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Redundant posted:My crew ended up stealing evidence from the bluecoats to get a loyal fence and it all went mostly fine but some of the mystical stuff kind of eludes me with it. In the last session my whisper ended up isolated after succeeding in the heist and was looking for a way out. Since the crew has Ghost Echoes and the whisper has a spirit key I let them unlock a door to the echo of an old tenement building that had been burnt/knocked down in the past and hide out there after a survey roll and a desperate attune roll (the ghost field isn't to be toyed with lightly) but I worry I've made a rod for my own back. In a heist game being able to just disappear into thin air is a powerful thing. I mean, the ghost field isn't empty of its own dangers. Its like an alligator-infested sewer: sure, you can use it to give the cops/guards the slip. But you need to be careful you don't get your butt bit off. Or cross paths with a nasty revenant/whisper annoyed you're messing up their turf, in this specific case.
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Jul 6, 2020 23:58
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Redundant posted:My crew ended up stealing evidence from the bluecoats to get a loyal fence and it all went mostly fine but some of the mystical stuff kind of eludes me with it. In the last session my whisper ended up isolated after succeeding in the heist and was looking for a way out. Since the crew has Ghost Echoes and the whisper has a spirit key I let them unlock a door to the echo of an old tenement building that had been burnt/knocked down in the past and hide out there after a survey roll and a desperate attune roll (the ghost field isn't to be toyed with lightly) but I worry I've made a rod for my own back. In a heist game being able to just disappear into thin air is a powerful thing. I used the "ghost of an old building that had burned down" thing a couple of sessions ago and had a similar worry -- but I think you might be underestimating how much even one desperate attune roll could hurt the players. You're well within your rights to give the players a level three harm like "possessed" for even a 4-5 result on a desperate roll. It takes a while to get the balance of risk right in Blades (I'm definitely not all the way there yet) but the players have a lot of tools to mitigate risk and deal with damage so you should feel free to use risk and damage somewhat freely. Like last session my players were debating two plans, one of which required one roll and one which required two, and I added "and rolling less if you can is always a good idea." Remind them and yourselves that rolls, even something like a controlled/great, is a moment of dramatic tension with real stakes. That should hopefully mitigate any arcane fuckery you're worried about -- and then if it does derail some consequence of yours it's because the PCs earned it.
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Jul 7, 2020 16:53
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And, on the other hand, the crew and character heavily invested resources into being able to do that. It's fine if they can do cool things, especially if they're cool things you're already requiring two rolls (one of which is desperate!) for. That's the sort of required rolling that could have seen them exfiltrate from the situation without a crew ability involved.
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Jul 7, 2020 16:53
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I gave the whisper a level 3 harm which they used armour and then resisted down to level 1 and my logic was that they could've used something like Lurk to just run/climb away but they were encumbered and that's less fun. I have also been playing a little bit fast and loose with recovering from level 1 harm because I don't want them to be hungover for multiple sessions because they keep stubbing their toe. If they take a recover action then I am just clearing level 1 harm along with progressing higher tier injuries. Our leech is stepping up to become the doctor though so I might leave them with a bit more work to do as we progress. I also suffered from some name blindness in the last session and gave an Inspector the same surname as the Bluecoat commander. My players have asked if they're related (drat their observant nature!) and whilst I don't think that fits the Inspectors well I might roll with it any way. Clelland is a corrupt and powerful man after all...
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Jul 7, 2020 17:49
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You better believe that if you're trying to dimensionally transfer into the ghost of a building that burned down, rolling anything less than a 6 is going to dump you into the fire that burned it down.
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Jul 7, 2020 21:26
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I had a quick question, but do folks think it would be possible/ good to make a blades in the dark that didn't have the "constant doom is all around" aspects? Like you still have the lightning tech and the ghosts, but when you die no-one knows what happens, and there are signs that life is returning to certain places. I just find myself interested in general skullduggery but I find the sheer bleakness of "you die, the world is hosed and getting worse" not especially appealing at this point in time. Would it undercut the themes too much, or would it be appropriate?
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Jul 7, 2020 21:31
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The ghost apocalypse stuff is completely incidental to anything in Blades, except that it provides a handy excuse why "just run away to another city" isn't an option for escaping the consequences of your fuckups. Sparkcraft is completely divorced from ghost stuff, and you could pretty easily reflavour Whispers to being about spirits or whatever instead. If you can find an alternate excuse for why outside the city is incredibly hard to access and survive in, go hog wild.
