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Blisster posted:Would Band of Blades work ok for a campaign about a travelling merchant caravan? I have been obsessed with the Ultraviolet Grasslands setting recently, but also want to try out Forged in the Dark as a system. Is there a fitd game that could be adapted to run UVG with a bunch of overland travel and some dungeon crawling on the side? I don't think it would make sense to use Band of Blades for this. Seems to be it's easier to just run regular BitD as the 'Smugglers' crew type and adjust and tweak the special abilities as necessary.
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Jun 21, 2022 05:28
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| # ? May 18, 2024 00:09 |
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https://nitter.net/_sulcata/status/1526795214051893249#m
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Jun 21, 2022 19:09
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Perfect.
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Jun 22, 2022 01:42
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FrozenGoldfishGod posted:the heaviest rewrites were basically reworking the Whisper into the Correspondent (as in, "one who studies/uses the Correspondence, albeit badly") Do you remember what action covered supernatural bullshit? There's all sorts of other weird skills and disciplines available to FL characters who study Things Man Was Not Meant To Know: Glasswork for understanding dreams and mirrors and why they're so weird in the setting; Mithridacy for sowing confusion and deceit through words that are technically true; Kataleptic Toxicology for making use use of poisons and weird Neath substances, etc. etc. All of these could be available to crew members willing to risk their hair catching fire or worse, but Attune doesn't fit, and Esoterica doesn't have a good verb form. I like the idea of the Whisper being called the Fox. For mysterious reasons, there are no foxes anywhere in London.
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Jun 22, 2022 22:45
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Blisster posted:Would Band of Blades work ok for a campaign about a travelling merchant caravan? I have been obsessed with the Ultraviolet Grasslands setting recently, but also want to try out Forged in the Dark as a system. Is there a fitd game that could be adapted to run UVG with a bunch of overland travel and some dungeon crawling on the side? UVG's author is pretty close to releasing the full version of his OSR system. The current version is content complete. https://twitter.com/stratometaship/status/1538777086457810944 If you want a system for UVG, I'd wait for that.
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Jun 22, 2022 23:49
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I couldn’t host my session tonight because my internet went out, but I did make another newspaper that I’m super proud of and want to share. Most of the stories are either something the players have done or closely related. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/951708354772877352/989269608496246874/The_Doskvol_Echo_-_Kalivet_56_847.pdf
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Jun 23, 2022 05:28
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Captain Walker posted:Do you remember what action covered supernatural bullshit? There's all sorts of other weird skills and disciplines available to FL characters who study Things Man Was Not Meant To Know: Glasswork for understanding dreams and mirrors and why they're so weird in the setting; Mithridacy for sowing confusion and deceit through words that are technically true; Kataleptic Toxicology for making use use of poisons and weird Neath substances, etc. etc. All of these could be available to crew members willing to risk their hair catching fire or worse, but Attune doesn't fit, and Esoterica doesn't have a good verb form. I'm not exactly an expert on Fallen London's endgame skills, but things like toxicology feel less like individual skills and more like the Leech moves that let you use craft specific things better. Maybe make some custom moves similar to the Ghost __ cycle to represent the weird practical uses of Glasswork. The point is, there's a lot of ways to represent supernatural weirdness in Blades beyond what is and isn't a skill. (And really, a lot of supernatural stuff probably shouldn't be a skill. Attune's a basic skill because everyone can try to contact the other side and do a seance and etc, or can try to work with horrible burning words in the Correspondence version used here. Not everyone can make advanced poisons, or attempt the more complicated uses of dreams and mirrors, or lie in a way that's unique enough to justify its own stat in the game, so they should take a different approach.) (Okay, in writing that I realized the basic dream/mirror/etc stuff is also universal enough to work as a basic skill, but it doesn't feel broad enough that you couldn't fit that and Correspondence into Attune as it currently stands.) Lurks With Wolves fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Jun 23, 2022 |
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Jun 23, 2022 14:36
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Can you play as one of the rats with guns?
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Jun 23, 2022 15:42
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Anime Store Adventure posted:I couldn’t host my session tonight because my internet went out, but I did make another newspaper that I’m super proud of and want to share. Most of the stories are either something the players have done or closely related. This is awesome.
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Jun 23, 2022 23:53
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Ichabod Sexbeast posted:Can you play as one of the rats with guns? We had a Rattus Faber in the gang, yes.
