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We're finally getting the version 7 update this weekend according to the Google Plus group
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Aug 8, 2016 21:46
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Jesus Christ that took long enough!
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Aug 8, 2016 21:53
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I dunno that I would wait to start a game at this point. The core rules aren't likely to change -- most of what's being worked on are setting details.
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Aug 8, 2016 22:00
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admanb posted:I dunno that I would wait to start a game at this point. The core rules aren't likely to change -- most of what's being worked on are setting details. I hope that's true. I'm not the guy I quoted from G+, but I just printed a ton of character sheets with character creation rules on the back.
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Aug 9, 2016 02:04
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He already said the rules were finalized. If there's any changes I'd expect minor tweaks there. At this point the work on the core book is related to layout, fluff writing, and graphics afaik. Plus some work on the stretch goal hacks/supplements he's directly involved in.
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Aug 9, 2016 12:14
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There's a new version of the PDF out to backers. It features some small changes to the classes, an overhaul to crews' hunting grounds (which I'm excited about, my group couldn't stand them as they were originally implemented), and a ton of lore/setting stuff. This is getting a lot closer to being a game I'd actually want to run a campaign with.
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Aug 15, 2016 12:04
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Yeah, this is the first PDF that shows it's pretty near completion other than some setting stuff (which this update added about 500%). There was a slight tweak I may have missed from v6 too, in that you can only start with a max of 2 dots in traits but can go up to 3 for advancements right out of the gate. Previously you couldn't go to 3 or 4 without the crew's mastery training, so that's a nice touch with advancement being on a bit more of a gradual curve until you want to hit 4 dots in a trait (which is a pretty huge end game goal/power spike anyway, rolling 4 dice for actions is almost assuredly always at least a mild success, with a lot of chances for critical successes and increased effects). I'm liking it more and more with these additions and for once the game is, in my opinion, in a fully playable state with the classes and crews completed and finalized and a good balance of how things work in the system. There's even some options for extra downtime on your own turf when starting out for the first few sessions and onward as you expand your turf, since only 2 downtime actions can be a little limiting if the players get unlucky and take some harm. I'm also excited because there's a blank playbook in here, and I might start working on a cyberpunk hack soon if I can run this and see how everything plays out.
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Aug 15, 2016 15:36
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I've flipped through v7, and it seems basically like what I'd expect from the end product (having played maybe 12 sessions at this point). It's cleaner, it seems fun, the health system is still a mess, and the magic looks roughly in-theme. That said, the magic rules are a bit troubling: first, there are a lot, and second, they seem powerful relative to other characters' abilities. I'm not sure how it manifests in play, but the risks for magnitude and alchemical prep seem negligible when compared to the potential effects. I also wish Finesse covered lockpicking because, as written, the Lurk's bad at their job. (Oh, and the district art looks like it was made in MS paint.) In related news, I finally picked up a copy of Lies of Locke Lamora, and I'm sort of flabbergasted at how much of it John Harper stole whole-sale for BitD's setting. He obviously added most of the magic-y stuff (eg vampires, ghosts, leviathans), but everything from bustling canals to the city map to naming conventions seem like cribs of a book written ten years ago. I wish he had just gotten the license, because the game would be cooler without the serial numbers filed off. Fenarisk posted:I'm also excited because there's a blank playbook in here, and I might start working on a cyberpunk hack soon if I can run this and see how everything plays out. If you do this, please change the health system. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 01:09 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 01:03
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What do you want to see out of the health system? It seems to me that the whole point of it is that anything that actually hurts you should be Bad -- your actual health pool is your Stress.
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Aug 16, 2016 01:07
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I want a system that doesn't require 7 steps any time you might take physical harm. e: The v2-v3 quickstart rules just used stress for harm, so you took harm (with armor option), made the resistance roll, and marked stress, the end. Which, incidentally, is exactly how every other action in the game works. QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 01:10
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I guess nothing about that actually seems complicated to me. Every consequence in Blades uses the same mechanic: take the effect or roll to resist. The only thing special about harm is the three levels and Recovery. Rolling to resist is the weirdest mechanic in Blades, but it pays off in how important it is to the fiction. The idea that your characters are such badasses they can resist the negative effects of almost anything except what it does to their sanity.
