I have wanted to play this game since I saw an early draft.

I have wanted to play this game since I saw an early draft.

I have wanted to play this game since I saw an early draft. As I currently GMing a Dungeon World campaign, I saw it as impossible. But then the players decided to return to the thief’s home city and he started to describe it as a grim city oppressed by a corrupted Governor using criminal gangs and the city watch to keep the population in check. So I decided to turn my campaign in a DW/BitD hack. It was really a success, but I have several questions I hope you can help answer:

1. The crew is not a thief one, more like a group of rebels, so I am suffering with special abilities.

2. How do the Item Quality upgrades work? I am struggling mainly with documents. What benefits does it gives? How can I show it in the fiction?

3. How do you tipically give missions to the players? For last session, I had the thief contact his criminal fellows and give them two random missions rolled in the scores tables to choose. But in future sessions, that trick will grow old. Do I let them know about rumors? Do I ask them what they plan to do?

4. How many flashbacks can a player use? One of my players kind of spam flashbacks to solve problems. I didn’t realize it causes stress so it was partially my fault too, but I don’t know if I should set a limit per score or per player.

5. Speaking about stress, do you have any idea to translate it to DW? Could I hit their HP? Or create a stress track?

6. When they rolled the engagement roll, should I put them in the middle of the action? I kind of put them in the beginning of the score (going through the sewers to one of the city watch post), but it felt sluggish.

7. Also, during the score, do you roleplay every detail? Or cut it in scenes? In my case, I opted for the first one and had a difficult time establishing a satisfying pace: after the entered the post, they walked through the courtyard in the shadows, found a locked door, opened it, killed a sleeping guard, stole the keys to the cells, found the criminal they were trying to rescue, opened his cell and left. Maybe I should have put more obstacles?

Thank a lot! This game looks amazing but I am waiting foe my next session to find more about the struggles of Radiant Edge to throw the Governor out of office!

6 thoughts on “I have wanted to play this game since I saw an early draft.”

  1. Hi Alfredo. I’m glad you are getting a chance to throw around some darkness with blades in it!

    I can’t answer all these now but here are some quick thoughts that come to ind.

    2. Quality upgrade allows the factor of Quality to work in the players’ favor as far as effect level of rolled actions when using the upgraded items is fictionally significant.

    So Documents may refer to maps and architectural drawings of building layouts, sewers, rooftop routes, or forgotten parts of the city; library resources full of lore, history, financial records, bureaucracy, legal proceedings, sales or shipping manifests, etc; blackmail in the form of tabloid evidence, steamy love letters, incriminating photos; or even titles and deeds to land, buildings, vehicles, certificates of life, death, marriage, immigration, citizenship, craft licensure, guild membership, etc; even mundane newspaper access and correspondence with friends, allies, family, or business partners in other parts of the city, continent, or world.

    Anytime the players want to use any of those sorts of items to gain an advantage on an action, you can factor it into the effect they achieve from the action. For example, without upgraded documents, it would likely be formidably difficult to make any meaningful effect at blackmailing a high-status merchant of the Hive into giving away the name of the Railjack he pays to ignore some shady shipments that come through the rail station. The tier of the Hive implies layers of protections and contingencies for dealing with such things, so a players’ effect is likely reduced due to the scale of the Hive’s reach, and perhaps the quality of its own competing documentation that could nullify the crew’s. If the crew spends an advance or two upgrading their Documents, that levels the field somewhat. The Hive may still have a scale advantage, but if you can find a fictional way to ignore the reach of the merchants’ Hive allies, your documents will more likely be at least equal to the Hives, and possibly even increase your effect if they are better, more damning, more convincing, more official etc.

    3. Before to long, players will likely plan their own scores. Using the claims map helps amazingly, because it entices players to lust for new claims they don’t already control, or if they don’t want a claim, they will know they could use either coin or rep. Each of those desires of theirs should inspire them to proactively seek out their own scores. Then all you have to do is say who currently has what they want (a faction or three may have each thing they’re after), then they will determine what they wish to do about it.

