Blades Against Darkness
A little sneak peek at one of the playbooks:
The Arbiter
Playbook Moves
• Tactician: When you lead a group action in combat you suffer -1 less total stress from all failed rolls.
• Assault Leader: +1d effect when you seize contested ground, drive the enemy back, or secure an advantageous position.
• Battlefield Awareness: You can immediately read a combat situation. When you gather information with Battle you and your team get +1d effect when acting on the answers you receive.
• Gunslinger : Ricochet shots off of things, shoot objects out of peoples hands, draw and reload your weapon in the blink of an eye, etc.
• Cold Blooded: Clear 1 stress when you kill an enemy.
• Breach: +1d when you do violence to inanimate objects.
• Full Metal Jacket: Armor you’re wearing doesn’t count against your load.
• Battleborn: You get special armor against physical attacks in combat. When you roll a critical in combat, clear 1 stress.
Unique Gear:
• Fine dragoon revolver
• Bandolier of specialty ammunition
• Fine tower shield
• Chokesmoke Vials
• Wrecker tools
WANT.
This sounds pretty awesome. Definitely would want that specialty ammo and the dragoon revolver in my loadout on scores involving killing!
Nice. More peeks please! I enjoy non-mechanical abilities like Gunslinger. Full Metal Jacket and Cold Blooded seem a little crazy good to me, but I like the idea.
Dalton L. This is more intended for dungeon crawling than heists but if you wanted to convert The Arbiter to core Blades it would probably be as simple as changing “Battle” to “Mayhem.”
Adam Minnie There’s definitely some tinkering that needs to happen here. Future playtests will shake some of the bugs out, but I’m aware of those moves being possibly a little too much. Changes under consideration are:
Armor you are wearing counts as 1 less than its listed weight and “When you brutally murder a defeated enemy”
Huh, I thought Gunslinger was an unnecessary move since it’s purely narrative in effect, unless success is automatic }:)
It’s a move which provides fictional positioning, so instead of making a Desperate roll, depending on the circumstances, you would get to roll a Risky or Controlled.
Anybody could try those things, but they would likely be Desperate.
Gunslinger, to me, says “Lucky you, you can consistently do things with guns and bullets that are impossible/improbable for mere mortals.” I like that permission.
As a way to move from desperate to risky to controlled makes great sense, but I didn’t intuit that from the description.
Consider, the “specialty ammunition” doesn’t actually do anything either. Both gunslinger and specialty ammo give you permission to make something up.
We tend to assume that abilities like this which “give us objects to use” are more legitimate than abilities which “give us skills to use”, but that’s artificial. In the same way you could respond to being told to roll for getting into a crate and say “nah, I have a crowbar, remember? I’ll just pop the nails out”, you can respond to being told you’re shot by saying “nah, I’m a gunslinger, remember? If I shoot first, he doesn’t have a gun in his hand anymore” or similar.
Gunslinger guarantees you the ability to trick-shoot, to quick draw, etc., and the only question on rolling is whether or not you can use leverage it, not whether you succeed (see above; will definitely disarm! Not sure if will go first).
It is not “purely fluff”, because fluff is not really a valid distinction. It’s still a rule of the game even if it lacks a numerical mechanic. It’s no different than any other fictional tool to decide if and how to roll. And it’s the only one that clearly puts you in the invisible fourth “you just win” roll category.
I love seeing the new stuff, hate being forced to wait for it! Keep it up the good work. 🙂
This is a big problem with games like D&D/Pathfinder, where all of a sudden there’s a feat that’s called Trick Shot, and suddenly there’s a thing you used to be able to do that you can’t anymore, because there’s a feat that lets you do it.
For players who have been introduced to that mindset, which is present in quite a few RPGs, it might be useful to have a note that explains that anyone can try anything, but having an advance like Gunslinger means that it’s something that’s second nature to you and is part of your Thing, which the GM will take into account when determining difficulty and the like.
Yeah, Gunslinger basically makes all that stuff second nature – you can just say, “I do this” – no roll required. Note it doesn’t say, “You can just straight up kill people without rolling” – it gives free narrative permission to a lot of non-attack actions with guns.
Hope to see tjis soon converted to V3.0 of the Rules
Then you’ll be pleased to know that is what I’m working on this evening!
I won’t be showing anything until after I get some playtests in but I hope to have more news in the next couple of weeks.
Thats cool. I am eager to see what new skills you implement.