Blades of New Crobuzon — progress update #2

Blades of New Crobuzon — progress update #2

Blades of New Crobuzon — progress update #2

I am a bad, bad man (yes, those are all districts, and yes, I am writing blurbs for and statting-up all of them).

Speaking more generally, I hadn’t realised starting out how much inventing I’d have to do – there’s plenty of info out there, in the books and in Dragon Magazine, lots of stuff on the plate, but I’m needing to do a lot of seasoning and side arrangements to get it up to Blades’ sandbox needs (new contacts and key NPCs, rule wording adjustments and the like, as well as more detailed descriptions for the districts).

After that overwrought metaphor, a question of time: I’m playing fast and loose with it, but setting a broad precedent for this current version of New Crobuzon being set somewhere a few years before Iron Council, during the beginning of the war with the Witchocracy of Tesh. This gives us a nice pressure-cooker situation, with heightened danger outside the city and political tensions within it. It also gives me an excuse to have Toro’s gang as a faction, ‘cos they’re too dang cool to pass up.

I am also including Jack Half-a-Prayer and his band of thieves though, so that muddies things somewhat. My excuse is that this is a toolbox for groups to pull or discard from as needed, and players are likely to mess the broad timeline up royally anyway, so I might as well include as many cool toys as possible.

I’ll probably post the current version of the Faction ladder in a few days so you guys can pick at it and make suggestions (I’m detailing all the political parties within Parliament, which might be a fools errand but is, let’s be fair, a big part of New Crobuzon).

Outside of the faction game stuff, I’ve started in on playbooks; these aren’t seeing drastic changes, though the Ghost special abilities are changing, and the Whisper is being reworked as the Thaumaturge (still essentially a whisper, but with Tempest replaced with Torque, which is all kinds of scary and weird, among other tweaks).

13 thoughts on “Blades of New Crobuzon — progress update #2”

  2. I live in the middle of nowhere and have a lot of time on my hands, so might as well apply myself to something, and anyway, I love this shit.

    I only just noticed that. It really does, doesn’t it? The map in Perdido is oriented North-South, with the book’s gutter cutting through between Brock Marsh and The Crow, but that oval shape and the rivers’ arrangement is still there. Interesting stuff.

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