Hey everyone! With the amazing start of a new Game of Thrones season, it quickly dawned on me that Blades in the Dark would be a perfect system for it. What kind of adjustments, hacks, additions and subtractions would YOU make, if you were using BITD for a Game of Thrones game?
Hey everyone!
Hey everyone!
This is a thing we’ve had to think about for Throne of the Void (which is a ways out, but is similar at least in concept. Lots of big factions, wheels-within-wheels Dune type stuff).
You’d have to change crews to be more like families, and a good setup might be to have a few major crews, where you have to scale up inside your faction while avoiding internal politics, before you can play the great game with the other factions.
I think the “how” would depend on what your focus of play was. You could play it very close to original blades, with the PC’s being members of, or retainers to, a minor house, or faction within a house, that eventually gets built up to be a more powerful house.
The other possibility is dividing up the play focus. The player’s house could start as a powerful, major player in the Game of Thrones, but the PCs are less powerful members of the house that go on missions, have adventures etc and eventually become more personally influential. Meanwhile, the players could play an almost separate faction game where they each take on prominent roles in the house, and make big decisions about how the house navigates all the politics and war (somewhat analogous to the extra roles Stras Acimovic is includng in Band of Blades).
I think both could be very cool.
I’d use a different system. I’m actually genuinely interested in why you think Blades is perfect for it? Because I feel like the tone of stories told with the never-tell-me-the-odds daredevil style that the Blades dice system has is completely at odds with Game of Thrones – still really interested in where you feel it lines up, however!
It’s a big fight over turf (where the only lasting chars are factions themselves), with powerful factions vying for power, in a dark fantasy setting with some supernatural elements. It’s pretty much blades.
And depending on how you set consequences, those 4-5s can reflect a lot of the show. Losing arms, losing family etc as consequences of rolls scans pretty hard to me.
Thanks for the info everyone! As for your question Adrian, while the never-tell-me-the-odds style is a little far from GoT, the overall feel of my games in general are pretty stark, especially with Blades. 😀
Anthony Costa That Stark pun. It hurts, but it’s a good pain.