Hey scoundrals,
I’ve been day-dreaming about XCOM hacks for Blades. So, I did a search and found Adam Minnie had been working on one back in 2016 and John Harper was talking about doing something called Razors back in 2015, which was to diverge so greatly from the current system it would be a separate game. But, now I can’t find anything more about these. Could I, please, get a status update from anyone in the loop?
I don’t remember that being the title, but I do remember there being talk of such a project.
First I’ve heard of it, but I’m also interested…
Sounds cool
I was recently playing XCOM2 on veteran difficulty and having similar daydreams. What would Blades look like with more mechanized tactics and a high fatality rate? I am tempted to tinker myself…
I read an early draft of Razors long ago, it was really good.
Glad to hear someone is working on this as I had it on my list of things to try doing. Guess it’s on to my Silicon Valley startup hack instead
Based on XCom 1 you really need more tactical game and probably better defined weapons and armor. Leader playbook would be extremely important and propably a bit more focused tinkering guideliness for research. This would also benefit from multiple characters per player with at least one soldier and one base character like scientist.
It’s called Razors, yeah. It’ll probably be out next year.
For the military campaign XCOM feel, I think Band of Blades will be a great starting point for hacks. It does a lot of things very well. It’ll be out before Razors.
Thanks for hearkening back to this, Richard Robertson. I’ve been busier lately, so backburnered mine (Shot in the Dark) since last summer. I see you found the old ideas thread. I did a lot of tinkering it around back then in 2016, made some cursory playbooks, did some tiny playtests, and ended up leaning more toward John Harper’s World of Dungeons Turbo: Breakers than BitD. I feel pretty good about my systems for lethality, rank, and troopers that start simple and gain detail through play.
However, I tend to try XCom hacks of any system with potential, but get ambitious wanting to design for hyper emergent almost procedurally generated or legacy gameplay for both generating the invaders’ details, methods, and strategy, and the corresponding research that can compete with it. At that point, since my main XCom fan friend is my brother, I also tend to ambitiously want to design for Gmless play. At that point, I also got ambitious about doing humanity up with all sorts of factions, all in random tables so everything can be randomized.
All that’s to say, I give myself major scope creep. 😜 I’m happy to share some of what I have but at the moment it’s all in various forms of useful/lessness.
John Harper Anything more about the Razors or news about Band of Blades?
Adam Minnie I for one would enjoy seeing however far sissyphus got up this mountain 🙂
Adam Minnie, I followed the same threads of thought, though I found it overwhelming and thus started searching for others’ work.
For tactical combat, there are useful mechanics in Wade Dyer’s Fragged Empire, though it’s kind of on the opposite spectrum of AWE gaming.
I think it could be well simulated. But, it could quickly become so complex as to become tedious to roll up and track all the vast systems in XCOM. So, either one would need an app to help run the game, or it would need to be greatly simplified.
Regardless, I’d love to see what you came up with.
Band of Blades is almost text complete and going into editing. When there’s a release date, I’m sure Stras or John LL will announce it here.
John Harper thanks!
John Harper, what about Razors?