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Aug 16, 2016 01:18
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QuantumNinja posted:If you do this, please change the health system. Honestly I don't find it so bad. Harm doesn't come up as often as stress, and even if it does there's barely any steps. Either let armor soak it (which for most characters is once or twice per session anyway), or roll to resist, which the roll resulst gives you how much stress you take instead. Sometimes (again, maybe every few sessions), you take enough stress to wipe it all out and take a permament Trauma. Bam, that's it, it's more like 2 steps. Edit: The nice thing for cyberpunk/shadowrun hacking is that the only thing that needs to be done is renaming some of the skills and some of the items, and some flavor text changes for the crews. Everything else is perfectly baked into the system as is. Fenarisk fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 03:14
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admanb posted:I guess nothing about that actually seems complicated to me. My beef is two-fold: one, it's jarringly complicated in comparison to the other rules, and two, it's a brutal, secondary quasi-economy that seems out to get the players without much real benefit to the narrative or the mechanics of the game. There is already a stress and trauma system in place, with a nice economy of usage, penalty, and recovery. But we also need apparently a second quasi-economy of penalty and recovery that explicitly applies to physical harm for some reason. Which could be cool, except that it's a sub-par mechanic with a lousy economy. First, on the topic of the mechanic: what does Harm really do? It decouple PCs' physical and mental well-being, and it accounts for the former separately. This has some advantages1:
Now, onto the lousy economy: a player is allowed to Resist any Consequence, and they do that by rolling the relevant dice below the line in their sheet. They take the highest of these dice and subtract it from 6, taking the difference as stress. Now, if you roll two dice to soak this, you've got a 75% chance of taking 3 or less stress and a 55.56% chance of taking 2 or less. (For one dice, that's 50% and 33.33%.) Since it costs two stress to gain a die (via Push Yourself), and 2-harm can cost you a die (and 3-harm costs you 2 stress for EVERY action), the penalties in the Harm economy basically demand that you try to Resist2. And even if you do, it's still a brutal punishment for flubbing the action roll (because, let's be real, reduced effect or extra time is a lot better than reduced effect every time you try to do something with your left hand). Oh, and did I mention that all of this sticks around until you perform 3-4 downtime actions! So, for some reason, unlike the other Consequences and sub-systems, Harm is this double-double bad Consequence that you really want to blow Stress on and that screws you over even when you do (well, maybe, since, again, the GM gets total fiat). It complicates the game, it brutalizes the players, and it puts a lot of weird power in the GM's hands. At best, it's sloppy design. At worst, it's a hatch into poo poo-GM power tripping. And, while many people here have said it isn't that complicated during play, none of them have indicate that it feels like a necessary or good mechanic. Footnotes: 1. If I'm missing some other awesome thing it adds, mechanically or narratively, please point it out. If I'm missing something about what the Health track adds, I want to know---I want to be wrong about how unnecessary this overcomplicated mechanic is. 2. At 3 dice, you have a 42% chance of taking no stress and reducing the harm. At four dice, that's 51%. Fenarisk posted:roll to resist, which the roll resulst gives you how much stress you take instead That's wrong. The Quickstart guide explicitly reads (p11) "Usually, a resistance roll will reduce the severity of a consequence. If you're going to suffer fatal harm, for example, a resistance roll would reduce the harm to severe, instead. The GM also has the option to rule that a given resistance roll allows a character to completely avoid a consequence." You're supposed to drop the Harm a level and then make 'em eat the Stress. (Well, it depends---how benevolent of a GM are you?) Fenarisk posted:The nice thing for cyberpunk/shadowrun hacking is that the only thing that needs to be done is renaming some of the skills and some of the items, and some flavor text changes for the crews. Everything else is perfectly baked into the system as is. How are you planning to roll the cyberware? QuantumNinja fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 04:26
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Cyberware should just be part of playbook moves IMO. Though I guess that comes with the narrative problem of how they were obtained. I dunno. One thing I know for sure is that there should not be Fine [item]s there should be Brand-Name [Item]s with the player making up the exact name. Its not just a deck, its an Ono-Sendai Cyberspace 7, its not just a pistol, its an Ares Predator. Cyberpunk loves its consumer fetishism. [edit] Started reading the latest version. Man, my group has played through them all to the point where I can't keep all the changes straight anymore. It all blurs together in my head. Galaga Galaxian fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 04:29
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Ok so for harm, would you scrap it entirely and just add more stress points? Would you still let players roll to resist and instead just taking that much less stress? Edit: this doesn't leave out much steps but I would personally say stress is equal to harm one for one, with any remaining eaten as stress as far away as it is from six. You roll for resistance and each point you get on the die cancels out harm first, then stress. Say you've got a nasty 3 harm attack coming in, and on the resistance roll you get a 3. You'd avoid the 3 harm entirely and just take 3 stress (6-3). On a 5 you'd take 1 stress (6-5). On a Crit you still actually end up healing one stress. I'm not convinced it's easier though, just spit balling. Fenarisk fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 04:38
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Cyberware should just be part of playbook moves IMO. Though I guess that comes with the narrative problem of how they were obtained. I dunno. Maybe you could do it like Heritage, but call it Ware? So it gives you the bonus. Then a move might be Chromed. Pick two more 'wares from the list. Fenarisk posted:Ok so for harm, would you scrap it entirely and just add more stress points? Would you still let players roll to resist and instead just taking that much less stress? v2 BitD did it as individual clocks on your sheet: Winded would be a 2-tick clock, Knife Wound would be 4-tick. You had to heal those during downtime with healing actions. I could see doing something like that, but using smaller clocks and treating them as invoke trackers to avoid the 'infinitely-invokable FATE Aspects': if it comes up that your knife wound is causing you trouble, that clears a tick off, too. That doesn't make as much narrative sense, but it relieves a lot of mechanical pressure for burning downtime on healing. So you might be winded, but it'll pass, and you might have a wound that sucks now, but by the next job you're good to go. Another decent system might be to have three tiers like FATE, a la "Scene, Job, Downtime" or something, where Scene wounds go at the end of a scene, Job at the end of a job, and Downtime as an explicit Downtime action. Then the GM can take them however, and the player can make a conscious decision to risk his floating his Broken Leg instead of spending Downtime on it. It becomes a gamble, and that feels pretty Blades-y to me. I guess my main goal here is to get the PCs back up to task faster. I mean, PCs already have a hard game-over clock of 4 Trauma, so why introduce a second game over condition here? Also, it isn't much fun as a player to show up to a session with four Harm boxes filled in and a half-done Healing clock, trying to figure out how you're going to survive the job. Your edit also seems like a good system. You may want to bump the Stress track a little if you do that, though.
