so it occurred to me that Blades in the Dark + Urban Shadows might be a lot of fun.

so it occurred to me that Blades in the Dark + Urban Shadows might be a lot of fun.

so it occurred to me that Blades in the Dark + Urban Shadows might be a lot of fun. “Web of Darkness” / “Citadel of Shadows” perhaps.

Idea is you pick a World of Darkness splat just like you would in Urban Shadows, but these are each naturally aligned with certain kinds of supernatural factions, which is the other angle advancement to pursue (and getting faction rep earns PCs who got, access to crew abilities):

* Mortal faction playbooks: HunterPsychic

* Night playbooks: VampireWerewolfSpirit

* Wild playbooks: DemonFae

* Power playbooks: MageOracle

[later I’ll work on indy/hard mode playbooks to spice it up] Mummy & Genius. IE: Mummy earns rep for their forgotten god cult. And Genius is like a (mad?) scientist, earns rep for their colleagues in some weird/high-science.

Claims for turf would be things like the location based merit stuff: locus, cursed ground, desmenses etc located in the contested portions of the city.

Would definitely try out Trust Issues option with this one.

Ex: the hunter or psychic earned +1 status with the Humanity faction (the Vigil & Gifted), so both of them earned a Patron. But the vampires would have to figure out their own way to get their crew stuff by serving the Night (probably led by elder vampires, tangible spirits, and werewolf tribe leaders)

I wrote out some playbooks in a spreadsheet. But if people are actually into this, I would write up some more complete rules to make it all woI .

10 thoughts on “so it occurred to me that Blades in the Dark + Urban Shadows might be a lot of fun.”

  1. Lots of belief-based trigger abilities seem mandatory.. like:

    The Vigil: You get an extra XP trigger: When you struggled to maintain the Vigil. If your teammates helped you or struggled too, also mark Humanity rep.

    and since I’m a VTM kinda guy..

    Camarilla: You get an extra XP trigger: When you struggled to uphold the Masquerade. If your teammates helped you or struggled too, also mark Night rep.

  2. Mummy ideas. Use the Hull. They are “chosen avatars of a forgotten god.” They have duties too, and a vessel as their body. They choose features gifted by the creator like flight (wings or unseen force), life-life appearance, spider crawl (supernatural grip), or plating (mystical pauldrons). Also choose from abilities like Wave of Locusts & Second Body. Their Turf is Pillars, which supports the tomb of whatever forgotten god they serve, speeding Rep increases with their independent faction.

  3. update: I edited post to have more detail. I wrote a set of playbooks, using a spreadsheet. Lots to do, but I need to start testing a little before I write the playbooks out anyways. Some have playable lists of abilities, but the friends and items arent yet.

    maybe.. Jennifer Fuss and Benjamin Davis have a look at the list of PC playbooks, and tell me one you’d be most interested in playing? and I will get those two alpha-ready

  4. Well that depends what “things” means, but it should have something to do with “opposing the control of the other factions” especially those associated with supes. I’ll try to get a Hunter playbook going since that is classically what “being a mortal in a world full of supes” means

  5. I have also been thinking of the same idea recently.

    I’ve been thinking of a way to make this sorta campaign work. The part I found to be a stumbling block is what sort of structure to use. Keep the mission structure? Make something else? What were you thinking of implementing?

    Also, I was wondering if there would be a way to make the individual the central entity rather than the crew. Not sure if that would work well for a Blades hack though.

  6. Yea. Notice all those things discussed above, aiming to cover the gaps left by pulling the crew playbook out.

    Just making the crew benefits come from the faction playbook like I described gets us most of the way there. This, to reward working as a free agent instead of with a crew.

    Anyone individually aiming at getting in with the same set of factions might feel like they are “crewed” up – but they can always backstab to keep all the benefits for themselves (possible marking them as a pariah of their group of factions!). And I incentivize that so far with Trust Issues and the special XP triggers I am writing (see Masquerade, above, as an example how that might look).

    It will work! I mean.. I havent tested it yet, but my spreadsheet version has 12 playbooks and 4 faction playbooks. There are more than just 4 factions though; there’s only 4 categories of factions, but each has 10-15 competing factions within it (so like.. 50 factions total, all supernatural and competing!). Seems neato. Soon I hope to commit to another round of edits and show my work off 🙂

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