I have been thinking about FATE and Blades recently. FATE has a fantastic tool the “FATE Fractal” where anything can become a character with aspects.
Blades already has a bit of this baked in, the concept of having crew and character playbooks and being able to use any number in a 0-5 range as a stat for fortune rolls gives a lot of this functionality.
However there is a lot of parts of the game that could be expanded. Different hacks often change what the shared blaybook is, in many sci fi hacks it changes the crew playbook to a ship playbook or in girl by moonlight it changes it to a season playbook that changes the types of threats you face.
It seems like just about any part of the game could be expanded. you could give one of your gangs, vehicles, sites, or experts their own playbook and that should work. you could also give affiliated factions their own playbooks. There are definately diminishing returns here, a playbook along with all the additional abilities and overhead would increase both the amount of needed development and the amount of cognative overhead for the players.
So with that in mind I have the kernel of a hack designed to work in the core blades setting. Instead of being a complete crew you are a gang or a team of operatives inside a bigger faction.The crew sheet would need to be split and augmented into the faction sheet and the team sheet. The Team sheet would have the specific assets and abilities of the team and would level up at the same rate that a normal crew sheet does. The faction playbook would have to level up much more slowly and have different triggers.
This would also facilitate having multiple groups play as one faction but with different priorities and they would share the larg faction progression while having their own team sheet that was only theirs.
I’m intrigued by the concept, especially in the sense that the Faction Playbook might fulfil some of the same functions as the Series Playbooks in Girl by Moonlight :
Players could signal the theme of the story they want to play with the Faction Playbook they choose, then the role they want to play in that story with the Crew Playbook.
There’s also some potential in the story of a Crew climbing up the hierarchy of a Faction, etc. It’s interesting.
This sounds great, coming from a single player group. This is exactly what I need, to break him into the game. I would be really interested, especially with a thought to single or small group play. Part of a larger faction, with internal politics and egos. This way he would feel part of a greater hole and not stuck out by himself.
Do you think you will work some thing out?
A possible time frame, as that will help me roughly place a game i our future gaming calender
Man, I have ideas, but I need to play a lot more Blades and playtest my ideas before I was happy with recommending specifics.
No timeframe I’m afraid.
That said, I don’t think my hack is necessary to get intrigue in your game. I would focus on having several factions poised in conflict with each other like in many of the starting situations.