A NOCTURNE — progress update #???
AKA It’s a Blades hack, for real this time
After some genuinely sleepless nights, I decided to bite the bullet and just port over Blades’ core dice system to A Nocturne. To be honest, I’m not sure why I didn’t do this months ago. I’d been wrestling with my custom dice stuff for a while, and was realising that I was essentially reverse-engineering Blades’ dice mechanics in a way that was, at the end of the day, not particularly useful or meaningful for the game.
So, here’re the current range of actions in the game (this is screenshotted straight off the Killer playbook). Lemme know what you think. I’m currently messing with the naming of Operate, which is basically the techy “fix things, make machinery go” action. I’m also wondering if I couldn’t go further with the poetry layer, though I’m pretty happy with the suite of actions as-is for playtesting purposes.
So, yeah, a lesson for myself, since I’m guessing most of you guys already know this: be truthful with yourself about whether or not something is working, or worth being made to work! It’s kind of a massive relief to have done this, and reinvigorated and streamlined my hack (and hacking process) quite a bit.
WHAT IS THIS TANTALIZING MORSEL!??!!!
Greg Barnsdale A Nocturne is a game about playing interstellar space bastards in an unevenly transhuman future!
A spitter crew, the skeleton crew of a massive, weird, old space craft combat the ravages of time brought on by relativistic space travel, the ambitions of nascent space empires, and their own human morality in order to turn a profit however they bloody well can. There’re planet-destroying weapons platforms and war criminals and machine intelligences run amok!
Fun for all the family!
(it’s also secretly a cyberpunk mecha game, but don’t tell anyone, shhhh!)
I love what im seeing, but i wonder if there isnt some overlap in the ‘Systems’ category. Like how do analyse and scan differ, and operate and hack?
I’ll offer what i intuit, to see if im on your track. Analyse and scan differ in depth and breadth, like analyzing a crypto-code versus scanning an area for signs of travel? I guess operate could be dramatically useful, like operate the power station, instead of hack the power station, make tech do what it should instead of what it shouldnt? If the examples dont fit the exacts of the genre bear with.
Playbooks, classes?
On. Board.
Greg Barnsdale Yeah, that’s definitely what I’m going for with the Systems actions. Analyse is deep and focused, Scan is broad and sweeping. Think the difference between Study and Survey in Blades. You’re right on Operate and Hack as well.
As for playbooks, I currently have four worked up: The Broken, a tech-oriented survivalist; The Forgotten, a hacker who thrives on misdirection and has a lot of creepy abilities to do with memories and perception; The Killer, who’s a killer; and The Outlaw, who’s a gunslinging criminal who’s always operated on the edges. More to come, but that’s where it is right now.
The playbooks are as much about where your character’s come from, why she left normal society to join a spitter crew, as much as what she gets XP for and the like.
Naturally, there’ll also be Craft playbooks as an equivalent to Blades’ Crews, but they’ll be operating quite a bit differently.
Am i following correctly that Craft are the ‘massive, weird, old space craft’ mentioned in your earlier post?
Greg Barnsdale Indeed! They’re city sized monstrosities with on-board AI’s, and can get Scars (A Nocturne’s equivalent of Traumas) sort of like the characters do, which means they tend to get stranger as the game goes on.
So is the BitD crew adv map like literally a map of important parts of the ship? Hangar full of autodrones, wetlab, neutrino forge?
Greg Barnsdale Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. The Claims grid literally mapped onto a silhouette of the craft. You’re basically reclaiming bits of the craft as you take the Claims, with those kinds of scores being things like spelunking into the innards of some lost computer matrix, or battling stowaways for control of an old weapons hangar. Some of those claims would also be acquired externally, so say you’re looking at the Module map (what I might start calling the Claims map), and you see there’s a square called Cloning Vats – you ask the GM who has control of this cloning tech and they point to a system on the map of the star cluster, naming a faction, so you’ve gotta do a score against that faction to get the Cloning Vats. Blades’ principles apply – all modules (i.e. claims) are already in the possession of somebody (or something) else.
