Hacking Blades for a Mythic Approach: Lairs
This whole hack kind of came out Civilization games. We’d played Keep on the Borderlands and Kingmaker and so on. It just seemed a bit weird to have a whole nation spring up out of a ruined trading post within one human fighter’s lifetime.
Our group started exploring the concept of how to make immortal heroes who would still feel threatened by mortal scale events.
Hence Pellikoi, (man I wish I had better name for them, but it stuck.) Mortals wearing heroic masks and struggling to build a civilization over generations.
Blades Lairs seem like a really great fit for this, and I’ve been working on different “crews” (mystics, traders, conquerors) as well as what the different turf would do.
That’s very much ongoing, but hey, here’s our working map!
Write it out! Sounds very cool.
Very Runequest
Michael Bacon Going as fast as I can. I’d love to hear all of your versions of this world, but I’m not much of a writer.
Jeb Boyt Is it? I haven’t read that one yet. Sounds like I should.
That’s very pretty.
What did you use at the table?
Thor Hansen This map, but with a heck of a lot of overdrawn lines, scratch-outs and post-its on it. As for mechanics, I’m mostly using John Harper’s rules for Hawkers, but reskinned, as this group is mercantile/explorers in nature.
I hope to have a few new buildings by the time we’re done, but I don’t want to change just for the heck of it. The original rules work so well, I mostly want changes that “zoom out” the scale to represent a whole nation.
Sounds cool…there’s a similar concept in 13th age, where they describe “icons” mortals who come to represent concepts and in so doing lose their mortality…your idea with masks seems more concrete, which I imagine makes it more accessible. Very cool!