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Jun 24, 2022 09:50
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Lurks With Wolves posted:I'm not exactly an expert on Fallen London's endgame skills, but things like toxicology feel less like individual skills and more like the Leech moves that let you use craft specific things better. The more I think about it, the more it seems like these are abilities a PC would acquire in-fiction once the crew is of a high enough Tier to meet the kind of people who know them. Just having the ability would give PCs new ways of using actions and GMs new story hooks or plot points. "One of your Tomb-Colonist friends eventually consents to tell you of a Zealous Chemist, lately arrived from Venderbight. She scoffs at the notion of being a mere student of toxins; she is an enthusiast, she boasts giddily, in the same fashion that His Amused Lordship is a wine enthusiast." "The Miserly Landlord trusts no one near his riches, so the room is secured by many locks and no guards. A precise mixture of prisoner's honey and Darkdrop Coffee could let you slip past it in a brief honey-dream and emerge on the other side. An imprecise mixture could cause you to emerge too far away, or not soon enough, or not at all." "Abominable Salts stay in the body a long time, making large quantities like this inefficient for murder but singularly effective for torture. The Oenophilic Informant died slowly and painfully, then recovered and died again at least twice before you arrived. Someone went to great lengths to ensure they didn't share this particular information." FrozenGoldfishGod posted:We had a Rattus Faber in the gang, yes. I love those little bastards, almost as much as I love the fact that in-world they are informally called LBs which appears to stand for "little bastards" Captain Walker fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Jun 24, 2022 |
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Jun 24, 2022 20:19
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I've been in a couple Blades games, and the last one we ran (S&V) we kind of all agreed we were missing having crunchy tactical combat to engage in, so we were thinking about going to PF2e. Then we found out about Icon, the final fantasy/ghibli anime rpg by the guys who made Lancer and Kill Six Billion Demons. It is a FitD with a built in crunchy tactical combat system, and if you like seeing a novel approach to Forged games, it's free in playtest right now, I recommend it. Also, I forgot who recommended Nocturne to me a long long time ago in this very thread, but I ended up buying it and am putting together the structure of a Iain M Banks campaign right now.
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Jun 25, 2022 01:37
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spider bethlehem posted:Then we found out about Icon, the final fantasy/ghibli anime rpg by the guys who made Lancer and Kill Six Billion Demons. It is a FitD with a built in crunchy tactical combat system, and if you like seeing a novel approach to Forged games, it's free in playtest right now, I recommend it. I'll save the rest of you some google searches: "the guys who made Lancer" are called Massif Press, and their current Icon playtest is free on itch.io
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Jun 25, 2022 06:28
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So my current Scum and Villainy game ran into a hiccup last night that kinda rubbed on a few things we need to evaluate. Towards the end of the session a crooked security chief at a station the crew was running a scam in made it clear he was going to send in his boys to crack heads at the event the group was going to put on since he wasn't getting the pay-off he wanted. This was due to ramping complications/partial successes paired with a failed desperate roll. I was expecting the result to be resisted. The first stumble is a player pointed out that we've had 3 scores where cops were jackbooted thugs, corrupt and quick to violence. They felt the escalations made sense narratively, but touched too close to RL unpleasantness for them so wasn't fun. For the record none of these scores were in a row and security forces were only the primary antagonist in one of those scores. So we had a discussion at the table to try and suss out if this was more of a yellow card or red card thing. I don't think that part was mishandled by anyone at the table. Really the conversation there was more about reassuring the player they can and should speak up if games ever make them feel bad or hit too close to home, and we can exclude elements using red card/yellow card or can discuss curtains and veils again next session. To help ease that we negotiated a less violent reprisal from the corrupt official, who still is going to disrupt the event. The actual bigger problem I noticed is I have 2 very risk adverse players, who specifically want the illusion of high risk/high reward, but never want there to be actual risk. They're both playing scoundrels and have taken the abilities that let them stack the deck on desperate rolls. The failed roll was not only from one of them, but they traded position for effect, so it was 100% self inflicted. The one who rolled isn't happy because they feel forced to resist the roll and risk a 1 in 6 chance of traumaing out -after they spent the session buying extra dice for bigger pools. Coolness Averted fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Jul 13, 2022 |
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Jul 13, 2022 14:50
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Coolness Averted posted:The actual bigger problem I noticed is I have 2 very risk adverse players, who specifically want the illusion of high risk/high reward, but never want there to be actual risk. They're both playing scoundrels and have taken the abilities that let them stack the deck on desperate rolls. I think blades reaaallly struggles if people are risk-averse. The fun of the game is in the consequences and the things coming from the consequences. If you're not able to roll with that kind of thing, they'd probably be more up for a different kind of game. (though honestly even in things like gurps i find risk-averse players to be a chore to try to DM for).
