Question for fellow hackers. In your view, what is the Blades engine best at? As an example, Fate can do a lot of things but is at its best when it’s going for highly competent heroes and pulpy action.
Blades is obviously great for crime/heists, and a lot of the upcoming hacks and stretch goals are centered around that idea in different settings. How general do you think it can go before losing what makes it tick? What scope of game/genre/setting “works”?
I think Blades does the underdog well. It models the picaresque scoundrel well. Any model where cost-and-consequence driven player empowerment is front and center. These are not new observations, they are pretty well spelled out in the book. I’m stuck in thinking about the core mechanic, but there are many parts to the Blades whole, and I’m interested in seeing where creative people take the other bits and twist and amplify them for unique applications.
One area I just feel in my gut that Blades could excel at is horror. I have stewed about stress and sanity and I’m convinced a mechanical model could be worked to something fruitful and cool. Especially the way Resistance works in Blades, with the GM able to really hit hard on Harm and Consequence. The Players have a mitigating resource to prolong the inevitable, but as great tension comes from prolonging what you know is coming, I feel Blades is ripe for a really kickass horror one-shot. Now, mind you, I haven’t any actionable stuff to base this on yet, but it is something on my to-do list.
I struggle with meaningfull battle scenes.
Michael Bolis, that’s definitely something I’m working through as well. What is core to the “Blades” engine, and what is core to the game “Blades in the Dark”? “Cost-and-consequence driven player empowerment” is exactly the kind of phrase I’ve been thinking about and looking for. That resonates with me.
Vandel J. Arden, I can see that. Even though there can be lots of fighting and violence in a session of Blades (like, a LOT of fighting and violence), the system doesn’t seem well-suited to a game all about combat.
Yes, I become a bit uninspired at times and the players just escalate rolls/consequences (in a not fun way)
I think the system has three shining points that elevate it.
1. Cut to the chase. Using flashbacks fueled by stress and a permissive framework that assumes the characters have prepared, you give the players LOTS of latitude to manipulate the situation and its context both as they jump right into the challenges.
2. Fiction first. Using position, factors, effects, and a variety of cooperative actions you can adjust situations with different mechanics, without establishing set difficulties and stat blocks for opponents. There are good tools for evaluating and resolving a situation.
3. Drama engine. There are enough hooks for characters specifically (like allies, odd gear, class issues, and race issues) for them to get pulled into the setting and woven into its difficulties. Combine that with faction alliances and enmities, and the entanglement roll after a heist, and you’ve got fertile soil for troubles always roiling to the surface. Combine all that with devil’s bargains and complications in play, and there are always enemies and allies that want things, crossing and aligning with what the characters are after. Long term project clocks encourage ambition, and constantly spoil a straight run at a task with a living world that’s morphing drama around a crew at all times.
So, for a successful hack, I think you need to have a focus on crisis events with stretches of down time between them, and a dynamic world that is inescapable and constantly generating enganglements.
Also, the genre has to accept main characters whose efforts constantly breed further complications, and who pay a heavy price for limited success.
As for Vice, that’s a piece that you’d have to figure out what to do with on your own. I’ve got my solution, but other designers will have to find theirs, to make hacks work.
Speaking to the combat point, I have had less problems with that because I have some assumptions that come to bear when I do a fight.
One, every round you’re in battle you will take an injury. How bad it is depends on how desperate the fight. You can resist it, of course, and armor is made for such circumstances, but if the fight wears on you can get injured multiple times and taken out.
I also favor short sharp battle with quick death on both sides (but the characters can resist where NPCs can’t so much.) There are many ways to mechanize a boss battle, like using clocks and switching the default injury system to being based on complications and failure instead. Factors also play in to fights.
Overall, each roll should be a fight scene, not a single exchange. Each roll does a lot of heavy lifting that way.
I don’t have much combat in my Blades in the Dark games, because like OD&D violence is risky and painful and expensive, and Blades in the Dark provides many exciting ways around it for a clever scoundrel. =)
Andrew Shields I love your summary in the middle there, and that’s great combat advice as well.
I agree that one of the core elements is the cycle of crisis and interesting downtime.
You might enjoy these videos that Adam and I made about hacking the game:
https://youtu.be/SLS2JwPhesg
John Harper I definitely enjoy this video. Love hearing Adam talk about games
Something I appreciate about Blades is that it churns out drama with every score. For some this lack of complete resolution might prove difficult but it makes my job as GM so much easier.
Other modular bits I like about blades:
Blades excels at something most narrative first games I’ve played don’t do well: it’s a narrative resource management game. A lot of its complexity is caught up not in an individual system but in the sheer variety of interactions between many different, simpler, resource systems.
Inventory can be used to offset stress expenditure can be used to offset harm can be used to offset trauma can be used to leverage experience etc. and it all directly adds to the fiction.
I’m currently playing with bringing large pieces of the Blades system in line with the play style and spirit of Dungeon World and am learning a lot about how the former influenced the later and what I like about each.
For my purposes, (I’m not a classic hex crawler), the inventory system of Blades is a vast improvement over the longer term (and poorly balanced) inventory system of DW and other fantasy adventure games, and the narrative focus of the Blades level up bonuses are super similar to the best of the Apocalypse World system moves.
The most difficult systems to balance in my mind are stress and harm, though the special classes, (ghost, vampire, etc.), provide some insight into how one can rebalance that mechanic to your style of game.
Finally, and this goes without saying, but EVERY GAME should have a Devil’s Bargain system. It’s pure narrative mana. I’m reimagining it as A Deal With Death for my hack but it’s the same damn thing and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I feel what Blades shines at is *sandbox play among multiple factions*.
The multiplicity of factions is what keeps the engine running, giving you a steady stream of competitors, enemies, allies, and opportunities. Cut those away — e.g. by putting the PCs in the wilderness, or giving them true safety — and suddenly you need to prod them and push them or dictate what adventure they’re up to this week. Keeping them in the roiling sea of conflict is what keeps them active and coming up with new goals of their own.
The other key is, you need to make sure all of the characters are capable of being relevant most of the time. Blades is really good at letting everyone participate — if you’re cunning, the silver-tongued socialite can help out in the toughest battle by poisoning your enemy yesterday. But shifting to other arenas doesn’t guarantee that holds true. (For example, I haven’t played Scum and Villainy yet, but I have misgivings about the use of piloting as a major element – it feels like a minigame you’re either in or out of, and an action with very limited applicability outside that very particular type of scene. I might be 100% wrong about this one specifically — but I’m using this as an example of how not all actions are widely applicable, even if they’re iconic and cool.)