    Additionally, you may tie some advances or players’ long-term projects to scores they have to complete to progress. Still further, most entanglements after each score suggest easy pickings for follow-up scores the crew must complete to clean up whatever cropped up. Again, NPCs and the simple desire to fulfill crew and player xp triggers should compel players to pursue their own scores that suit them. Finally, the random route works great for leads if players overindulge their vice, or gather info for possible jobs. Still yet, once players want to raise their tier, and that gaining influence with ally factions or bringing down opponent factions is the quickest/only way to raise your tier, they’ll start seeking out ways they can do jobs that win the respect of ally factions or to bring down an enemy faction’s hold to make them vulnerable.

    I also like to use the randomizer a few times per session to generate rumors and news within the city, using the results of the random score to indicate what some faction did to some other faction during the last few days or weeks. That may pique interest if it suggests a means to progress on a crew or personal goal.

    4. I’d allow as many flashbacks as players can come up with. They’re great and they prevent the need for player time spent planning while allowing the PCs to feel competent and like the game is more of an Ocean’s Eleven movie. Stress sufficiently dissuades abuse, so I wouldn’t worry about it. Just remember that some flashbacks that aren’t complicated or unrealistic don’t cost any stress, though they still may require a roll to see if any fallout came of the flashback event.

    5. I don’t know how to compare stress to DW hp, but some key considerations are 1) BitD doesn’t allow players to recover stress except through indulging vice, 2) stress is the currency for minimizing some nasty fictional effects. “As you slip, the massive clockwork carriage wheel crushes your knee.” “Dang, I’m going to resist that with vigor, so ah… that will cost 4 stress. That’s a lot, but I’ll do it instead of getting a crushed knee. It still runs me over but isn’t as bad as everybody expects. A big pothole with a muddy puddle in it gave my knee somewhere else to be instead of between the weight of the carriage wheel and unflinching flagstones.”

    6. I’d always toss the players into the middle of the job as much as possible. That’s why flashbacks exist, and that prevents the players from spending time planning. They get to “plan” only as much as they must when needs arise. “Oh, we totally brought a second boat, knowing these water ghosts might sink our first one.” “Locked up?! It’s a good thing I kidnapped a noble’s beloved tiger and sent her photo evidence so she would be adamant about “buying” us as indentured servants from the Prison after we managed to fetch all the prisoners’ secrets we needed.” “A dead end? Say, didn’t you plant bombs on the other side of this wall with a timer of right now?”

    7. Cut scenes more than you probably do for more typical roleplaying. Part of the fun is that the system thrives on finding out what happens as you go. To this end, don’t use too many challenge clocks since they can slow things down. Just use the effect level achieved to indicate the degree of success and carry the fiction ahead until there’s a significant obstacle that is interesting if the crew fails to overcome it.

    In a chase for instance, running another 100′ down alleys isn’t interesting if you just did so, so cut to when the alleys run into canals, or when the PCs run afoul of another enemy gang, or the noble they’re trying to romance wants a word with them from the carriage, or the bedsheet full of loot that they’re hauling starts to tear. I’d say cut fiercely, and make it clear that you expect players to cut just as fiercely with flashbacks and actions.

  2. #1 – It’s not clear to me exactly how many, but there is obviously going to be support for additional crews and probably playbooks in the final version, but for now you’re going to be on your own here.

    #2 – If you look at the item list, most of the items actually contain the words that are used in the item type upgrades section, and presumably they grant “fine” or better quality equipment for items of those types. Documents is a little odd, but probably gives the crew access to all kinds of records and blueprints and the like.

    #3 – However you want, but mostly by presenting the crew with opportunities – via their friends, other factions, word on the street and their own ideas.

    #4 – As many as they want – that’s part of the point. Just remember the stress costs in the future.

    #5 – Since everyone has the same amount of stress, it’s easy to create a new track, but honestly, I’d probably just use HP at maybe a 2x cost.

    #6 – Yes. The engagement roll is basically the “what kind of situation do you get dropped into” roll, and you’re always supposed to drop them right into the action.

    #7 – it’s really a matter of taste, but I favor scenes.

  3. Thank you for the advice! Yeah, I will use HP as stress (just to keep bookkeeping to the minimum) and use scenes instead of narrating all the flow. About the factions, is there a lore there? For example, Adam Minnie you mention The Hive as a group of merchants. Is that canon? Or is that how you interpret it? I thought of them as youngsters led by a female lady (a.k.a. Queen Bee). I realize I do need to think more about the setting and giving each faction a flavour so, if there is some details of background of each of them, it would be so helpful!  (also adapting it to mi DW campaign that is low in the supernatural, for example, so there is no ghosts).

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