January 2018 – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

So for a hack I’m doing I’m experimenting with advanced moves that allow you to upgrade a roll’s success tier by…

So for a hack I’m doing I’m experimenting with advanced moves that allow you to upgrade a roll’s success tier by spending a resource or accepting a certain consequence.

An example might be:

Out of the Pan, Into the Fire

“When you attempt to evade capture or detection with Skulk you may choose to be placed in a more desperate circumstance to upgrade the success tier (from a miss to a partial success, for example) after the roll.”

Has anyone else experimented with such a move? Is it too powerful.

Well, do they?

A fine evening of downtime and free play with Pete Cornell, Sean Nittner and Jason Bowell.

https://githyankidiaspora.wordpress.com/2018/01/31/the-wobbegong-crew-do-sharks-have-souls/

#CopperheadCounty

#CopperheadCounty

This week, we wrapped the first season of my second playtest campaign for Copperhead County, my modern-southern-Forged-in-the-Dark game. RIYL: Blades in the Dark, Breaking Bad, Justified, The Wire, Fargo.

To celebrate, and to observe my ongoing attempts to finish this game, I’m going to recap the season, and show off both PC and crew playbooks, and the county map.

Copperhead County, modern crime Forged in the Dark, buy it from me sometime in 2018! Enjoy this preview, and read on for exciting criminal adventures.

Playbooks preview:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1byaA6PohQN7trutrmhCblXBVVqG6INVf

In this game, we follow the exploits of the Hunnicutt family, a crew of Blood relatives who live in the fictional city of Patterson, TN, the seat of Copperhead County. At the start of the season, the Hunnicutts were not seasoned criminals, but turned to crime to raise money for their father, Ezekiel, a retired cop who now struggles with lung disease.

The Hunnicutts are:

Zeke, the Stringer. The oldest son, his business career cratered after a failed start-up and he now uses his financial acumen to lead the crew. Played by Adam Maunz.

Earl, the Cleaner. The younger son, he’s a city detective just like his dad, but very willing to abuse the badge, and his powers of observation, to do crimes. Played by Tyler Ellis.

Eustace, the Mover. Ezekiel’s younger brother, he’s a life-long fuck-up who recently left prison, and is at the forefront of making dangerous, violent decisions for the crew. Played by Adam Schwaninger.

The main trio are joined by Zeke and Earl’s sister Gwen, a county medical examiner / NPC Expert, and their idiot cousin Wayne, their starting Connection, who deals drugs out of a local Zip Burger restaurant.

With Wayne’s help, they started the season by ripping off a dealer who used to work with Wayne, but spurned him to find greater success with the College Street Crew, a tier-1 faction of college students and dropouts who run a party-drug ring. Deciding to double-down on drug-dealing, they decided to figure out the CSC’s workings, and possibly recruit, or eliminate, their drug cook. Eventually, they sniffed out the CSC’s lab (in the basement of a campus maintenance building) and kidnapped the cook, but the CSC came back on them and took Wayne hostage, and the two sides reached a deal where the hostilities would cease, but the Hunnicutts would pay the CSC a tithe after every job, in return for the CSC acting as their MDMA supplier. The Hunnicutts thus completed a Drug Game claim, but bristled at having to bow to these damn millennials.

Meanwhile, each of the Hunnicutts dealt with their own issues:

Zeke’s wife, Liz, a teacher, was recruited by the local Democratic Party in a long-shot bid to win a special election for County Trustee, an important position controlling the distribution of public funds. This eventually put the crew on the radar of the Barnett Mob, a tier-3 faction of no-drama dealers and corrupters who run the east side of the city, and apparently are in deep with the anemic County Democrats. Zeke made contact with a Barnett captain, and agreed to cooperate with them to covertly support his wife’s campaign, leading to the crew breaking into a GOP fundraiser at a country club, and planting a bug in the private lounge where the county’s powerbrokers gather (a bit of The Americans in our game).

Earl found himself embroiled in an affair with his superior officer, Det. Sgt. Kathy Lind, when he ran into her in the supply closet while ripping off police supplies to use on a job, and responded to it by seducing her. This started a “Lind Trouble” clock, and for the next several downtimes, Earl had to avert her suspicions of his mysterious wounds and comings-and-goings. Eventually, the Lind Trouble clock completed when Eustace tailed her and found out she herself was bent, and on the payroll of the Mountain Mafia, the tier-4 masters of county corruption.

