I have a thought on focusing that helps improvisation be easier.
Long-running fiction series’ with supernatural elements tend to have a lens they use to unify many of the unusual things they want to do in the series. In the Fantastic Four, science(!!!) was the answer. In Marvel, it was a boon to have mutations; now if you want something unusual a mutant is behind it. In both Smallville and Warhammer, you’ve got mutagenic warpstone that hooks into a victim’s deep desires and makes them horribly manifest, power at a cost. In the tv show Supernatural, most things can be traced back to souls as the power source of the supernatural. And so on.
For Blades in the Dark, the supernatural is all grounded in electroplasm. Ghosts, other undead, leviathans, industry, Whispers, even runic magic all trace back to electroplasm. That is a great unifying lens.
So, as you improvise, be intentional about that. The vision of Duskwall carries with it electroplasm as a theme, from technology to fighting fire with fire dealing with ghosts to the major industry of the city to the haunting of your rickety lair.
If you are hard pressed and need to think up something valuable to reference, steal, or wreck, how does it relate to electroplasm? If you need to think of a cool site for something to go down, keep that electroplasm lens in mind to give it unique touches. Maybe you need a quick obstacle; maybe it relates to electroplasm.
Having that supernatural touchstone can bring unity to the game. Can you overuse it? Yes, but that’s a lot harder to do if you use it in lots and lots of different ways.
You don’t want people to run across electroplasm walls to keep out the undead as an obstacle over and over. But there could be a restless spirit that manifests and is intensely territorial. Or maybe a group of spirit wardens picked tonight of all nights to do an alley sweep to wipe out the residuals. Or maybe there is a Whisper with an independent agenda in your way, communing with the spirits, and you’re reluctant to interrupt. Maybe when you were casing the location an illegal leviathan blood vendor spotted you and thinks you’re spying for the bluecoats, and sends thugs after you.
Need someone who is rich? Maybe they own a leviathan hunting fleet of four ships. Maybe they made their fortune from whispers prodding ghosts for blackmail material. Maybe they manufacture the restricted electroplasmic barrier technology. Maybe they curate a museum of art made by ghosts.
Both those sets of improvisations were based on thinking on how it traces back to electroplasm, but also thinking of the breadth of how that could apply.
Finally, the power of Gothic storytelling (for me) comes in the uneasy clash of rational intellectual scientific worldview, and superstitious emotional magical worldview. Electroplasm has that built in, as people were coping with it before industrialization harnessed it properly as a mass-produced energy type. As they lost sight of its identity as anything but a resource, they lose the respect the superstitious showed. If you feel you are at risk of getting stale in improvisation, jump back and forth across the Gothic line.
They go to meet a contact, you want to make him interesting. Maybe he’s proud of his taser walking stick run on electroplasm, and he lights his cigarettes with it. Or, to jump to the other side, maybe he’s got a hat band of runes so he can trap a ghost in his hat’s crown if he gets in a pinch. Either way, bam! Your contact just got more interesting, and also is a flavor fit for Duskwall.
You need a heist location. On one side of the Gothic line, it’s an abandoned distillery for leviathan oil. The spirit wardens were underpaid and sloppy in clearing it out, and all the dead in a half mile congregate here, corporeal or otherwise. But the office still has the safe…
On the other side of the Gothic line, three ragged basements connect, to get into the cellars of a wealthy aristocrat. One of them houses a squatter who has covered all surfaces with chalk runes, trapped by a paranoia that there is a specific ghost out to get her. Maybe tonight there is.
I hope that’s helpful.
Very good. Should be in the book.
Andrew Shields If you write a rpg, I would most likely buy it too. Your writing is inspirational and evocative. And I feel thoughprovocate about the way I GM.
Josephe Vandel You might get a kick out of “The World Between for Fictive Hack.” I took “Old School Hack,” a game by Kirin Robinson, and fleshed it out. I adapted it for Jack Shear’s “World Between” setting, which is Gothic and a mash-up of Europe and D&D. The .pdf is free if you want to take a look. I also did a patch for 2015, with adjustments after much more experience of play. I’ll revise it when my other projects get done. =)
https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/fictive-hack/
That page also has my Thief game, and the Avengers game I did for the system. The blog also has some of my other work on it if you want to look around.
Currently I’m working on Axes and Anvils, it’s a neat game where you generate a clan (like this game generates a crew) and defend its honor. It will be out in a few months. Thanks for the interest!
Alternating on the Gothic line, as you say, is a good angle for drumming up ideas.
This is a great angle. Another way to put it is that Duskwall is in the middle of an Age of Spirit Industrialization — a Electroplasm Revolution — what once was just people dabbling in spirit mediums, seances, and the like has become a science harnessed by industry. Much like our own Industrial Revolution of the late 1700s, it engenders a certain callousness and is an era ripe with human rights abuses.
Colin Fahrion That’s the stuff. The better it maps to what we understand and our experience, the more resonant the echoes will be. A few touchstones shared among the group can help everybody stay on the same stylistic page.
On a related note, Blades in the Dark (and the prior game Ghost Lines) is the first “steampunk-ish” setting I’ve ever wanted to play a game in. So much of a lot of steampunk focuses on pulpy clockwork wonder and handwaving away much of what made the early industrial revolution a terrible time to live for the workers. Whereas, Duskwall solidly does not shy away from revealing the squalor and day to day struggle to survive.
Here here Colin Fahrion.
Andrew Shields nice world building. I heard you host BitD online, would you add me to the list next time?
Sure! I’m currently waiting until the next quick start is out and I have a chance to ruminate over it some. When I’m ready to run an online session I’ll post it in this community.
Andrew! Remember when you played your first session and walked away a little disappointed? Now look at you 🙂
Wonderful essay mate.
Hey Colin Fahrion Have you seen the ‘worlds worst jobs in history’ (Hosted by Tony Robinson)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLC321E5637B629756&v=RtoA17bidW8
If you just add electroplasm to these jobs, well then!
Nathan Roberts seriously. I mean obviously leviathan hunting — or debloodening — is a job where no amount of danger pay is likely high enough. But I’m sure the refining process for the leviathan oil or any spirit industrial process that handles electroplasm is also quite hazardous. Likely electroplasm refining workers are paid shit and if they work too long around the raw stuff they have to deal with troubling side effects like rashes, welts, headaches, blurred vision, mood disorders, possessions, soul abrasions, episodic hollowing syndrome, ghost magnetism, etc.
I do love the world building and the creative side. That is my strong side.
I still have little confidence in my ability to handle the mechanical side satisfactorily. Lots and lots of invisible fences and judgement calls that jostle against a variety of expectations (one set per player) at the table.