manner to avoid the crew creation process.
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Dec 7, 2019 17:10
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SkySteak posted:Hello there! There was one aspect to this system which I wanted to see how other individuals handled, mainly pertaining to Scum & Villainy. It's something worth asking your players about. Do they think they got the ship from a contact? Or did one of the playbooks have it to start with like the Mechanic or Engineer? If none of them have a strong opinion, you could suggest for their first score to be the theft of the ship itself and they'll probably be on-board for that. SkySteak posted:Beyond I am also wondering about the potential for this system to handle one shots. I tend to use them as an introduction to systems, and from what I've seen it should be doable with S&V? Player generated characters could work but pregens absolutely could work too as a manner to avoid the crew creation process. Creating the ship and PCs takes enough time on your first go-around to be a session 0 of sorts. If the players are cool with you pre-making the ship and establishing the starting faction reputations, the PC playbooks don't take very long or could be premade, too. If you do end up making the ship playbook as a group, read through all the factions to start with, and note ones that you think would be good ones to have starting positive/negative relationships with for the crew. The game, like Blades, assumes the GM will assign out the factions they have reputations with, but you could open it up to the players and get their feedback if you give them a short description of the factions you suggest. Once the ship and PCs are made, Blades and S&V are segmented enough that each score is effectively a self-contained one-shot as it is, and characters or players can swap out freely as time constraints demand. If you do create pregen playbooks for a one-shot, I'd suggest Muscle, Stitch, Scoundrel, and Mystic as the main ones to start with. You could make some of them Xenos so they get an idea of how Xeno abilities work, too, but I wouldn't suggest doing that to the Mystic because of how central the Mystic's starting ability is to the playbook.
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Dec 7, 2019 17:37
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Haven't got players yet but I intend to run in the future! My initial question was more directed toward if people used Starting Position quests each ship has attached, and if they found it useful. As mentioned previously I found them a little sudden for lack of a better word. I am used to running and playing long session D&D campaigns which are often custom settings, so I don't think it's some design problem with them. The one shot advice is excellent, and I will keep it in mind!
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Dec 8, 2019 21:14
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Hey I'm probably gonna be running this game for the first time soon and I noticed the rules about tiers and reducing effect. Do people play like that? Because the game seems to put a fair amount of stock in tier for rep and stuff but the game also seems to push with the starting situation example for the tier 0 starting crew to go up against tier 2s. Is that normal? Players rolling at limited a lot until they get to a higher tier and start using fine equipment a lot?
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Dec 13, 2019 15:23
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Glagha posted:Hey I'm probably gonna be running this game for the first time soon and I noticed the rules about tiers and reducing effect. Do people play like that? Because the game seems to put a fair amount of stock in tier for rep and stuff but the game also seems to push with the starting situation example for the tier 0 starting crew to go up against tier 2s. Is that normal? Players rolling at limited a lot until they get to a higher tier and start using fine equipment a lot? Not everything a tier 2 gang has is going to be tier 2 quality. Most locks, for example, are going to be pretty simple and low tier. Maybe the main entrance or safe full of valuables will be tier 2, but not everything in the building. Then your players need to find a creative solution to mitigate that tier 2 advantage, maybe by sneaking through a window or flash-backing to someone lifting the safe's key off a gang member in a pub. Think of it more as what the gang has access to, or maybe average power. Of course, if your players are really really into the idea of starting off as the underdogs and always being on the backfoot maybe they'd be into the idea of everything being higher tier. Sounds tedious to me though.
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Dec 13, 2019 15:50
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I made a lot of decisions for my group since i was the one to read the book and myself and the DM are the only ones to show up to all the games. I picked a hunting ground way out of our league because thought it would be fun, but also it showed how ambitious we were. Plus, don't be like Joe Chill, waiting for rich people to walk int crime alley, just walk a few blocks to rich people alley. It is harder, but i'm also the kinda player that's always trying to make my rolls desperate. The narrative style really fosters it in a way something like DnD wouldn't.
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Dec 13, 2019 16:56
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Fuuuuck getting anything started that isn't D&D is a pain in the arse. I've tried now for a year to play BitD in Brisbane, Australia, and if it's not Basic As gently caress Dungeon Crawl Until We All Die D&D 5E, nobody wants to know. Jesus wept.
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Jan 8, 2020 09:58
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Shockeh posted:Fuuuuck getting anything started that isn't D&D is a pain in the arse. At least the new edition of Pathfinder is good. 
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Jan 9, 2020 05:40
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Don’t recruit trpg dorks. Make them. Convert your friends and then you don’t have to deal with randos.
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Jan 9, 2020 23:09
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I was linked this interesting review on Blades: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqH2IZ9qhzA I don't agree with it at all, but I have noticed a lot of people struggle to grasp the way the game operates and abstracts stuff. It's interesting because I've seen more and more people endorsing Blades in random places online to people who don't really have the context of how Apocalypse World or similar games structure a narrative or character interaction. It has left me wondering how easily a new group can acclimate to the system.
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Jan 20, 2020 05:11
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FWIW Blades does play differently from most games out there, but it does a pretty okay job of explaining the differences in the rulebook. I do think Band of Blades does a significantly better job of providing examples to illustrate position and effect than BitD itself does, though. You get the usual problem of people fixating on one system and acting like it's universal when it isn't, but reading the rules will generally teach people how the game works differently from what they're used to (whether or not they recognise that it might not work for what it was recommended for is another story). I'd say BitD's biggest failure is not providing a stronger thematic relationship between the core mechanics and its setting, or not stressing how important it is for players to have a shared sense of place as a result.
