So here’s an interesting thought experiment: how would it be interesting/feasible to inject metaplot into a Blades hack?
I know it sounds kind of contradictory, but there’s a method to my madness. The Tribe 8 rpg is one of the kings (or is that queens) of the metaplot craze of the late 90s/early 00s. It is not necessary to run the metaplot, and it often went thoroughly off the rails. I certainly wouldn’t want to recreate the entire metaplot for the umpteenth time, even though I’ve never succeeded in getting to the end of it.
But it makes me wonder if there are some core concepts to what makes up a “metaplot” that can’t be adapted. Clocks, for sure. But maybe something related to the territory maps as well? Ways for a crew (and NPCs) to “claim” plot points. I have to think about it a bit…
Blades in the Dark lends itself very well to metaplot. There is a question of how much the GM would want to mechanize it, but whether it is wholly fiction-driven narrative or a clockwork beast unfolding along its own custom lines, works fine either way.
I’m thinking it might actually be as simple as clocks for metaplot elements, but I’m finding the idea of “claiming” plot points to be kind of intriguing. After I get my feet wet with just running Blades out of the box, I’ll have to see how I want to tackle that sort of thing.
It would be interesting to see what John Harper​ thinks Doskvol would look like 10 or 20 years from whenever the assumed date is in the book. What about 50, or even 100 years?
Ghost Lines and Lady Blackbird are set in the same world, but in different eras. Do we see a metanarrative emerging if we think about all three of these games in sequence?
Eddie Hardy oh really?! I didn’t know that!
I knew about Ghost Lines, but not Lady Blackbird. That’s pretty awesome. Anyway, as I continue reading through Blades I think I’m finding fertile ground for a few ideas regarding metaplot. A Tribe 8 hack is definitely going to be in the works, once I get familiarized with actually running vanilla Blades.
Yeah! Here’s the map from Ghost Lines:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/GBlWOwPI6ESie81khOYpNBkFQOwfyn8JFbQbYHyhegzEqE0Uodu52a8XExv3ORsoieDyExK7E6HwnPmTJGjlsRJWJuo1OwhAuDQ=s0
That puts Ghost Lines about four decades later than Blades. And I’ve heard Lady Blackbird is much much later than that, but a quick review of the text didn’t really give me any evidence of that.
Personally, I am intrigue by a Tribe 8 adaption/hack. The Fatimas would replace the forgotten gods, the demons would be the Z’bri, and everyone would have low levels in attune. The wasteland can easily function well enough to keep the population bottled in.
John Williams​ while a lot of elements of stock Blades would be retrofitted, there would be tons of custom bits. But an interesting thing about the idea of bottling the population in would be to modify the Pact of the Dome to be similar to what I proposed here: rivetgeek.blogspot.com – Kicking Tribe 8 up a notch So the Seven Fingers and their new extensions would become similar to a lightning wall.