Thinking of making a Fate/Stay Night Blades hack, replacing the playbooks with servant classes (Archer, Saber, Caster etc). The setting would be a Holy Grail War where 3 mages have joined forces to get their hands on the Grail and have summoned you, Heroic Spirits, to fight for their cause and to have your own wishes granted.
Players would base their character on a Myth/Legend/Historic Event/Future Hero, tell us about their Noble Phantasm, and tell us about their wish to give the Grail when they win.
Does anyone have any thoughts about how Blades might be adapted further for this?
That sounds like it could be cool. Blades can do really tense action scenes. So I’m only somewhat familiar with Fate/Stay Night, but a couple of things stand out to me:
Are scores just going to be fights? What other sorts of things would make good scores? Writing these out could make for a good plan list. I think keeping the engagement roll and such are core to Blades since it’s a powerful pacing mechanic to get into the action.
How are tiers going to be used, if at all? After battling it out with other servants, what are the currencies that improve your overall quality and how do you use them fictionally? Is this progress on the way to the Grail, or just status and power among mages? What is turf?
What do you think of claims and crew in this setting? Is that the path you have to follow on the way to the Grail? What finite resource are “claims” going to turn into, because they need to be valuable and all taken by others? Is the crew sheet now the summoner sheet? That seems to make sense to me, but I’m not sure.
Speaking of the summoners, are the players controlling them too? Or are they NPC quest-givers? If so, how will player agency be preserved?
What is downtime, and who/how does it benefit? It seems like reducing stress and recovery are easy fits, but how are long term projects handled? My recollection was that the summoners have all the power and agency outside of the fights. What are vices, then? Can they be linked to Grail Wishes? Or should they be tied to the historical figure?
You might want to go back to the old healing rules. It’s an action show, so getting rid of harm faster seems like it’s more in genre. I think writing cool “push yourself to…” powers for some of the superpower moves sound cool.
John Dornberger the main idea is to eliminate the other servants and/or their masters in order to take the Grail. I like the idea of Crews becoming Masters, perhaps each Master has his own way of doing things? Definetly keeping the engagement roll, I love that mechanic.
Currency is something I haven’t thought about yet. Perhaps the Master can gain funding from certain missions which he can use to bolster his resources? As for Tier, I was thinking of scrapping it and introducing something new. It seems in Fate that certain Classes of Servant have an advantage over others, maybe I could do something with this? Maybe the Master has a “wealth” stat at the start and it could be an interesting thing to play around.
I was also thinking of replacing Stress with Mana, and having something bad happen to the Master if his mana gets drained by his servant.
Claims would work as a pathway towards the Grail with each Master having his or her own starting plan (which may or may not change depending on the fiction).
I feel that the Masters will be NPCs (unless a player really wants to play one), but not quest givers. They will be on the front lines with their Heroic Spirit (unless their “crew” sheet says they opperate differently). The idea being that they are also actively working for the Grail and it adds an extra consequence for the player having to protect their Master.
Downtime would work as usual. I might need to change Heat. Vice would be something the Master indulges to restore mana. Perhaps a second vice-like thing could be used differently for Servants? Maybe theres a second resource pool for the servant to use which varies depending on his class?
I prefer the new healing rules in all honesty 😛 one thing I want to figure out is how Command Seals would work, any ideas?
Without a full knowledge of the series:
Command Seals: They’re what keep the servants bound, right? Maybe it would be fun if they replace the trauma conditions with stress becoming mana? Push them too far and their hold weakens. Start with the ability to take 3 Trauma/Lost Seals.
When you max out on lost Command Seals, your servant breaks free and kills the master unless you have the appropriate abilities to keep them satisfied to serve for now? It also gives some bite to the mage/servant relationship. You can power through mana and leave, but you lose the character.
You can also steal them from someone else, right? So maybe there would be a Claim that gives a the mages more.
Wealth/Tier: Yeah, I didn’t know how appropriate it would be for the genre. Mechanically, it means that you won’t need to push yourself for greater effect as often because everyone’s on the same tier. Having a sort of rock-paper-scissors effect that you describe could help replace that aspect.
Without Tier, though, you loose one element of advancement. Instead, advancement is about the path to the Grail and the personal servant power. That’s fine, especially for a short or mid-length campaign. The “domain” type play, though, suffers somewhat by losing the rise in tiers. This also changes how claims would function since there’s not much of a need for a turf analogue. Lacking a “coin” analogue makes that worse.
Time seems like something that could play into those. Since money is no object, time until someone else takes the Grail is the finite resource you have to husband. Beating a competitor gives you time to work. “Points” of time to buy extra downtime actions and such feel a little weird, but maybe there’s something there. Claims that give you more “time” are weird too… Maybe there’s something there?