Duuude
Is the idea that contact with non spitter-crew will be fleeting, since they don’t experience time dilation, so spitter crew only have relationships with crew of other spitters, ais, brain transplanting monsterous Methuselahs, entire dynasties and the like?
Michael Atlin Yup. Any close relationships with individuals tend to be fleeting and inevitably doomed, so it’s more on the faction and dynasty scale, including everything you mentioned for sure.
When you revisit a colony or culture after a stretch of travel on your spittership, roll+weird, and choose …
(I know its not pbta but it sounds like a good fit)
I like rolling to see what happened to a civilization since you last visited. Kinda like playing Microscope in game time rather than retroactively!
Calum Grace I finally had the chance to give the playtest (0-6) and it’s playbooks (0-7) a proper read and it’s absolutely incredible stuff!
I’m really excited about the changes you’re making. The (0-7) playbooks feel even better than the (0-6) playtest, and I love the changes you’re discussing here.
Reading about your description of the War Shells reminded me of the Starship Troopers novel 😀
The playbooks are evocative as hell, they make me want to throw away my ongoing games and tell my players “forget all that, THIS is what we’re playing forever now.”
One thing I’m missing (or rather, I know my players would be) is a kind of Jedi/Psyker/Witch/Navigator playbook
Anyway : YES!
By the way, have you read Ann Leckie’s Ancillary series yet? Give them a look if you get the chance.
Renaud van Strydonck Thanks man!
Btw, since you’ve read through the current 0-7 playbooks, what’s your take on the Starting Options section? The 0-7-1 playbooks are moving closer to Blades’ Load rules and modules are moving over to Craft playbook upgrades and my version of the claims map, so just wanted to get your read on that.
The War-Shells are definitely inspired by the powered armour in stuff like Starship Troopers, as well as the Tau’s mini-mechs in WH40k.
A weirdo space-wizard playbook is definitely in the works, oriented around post-singularity nanotech and warped physiologies, with some very witchy overtones.
I’ve not read the Ancillary series, but I’ve had it recommended to me a few times. Definitely on the to-read list!
I was actually thinking about the Starting Options section this morning for a couple of reasons :
Gear Choice had me torn.
On one hand, I do think that the permissive approach to character gear is a staple of BitD, with each character type having an assorted paraphenalia that reinforces its archetype.
On the other hand, I felt like the gear choices you presented were incredibly flavourful – I love the idea of choosing whether I want to be a powered utility shell OR a swarm of drones, and what that says about me as an engineer.
My greedy first thought would be to do both : use the BitD load system for most gear, but keep an either-or choice for each playbook…
Craft Modules – I really like the idea that character choice influences what modules are available to the craft.
I wasn’t sure without more rules, but I assumed that each Craft would have its “Modules Map” but character Playbooks would make certain unique advances available too. (1)
Here again, I would wonder whether it’s possible to do both : keep a basic claims map per Spitter type, but unlock special options based on characters.
(1) Craft Modules were especially interesting to me.
I’ve been wondering about what the relationship between player characters and their kingdom should be in my slowly burgeoning 4X hack, and they felt like a lovely way of making character choices “colour” the kingdom.
Renaud van Strydonck I’m definitely going to be exploring what I can do with BitD’s Load rules in future versions to make the differences between styles of using a playbook more prominent. Also, figuring out how much Load a War-Shell takes up is an ongoing process 🙂
Also, yeah, that was my thinking along the lines of the gear options in the first place – it’s a pretty core bit of Blades, so why not use it?
I really like the idea of adding extra avenues to the module map based on the makeup of the crew. I’m gonna let it sit how it is for now for playtesting purposes, but that’s going in my “possible future changes” notes.
Here’s what the Killer playbook looks like right now, for reference (the blank spaces in the Items section are for stuff made using the light-fab):
drive.google.com – drive.google.com/file/d/0B_sURh-eDnchUXExSFNBNFRSRDQ/view?usp=sharing
Perhaps load represents cognitive load? as you overclock yourself and get ditracted its hard to keep track of everything all your expert systems are telling you AND maintain a conversation with a baseline.
Where can we find the playtest files? [aka I’m volunteering]