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Jul 13, 2022 15:08
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Yeah, there's a definitive RPG player sub-culture around 'Never fail', which is anathema to the whole Blades schtick. Some D&D groups never fail anything more than the occasional Attack roll, and even that is somehow a major problem for them.
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Jul 14, 2022 02:17
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At base, BITD reinforces a lot of bad habits of risk averse players. I say this as a very risk averse player in pretty much all games (I tend to prioritize defenses and reliability in pretty much all games I play). BITD sets up a kind of basic core motivation for all characters: gain 40 stash before you gain 4 trauma. You can get away with avoiding most consequences by spending stress, but this means that spending stress can be trading a short-term gain against your long-term goals, and if you're risk averse you don't know 1) what the rest of the heist might need in terms of stress and 2) how you'll roll when you get to downtime. Yes I do understand that if you're not a risk-averse player this is all moon-logic because the whole fun of it is in getting those whacky consequences, but at least for me its a game-design sword of damocles that takes the appeal off of taking on risky goals. On the other hand one of the guys I play with pretty much always tries to game a game's XP system which in BITD has been pretty hilarious as he will very overtly try to trauma out on the first session in order to gain an XP trigger. I like the system but it does have some flaws for the psychology of the table I play at. Part of why I like Wicked Ones so much is that it sands off a lot of the stuff that I don't like, mostly by making it so the 'trauma' is less of like a long-term planning thing and more of a short-term issue.
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Jul 14, 2022 05:05
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As the man said*, treat your Blades PCs like stolen cars. By extension, be willing to source another when your current one crashes in the river or get hauled off by the Bluecoats or is totaled by a lightning rail. *I don't remember which man said this
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Jul 14, 2022 05:12
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The original design was much more focused on the crew-as-character concept and pushed PCs as being much more disposable but people really weren't ready for that so it shifted to a more traditional style. I encourage people to play aggressive and lean back into that. You pull off big cool stuff or crash and burn fast, either way the game progresses quickly and feels great.
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Jul 14, 2022 22:35
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We have played around 15 sessions, and my character is yet to be wounded, have trauma or roll less than one 6er on any roll that matters. So his unhinged mind have convinced him that he's practically immortal and can do anything. "Worried that the ghost fence will come down? Psh, I'll round up the ghosts and bottle them. Yes all of them, in one bottle. What?"
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Jul 15, 2022 01:03
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Uh, are you making you pools correctly? Because the probability curve of FitD is not that generous. 15 sessions never failing a roll is Powerball winning odds. Hell, 15 *rolls* without a non-6 result is extremely unlikely.
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Jul 15, 2022 02:12
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Bottom Liner posted:Uh, are you making you pools correctly? Because the probability curve of FitD is not that generous. 15 sessions never failing a roll is Powerball winning odds. I have obviously failed whatever rolls, but for the plot-centric rolls that matter I almost always somehow get at least 1 6er, from a pool of 3 sometimes 4.
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Jul 15, 2022 11:06
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Lima posted:I have obviously failed whatever rolls, but for the plot-centric rolls that matter I almost always somehow get at least 1 6er, from a pool of 3 sometimes 4. In the first Blades game I played we had a reckless character who basically never faced serious consequences for their actions, for a similar reason, they also tended to push for desperate great rolls. Like there were obviously failures, but none of those really clutch rolls they made. Meanwhile my meticulous spider tended to get a serious injury in almost every combat. Which also was kind of fitting because he was an old man. Ironically I think part of the problem in the game I'm running is there's a bit of 'monkey see, monkey do' where one of risk adverse players saw how often the other game had clutch position trades for desperate/great. He also has some confirmation bias and has grumbled about the consequences for desperate/great failures being catastrophic and potentially putting scores at risk or having long term impacts. That whining doesn't really move me, because the result of the very first failed desperate roll in that first game was my character taking a level 4 harm. Like that's the whole definition of a desperate failure, and there's still resistance rolls. I especially don't have sympathy for it when someone trades position. Like my dude, you should be shifting everything to controlled limited if you're scared of bad stuff not desperate great to farm exp and because you wanna win harder.
