Let’s talk about Scum and Villainy

Let’s talk about Scum and Villainy

Let’s talk about Scum and Villainy

Over a year ago I was playtesting an early version of Blades in the Dark with some friends, when one of them suggested we should use the system to play Scoundrels in a very different type of setting: Space Opera (Star Wars specifically). We jokingly dubbed the hack Blasters in the Dark.

At the time it was just a funny joke, but it’s an idea that’s stayed with me for a while. 

Blades as a core engine has many parts that fit very well with this concept. The different playbooks give you a good set of abilities to work with genre. Team playbooks can change purpose and genre pretty readily (rebels or smugglers?). Switching the skills over is pretty trivial.  So what stops you from just recoloring things?

The answer is the core mechanics.

You might note that the hacks you’re seeing tend towards the darker edge of things. Part of this is no doubt genre (heat forces you to fight the law) which leads to outcasts and ne’er do wells. However there are some conceits at the core of the system that are hard to shake. The way actions/effects/stress are stacked generates a very specific vector of fiction.

By dividing up things into desperate => risky => controlled you make a very specific statements. Things that are controlled you’re far more likely to get away with. Hedge your bets. You only have so much stress. Desperate rolls are really dangerous.  That sounds like space opera? Not so much.

So one of the most important things to do in order to make this feasible and fun is to tweak the breakdown into something that encourages more daring behavior. Shift the core actions to keep the ratio of success, but give additional incentive to jump into danger face-first (dangerous => daring => safe bet) by triggering different sorts of moves. An example might be the Close Call rule where if you crit on a desparate action you gain a stress back.

Once that’s in place it becomes straightforward to setting drift to other source materials that follow a similar pattern. Smugglers in the Black dodging the Alliance. Bounty Hunters with a jazz soundtrack hunting for the next big prize. I’m also really excited to add an optional xeno book that can help you make aliens of all various sizes, colors and shapes.

Oh yeah. And spaceships. Can’t forget the spaceships.

Very excited to be working on this. Pyew Pyew!

17 thoughts on “Let’s talk about Scum and Villainy”

  4. Not only am I really excited about Scum and Villainy, I’m excited about all of the bits of technology that can be mixed and matched with all of these hacks. Just this different take on Desperate/Risky/Controlled sounds like a way to make any BITD game or reskin into something that plays more bombastic and less gritty.

  5. This sounds awesome! I think it may be the reskin I’m most jazzed about, and believe me that says a lot.

    Query: among the thinly disguised Boba Fetts and Han Solos, will Scum contain any robe-clad mumbo-jumbo artists wielding totally not lightsabers?

  6. I’d hope so. Psychics, mutants, experiments, and mystics are totally a big part of the genre, whether you’re talking Star Wars, Firefly, or Cowboy Bebop (Mad Pierrot). How it handles them will be interesting, though. 

  8. Thor Hansen the Smugglers playbook will be there for exactly a crew like this ^_~ It’s intentional.

    Linda Larsson Bryan Chavez I hear there may be an optional playbook for people that want to tap into the Galactic Ley Lines. I also hear there are Artifacts that only such people may use (and an artifact Seekers gang). Rumors of Psy-blades abound. The Hegemony finds and collars such people to use as agents. Sound about right?

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