Eustace, an expert driver, auditioned for a pseudo-reality TV show filming in the county, a fake Smoky-and-the-Bandit style series about hillbilly drivers. He ended up competing against his rival, Billie Jo Holloway, a young racer whose mother Eustace shared a brief affair with back in the 90s. Eustace won the race, and the further ire of Billie Jo, and eventually found himself served with papers from her mother Bobbie Jean, seeking a paternity test and back child support. Is it possible Eustace is…. a father?!

The season came to a head this week. Since the Hunnicutts had ruined the College Street Crew’s campus pill lab, the CSC made them find a new place they could cook. Eustace took this chance to find an abandoned trailer in the mountains and fix it up a little bit, planning to lure the CSC into an ambush there. To make this easier, they recruited their cousin Grace, a former addict and convict who recruited a Gang out of her old shitkicker friends.

When the time came to lure the CSC to the trailer, their engagement roll was a 3: it turned out the CSC also planned to double-cross the Hunnicutts, and had invited goons working for Baron Carter, a tier-2 local warlord, who was to be their new drug-dealing partner. Luckily, Grace and her goons were up on a hill overlooking the trailer, and the Hunnicutts proceeded to roll crit after crit and demolish both enemy gangs, only leaving the CSC’s cook, Roy Reyes, alive. Roy agreed to surrender and cook for the Hunnicutts in exchange for them leaving the rest of his crew alone (what little now remained).

However, just as the Hunnicutts enjoyed their triumph, their lives were complicated when Detective Lind arrived on the scene, having tailed Earl from the city. It turned out she had notified her masters in the Mountain Mafia about what was going down, and soon Jock Richards, a bald MM captain, arrived to negotiate with the Hunnicutts. Luckily, the crits were not done, and Zeke managed to strike a deal with him where, in exchange for now paying regular tribute to the Mountain Mafia, they’d protect the Hunnicutts and loop them into Lind’s corrupt-police ring, allowing them use of the Police Payroll claim.

As the season ends, the Hunnicutts have broken into the county’s corrupt power structure, affording their patriarch’s medical care (he is now doing slightly better after a lung transplant) by becoming drug dealers, killing several people, and co-opting the rest of their family into crime. Liz Hunnicutt, Democratic candidate for County Trustee, has no idea what Zeke’s been up to, but if she wins her race, she’ll soon find herself in the middle of drama she never imagined. Earl must still balance his career as a cop with his criminal life, now with the added complication of he and his boss-lover knowing all about each other’s secrets. And will Eustace get on television and dedicate himself to late fatherhood, or will his hair-trigger temper mess it all up? Find out next season…

Blades on a grander scale.

What would people think to a system like Runner Hub?

This is a reddit forum for Shadowrun, where you make a character and accept jobs from potential GMs. Run rewards and progression are tracked and carry over to the next mission your character signs up for.

A similar thing for Blades could happen, a forum with some balancing rules (where needed), where a player makes a character and enters it into the world of the BladesHub to garner experience.

The issue here is Crew Sheets. There wouldn’t be one. Or if there was, itd be a massive crew that levels up too quickly. Perhaps a new breed of fan-made crew sheet replacements could be made for “Experts” or something, so that instead of a gang, you play as a single Expert in a certain field. For example, you might be a Leech Playbook but an Assassin Expert. Or you could be a Slide Physiker. Or a Whisper Witch. Etc.

It’s just an idea I had to build a huge runnerhub-like version of the Blades of the Dark world.

TL;DR – Trying to Make the Characters Last Longer (Maybe)

I’ve been sitting down in front of the open book and the assorted sheets for a time, with a single question burning away in my brain:

How do I make Blades last longer?

See, I run with a group of very long-term players. We’re running two campaigns that are expected to go into the multi-year stretch by the end of it. The shortest campaign we ever ran was one where I was GM, and that one was weekly sessions for a little over a year, and most of the table noted at the end that it felt – compared to past efforts – like a mini-series rather than a campaign. They enjoy the feeling of rising to the challenge, of taking on bigger and bigger threats…and an almost absolute hatred of having to start over at ‘level 1.’ 3 of our campaigns – including the two I mentioned above – didn’t even start there.

