I have some friends willing to give the game a go now we’ve finished our current campaign. But they came up with a question that gave me pause: can it be run more light hearted for a leverage style game? I’m dubious as most setting material gravitates towards dark and the humour would likely also be black or satire. Anyone have suggestions on tone lightening?
I have some friends willing to give the game a go now we’ve finished our current campaign.
I have some friends willing to give the game a go now we’ve finished our current campaign.
One of the things I love about Blades is that the “difficulty” dial is completely up to the group.
Parkour-killing an enemy with a sword while jumping rooftops can be a Desperate roll on a table and a Controlled one on another. Bypassing a guard post can be a six segments clock on a table and a two segmented one on another. Electroplasmic vials can oneshot a ghost or not. Firing a pistol can be a pain in the ass or you can go full John Woo on your game. Same goes for consequences.
The one thing I can’t think would be easier to dial is the fact that they’re struggling scoundrels with no silver to their name. But even that can be dialed down with high-profit scores.
Not every fight has to be to the death. One thing you can do as a GM is set the NPCs’ responses according to the PCs’ intentions. If the PCs are going for non-lethal takedowns (blackjack knockouts, sleeping potions, and the like), then that’s what the opposition is aiming for as well. If they do well in a fight, great. If not, they get captured, and then they have an opportunity to escape. As soon as a player says “I’m going to kill them”, well then all bets are off.
I agree with Duamn Figueroa – this game has so many ways you can fiddle with the difficulty that it’s possible to run a VERY …over the top game, anyway. Humor? Well, you’re on your own there. 😛
Honour and tone will stem from your failure consequences. Muck around with those and you’ll lighten the grit.
You can even make your countdown clocks for complications (and your harm descriptions for that matter) slapstick.
Vice may be tricky, but you could perhaps spin it as baggage for relationship drama more than the PCs actually being seedy, obsessive, addicts and scoundrels who make many selfish choices.
What does the crew want ultimately? Do they want turf and coin altruistically, maybe by securing it from more crooked powers? Is the size of their gang more like liberation? Andrew Shields wrote a cool essay a while back about the fact that organized crime inherently profits from suffering. You’d obviously have to change that paradigm or figure out a clear way there are some people from whose suffering the altruistic PCs are willing to benefit.
One of the kickstarter stretch goals is for vigilantes, and I believe another is for revolutionaries (I think?). For more Leverage-y play, you’ll get a lighter tone by doing more grifting, thieving, and masterminding marks’ own demise and public disgrace rather than hitting, wetwork, and sabotage. As a result, you may want to recast many of the factions’ interests and assets more socially so they are vulnerable to subtle angles more than street war or assassination.
You might also think about more of a debt economy, rather than the idea that factions that you cross quickly want your heads. You might owe or be owed a debt by a faction you otherwise detest, but that doesn’t mean either of you may find it expedient to darkly torment or murder their members.
Just some thoughts. I love Leverage too, but a key difference for those white hat crooks is that they really don’t need anything from the jobs they pull. They’re loaded, and therefore do all their jobs not for the money. They always say, “It’s not mainly about getting their money, it’s about reputation, justice, inspiring hope, exposing the truth, etc.”
Having a unifying reason for the crew to be together goes a long way towards establishing the tone of the game, I think. Here are some suggestions.
https://plus.google.com/113881370051836623777/posts/XSMfGYdgR8C
One way I thought of adding humor elements to the game is to skin the campaign to “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”. Then go off the toon wall
I think that the main thing to consider is optimism: even if the world is dark, if your ideals never need compromises and hope is the light that can defy that darkness, then you are halfway there.
Also…
Make the character flawed but struggling to be better (as Parker or Nate Ford for example), and their vices somewhat forgivable.
Make the bad guys really bad, but always humans.
Make violence more cinematic, less graphical, and agree on the boundaries concerning its use from/on the PC.
Focus on the romantic side of crime (theft and grifting).
I’m thinking they’re more interested in a non-body-count game similar to Hustle, Leverage or Thief/Dishonoured (if you are good enough to ghost through).
If it’s just that, there’s no need to change anything: on one hand, avoid killing is almost always a smart choice (less attention, less ghost, etc); on the other, not every criminal need to be a murderer (for moral reasons).
And avoid classes that specialise in killing. Or modify.
Peter Cobcroft
You don’t even have to do that, because there aren’t really any “classes” that “specialize in killing” – some classes have more focus on using force/violence than others, but it never has to mean killing.
A lot of the tone will come from how you as GM play NPC actions and reactions. You’ll want to collect a number of ways factions can “make an example” and throw their weight around through means other than dark violence.
I mean technically, you could probably conceive of the Three Musketeers in a similar situation to a starting Blades crew, and the mechanics as is would probably suffice for it. They even have vice in the sense of melodramatic gimmicks or schticks.
Finding a way to present the religious atmosphere and factions away from madness and sacrifice would help too. Again with the Three Musketeers angle, maybe moderating extremism of various sects back to historical, corrupt power groups might help. Are there still demons and ghosts? Are the ghosts more like Slimer or the Harry Potter ghosts? How you present what supernatural creatures want and how humans can deal/cope with them will have a big influence on tone since they can bring a lot of the dark horror themes.
Now I’m thinking of how to use BitD for a Ghostbusters game, using the Tier as the successfulness of the franchise…