So, through some dastardly blackmailing and a none-more-goth mist-drenched midnight meeting in Ankhayat Park, The Prestige (my players’ crew of assassins and cleaners) managed to convince Milos Brogan, a jealous commander in the Imperial Military, to brutally murder industrialist Adric Strangford, who was being guarded by a squad under Brogan’s direct command (Strangford is an inner-circle member of the Hive, with whom our PCs are currently at war, so the Hive are pulling strings for extra protection).
Unfortunately, Brogan and his boys messed it up a bit, leading to a brutal slaughter out in the open, dubbed in the broadsheets as ‘The Turnbull Street Massacre’ (the result of some interesting fortune rolls). Some tabloid rags are also speculating that Brogan is the Brightstone Butcher, a serial killer The Prestige invented to cover their tracks. Now, there’s a huge investigation and court case going down in Duskwall, along with much ballyhoo and public outrage, not least because, as well as being a celebrated military man, Brogan is married to Lucella Rowan, the daughter of Elder Rowan, the patriarch of the Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh.
And all this because The Prestige accidentally came across evidence of infidelity on Lucella Rowan’s part and decided to use it to their advantage, pointing Brogan at whoever they wanted by lying to him about who Lucella’s lover actually was (Lucella’s actual lover was one Branon Farros, a minor noble in the employ of the Hive whom the PCs knocked off a few sessions beforehand). They’ve got heat coming their way big time, even though (and somewhat because) they tried for the hands-off approach.
Has anyone attempted or completed a “Blades of Serenity” hack that is characters and crews in a Firefly-like ‘verse.
Has anyone attempted or completed a “Blades of Serenity” hack that is characters and crews in a Firefly-like ‘verse. I was explaining Blades to my Dungeon World group and one player asked me “So like Badger’s crew on Persephone, or Niska’s crew?”
I’m sad that I didn’t think of that myself but it seems like it could be a good fit.
I did those for my roll20 game but maybe they’re useful for your game, too. One big piece of PNG picture to be convinient, you have to cut out the one(s) you need. I hope you like them.
So, I already shared the gorgeous poster of Doskvol that a friend of mine was nice enough to print out for my play…
So, I already shared the gorgeous poster of Doskvol that a friend of mine was nice enough to print out for my play group, and I’m back with another awesome bit of coolness. One of the players in my Blades in the Dark campaign is a new role-player, having just started gaming in the past 7 months, and a musician. He made a theme song for the D&D game he ran for his friends, and now he’s done the same for my table!
I absolutely love passionate players, and this was very cool, so I share his hard work with y’all!
The Third Rails out of Prism City hosted peace talks between Blacksand, a fortress-refinery taking cues from Gastown and Elvis, and the sentient drone semi truck-deity Big Red. Tensions started high as each contingent arrived with enough armed guards to fight a small war should things go south (mixed result on the social plan’s engagement roll).
The Rails’ main goal was to quell the animosity between the two factions, with a secondary goal of making some sort of trade deal with Blacksand (they had arranged one previously with Big Red). They did not want Blacksand to find out that they had allied with Big Red to take down a Blacksand convoy previously.
Gameplay-wise, I started each faction off with grievances to overcome and then something they wanted if they were going to move forward. Blacksand wanted Big Red to lay off their convoys, but their real problem was with the Tier IV trading hub Hightower, which was cutting in on their business. They needed allies more than they wanted retribution for their losses.
Big Red was easy. It wanted a bride.
“A bribe?”
“No, a bride.”
“I ain’t marryin’ no goddamn truck!” shouts one of the Blacksand guards, resplendent in body armor festooned with Vegas showgirl plumage.
“Our lord is not simply a truck!” bellows Big Red’s chief Mechanizer in return.
Johnny Tabernacle, the Third Rails’ Leftover, stepped in trying to bring everyone around to the idea that maybe Big Red wanted a truck bride, not a human one. With a six, he defused the situation, the guns went back down, and the exchange mutated into whose issues would get addressed first.
This was more interesting for me, because I’ve done lots of Glow in the Dark sessions that head towards violence. This was new territory. Was there enough structure here in my hack to make these negotiations compelling?