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Jul 7, 2020 21:36
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I mean I do like the idea that, if a series of heists goes really badly wrong up and running might be an idea. It'd just take time to prep the next city and get set up there. Would, say, have it so that it goes through phases of extreme growth and for the last decade or so the exterior portions of the dusk have been "lightly" irradiated with plants that grow through your foot and other weirdness? I do like the dome city approach and the general weirdness of the setting, but I always wanted to have the ectoplasm as like "secret government evil" like harvesting people to power things is seen as horrible, and most folks just use electricity like normal. Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Jul 7, 2020 |
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Jul 7, 2020 21:41
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The whole point of the Deathlands is that you can't get out or run if you hosed up, and every single inch of Duskwall is already claimed by someone else because it's been there for centuries and it's literally impossible to expand it, which means you're going to have to fight other factions and steal their poo poo if you want to expand your territory. Again, you can strip everything about ghosts out as long as you can justify the above. Also most plasm is made from leviathan blood, not ghosts. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Jul 7, 2020 |
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Jul 7, 2020 22:34
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Wait I'm getting it confused with "melting ghosts down in the electricity" thing.
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Jul 7, 2020 22:44
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Lemon-Lime posted:The ghost apocalypse stuff is completely incidental to anything in Blades, except that it provides a handy excuse why "just run away to another city" isn't an option for escaping the consequences of your fuckups. Sparkcraft is completely divorced from ghost stuff, and you could pretty easily reflavour Whispers to being about spirits or whatever instead. I'll raise one exception to this. The ghost apocalypse provides a reason that killing is an inherently noisy action so playing throatcutters is instantly bad.
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Jul 8, 2020 00:34
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Yeah, when I play Blades I pretty much ignore the setting but play the rules pretty much as written. Things are so narrative just changing the item names or saying heat just happens when people die without a supernatural reason is easy as pie. I mean, the ghosts don't just squeel to the cops. The setting is just dishonored with an electric fence.
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Jul 8, 2020 00:58
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Josef bugman posted:I had a quick question, but do folks think it would be possible/ good to make a blades in the dark that didn't have the "constant doom is all around" aspects? Like you still have the lightning tech and the ghosts, but when you die no-one knows what happens, and there are signs that life is returning to certain places. It really wouldn't be too hard to do with a little buy-in from your players. The reason they don't run away from the law is just that they're street rats and this is the only home they know. Why is murder noisy? The inspectors are more competent. But if they can clean up a crime scene they might be able to miss out on that 2 heat. The most difficulty you'll have is in coming up with a skill that involves either willpower or the ability to influence something socially to replace attune, because you'll still need the same amount of skills in resolve.
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Jul 8, 2020 01:45
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neonchameleon posted:I'll raise one exception to this. The ghost apocalypse provides a reason that killing is an inherently noisy action so playing throatcutters is instantly bad. You can still have the Spirit Wardens and crows without having the Deathlands etc., honestly.
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Jul 8, 2020 08:39
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Or just have it that murder always leaves a ghost. If you die of old age/ a surfeit of lampreys you are fine, but almost no matter what a violent death leaves a ghost.
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Jul 8, 2020 10:53
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I think the most important part that the ghost apocalypse setting adds to the mechanics and themes of the game is the "Duskwall is old and every inch of it is claimed by powerful entrenched forces." The reason not to run away to another setting adds something too but, IMO, not as much as the first bit - after all if the players start their crew over in a new city they'll be giving up a lot of their crew turf, advances, etc. But the sense that to get anything you're going to have to gently caress someone else over is pretty tied into the themes. You can absolutely do that without the doom and gloom that Blades trades in. But also like, unless your players are incredibly serious and committed keep in mind that even playing in Duskwall-as-written you'll probably be doing more stupid in-jokes and hilariously terrible plans and usual PC bullshit and less grim murder sadness.
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Jul 9, 2020 05:19
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:It really wouldn't be too hard to do with a little buy-in from your players. The reason they don't run away from the law is just that they're street rats and this is the only home they know. Why is murder noisy? The inspectors are more competent. But if they can clean up a crime scene they might be able to miss out on that 2 heat. You could play Attune as just Intuition and let them roll it as a more wishy-washy version of Survey or Study. It'll be a weak skill but that's going to be true once you take away all the ghost-related special abilities regardless.
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Jul 9, 2020 06:23
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Blades as a system is great for playing as 'Dudes in a place', like, only one of my three blades games has actually taken place in duskvol. Its so flexible you can pretty much just word replace most of the narrative layer and change the gamefeel meaningfully with barely any work. So you could totally do 'blades but no ghosts' I think. Hell the current game I'm involved in takes place in an alternative history version of the American sixties and all the ghost poo poo has been replaced by demon poo poo. Literally no overarching magical poo poo holds our crew to the city, except the game, baby, you can't just abandon a good thing. If you leave the crew your literally leaving a lucrative assassination career and all your unstashed cash and influence on the table mid stream. Not only ceasing to be a player character but a playa at all. The whole crew could move out tomorrow but we'd be leaving our contacts, our hold and the work behind. Its not narratively satisfying so we're not gonna do it regardless. Motherfucker fucked around with this message at 09:36 on Jul 10, 2020 |
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Jul 10, 2020 09:30
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I quite like the spooky and serious aspect of the city because it makes the ludicrous and outlandish stuff my crew gets up to stand out even more so it's funnier for us. To quote Bob Ross "you can't have light without (grim) dark". I can see how it's not for everyone though and the Blades system seems flexible enough to do whatever you want with it. Chop and change whatever you don't like as much as you'd like and it seems like the system will bounce back with a satisfying story still. I'm debating a few other settings for some friends who are interested but not totally convinced by the theme.
