Hacking Blades for a more Mythic Approach:
Cards are great. They’ll never replace dice for that satisfying moment of suspense, but they can do a great job of compactly expressing information.
For this hack we’d need a cast of spirits, somewhere between small gods, devils and imps, and talking animals like that fish from Wind Waker.
So I cobbled together a deck of 81 spirits, roughly flavored around the classic elements, with varying degrees of power. The PC’s would then have a “sideboard” of spirits available to them at all times, and this would replace the Devil’s Bargain from classic Blades.
The Devils in this case might have gonzo bonuses, (+2D is enormous!) but the Spirits would have their own little clocks and the heroes would have to earn them. Conversely, they might bone it up, anger the little gods and now there’s a powerful spirit on the sidelines waiting to ruin their roll.
The Ferryman here would be quite powerful, but that makes sense, he’d be close to humanity, and in playtest one group decided that he was like Charon, shuttling the souls of the dead to the foggy, bone bleached island at the end of the world, another declared him to be the messenger of the Queen of the Sea, delivering her taunts and threats.
As usual, this is a hack, and a beginner’s at that. Thoughts and suggestions appreciated.
That is pretty neat.
It’s a great idea! Would you be willing to share with the community, or are you planning on selling this someplace?
This looks really cool.
The Ferryman card looks great! Fascinating idea.
Matt Kay et al, thank you! It would be nice to produce something worthy of selling, let’s see how this all turns out.
Looks really good and I’ld like to buy such cards, too. If I understand it correctly, the players have to fill the favor-clocks to earn those favors. And disfavor-clocks are filled by working for other spirits? Are the spirits connected somehow just like factions? Do you have a small example for both, favor and disfavor, how it should work?
Skasi All fine questions! Originally the deck was designed to also be a Deck of Fate, (we had been playing this world in FAE as well) so the clocks did double duty, in practice players have liked Blades better. I’ll be posting the second iteration soon.
It seems better to simplify the Favor mechanic down to just a plus or minus 1-3 along the Faction Game, with attending bonuses and penalties attached. That would allow GM’s to make their own decisions as to what the many Spirits think of that group.
More is coming, it will be a few days though, I’m on the road for awhile.
I’m currently working on a game that uses tarot cards and I’ve been looking at ways to incorporate them into other settings like blades, I like this one, particularly for a more “mythic” game.
Justin Ford Exactly! I love the classic Tarot, and am currently using the Major Arcana as a tool in a Dungeon World campaign, for this game it seemed best to invent an entirely new set of Arcana in order to emphasize it’s other-worldliness. Also Rider-Waite just doesn’t have enough ghosts.