14 thoughts on “Hack idea number 2: Tales from the Borderlands”

  2. Playset ideas: Siren, Soldier, Robot (covers Calptrap and Loaderbots), Mech (cyborgs including the mechromancer), Grifter, Biggun (Brick and Gunzerker), and Sniper (This list feels pretty good)

    Crew types: Vault Hunters, Mercenaries, Gangers, and Enforcers (need more here)

    Background: Corporate, Labor, Vault Hunter, Psycho, and Academic (feel like I need more)

    Factions: All the corporations, a few various psycho gangs, and some various settlement groups

    Honestly the biggest obstacle is going to be getting the playbooks right and coming up with more crew types

  6. Playing episode 2 of the adventure from Tell Tale Games made me realize that there was plenty you could do with the setting without the focus on gear, but yes there would be special abilities that made assault VERY popular

  7. Definitely up my alley. I was working on hacking a number of systems to Borderlands last spring, while Blades would seem to do a pretty darn good job at what I was after.

    Some other Background ideas: Military, Entertainer, Settler, Vendor, Vigilante.

    Other Crew types: Profiteers/Tycoons, Scavengers, Cult (still definitely works), Smugglers, Revolutionaries/Escapees,  Bounty Hunters, Family (like the Zaford clan at the Holy Spirits pub), Eco-terrorists

  9. I was thinking last night that bot or mech/cyborg seems to fit more as a heritage. Then again, with Hammerlock and Rhys having cyborg arms, where do you draw the line between pure human and cyborg? Maybe it’s the difference between AI and human. Maybe the only heritage choices that matter are the various types of minds in the world: Human, AI, and Psycho (maybe Mutant too even if they’re usually psycho). Sentient fauna (perhaps a heritage Predator or Beast) could be interesting, but also problematic.

    Another playbook could be Nomad, though it could probably mean something more than just a heavily armored tank character. 😛 I sort of think of Mordecai as a Nomad. I’d at least broaden Sniper to Hunter or something more like Hound, implying more than just ranged shooting.

    Heh, just now I was thinking that everyone (human) on Pandora had to come there for some reason (usually due to corporations), so perhaps each character could have a corp for a heritage, implying the strong personality/cultural/style associations that go with each: Torgue, Tediore, Jakobs, Hyperion, Dahl, Maliwan, even Atlas, Bandit, or something related to e-tech or eridium? 

  10. I was starting with the fiction and looking at which playable characters we have seen so far. Gaige and Wilhelm are both built around the fiction idea of cyborg, so I basically was just mashing them together to avoid playbook bloat.

    I could see Robot transitioning to a heritage, but then I want to replace it with a Claptrap playbook, because if you don’t lump him in with the robots I can’t think of what else to make him.

    I agree with Sniper. When I was typing those thoughts I almost put Hunter instead. Only reason I didn’t was to avoid confusion with the Vault Hunter crew type. Nomad may be a really good substitute since I figured it would be the playbook for both Zer0 and Mordecai

  11. Having the corps as both faction and heritage isn’t something that I considered, but now I am liking the idea. Maybe during crew creation you have to pick your heritage faction as either positive or negative. With this system the group in Tales having so much Hyperion animosity fits (Rhys and Vaughan obviously both put points to Hyperion as a negative to represent the way the left for Pandora)

  12. Heh, isn’t Claptrap basically a robot psycho? 🙂 In that sense, he actually seems pretty similar to that loader bot who you install in all kinds of devices, eventually settling on the radio. Maybe his heritage is AI and his background is psycho. Depends on how you want to play him, he could also have background in labor, entertainer, corporate, etc. Wilhelm could be AI-military/corporate, even though he started human.

    I imagine both Claptrap and the mechromancer could be some engineer type playbook?

    Reconsidering, using the corps as heritages only really helps if everyone know the flavors of each corp pretty intuitively. Same goes for the Blades heritages which mean nothing until you know what baggage they bring along. Therefore I am less sure corps help as a heritage, rather than just factions with possible starting dispositions as normal. A crew with +3 with Torgue and -2 Hyperion should feel quite ideologically different from a crew with +3 Jakobs, -2 Tediore.

    All that said, this morning I was preferring mental state as heritage (AI, Human, Psycho, Beast) and background as occupation/lifepath like the Blades default. 🙂

  13. I’m not sure new class playbooks are necessary: Brick, Gunzerker, Soldier, Psycho all seem perfectly encapsulated by Cutters. Zero and Mordecai = Hound, Sirens = barely modified Whispers (phase/elemental abilities, maybe fueled by eridium, which could be a new Siren-only vice), Mechromancer = Leech maybe, Jack = Spider maybe, a bunch of non-vault hunter NPCs can fit as Lurks or Slides.

    Also, I think Loot-crates! or Gunz! should be a new Vice option, if people want to still be loot-mad.

    I had a loot idea, but forgot it. This is all that’s left: Whenever you acquire asset for weapons (which may be once free per character per score), roll d6 to see what it is 1=Pistol, 2=SMG, 3=AR, 4=Shotgun, 5=Sniper or Rocket Launcher, 6=shield or grenade. It becomes standard by next score (since everyone has leveled up in the meantime)

  14. I remembered my idea that may in itself provide sufficient loot-frenzy tone.

    Add a playbook advancement to the following effect: “Gain a more badass version of one of your weapons [either from a superior foe or purchased with Tier+1 coin].”

    That might be enough to keep players keen on that sort of thing narratively scrabbling to articulate why a new weapon is better than their last. If the narrative parameters of the first clause doesn’t cut it for you, perhaps the bracket clause on the end could mechanize it a bit in Borderlands style (either loot it by force or buy it with spoils). I confess I have no idea how that coin system scales or balances with other uses in the game.

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