Help!! I have a game design problem. As I’ve posted here before I’m currently working on a Star Trek hack of BitD. I have most everything roughly figured out with one mahout exception. Tier, Rep, and Turf. I’m just really struggling with a way to thematically work these mechanics into the Star Trek universe. I’ve thought about just cutting them entirely, but then I feel like in losing a lot of what makes Blades great, as well as I have to get rid of Quality upgrades to the Crews. I’m just really struggling with figuring this out, and would appreciate any ideas you may have.
#BladesTrek
When you say Star Trek, I think of a Starfleet crew going places and getting into shit aboard their starship. Every “heist” is some sort of away mission, and downtime is aboard ship? Or are you thinking more broadly? Are there crew types (Romulan crew, Klingon crew, etc), or is the only crew type “Starfleet”?
Hacking BitD to circle back around and do Lasers and Feelings is pretty meta. 🙂
Those are all ways to measure relative standing with other faction. Is the politicking of the crew with other factions (allies/rivals/competitors/enemies) a big deal in your hack? One of Blades’ main design ideas is that the gameplay explores what happens when the crew tries to become top dog. Another thing to consider is that Blades assumes anything the crew hopes to gain has to be at another faction’s expense. “What do we hope to gain? Who currently controls it?” Is there any sense in which Trek crews are wanting to come out on top?
I’m not a huge Trek fan, but do the PCs represent the Federation in a way that that could be their crew, with Tier relative to other macro-factions? Rep could still be the crew’s reputation among the complex factional landscape. At a smaller scale, Tier could represent the class of your ship, while Hold represents the current status/morale of that ship. Claims could be either special components/subsystems of your ship or some home world/system, but that’s pretty limited since claiming such things is seldom at the expense of others.
Alternatively, if you want your game to be more about bringing cooperation and understanding throughout the wide universe (rather than any single entity coming out ‘on top’, then you could maybe flip Tier, Turf and Hold on their heads. Turf/Claims could represent levels of peaceful coexistence. Hold might be stability/morale among various factions, in terms of how ready they are to break from coalition goals and pursue their own ambitions. In this sense, Tier of the crew might be the reach of their influence.
Essentially it might work similar to standard BitD, but your crew is a gang of peace-makers/cooperation-bringers, rather than self-serving scoundrels. In that framework, it’d be fun to start with most factions tending toward animosity, so your work is cut out for you to gain cooperation from any. Then, a bit like in Mass Effect, everything the PCs do might earn trust with some faction, while also likely peeving or frustrating another faction. Success and climbing the ladder of tiers/claims/etc. becomes a dance of keeping happy and safe a huge set of culturally and ideologically and sometimes biologically opposed groups.
Adam Schwaninger haha, it definitely is a bit meta. Something I realized pretty early on. At this point everyone is Starfleet. Every heist is downtime plus “hook.” Which is generally away mission, but can also be upgrading systems, or some other sort of mission aboard the the ship itself.
If everyone is Starfleet, perhaps the PCs are a group competing with internal factions of other Starfleet groups. Then maybe tier/hold/claims are their influence, respect, reputation, and maybe rank or clearance level within Starfleet itself.
Ha, that gave me a strange image of thinking of Tier/Claims something like the very different/non-Trek-like psychological effects of the rank mechanics in 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars.
Tier should represent the overall training level of the crew, the quality and number of ship’s you control, and the provisions/weapons/what have you.
Rep is basically the same, but using a Starfleet context. Earn it from successful missions.
Turf should be outposts, colonies, and space stations that are loyal to you. Places where the crew can refuel, rest, or hide (represented by the benefits on the Turf map). Just like with Turf in Blades, a Show of Force means an enemy faction makes a move on your Turf. Maybe the Ferengi do this – forming a blockade on a poor space station that once provided +2 Monies from resource missions. The crew would then decide to Give it up, or Go to war (drop to -3 status).
What’s your Coin replacement? That might help us out too. And Heat/Wanted?
Heat/Wanted is System Strain and Strain Level. Basically like how stressed the ship itself is. And coin is Influence. So how much pull can you have within Starfleet.
Ok, I’m no longer on a phone, so I can respond a bit more eloquently. I really like Mark Cleveland Massengale’s thoughts on turf. So getting turf isn’t necessarily taking it from someone, but it is establishing, stabilizing, or convincing a station, outpost, colony, etc. to join the Federation in a previously unknown region. And I think in this context Rep would still work even with my Coin being Influence, as you can reasonably separate the distinction between Influence and Rep.
One thing I should say, is that a central theme of the game is exploration. So in that vein, I was thinking about potentially having some sort of group of themes/concepts/conflicts to explore rather than opposing factions. I’m just kinda spitballing here, cause I don’t really want it to super focus on actual factions (e.g. Klingons, Romulans, Ferengi, etc.).
Also, Adam Minnie your image of tier/rank within the Federation would totally work in the JJ verse. However, I’m designing a bit more with Next Generation/TOS in mind, which isn’t nearly as dark.
What if your claims map was in reverse? It’s a roadmap of your ship’s systems, and you have access to all of it when you start. Or at least most of it – have some basic things on there like “transporters” but then maybe room for potential technobabble upgrades? Then as you fall victim to subspace beings, boarding parties, and Ensign Barclay’s latest bumbling, you lose access to claims?