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Aug 16, 2016 05:04
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Personally in my own games three harm would be like a once or twice per campaign thing, I would mostly just dish out 1 harm 75% of the time anyway, with some 2 harm threats once or twice a session. And yes, I would absolutely make the two 1 harm boxes go away automatically during downtime. I think that coupled with my edit would make for a pretty good balance, especially since taking the risk of 1 harm and -1d would be an actual solid option instead of possibly taking no harm but taking more stress if stress is getting filled up.
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Aug 16, 2016 05:13
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QuantumNinja posted:In related news, I finally picked up a copy of Lies of Locke Lamora, and I'm sort of flabbergasted at how much of it John Harper stole whole-sale for BitD's setting. He obviously added most of the magic-y stuff (eg vampires, ghosts, leviathans), but everything from bustling canals to the city map to naming conventions seem like cribs of a book written ten years ago. I wish he had just gotten the license, because the game would be cooler without the serial numbers filed off. I'll have to check out Lies of Locke Lamora. BITD clearly cribs a lot from Dishonored, but I can't say how much Dishonored takes from LoLL. Leviathans seem to be taken straight from Dishonored, except John Harper had them in Lady Blackbird (which predates Dishonored by a year).
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Aug 16, 2016 11:44
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The game is cooler with the serial numbers filed off, rather than being tied to an existing setting. e; vv exactly. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 12:59
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Lemon-Lime posted:The game is cooler with the serial numbers filed off, rather than being tied to an existing setting. Plus it's a pretty equal Dishonoured/Locke Lamora/Vlad Tlatos mix, so if it still had serial numbers it'd lose at least one of the interesting things in the mix.
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Aug 16, 2016 13:50
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There's a lot of Locke Lamora in it, but that's partly because that series has a lot of Taltos and Dishonored in it. And a fair bit of Fritz Leiber. I like the Lamora series but the setting for it is pretty clearly not!Renaissance Europe and hardly totally original, so any game in a similar world is going to look like it. That's not a hit on the series - it adds enough unique elements to be compelling. Let's not pretend it's a totally unprecedented and wholly unique world though. Besides, there's a lot of games with similarly direct setting cribs (Eclipse Phase is the Takeshi Kovacs setting with extra bits, even original D&D is equal parts Vance and Leiber with a bit of Howard and Moorcock spackled onto it).
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Aug 16, 2016 15:42
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Hey there guys, I am doing a recruit for a Blades in the Dark campaign and thought people might be interested! http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3787297 Also I am kind of thinking of if you could do a hack to model Railos from Glorantha into the BitD format.
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Aug 21, 2016 22:54
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Email and update just sent out, seems Evil Hat will be doing the publishing, and an update on the status of book sections got updated as well. Things are coming along but the new goal for the PDF to at least be done is now December  Also half the hacks aren't even started or at only 1 dot out of 4, so that's not very encouraging either.
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Sep 9, 2016 01:53
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Part of the update asked that backers keep the news under wraps until the 13th.
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Sep 9, 2016 02:58
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Yeah, but its not like people were gonna keep mum about that anyways. And I wasn't really expecting most of the hacks to be ready by launch, personally. Kind of need a finished game to do a hack of it (granted the mechanics have basically been solidified now).
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Sep 9, 2016 03:00
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I don't think I've contributed to a game kickstarter before that offered full rule hacks as part of stretch goals but is it normal to expect the hacks to be ready at the launch of the primary rulebook?
