Well, it took a while folks, but Band of Blades is laid out, printed, hand-folded and ready for alpha at…

Well, it took a while folks, but Band of Blades is laid out, printed, hand-folded and ready for alpha at…

Well, it took a while folks, but Band of Blades is laid out, printed, hand-folded and ready for alpha at GoPlayNorthWest this weekend.

It ate up a chunk of my life, and forced me to learn a bunch of illustrator but I couldn’t be more proud of this. Here’s a sneak peek at some #BandOfBlades stuff for all you patient fans. I hope you enjoy.

44 thoughts on “Well, it took a while folks, but Band of Blades is laid out, printed, hand-folded and ready for alpha at…”

  3. It’s Alpha at the moment, still a bunch of stuff left to do before anyone that’s not me or John LL can run it.

    I’ll use the famous Blizzard line: It’ll be ready when it’s ready. But it’ll probably be early fall before it’s out to backers.

  4. Jason Eley it totally was! That’s a super fun little program. We needed a map to play around with and do dev on before we hire a pro to do our final version (there’s a guy in this community doing our final version).

    We changed some stuff around between first pass and final so it was a good call to not go all “Lonely Mountain hand drawn pretty” straight off the bat ^_~

    Good eye.

  7. In overall terms, things are rougher than they look. I’ll break it down, because we <3 you all and want you to fully appreciate where we're at.

    Core Mechanics

    Stress, Trauma, and Corruption

    We shortened stress tracks for the game and that’ll have a big impact. We’ve also reduced access to Trauma. These changes impact character longevity but we need to play a lot to fully appreciate the scale.

    Skills

    We’re trying out a new thing with the specialist skills being multi-use powers. We need to playtest to see how it pans out. We’re also keeping an eye on the resolve skills – I believe Marshall and Discipline have enough distance from Consort or Sway to be meaningful, but playtesting will prove me right or wrong.

    Harm and Recovery

    Harm is higher in BoB than Blades, but we’re still tuning it and we need to evaluate the frequency and intensity of that harm. Also, there’s a new recovery system we put in for this game. This all needs to be put through its paces.

    Heritages

    There’re a lot of ‘micropowers’ we added through the heritage facility, and these have replaced larger action pools at the beginning of the game. We love them, but I’m sure some will get tweaked before we’re done.

    Playbook Specific

    Playbook Powers

    We still need to make sure every power has a purpose. With seven playbooks and potentially up to two more, that’s a lot of powers that need to be assessed.

    Playbook Items

    All playbooks have distinct items, and there are some cool things thrown in here, but some may be darlings too dear to live.

    Playbooks

    Which brings us to ‘are these the seven playbooks we need in the game’? We have two more we’re thinking about adding, but that aren’t 100% in. Bandwidth and necessity will determine.

    Campaign Structure

    Generals

    Another concept we’re adding is that of ‘Generals’, which are like playbooks you get as a player. You’ll take on the role of Commander, Marshall, or Quartermaster in-between missions, and make decisions for the legion at a higher level. Properly dividing the responsibility between those generals is important for the feel of the game. Not to mention that we’re considering adding an optional Spymaster, so that’s a wrinkle.

    Chosen

    Chosen are much like Crews, and have powers they grant the legion. We only have one of those right now, and we need several more.

    Points

    We haven’t talked much about this but your play-through will be scorable so you can see how well you did! But the system has yet to be defined.

    Missions

    We have a mechanism for getting special missions but we need to design like, two dozen special missions for ya’ll and assign them to the various locations.

    I can’t state how awesome it is that ya’ll want to get a hold of the materials and that BoB has your attention. We just don’t want to give you all something before it’s even ready to be reviewed. If you have any specific questions about where we’re at with something or what we’re trying to do, I’m happy to answer them. As for time-lines, we think it’ll be a few months before we’re ready to move on to Beta. As you can see, it’s a lot of work.

  11. It really does deserve its own ‘limited ed’ hardback printrun as a supplement. So inspirational!

    I know what I’m gonna push for our next campaign 🙂

  20. Thank you all SO MUCH for the kind words.

    Thomas Berton Let me know if you have questions.