Honestly, if Coin is influence/favor with the Federation, and Heat is directly linked to your wessel (rip Anton), Rep might still work as your rep outside the Federation. Kirk had a rep, you know? If you do one-off away missions on planets unaffiliated with the galactic players, it’s like your hunting grounds. No rep, no heat.
Adam Schwaninger That’s a really interesting idea with a lot of potential for a lot of settings. If I was trying to do a Voyager hack I think I would totally go with it. However, Voyager is a completely different game from TNG. In TNG, they constantly upgrade systems (usually involving something screwing up in the process), and so I think expanding systems works well for this hack.
And I really like that way of looking at Heat/Rep. Even Picard had people coming for him from outside the Federation (think the Stargazer).
So for Heat and its reskins, I found it helpful for my hack when I realized that Heat represents the amount you skew from what you’re doing and how you should be acting when on your heist/run/away mission. It helps even more if those actions have some level of oversight – the police when you’re playing thieves, other factions, Starfleet’s admiralty board, etc. Go in with redshirt killsquads? Probably get dinged for heat. Pass out phasers to two warring tribes on a primitive planet instead of obeying the Prime Directive? Probably get dinged with heat. Kirk ran a lot of hot missions, in retrospect. 🙂
It’s the in-setting karma wheel, separate from how a single character might feel or how our present-day morality might stack up, and entirely specific to the type of characters you play. The stuff that gets you Heat in Duskwall isn’t necessarily representative of the values of the society at large – it’s limited only to scoundrels in Duskwall pulling heists.
I’d personally retain that aspect for a Star Trek hack. There IS a code of conduct to follow and regulations, and there are consequences, even if they get retconned or ignored for our entertainment.
Maybe Tier is the relative power of your ship and the skill of its crew, right? Crew gain experience, better officers request transfers to your ship, etc. I like Hold as morale – plus, there’s not a whole lot of Blades rules targeting that right now so you can probably play with that a little more freely.
That’s some really helpful advice all the way around. Accumulating Heat (or system strain, or whatever I settle on) could lead to scenarios such as Cmdr. Remmick’s investigation, or some other branch of Starfleet investigating.
Right at this moment I’m leaning toward making the Factions actual factions inside and outside Starfleet, but instead of the faction status representing allies, enemies, and war, it represents the level of respect that group has for your crew. For example, even though the Federation has tense relations with the Romulans, your crew could garner a certain amount of respect within their Admiralty. Or something like that.
Maybe you could be more specific since you have qualms about bringing the wrong experience. What do you see as the theme differences in TNG and Voyager, or which of those do you want to keep?
Mark Cleveland Massengale You are absolutely correct. I want to make sure I hit the right chord with this game and not have it stray too far. Voyager is much more gritty, and much more of a survival epic set in a hostile, crowded, alien universe. By contrast, TNG is much more hopeful, and focuses on exploration and diplomacy in a much more open and optimistic universe. I’m definitely wanting to be more on the TNG side of that scale. I’ll admit, making a Voyager hack of Blades would be easier, but its not the game I want to build.
From my perspective, when I sit down and read your theoretical final product, I’m going to be wondering 1) how did he do starships and 2) how did he change the rules for claustrophobic, greedy, power-hungry gangs to model post-scarcity open universe space sandbox exploration?
Sounds like you’ve at least got those on the todo list. 🙂
Great advice and considerations going on here.
Tier is also used for acquiring assets, and roughly determining quality of gear/cohorts, etc right? (I may be behind the most recent quickstart) So Tier should somehow represent ones’ pull with whatever is the source of acquisitions, whether that’s stacked stores aboard a single ship, or sway with admiralty to get what you want when you ask.
Adam Schwaninger Yep, those are two things I HAVE to nail for it to work. I’m currently playtesting as well, so I’ll be updating you guys frequently.
curious: so if coin = influence, did you just remove the vault and stash?
Mark Cleveland Massengale no I didn’t. I made the vault an upgrade called Broad Influence.
And for stash, I’ve still not worked it out exactly, but it will be some mechanism for what kind of position your PC gets in Starfleet after they leave the ship.
I believe I misread something you said earlier, but I can’t help thinking it’s really cool how different stories with this game would be based solely on if you consider downtime to be time aboard ship between away missions, OR if away missions are downtime while shipboard action and drama are the ‘scores.’ I think instead that you have an altogether different division in mind, but there’s something neat ere I can’t shake.
I like away team missions and space battles being the scores. And downtime being everything else (rec time, research, dock and repair, etc)
So do I, but flipping that structure is super intriguing. It’d be a completely different kind of game. Like playing Lords of Waterdeep as opposed to regular D&D.
Yes! It’s a super interesting concept and you could do some really innovative stuff with it. I do plan on having the score be an actual mission and downtime being the other stuff. However, downtime may sometimes feature much more prominently than the mission (think holodeck episodes with some sort of complication taking lots of screen time while the actual mission is relatively straightforward).
I didn’t mean to restrict it, so much as describe how to present it. In this game, as we see in the Bloodletters AP, some actions should be run as scores (or mini-scores) which are typically downtime actions. Arcy’s heat removal plan (string up the Bluecoats over the water and threaten them) for example, was a series of rolls for the fiction happening, not just.. Roll Tier. It’s built in for things to go this way, but it could deserve special mention that putting teams on finding the cure for the Bajoran plague is not a simple Gather Info roll
Yes, I didn’t take it as a restrictive view. I was just trying to elaborate my vision of it a bit more.
Aye 🙂 I was worried I was seen as naysaying the idea, but the ideas are actually just revving