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Jul 15, 2022 19:06
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I'm putting together a game of Wicked Ones and was wondering if there's any quick reference documents that I can hand my players to help them remember general mechanics and flow. The character sheets do some of that work, but I wanted to see if there was anything more before I made one myself.
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Jul 18, 2022 02:28
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Chakan posted:I'm putting together a game of Wicked Ones and was wondering if there's any quick reference documents that I can hand my players to help them remember general mechanics and flow. The character sheets do some of that work, but I wanted to see if there was anything more before I made one myself. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/352377/Wicked-Ones-Rules-Reference-Sheets this work?
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Jul 18, 2022 02:41
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That works perfectly, thanks!
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Jul 18, 2022 03:18
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I had a cool enough moment tonight that I want to commission at least a sketch of what happened so I can throw it in one of my in-character newspapers that I’ve shared here. One of my players, in an attempt to show Crime and Corruption on the part of the Big Bad, snapped a photo but used his Double Barrel Shotgun as the flash, all while another character shot a comically large hat off of one of the thugs. Can anyone help me a solid way to find an artist? This is a thing I’ve 100% never explored but know exists. I don’t want to pay out the nose for some Mona Lisa, I just need something that can vaguely pass for a relatively close Old Timey photo because my players would absolutely love to capture that moment. I’m looking to spend under $100? That said I have no idea what is a fair price for what I’m asking. It’s incredibly daunting when you don’t know what you’re really asking for. I tried googling it but I just got Fiver results to draw my fursona. :/
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Jul 28, 2022 07:51
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Try CC, the daily drawing thread has some extremely talented artists
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Jul 28, 2022 08:36
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Dalle (full version) is an incredible tool for this kind of thing if you can access it.
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Jul 28, 2022 14:51
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Anyone else familiar/experienced with the Charge RPG? https://fari.games/en/games/fari-rpgs/charge-rpg/ It's strongly based on Blades in the Dark, just with a couple of the basics adjusted like changing stress to 'momentum' that you build and then spend, and changing harm/consequences. You could call it FitD with some Fate stuffed into it. It seems nice basically as a hacker's guide to building a FitD game. Thinking of using it myself if I ever get around to writing a game for my own specific ideas. I'm almost slightly mad at how much is... pre-done in terms of effective mechanics.
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Aug 31, 2022 13:17
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Yep it’s very good. They also just released Dash which is even more streamlined but still incredibly effective (and great for teaching or one shots) https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/wygpep/dash_a_free_generic_and_condensed_rpg_based_on/
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Aug 31, 2022 17:14
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Don't fuckin use dalle instead of paying an artist, do not listen to that guy. I'd definitely look into the CC threads that were mentioned.
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Aug 31, 2022 21:42
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I found an artist through CC and he got me an awesome picture for a super reasonable price and turned it around quickly. It rules, my players loved it.
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Aug 31, 2022 21:56
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There is no moral imperative to hire an artist any more than there is to hire a mechanic to change your oil if you can just do it yourself. I've been a professional artist for 15 years and will happily recommend someone using these new tools to make art they otherwise couldn't, especially for personal use. It's no different than any number of things technology has enabled in the past few decades like music production, digital photography, etc. This isn't the place to debate it and doing so will stop exactly 0 progress on that front anyways.