(In retrospect, this may be why they make the campaigns last so long.)

So a game like Blades – which I have described to them in detail, and they sound really jazzed about – with its ‘retire your Blade at max Trauma, start a new character’ setup might not go over really well with them, especially if they’re running around with a bunch of more skilled (but probably higher Trauma) characters.

Which got me thinking about the above question. To which I came up with two possible answers:

Answer A is to create rules for making ‘veteran’ Blade characters. Characters with more than the single Special Ability and seven Action dots…but probably also more Traumas to compensate. Think like how when a major crew loses a significant player/character, they don’t go to the nearest recruiting center for whatever scrub turned up today. No, they go looking for someone close to their level. (For those of you who know it, think Gaunt’s Ghosts.)

My initial thoughts on how to handle this were as follows: for every Trauma a character accepts as part of their build, they gain 7 Action dots, and 2 Special Abilities. The Action dots cannot take a character over Rating 3 (unless the Crew has the Mastery option), and you can take Veteran only once for every Trauma. I’m willing to hear alternatives on this.

Answer B is to make individual characters last longer. In-game, there’s 2, maybe 3 ways to finish a character: Level 4 Harm, suffer your last Trauma, or (alternately) accumulate enough Stash to hit the top-tier and retire the character.

The latter one is the Golden Ending, the first is easy enough to avoid if watch when you’re Desperate, but the middle one…that’s the one that, IMO, makes most Blades tap out. To wit, how do I change that in order to accommodate longer-lasting players?

See, in a book series, or video games, it’s all about (more or less) a single character and their life. To use two example, one from each – the Jhereg novels are all about Vlad and his adventures. So when Vlad finally retires, that’ll be the end of the stories, since following him was the whole point of the series. Similarly, in Dishonored, the viewpoint character is Corvo, following him through one specific adventure he has in his life. Vlad and Corvo may have their friends and enemies, but ultimately their properties are about them.

But Blades doesn’t work that way. Blades is about many MANY adventures, but more importantly, is about several characters, not just one.

Initially, I wanted a way to remove Traumas from players, despite the game’s insistence that Traumas are permanent. The best idea I had for this was a long-term project clock with 12+ segments, which had to be re-started if you acquired a new Trauma during the project’s duration, and could only be used a limited number of times…the idea is still out there, but I’m not staking myself on it.

I gave it more thought, and what I came up next with is a game hack that manipulates the Trauma system a bit.

First off, while you can accumulate multiple Traumas, you only ever accumulate 2 of the personality quirks that help you gain XP. (Some of the quirks are almost antithetical to each other – like Soft and Vicious – and while a player can play up 3-4 quirks, I’d rather have them play 1 up consistently than rotate between them.)

Second…okay, this is the part I was really struggling with, but basically what I had initially in mind was the idea that after every Trauma you gain, you roll dice equal to the number of Traumas you have. 1 = 1d; 2 = 2d, etc. Then you roll your Vice Attribute without modifiers, and compare the results. If you have a better result on your Trauma roll than on your Vice roll, then you retire the character. I realized the problem with this halfway through – that while it does at least initially favor the player – you can get a 3 & 5 on your Vice roll but an errant 6 on your first Trauma…and then out you go. Which was not the point. Plus, it left the question of advances that give you extra Trauma boxes (like Unbroken) up in the air. My initial thoughts here were for one of a few effects – the advance lets you roll your strongest Attribute (as opposed to Vice, which is your weakest), it lets you go on for one more Trauma after a failed roll, or you can re-roll a failed roll. (Probably just once per character, but I did entertain the notion of one per Retirement roll.)

I think I’ve managed to strike a good balance. For every Trauma after your fourth that you accumulate, you roll dice equal to the number of Traumas over 4. 5 = 1d, 6 = 2d, etc. Then you roll your Vice Attribute. If the Trauma roll gets a better result than your Vice roll, then you retire the character. If you have the crew advance that gives you an extra Trauma box, this extends your track normally. (So a Crew with +1 Trauma doesn’t start rolling until their 6th Trauma.)

