We have a Train Job coming up.
How have trains come up in your games?
This is what I sent to the players via e-mail:
Thinking about trains in Doskvol.
The world at large is an apocalyptic ruin filled with hungry ghosts and monsters. Doskvol is kept safe from ghosts by the Lightning Barriers and the Spirit Wardens. Trains are only kept safe because they have Railjacks, working class steampunk ghostbusters.
Trains are used primarily by the Imperial Government of the Undying Emperor (long my He reign). The trains are how they get resources around from city to city. Food, fresh water leviathan blood – y’know, the essentials.
People who use the trains have to get an Imperial Writ. Scoundrels can’t just easily jump on a train to get out of town. There are freighthoppers or “hobos” but they play a more dangerous game than the vagabonds in our world.
Don’t feel any pressure to have any of this memorized. I just wanted to give you fuel for game-related daydreams.
I probably should have mentioned the Ministry of Preservation…no big deal.
Having played BitD first before trying out Ghost Lines. It was a trip finding out about the rail jacks.
I looove Ghost Lines.
Sooo, for one of my groups heists they were hired by the Dimmer Sisters to steal a demon’s heart, one being ferried around on trains to keep it secure by the Dockers.(This being the demon the group accidentally released earlier, but that’s another story).
The plan involved jumping the train. How do you do that, when the lightning rail moves fast? Well they have to slow down just after they enter the city, as the aperture has to be opened in the lightning fences, and the railjacks don’t want anything unsavoury coming through. What’s the best way to slow the process? Release a rogue spirit to make it look like something came through of course!
Does Blades in the Dark call them “railjacks”? I thought they were called “line bulls.”
Eddie Hardy a search of the document turns up Rail Jack, but — curiously — doesn’t turn up line bull even once as far as I can see? How weird!
Maybe they call them railjacks in Doskvol and line bulls in the wider world represented in Ghost Lines.
line bull I believe was a position among the rail jacks.
My crew of shadows pulled a heist that involved stopping an incoming train at the bridge before the station. They got away with the artifact they were after, but ended up derailing the entire train in the process, causing it to fall into the river. (They had summoned a strong ghost that they couldn’t quite control.) Fun session!
I’d bet the percentage of derailed trains in these jobs is high.
As a minor contribution to this, trains in my version of Doskvol convert friction to a repelling field on the train, so it looks a bit like it’s racing down the time tunnel in Baker-era Dr. Who. This sheath of energy repels most ghost incursions, and is generated by massive mandible-like appliances mounted on the front of the train to manipulate the feed of electroplasm and physical friction on the tracks. Walking the train skin can be like strolling in a tunnel in Sea World that’s underwater, watching things outside the fragile barrier drift by.
Of course, it’s not perfect. But that’s how they can carry enough fuel to make the trip.
My new game’s crew is based in a disused railyard (I’m thinking old-model trains have been left there to rust). They have relationships with the railjacks and hive and seem to be keen on the idea of sabotage, so I expect a reasonable amount of train-related hijinks.