Art and Artists in Blades In The Dark

Art and Artists in Blades In The Dark

Art and Artists in Blades In The Dark

Alright, the more I fiddle around with this “Illusionist” playbook, the more I’m veering away from Houdini and towards the idea of a mad artist capable of making their visions manifest.

To be honest, I quite like the idea of creating a playbook that captures the love of Art in the Dishonored series to let players create the Sokolovs and Delilahs of Doskvol.

So my question is : How would you handle artists, art and the creation of art in Blades In The Dark?

Part of the reason I’m asking is that I created a Special Ability called Palimpsest which may well define something which should normally be possible already.

#ArtistPlaybook

13 thoughts on “Art and Artists in Blades In The Dark”

  1. I like this a lot. I think Palimpsest is fine, although you might want to add +1d to give it some mechanical weight and simplify the wording a bit. Maybe look at the Cutter’s “Savage” ability as an example.

  2. This is supremely cool, and the fact that I’m currently, no kidding, running an assassin/cleaner crew calling themselves The Prestige makes me want to spring this playbook on them as an option for secondary characters.

  4. To answer your question, since Blades in the Dark is happening in a victorian era like setting, maybe do some research on the art and culture in that time period, silkshore in Duskwall is bith the Art and Red light district, witth theaters and operas as well as art galeries being there, so maybe an artist character could come from there?

  5. The only thing I would suggest is to rename one of the abilities to have Ghost in the title so it still interacts with the Ghost playbook. Beyond that the playbook looks great

  6. I greatly like this playbook. I also like how one of the contracts is a Gondolier, sense they are one of my favorite factions. This fits practically perfectly with the Siren brainstorming that happened in the thread linked to here. I’m definitely going to allow this playbook into my games.

    Am I correctly reading Phantasms in that the default illusions cost nothing but the additional features cost two? If so, is the reason for this to be like it is, as a tradeoff for the small unlimited supernatural power, making it more significant costs extra?

    I think that the memory fuckery bit in the front should be attached to a loadless item called something like “Pinhole in Reality”. Which other than messing with your mind allows you to “let in a breeze from the Otherworld”. My reasoning for this is to allow for consistent layout across all the non-ghost playbooks, and it also maintains the illusionary nature of niches in the non-ghost playbooks. It also makes the ambiguous area around the “Pinhole” and it’s associated moves similar to the ambiguous area around Ghost Hunter and the Hound’s Pet, which I feel adds consistency to the design.

    Sorry if this post is overly critical, it comes from a place of love not of malice.

    plus.google.com – Leviathan hunting…in spaaaaaaace! OK, not really. I just read the bit abou…

  7. Thomas Berton I reworded Palimpsest a little along the lines of the Hound’s Scout ability. I’m not 100% sold on the Actions, it might be easier to just let the player use Consort in both cases.

    Michael Hill I’d never spotted that! I renamed Phantasms to Ghost Dreams since I figure it gives Ghost characters a nice way to handle hauntings.

    Gorinich Serpant Just scanned through the Siren thread you linked and it’s awesome, thank you!

    Phantasms was originally a ‘push yourself to’ ability but the effect of a small illusion feels about on the level of a “free” ability effect so it seemed unfair to make the player pay twice.

    Love the idea of including Andrew Shields’ pinhole idea as a loadless item! I moved it to “Items” and it does make the design more consistent with the other playbooks.

    Thanks so much for your help!

  8. Colin Fahrion I struggled a little with that to begin with.

    Andrew Shields’ idea of the pinhole connection to a Leviathan works wonderfully, but I would like to leave some more room for the player to decide what they are and how.

    An option I quite like would simply be “you are bound to a devil by contract…” which might let the player decide what that means and echoes stories of artists and musicians who made a deal with the devil for their talent.

  10. Adam Sexton I would never say such a thing! It’s covered by “or create your own” 😉

    I fucking adore the work you did on Mortally Bankrupt by the way!

    It reminds me of reading Unknown Armies for the first time.

  11. Renaud van Strydonck Thanks! I’m still unnaturally obsessed with making that game. I’m currently in the learning-pits of making a fully functional Roll20 sheet so you don’t need to flip between Roll20 and PDF tabs.

    Also I believe my fresh new playtest group is doing a streamed playtest sometime this weekend if you want to watch us play a terrible martian noise band. I’ll link it in this community sometime before the weekend.

  12. In the game I run, our crew of shadows performed a heist to steal a supernatural painting from an art gallery. We established through rumors and whatnot in the setting that it was painted by a man supposedly possessed by the ghost of a long dead artist. Over the course of a couple 4/5 rolls when handling the painting, we established that it was possible to see something deeply personal and unnerving in the painting that no one else could see.

    The crew’s whisper wound up starting a long term project to study the painting further. At the end of our last session, she completed the clock… And I told her that she found that with some focus, she could Attune to the painting and try to see another location — kind of a clairvoyance sort of thing. I haven’t fully fleshed out the rules and consequences for doing so (probably the topic for a different post here), but it seems like the kind of thing that could fit well with this kind of playbook.

    Maybe an ability where you can paint a person or location that you are familiar with, and then attempt to Attune to see what’s happening at that location or through that person’s eyes. Consequences for rolling less than a 6 could be anything from harm to the subject of the painting becoming aware that they’re not alone…

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