This allows for Trauma Crew Upgrades to remain as-is, still allow for the possibility of retirement due to just having seen too much, but allows Blades to hang in there just a LITTLE longer…

Apologies if I missed the post before, but what are the changes between v8 and v8_1?

Hey Scum and Villainy peoples’, I got a question for ya.

The pilot ability Keen Eye reads: You have sharp eyes and notice small details many might overlook. Gain +1d when firing ship guns or making trick shots.

Can anyone explain to me what a trick shot is?

Are we just saying a tricky(difficult) shot? Perhaps something from long range?

I would also think bouncing a shot off something but as most guns in the game are explicitly some sort of plasma I don’t imagine they could bounce off walls/etc. like regular ballistics.

Do I just hope the enemy is standing underneath a chandelier?

Any examples would be greatly appreciated.

I noticed that the BitD site has a link for “Backer Downloads” with a description, “Downloads for Kickstarter and…

I noticed that the BitD site has a link for “Backer Downloads” with a description, “Downloads for Kickstarter and BackerKit backers (password provided in BackerKit)”.

Does that include people, like me, that pre-ordered the special edition on BackerKit long after the Kickstarter ended? Or does “BackerKit backers” refer to an earlier BackerKit round that included stretch goals and other KS-specific rewards?

Star Wars Scum and Villainy Session 2 report: It all went sideways

In our latest session, the players did their downtime actions, mostly recovering from the last mission and training. We actually didn’t know how to handle healing for a droid character, so I ruled that the Mechanic could use Rig, but the Stitch’s Physicker special ability would still apply. After that, they took a job from their contact with a bunch of anarchist criminals called the Laserbrains: simple delivery job of booze and drugs to a pirate outpost on an ocean planet controlled by the First Order. The Speaker also managed to acquire a small side job delivering a package to an unknown contact on the same planet.

They rolled a 6 on the Engagement roll and so their first obstacle was getting stopped by a First Order patrol and boarded for inspection. These FO guys are pretty sloppy and disheveled since they haven’t had a proper resupply or rotation in over a year, and the characters manage to slip the cargo past them no sweat. Afterwards, the characters met up with their unknown contact, who turns out to be a Resistance pilot and their cargo for her was a lot of explosives. The party Stitch gave her a check-up, but managed to roll low enough that she was offended and they parted on bad terms.

It turned out that the pirate base (the Reef) was mobile, built on the back of a mega-whale skimming the surface of this ocean planet. Once there, their ship got boarded by some dockworkers for inspection, and they tried to skim some of the booze and drugs off the top of the shipment. The Speaker was having none of it and immediately shot the lead pirate in the head, sparking a huge firefight and getting the first Trauma of the game. The Scoundrel held off the pirates and killed most of the boarding party. As more pirates rushed in, the crew’s droid Muscle ran in with their flamethrower and used Command to scare them off. Afterwards the party hit the engines and blasted their way out.

They considered giving up on the mission, but the Speaker hit up a contact back at the Reef who managed to negotiate a deal to still sell off the cargo. So they returned, this time watched much more closely, and sold the shipment to the intended client: a sullustan named Dua Ath. When they told him about the skimming, he figured out that the dockmaster was stealing from him and had his battle droid shoot the dockmaster. In the end, the players got paid less than agreed upon and hurt their reputation with the Laserbrains. And they started a clock with a starship manufacturing company, Kuat Drive Yards, from whom they stole their ship parts during ship creation. If it hits 4 ticks, KDY is gonna find them. The Speaker took Vicious for their Trauma, and the crew forged a new reputation on top of Daring: now they are known to have a Short Fuse.

Still loving the game so far! I do have one question, though. During the game, the Speaker used Acquire Asset and rolled well enough to get a standard item, but we didn’t decide on what it was. They later used it as part of a flashback to decide that it was false crates that they could hide their real crates inside of. Is this a proper use of Acquire Asset? From my reading, we need to decide on the item ahead of time, but the player made a good argument for combining it with a flashback later on in the game. It felt sorta like a Hannibal-esque “plan comes together” moment and it was cool. I just want to check and see if it is something allowed within the rules.