    Alfredo Tarancón Not every hack/game is for everyone, but we’re doing what we can to make it exciting!

    Nathan Roberts actual printing is a huge hassle (warehousing, you need to print like 1000 books at once etc). So not sure if that’ll ever happen. We’ll see.

    Ross Cowman Ross! Didn’t realize you were in the community ^_^ waves hi hopefully I’ll see you at GPNW.

  21. Lex Permann yes absolutely. We’ll probably do the same deal we did with Scum & Villainy and put it up on drivethru at the same time it goes out to backers. But we’ll definitely get it to non-backers somehow.

  22. Stras Acimovic Yeah sure! So is the idea kind of like the player’s are managing a Stars Without Number-style GM-turn, making decisions for the larger body of the army?

  25. Thomas Berton sort of. There is an active GM in the game. Right now we have three roles (we call them the Generals). The Commander, the Marshall and the Quartermaster.

    The Commander tracks how close the undead army is on you (pressure) and looks for missions, and decides which missions you’ll pass on (though there are often penalties) and which ones you’ll prioritize (play). Also when and where the Legion moves.

    The Marshall decides which squad and specialists go on what missions, and keeps track of who’s wounded, which squads are ready for action etc.

    The Quartermaster controls supply, and decides on campaign actions (downtimes are Legion-wide, so if Rest and Recuperation is called everyone heals a bit).

    The GM does essentially enemy factions, and with some input from the Commander generates missions to present to them and runs the actual missions themselves.

    Dunno if that explains it.

    Lex Permann we’re got the specialists: The Heavy, Scout, Sniper, Medic, and Officer. Also Soldier and Rookie playbooks (not every mission is full up on specialists, that’s the Marshall’s decision, and if you die – which happens – you just grab a rookie or soldier playbook depending if the squad is veteran or not, and play one of the other squadmates).

    There’s a chance we’ll have some non-military personel playbooks (Brandon Perkins) like the Alchemist (who are priests of the builder gods of the east, and who can Craft blackshot, set up wards etc).

    And I’m not going to give anything away – but there might be a unique playbook you get for a special mission at one location too ^_~

  26. What does your tech level look like for Gear (Blades-equivalent or less)? Have you taken a gander at The Watch, a similar-on-the-surface game that uses Night Witches as its jumping off point?

  28. Tech has got less spirit oil and steampunk, but roughly blades-ish.

    Also, I have and this is nothing like it. For one the focus is on the missions and larger overall strategy, and you may play many chars over the campaign. The only true constant is the Legion.

  29. Rotating cast like that is an interesting niche I don’t see explored often, especially in a storygame space. Can’t wait to buy this!

    I forget, are any other upcoming hacks yours as well?

  31. Amazing. I love love love when games manage to blend the two scopes of individuals trying to survive and the whole host to which they belong.

  33. Oh that’s cool, I’ve been using a roles thing for Final Frontier – though the system I wrote is in its infancy. Stunningly similar though, down to the duties of each essential role… And probably where the similarity ends. But yea, my design called for Commander, Tactical, and Engineering. and 4th role was variable/optional (usually my groups added Medical/Science). Anyways, i hope to hear more dev updates like this, as I will likely be following very closely in your footsteps

    Good luck at GPNW! I’m sure you’ll rock it, judging by the hype during the S&V show

  40. Oh my.

    I hadn’t realized how ambitious this one was going to be! It looks like you’re making a bunch of major changes, and I absolutely love that you’re finding Blades so versatile and changing it so much.

    Kudos for all the hard work. Am very very patient 🙂 But looking forward to seeing what you’ve got cooking for us… 😀

  41. This looks and sounds fantastic. I have a few friends that would absolutely go bananas for this, so I’ll definitely be keeping tabs on the release. 🙂

  43. I ran it last night for some folks for Halloween 🙂 It was my spooky/scary game for the night. So it’s being tweaked and tested. Playable at the moment, just needs a bit of polish and a bit more info so someone other than me can run it.

    I’m in the middle of laying out the final S&V version so once that’s done I’d expect a BoB release. 🙂

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