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Jan 20, 2020 08:36
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Yeah, I think Blades does explain itself a lot better than most games; there's just a lot of internalised D&D out there. Most people don't learn D&D from the book, remember; most people get taught it by friends. But, yeah, blades SUPER likes to have a map, even if it's just a sketch. Having the information needed to play the game in front of people is more important in Blades than most games, IMO.
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Jan 20, 2020 21:20
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WhiskeyWhiskers fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Jan 21, 2020 |
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Jan 21, 2020 02:51
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Ran copperhead county last night. Lovely setting.
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Jan 27, 2020 04:17
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I'm running a CC campaign myself (when the lazy players deign to show up.) What is your crew up to?
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Jan 27, 2020 12:18
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Freudian slippers posted:I'm running a CC campaign myself (when the lazy players deign to show up.) What is your crew up to? Knocked over a Rodríguez Brothers stash house to sell drugs to motorcycle gang. This was their compromise after their attempt to sell fake pills was very quickly found out. Their small time rivals are decimated. Unfortunately, dropping bodies has consequences, even with a dirty cop on the payroll, so they decided to get someone’s unremarkable son elected to local city council. It was a successful project, thanks to gladhanding and a whiskey party. At this rate, Michelangelo is theirs, and tier 1 might not be far away. But Copperhead is a lot bigger than Michelangelo....
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Jan 28, 2020 06:52
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Golden Bee posted:The Abernathys are putting in work! Cool! The Dogs of War MC started their career (after being kicked out of the Heathens MC), by robbing a liquor store. They've now set up shop in Slayton, where they've teamed up with Local 77 against O&G Resources. The Crew was just "recruited" by Buck Pettimore to find out who killed his father, but may end up playing both sides against the middle here... Edit: I have a question about the regular Blades setting. As I understand it, moving beyond the city walls is quite dangerous (ghosts, etc). There are some exceptions, like trains and Leviathan hunters, which probably have some sort of anti-ghost technology. What I don't understand, is how the Imperium managed to wage war on Skovland (extremely portable anti-ghost fields?) and how refugees from Skovland made it to Doskvol. Can anyone explain this to me? Freudian slippers fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Jan 28, 2020 |
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Jan 28, 2020 19:30
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Freudian slippers posted:Edit: I have a question about the regular Blades setting. As I understand it, moving beyond the city walls is quite dangerous (ghosts, etc). There are some exceptions, like trains and Leviathan hunters, which probably have some sort of anti-ghost technology. What I don't understand, is how the Imperium managed to wage war on Skovland (extremely portable anti-ghost fields?) and how refugees from Skovland made it to Doskvol. Can anyone explain this to me? By "anti-ghost technology" you mean "some poor slob riding on top of the train with a ghost-pokin' stick." But really, I think the answer is twofold--first, if you look at the map of the Shattered Isles, it's a pretty straight sea shot from Doskvol to any of the cities on Skovland. Sea travel is... well, I hesitate to use the word "safe" to describe anything in the Blades in the Dark world, but certainly the horrible monstrosities in the sea don't seem to care all that much about humans in boats crossing the surface. So you can probably assume that "war" looks an awful lot like "sail an armada into the enemy harbor and throw bodies at the beach until you can establish a landing zone inside the ghost fence" more than big protracted land battles. As for the refugees reaching Doskvol, well... without knowing the number of refugees who fled Skovland vs. the number actually living in Doskvol, it's hard to say exactly, but I think it's fair to assume that lots of refugees just didn't make it.And the second part: Blades in the Dark, p. 308 posted:Don’t expect scientific realism here.
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Jan 29, 2020 09:36
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Ocean going ships have their own lightning barriers and leviathans congregate in specific difficult to locate places. Presumably some of the refugees who came to Doskvol from Skovland are indentured workers whose travel was sponsored by their employer.
WhiskeyWhiskers fucked around with this message at 10:47 on Jan 29, 2020 |
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Jan 29, 2020 10:44
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Anti-Ghost techniques are not limited to just science and electroplasm too; I think the book mentions a nomadic tribe in the deathlands with ghost-eating horses at the very least, so I'd say there a lot of room for folk-lore based protections.
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Jan 29, 2020 14:54
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Thanks. The reason I ask, is that I'm envisioning a character who fled from Skovland during the war and spent some time in refugee camps on the way to Doskvol. I'd like to find a way to make that work with the setting. Maybe Skovland itself wasn't that plagued with ghosts and setting foot outside the city wasn't that dangerous?
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Jan 29, 2020 15:00
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The game is explicitly open about letting the players decide the specifics of the world. On the map of the city, for example, each square could be one building, or one city block. The deathlands can be as dangerous as you want them to be, or maybe other places aren't AS bad as around Doskvol. I think the important thing is to make sure that it is bad enough that the players can't simply avoid the consequences of their actions by leaving the city and hiding out. When I had the players leave the city on a trip to a small research outpost I ended up running the journey there through the deathlands as a score unto itself, I wanted it to be that bad out there. But other games maybe it is simply bad enough that not everyone can go out all willynilly. Maybe your refugee camps were small enough that they didn't attract ghosts very quickly, or maybe there was some secrete techniques that Refugee Smugglers had and the players can investigate / flashback to getting, or maybe. . . etc etc etc
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Jan 29, 2020 15:28
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There's also some writing on the deathlands scavengers who go outside without the benefit of lightning whatevers. If I remember right it kind of implies or states that scavengers just kind of... Suck it up. They have protective equipment but it sounds like being a scavenger isn't about whether or not you get possessed but when you get possessed. It's gonna happen and I guess they just deal with sometimes a ghost is gonna jump you. I think refugees might just end up toughing it out. Restrain people who end up possessed, and drink heavily to fight the stress.
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Jan 29, 2020 15:39
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