Yesterday we uncovered another useful background to add! Entertainer.
That covers buskers, circuses, artists with patrons, tavern shows, seedy actor troupes, etc.
That brings the total recommended new backgrounds to three: military, whaler, and entertainer.
It would also lack bull (cf ghost lines). So maybe it would be better to just leave a blank and offer suggestions in the book?
Or consider whaler and bull as specific labor, bluecoat as specific military et caetera
Heng benjamin My usual method is to list things in a book, and have a character sheet with blanks. One of the things that puts Blades in the Dark in a more complicated position is how much character information the game decides for the character and puts right on the character sheet.
This is especially apparent with equipment and friends.
So, I think it’s helpful to have a broader range of backgrounds, but I don’t know that I recommend putting it on the sheet. That’s for John Harper to figure out. I do feel I have all the freedom I need to use backgrounds that AREN’T on the sheet.
The main reason I share them is because others might find them inspirational too.
I do not think it is best to try and serve utility by trying to pigeonhole backgrounds within background when there is a significant difference and multiple options are on the same scope. For example, I don’t think police are a subset of military unless you come from a police state where the army handle both policing and military action. Likewise, I think a miner and a ghost hunter would be different enough that their commonalities aren’t enough to put them in the same background.
Of course, it is all a matter of taste.
I know I’m late to this conversation but I think you’re conflating “background” with “job”. I get why since it’s only after writing out an entirely different draft of this that it clicked for me.
It seems to me the Backgrounds are broader categories than they appear, and more importantly the same “background detail” can fit under more than one in most cases. You can be a Noble: entertainer or a Merchant: entertainer. A Whaler might be a noble, a merchant, or labor – maybe even academic! Bulls are bulls, of course, but for the sake of the character sheet they’re surely just labor (though I wouldn’t say that to their faces).
Military I agree with, mind you. Though even thinking of that I’m not sure that Bluecoats are strictly “police” in this setting and not something more like what we would today think of as a militia. Though even then I can see “Noble Military” so perhaps it fits in some of the other categories as well.
My rambling point is that if we’re thinking of “Background” as “Jobs” then this list is going to keep growing forever. Those background categories are probably better thought of as the equivalent of social classes. Three of them are Noble, Academic, Merchant, and Labor after all. You could pretty much just sub in Aristocrat, Bourgeoisie, Middle-Class and Proletariat.
Though for the record I wouldn’t call it “class” instead of “background”. I just think we should stop considering “background” as just meaning “previous employment”.
Using broader background allow for lists on the sheet: the sheet is cleaner, the police is unified… in the spirit of what we have seen so far.
The backgrounds in this case are vast guidelines, calling for personalisation.
On the other hand, if the list is empty, you can use whatever you want (even sewer inspector if you’d like) but you lose a bit of the plug and play appeal the game has as it is.
The same goes for the friend list.
Maybe the simple addition of a “blank” character sheet (no friends, no backgrounds…) could give satisfaction to both kind of players.
I just wanted to point out that if you’d list all the possible and inspiring background on the sheet, it would be pages long 😉
I don’t see background as job so much as culture. There are surely subcultures within cultures, and part of that is the worldbuilding.
Besides, it likely won’t matter as much since the role of the background will likely be reduced to +1 action rating. Still, for purposes of what goes on the pregen sheet, I still think there are suggestions to consider.
If the categories are too broad, they are meaningless. You might as well put Urban, Rural, Traveler, and Military as the backgrounds.
That said there probably should be one more for “street people” (especially appropriate for buskers!), though I don’t know what you’d call it precisely. Currently I’d stick that under Labor or (more likely) Underworld but it’s more borderline than whalers or railjack in my opinion.
But yeah like Heng says, you’ll go on forever if you don’t consider the existing categories as broad as possible.
If broad categories is what we want, I stick by my 4 category suggestion.
I’m down with Entertainer and Military, though I’d rule whaler as Labor. More than actual details of occupation, I think Background has as much to do with knowing related locales, environments, tasks, groups, cultures, etc broadly defined. With that in mind, I do consider Bluecoat and Military as similar, a rigidly hierarchical enforcement group where folks wear uniforms, follow orders, work in units, and use intelligence, patrolling, violence and higher authority to complete those orders. The thing that does it for me is the question: “Would my mercenary be familiar enough with how things work in a bluecoat HQ or patrol unit, or in the head/culture of an NPC in this domain? and vice versa?” That’s just me though.
Adam Minnie Yeah, and this is where our stereotypes and assumptions really come into play. What is at the heart of the skill in each group?
How rigid do we think the bluecoats are, for example? Are they idiosyncratic highly political gangs who hae to know who is touchable and who is not, and how to enforce law to keep the noise down? Well, yeah. And would a soldier be able to step into that? Depends on your setting, I guess.
Would a bluecoat know how to work the cannons, or interpret ranks quickly enough to avoid faux pas, or have military formation marching and dress uniforms figured out, and know how to handle privation and long marches? Maybe that’s how they work in your city.
Andrew Shields Well, they ARE meaningless. I mean your four would in fact work perfectly well, John’s are just more colourful.
And I think you’ve touched on it with mentioning the +1 mechanics. The problem with making a whole bundle of backgrounds is that it becomes less useful. If you’ve got four to choose from, you’re going to be able to use it (very very roughly) 25% of the time. If you’ve got ten that drops to 10%. Keeping them as broad and few (or at least a balanced number of your choice) greatly affects their gameplay utility. If you’re only interested in them as story then don’t bother with lists at all.
Or if you’re worried about the simplicity causing problems in the fiction of the game, you could just play it a little looser. A GM could certainly rule that in a challenge like, say, debating the merits of Hamlet, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Labor: Actor and your opponent is a Noble: Playwright, the detail gives you a shared background (and thus a die) in THAT specific case.
Mike Hoyer I think my context for the discussion has changed, since John Harper has suggested he’ll likely reduce the utility of a background to a single additional dot to put in an action. Otherwise, as you say, the discussion is different.
Andrew Shields Ah I gotcha, I had missed that decision. In that case yeah you might as well have a buttload of background categories, or some encouragement in the rules to just make up your own.
I think it isn’t broken the way it is; here are some suggestions, and you have freedom to add your own if that’s your thing. It helps calibrate your city.
I share the ones I added, because they might click for other people. Sometimes I’ll build a character around an idea that sparks from something someone else shared, after all, so I figure other people do that too.
As we play in a theocratic city, we added Clerus, to the mix of backgrounds.
To add to the discussions about background functions, I took what John Harper suggested some days ago and gave each player a free point for background/Heiritage and they marked it as their speciality, and I raised the limit of 2 dots to 3 for it. So they can earn an extra xp, when they use it in a cool and exciting way while playing.
This “Focus-Ability” was locked to a certain story they had to tell while creating the character.