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Jul 10, 2020 10:46
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Mhm, the basic feature of "gangs and individuals in them" works really well, and I think could probably be adapted for a whole load more. I think it is why we might end up seeing more BitD hacks over AW hacks.
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Jul 10, 2020 12:19
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If anyone's interested, I've recklessly started a Blades in the Dark-roughly-adapted CYOA in the Game Room! I have no idea if people are going to be on board with it, but I think it could be kinda fun, so please stop by if you'd like.
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Jul 13, 2020 08:56
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Has anyone been running Band of Blades? I've got a query about the rewards from the Capture a Wardstone special mission; hwo long does the 'Pressure doesn't increase' benefit last for?
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Jul 26, 2020 01:55
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Angrymog posted:I've got a query about the rewards from the Capture a Wardstone special mission; hwo long does the 'Pressure doesn't increase' benefit last for? Just that mission, is how I would run it.
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Jul 26, 2020 08:45
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grobbo posted:If anyone's interested, I've recklessly started a Blades in the Dark-roughly-adapted CYOA in the Game Room! Yeah, you should all come and join in the misfortunes of Fair Winds Trading Company. Grobbo is doing a killer job with the write-ups!
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Jul 28, 2020 14:05
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My Whisper has decided that he wants his ritual to be something that can give people face blindness to reduce heat on the crew. I am basically stealing the example from the book right now and am going to say that the prep is making a cigarette but can't decide whether I want it to be a roll to see if it is effective (more stress means more dice to roll) or just use the time frame of how long the effect lasts for to be the stress cost for the ritual. I don't really want them to be able to keep the heat too low since that is part of the fun so again I feel like this is something that I will have to tweak as we go (wouldn't be the first time) but if anyone has any general ritual advice I'd be happy to hear it.
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Jul 28, 2020 19:00
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Redundant posted:making a cigarette Should roll to roll imo
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Jul 30, 2020 09:11
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Sounds like Finesse to me, but I could see tinker too. Oh you've rolled a 1? You might as well eat that stuff because you certainly can't smoke it anymore.
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Jul 30, 2020 16:34
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 Ran my first game of BitD last night, and it was a lot of fun! My players made some fun characters and we did a simple score of sabotaging an Iruvian Sword Fighting Exhibition to appease Bazso. I used the score to explain some of the mechanics along the way, and I could feel the players get more comfortable thinking outside the box when it came to actions and teamwork. The features in Roll20 are a godsend for doing this remotely, although some of them have a weird thing where the double up on item and abilities. Really looking forward to playing again and giving them more options of score to pick.
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Aug 1, 2020 18:00
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Ran our second session and I walked away with a question I probably should have sought the answer to first. These first two sessions have been my attempt at tutorializing the game, giving them more scripted (but not overly so) situations to navigate the way Blades is different from Savage Worlds or D&D. This session I wanted them to expand their territory and get a better understanding of how the crew sheet feeds into the players' options and rewards. I expected it to be super quick, a simple four clock to roll a few actions and flesh out their characters but, in my opinion, the crew kept overthinking the situation and trying to turn what I imagined as a simple assault into a stealth mission. And I know that I should let the characters drive the story but wanted to emphasize that this wasn't a score that could be solved non-violently which may have been my mistake. Things took longer than expected and I had hoped to at least get started on a more detailed mission but didn't get the chance. Anyway, the real question I wanted to ask was how does your group handle the turf/territory expansion? Do you make them as elaborate as any other score, or do you truncate them and spend more focus on "bigger picture" scores? The way I've been handling scores is just to jot down some high level notes and improvise the rest, but I did even less with the territory expansion ideas that I expected them to pick, which they deftly avoided. I think that led to a less satisfying session than the first one, but next session I will pivot back to more planned scores that are designed to be more than a four clock.