Gotta pause here to talk about the PCs. I’ve got a Leftover (social, some tech, middling combat), a Reaper (killing and bossing), and a Junker (hacking and scrounging). Zeke the Junker was throwing in some assist dice here and there, but this was clearly Johnny’s show. Lt. Dan the Reaper, however, looked like he didn’t have a lot to do aside from being there in case the guns came out. So I changed the game from figuring out this NPC on NPC shit and focused on making the NPCs want the PC tribe’s stuff.
1. Big Red wanted a truck. Zeke had a truck, a big tandem tractor trailer they hijacked from NOAH the mad AI (1 upgrade in Cars plus the Quality upgrade for Vehicles). Zeke and the other PCs had to convince Big Red and its Mechanizers to look for their Bride of Truckenstein somewhere else, which was hard because really, the Rails’ truck was perfect. While we still didn’t know what Big Red’s intentions were or even if this mandate was from the truck itself or something its acolytes just said their god desired, this was the best and fastest way to suddenly make Zeke care very deeply about what was going on.
2. Lt. Dan Halen recently tracked down an enemy on his revenge list. Bubba the mutant was in charge of a small Last Cavalry (Tier IV paramilitary nomadic raiders) recon force currently camped out in the Barrens near Dead Horse. This intel had an expiration date, however. The Last Cavalry was nomadic, and helping Blacksand against Hightower first or searching for some other suitable bride for Big Red would mean Bubba would vanish and Dan would have to restart his long-term project.
Zeke had an idea. “The Last Cavalry’s mobile. They’ll have lots of trucks.” A controlled Sway later and Big Red was onboard. So many sixes.
Blacksand still wanted their Hightower problems addressed first, however, and a controlled group sway roll on 5d6 produced naught but 3s. Would Dan try to coerce or intimidate them? Would they try their argument again, pressing their luck and eroding Blacksand’s patience? Johnny tried the Barter route, offering them a larger cut for their help against the Last Cavalry and arguing how they’d all be able to use any stolen warfighting gear against Hightower together. The sixes were back and the three factions parted ways.
The trade deal the Third Rails wanted would be contingent on their help against Hightower, but for the moment they had brought a tenuous peace to their corner of the wasteland.
No payoff, sadly, and Fallout for the score/run/job was Wastrels (pay Upkeep again) – easily explained by the Third Rails being generous hosts. While everyone’s load stayed Light, the tribe’s Supplies dropped from 5 to 3 even as their Rep maxed out. They’ll be ready to move to Tier I as soon as they can get 8 supplies (and if they’re smart, more than that to account for increased Upkeep, which means I’ll want their allies to claim enough loot to make the PCs’ situation untenable without conflict). Muahaha. The Third Rails also dinged over in tribe XP and picked up the first dot in Gyros (the explanation for which I am eagerly awaiting) and a Farm, which should help mitigate their upkeep in the future.
It’s supposed to be a small wiki-like page for my players. It’s designed with mobile devices in mind and the content (in German) is my homebrew world (Mix of BitD & WH40K).
You can open the menu by clicking the top bar.
The player page (“Spieler”) has an entry for every player which contains their current character. The achievements (image+title) are clickable to reveal the description.
The faction page (“Fraktionen”) has all of the gangs (the campaign is brand new so there are only a few), their business card and a brief description.
The world pages (“World”) are for general info (“Allgemein”) and for the city Ebrichsburg. There are interactive maps with points of interest for districts (so far there’s only 1 district named “Hasard”)
I’d love your feedback! Design, Bugs, features you’d like – If you speak German you can comment on the content too 😀
Question for yall and especially John Harper. If a player does something REALLY dumb say for example swan dive off a 1000 foot cliff, would a resistance roll to not die even make sense in such an extreme circumstance? I’m torn on keeping faithful to what written and my desire for realistic consequences.
My plan moving forward is to playtest it semi-privately on my Twitch channel and, if it’s in a good place, maybe run it for Roll20Con with some more crew options. I don’t think I’ll have a sheet by then but maybe. I can dream.
