I don’t know if anyone has ever brought this up, but I just recently started watching Penny Dreadful. It struck me as perfect inspiration/touchstone for Blades, and was surprised that it hadn’t made it into the general discussion (as far as I’ve seen anyways). Anyone else feel like this matched their idea of Blades? Or anyone who didn’t feel like it jived with Blades for them?
I don’t know if anyone has ever brought this up, but I just recently started watching Penny Dreadful.
I don’t know if anyone has ever brought this up, but I just recently started watching Penny Dreadful.
It has some cool creepy stuff that I think fits on an aesthetic level; that weird vampire thing with the hieroglyphics under its skin is exactly what I pictured when the Six Towers AP was talking about people shooting up on Leviathan blood and turning into demons.
In general, though, I think it’s way too slow paced and boring to be good Blades material. Blades is all about the daring action, and Penny Dreadful has maybe a single two minute action scene out of every three hours of screen time.
I listed it as a touchstone on the shared Google sheet for this
I forgot who posted it but I think it’s in the about section on this community
Agreed.
I think I posted trailers of it before, but I think the characters could be a great crew, and I liked the series:
The Medium
The Gunslinger
The Explorer
The Servant (Tribesman/shaman)
The Socialite (Dorian Grey)
The Doctor
The Dove (Prostitute)
Combined with hidden identities:
The Witch
The Beast
The Sage
The Dark Scientice
The Undead
The Ancient
The Slayer
Cue John Harper’s thoughts on Penny Dreadful as a show in T-minus Five… Four … Three… Two….
I’m not a fan. The visual style is cool, and of course Eva Green is awesome, but the show didn’t work for me at all. I ranted about it on Twitter, even. 🙂
Having said that, I think it can still work just fine as a touchstone to draw inspiration from for your Blades games.
Yup.
It’s 7-8 episodes per season stretched to 10 – the antithesis of the fast-moving pace Blades is set up to provide. It’s also about people who, for the most part, have little to do with the scoundrel’s life.
What I do think you could use it for is an exploration of vice and trauma. These are broken people who don’t know how to stop licking the electric socket.
My roommate used to joke about the pacing. “We have to go confront the vampire… right after this dinner party.”
Some of the cast was excellent. Some were horribly miscast. The Bro Trio (Victor/Dorian/Ethan) were comically out of their depth with the rest of the cast frequently acting circles around them. In particular, I never baught that Vanessa, a woman who has literally fucked Satan, would be interested in the dimestoor/hot topic employee they cast as Dorian.