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Sep 9, 2016 03:17
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Nope, highly unlikely they would be. If they're from the author that's just delaying the main book for no good reason (assuming it's not held up in outsourced stuff: editing, layout, printing, etc). From other people... Unlikely since they're gonna wanna wait for a lot of stuff until it's officially Done so they don't waste time on something that gets totally changed from feedback or whatever. Not that it can't happen, and I'm sure it has, but I just wouldn't expect it at all.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:42
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I just went and checked the kickstarter and I see that three out of sixteen of the hacks have 3/4 dots and one of those is the neato-sounding one that's set in not-antebellum New Orleans so I'm content
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Sep 9, 2016 03:57
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Nuns with Guns posted:I just went and checked the kickstarter and I see that three out of sixteen of the hacks have 3/4 dots and one of those is the neato-sounding one that's set in not-antebellum New Orleans so I'm content Yeah a few have been plugging away posting some betas of rules on the G+ page, they actually seem pretty good so far, not sure if John Harper has any quality control on them but so far so good.
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Sep 9, 2016 03:58
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SilverMike posted:It'd be on Page 31 of the Version 6 / March 2016 PDF, in the Recover box. That... is not in the rules for healing, which is mildy obnoxious.
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Sep 22, 2016 23:00
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Finally got to do our first heist today, but uh things didn't turn out so good for my crimeboys. 75% of the boners were on their side but I have a couple questions. Clocks are hard for me to wrap my head around. What sort of things should I be tracking? How do I encourage my players to flashback more? edit: BOY those healing checks out of session are ROUGH when you're on your first mission. I know the point is encourage swapping out characters and playing other gangstars but those rules aren't great. There are a lot of good ideas in this game but a lot of weird book keeping stuff that don't really jive too nice. Ominous Jazz fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Oct 24, 2016 |
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Oct 24, 2016 03:54
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Ominous Jazz posted:Finally got to do our first heist today, but uh things didn't turn out so good for my crimeboys. 75% of the boners were on their side but I have a couple questions. Consequences -- the Bluecoats arrive after X ticks of this box. Difficult obstacles -- the master swordsman won't be defeated with just one skirmish roll. Objectives -- you've cleaned out the lockbox, but the Red Sashes boss told you not to bother coming back with a pittance. Basically, if it doesn't make sense for something to be resolved with a single roll, make a clock for it. quote:How do I encourage my players to flashback more? I know right? I just try and keep it in their head -- when we talk about background scenes in downtime I bring up moments that would make good fodder for flashbacks, when we approach the planning stage I remind them not to over-plan because of flashbacks, when they ask something like "is there a good escape route from this room?" I say there might be, but with a flashback there definitely would be
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Oct 24, 2016 06:10
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Looks like the Scum & Villainy hack of the game is done, plus a Vigilantes add-on for the base game and a bunch of other bonus material to expand the world.
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Nov 18, 2016 14:03
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Scum & Villany seems a bit uninspired. I wish it was more, or less, or maybe just vaguer. Blades in the Dark does a good job of establishing a setting, but I hope the other hacks don't follow that suit.
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Nov 18, 2016 18:06
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I made this thing the other day. Don't really have time to work on it any more deeply at the moment though.
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Nov 19, 2016 03:00
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QuantumNinja posted:Scum & Villany seems a bit uninspired. I wish it was more, or less, or maybe just vaguer. Blades in the Dark does a good job of establishing a setting, but I hope the other hacks don't follow that suit. Other than some of the skill names ("Doctor"? Really? Why not Medical or something), I do kind of like the hack, although the moves suffer from the same basic bonus stuff rather than narrative stuff. The added gambit thing is cool. I know it's still beta so some small tweaks may happen, which I hope adds some ships or ship options beyond just the one. It is very much a reskin, I think it's pretty vague as is (doesn't mention alien races specifically, doesn't go into the universe/sector, etc). I think it's perfectly serviceable to start a firefly game.
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Nov 20, 2016 23:22
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Call me when the cyberpunk hack actually exists. That's the one I'm really excited for.
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Nov 21, 2016 17:19
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Over on the g+ community, John posted the revisions he made to the engagement roll, which look like he cleaned them up a bit. The extra examples also really help, I think.
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Nov 24, 2016 00:51
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I like the new system a lot, but feel it should move from crew's tier = base # of dice to difference between crew's tier and target's tier = base # of dice. It makes sense that a brand new crew would always be in desperate positions, but that's because everyone else is so much stronger than them!
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Nov 24, 2016 01:21
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admanb posted:I like the new system a lot, but feel it should move from crew's tier = base # of dice to difference between crew's tier and target's tier = base # of dice. It makes sense that a brand new crew would always be in desperate positions, but that's because everyone else is so much stronger than them!
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Nov 24, 2016 17:15
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