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Aug 31, 2022 22:07
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Anime Store Adventure posted:I found an artist through CC and he got me an awesome picture for a super reasonable price and turned it around quickly. It rules, my players loved it. You're right, this does rule and so do you for celebrating your players' greatest moments. Can't get that poo poo on dalle
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Sep 2, 2022 04:20
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Having progressed much further in Fallen London, I can confidently say that there is plenty of narrative space for Blades in the Neath. The majority of the game proper is open only to to Persons of Some Importance, so a crew would be defined largely by its status among the disrespectable and sinister factions of the city: smugglers, revolutionaries, devils, urchin-gangs, etc. The setting demands a few rules changes. Most of the esoteric arts function just fine as extensions of existing skills, available as veteran advances after some training with an expert (like the Iruvian sword arts and other advanced abilities). Mithridacy to Consort or Sway by telling the truth in a dishonest and opaque manner. Toxicology to Study or Tinker with weird substances like prisoner's honey or Cantigaster venom. Really weird stuff like Red Science or Shapeling Arts is beyond the grasp of a Blades crew. The two high level rules changes I would make: -No ghost field, so no Attune skill. When you Barter, you facilitate the exchange of services and secrets. You might find a buyer for contraband. You might try your hand at the Great Game. You could call in a favour from in high places (but Consort might be better). -You don't drop out of the score at maximum stress. Taking 3-harm or 4-harm at max stress means death or madness; you get better and take Trauma during downtime. Captain Walker fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Nov 12, 2022 |
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Nov 12, 2022 21:58
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Captain Walker posted:Having progressed much further in Fallen London, I can confidently say that there is plenty of narrative space for Blades in the Neath. The majority of the game proper is open only to to Persons of Some Importance, so a crew would be defined largely by its status among the disrespectable and sinister factions of the city: smugglers, revolutionaries, devils, urchin-gangs, etc. Instead of flat out removing attune you could use it a bit like Scum and Villainy does, and also have it double as intuition and communicating nonverbally or with things you can't normally.
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Nov 12, 2022 22:14
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Coolness Averted posted:Instead of flat out removing attune you could use it a bit like Scum and Villainy does, and also have it double as intuition and communicating nonverbally or with things you can't normally. The thing is the FL setting doesn't really have proper magic, or the Force, or a catch-all for supernatural phenomena. Weird stuff does happen in the Neath, a lot, but the weirdness comes from different sources. A newly discovered subspecies of rats can talk, but not for the same reason most cats can talk, or for the same reason that in the southeastern parts of the Unterzee all hats can talk. The closest thing is the Correspondence, a weird language closely associated with the Bazaar itself. It's not widely understood, in no small part because the symbols burn through the paper they're written on and the hair of those who study them. Like most of the weird sciences, I feel that use of the Correspondence is best covered by specialized uses of other actions, like Tinker (safely inscribe a surface with the Victorian gothic-horror equivalent of explosive runes) or Study (find the meaning of an unfamiliar symbol without losing your eyebrows). Certainly a Whisper (or whatever the analogous playbook is called) would have an option that makes the use of the Correspondence safer or more potent. Not both! Adding risk and reward is a core mechanic, after all, and I'm hoping to encourage players to use more stress and risk death more readily by emphasizing fatal harm or total madness is inconvenient, but seldom permanent.
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Nov 15, 2022 23:57
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Captain Walker posted:The thing is the FL setting doesn't really have proper magic, or the Force, or a catch-all for supernatural phenomena. Weird stuff does happen in the Neath, a lot, but the weirdness comes from different sources. A newly discovered subspecies of rats can talk, but not for the same reason most cats can talk, or for the same reason that in the southeastern parts of the Unterzee all hats can talk.
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Nov 16, 2022 00:20
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| # ? May 18, 2024 00:09 |
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I have finished my blades campaign and moved onto “mostly Scum and Villainy” with some changes to suit how my players enjoy the game, one of which was surrounding Attune. I didn’t personally want Space Magic, but the addition of nonverbal stuff is great, and we repurposed it into a sort of “Cool” stat akin to almost a “Luck” or “Hollywood Magic.” Stuff that might be a little too Extra, or might otherwise be a sort of generic fortune roll. It’s a little vague but so far players haven’t tried to abuse it and it works great. It might seem kind of useless without knowing the group but we get maybe one roll of it for a session and it excites everyone into wanting to burn resources to make it work. Our last one was a “Guy tries to cut off someone’s arm in such a way that it sends the weapon he’s wielding into an ally’s hands” - yeah, technically this could be like a Desperate scrap but taking it as “To really accomplish all that, you need a little something extra. That sounds like a Cool to me if you want that specific effect,” resonates well. I’m considering having a sort of “Cool Karma” system with it where you can temporarily gain or lose advantages with it - like if you blow a Cool move you absolutely cannot be effectively Cool for a bit - but so far I haven’t felt the need to codify this into any written mechanics.
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Nov 16, 2022 01:15
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