Anybody else making new playbooks either for hacks, or for standard blades? I was just wondering if you guys would share your process, to help both me and anyone else doing that work.
My hack involves playing gothic horror monsters and characters, and at first I was having a tough time. I was coming up with lots of powers, but some monsters felt a little same-y. I tried approaching it as filling group archetypes like blades characters do (fighter, rogue, wizard, face, etc), but monsters don’t necessarily fit nicely into a single role. It wasn’t until I started thinking about marking XP that things began to click better. Now I start by looking at the playbook concept, and ask myself what should this character get XP for. Then all the moves are about incentivizing or enabling that player to hit that trigger.
Anyway, if anyone else thoughts or tips, I have another 4-6 books I’d like to make. I’d be glad to hear them.
I experimented with that some a while back.
https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/07/23/blades-in-the-dark-three-playbooks/
Part of the trouble was I was doing worldbuilding through the playbook and I’m not sure how well that came through. That was also before we got a lot more of the worldbuilding that we have now, so of course it doesn’t fit.
I did a much deeper refit of the system, hacking it to my taste, where I redid the playbooks in their basic function in some ways. For example, cleared stress functions as experience; the harder you push yourself, the better you advance (instead of basing it on behaviors.)
With this playbook model, you have one ability that everybody with the playbook has in common. You can also burn stress to access some of your abilities even if you haven’t bought them yet, because you’ve been trained to do it even if you’re not fully proficient.
Eh. If you want to take a look, it’s here.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KpPuYSmoApsPcB5bLr2bG_uwfMPcONa3bquu-OdJaPI/edit?usp=sharing