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Aug 9, 2020 17:41
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Scores or long term projects usually. I think youre right that you made the wrong choice in thinking that turf can never be acquired without violence, it's specifically that someone already owns it and you have to be able to take it from them somehow. If the players can figure out a way to do that non-violently that makes sense, and they can roll well enough, I'd give it to them. You do control positioning and effect though, so if you thought a stealthy approach was just not a viable solution at all, limiting the effect is always the easiest way to announce to players they should try a different approach. (Or brute force it regardless)
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Aug 9, 2020 20:24
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LawfulWaffle posted:Ran our second session and I walked away with a question I probably should have sought the answer to first. These first two sessions have been my attempt at tutorializing the game, giving them more scripted (but not overly so) situations to navigate the way Blades is different from Savage Worlds or D&D. This session I wanted them to expand their territory and get a better understanding of how the crew sheet feeds into the players' options and rewards. I expected it to be super quick, a simple four clock to roll a few actions and flesh out their characters but, in my opinion, the crew kept overthinking the situation and trying to turn what I imagined as a simple assault into a stealth mission. And I know that I should let the characters drive the story but wanted to emphasize that this wasn't a score that could be solved non-violently which may have been my mistake. Things took longer than expected and I had hoped to at least get started on a more detailed mission but didn't get the chance. If you want to portray something as "an assault on the last hardpoint in this territory" led up to by various choices in other missions that weakened the other gang, well, the difference between an assault score and a stealth score is that assault needs a point of attack and stealth needs a point of inflitration. If it's really the last hardpoint in the territory, you can push back with "it's the last hardpoint in the territory. They're all crammed in there and paranoid as all getout. There is no obvious infiltration point. What are you planning to do with stealth?" And, I mean, if they have a really good idea for a risky as hell score that involves precision infiltration to hang up a giant "You are not safe here. Love and kisses, the PCs" banner in some central gathering point and send everyone running, that's amazing and also like 95% desperate positions but if that's your bag then go for it buddy.
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Aug 9, 2020 23:13
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LawfulWaffle posted:Anyway, the real question I wanted to ask was how does your group handle the turf/territory expansion? Do you make them as elaborate as any other score, or do you truncate them and spend more focus on "bigger picture" scores? The way I've been handling scores is just to jot down some high level notes and improvise the rest, but I did even less with the territory expansion ideas that I expected them to pick, which they deftly avoided. I think that led to a less satisfying session than the first one, but next session I will pivot back to more planned scores that are designed to be more than a four clock. The devils bargains in this game have made me realise what an awful enabler I am. "Oh no, sure you can definitely do that. How about I help out but with just a small catch. Nothing to worry about really, just a little clock we'll call something like.... I don't know.... ALL THE DEMONS  "
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Aug 10, 2020 00:12
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:You do control positioning and effect though, so if you thought a stealthy approach was just not a viable solution at all, limiting the effect is always the easiest way to announce to players they should try a different approach. (Or brute force it regardless) Ah, thanks, I didn't use this right. I definitely should have said "yeah, you can talk to the Gondoliers and try to get them to work with you, but without dealing with the Crows stationed outside their pub you won't have much effect in turning them into effective informants" then let them roll a limited effect
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Aug 10, 2020 13:25
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Another newbie question; when the players are creating their ship, can they choose an upgrade that isn't on the ship sheet - e.g. putting their weapons up by one then selecting particle cannons for the Stardancer, or during creations, are they limited to options printed on the sheet?
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Aug 17, 2020 02:49
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I've got a couple A Nocturne questions. Concerning armatures and war-shells, and scale values vs cost. The book says war-shells cost 5 Profit. Armature printing costs a base of 2 Profit plus Profit according to its scale value. It can be further adjusted by removing flaws and/or adding edges. What are the limitations, if any, of the scale of an armature? The one-to-one cost of increasing the scale seems like it will make it really easy to get high-scale armatures. I feel like I'm missing something about scale here. Isn't scale an expression of not just size, but power level too? What is the scale of a war-shell?
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Sep 29, 2020 15:32
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I have a general question. I want to do something Rogue Trader-y, and I think Scum and Villainy would probably work with sufficient reskinning. Does anyone have any thoughts in that regard, or have an alternate suggestion? I'd also like to figure out a way to include mech stuff, but I think I will probably just do that as go (very) loud option - the players flash back to hiding a suit of power armor inside the bank's monthly delivery of The Emperor's Own otter pops or something.
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Oct 5, 2020 00:25
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Your S&V/Lancer crossover campaign sounds great!
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Oct 5, 2020 02:37
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Haven't played it, but there's already a Rogue Trader Blades hack if you want to use it or just crib from it. https://thysane.itch.io/a-nocturne-play-test
WhiskeyWhiskers fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Oct 5, 2020 |
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Oct 5, 2020 03:09
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:Haven't played it, but there's already a Rogue Trader Blades hack if you want to use it or just crib from it. https://thysane.itch.io/a-nocturne-play-test This looks interesting! Thank you! Honestly, having played Lancer for about a year and enjoyed quite a few things about it, replacing its entire system for non-mech time with a Bladeslike would probably be a lot of fun.
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Oct 8, 2020 23:58
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spider bethlehem posted:This looks interesting! Thank you! I mean there is Beam Saber out there, which is just Blades in the Gundam.
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