Hey folks. Band of Blades is out on Drivethru! This is the Dark Military Fantasy hack of blades.
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/243347/Band-of-Blades-Digital-Edition-Early-Access
This is a bit beefy to be called a “quick start”. You’re looking at over a 100 pages of content and a bunch of art. I know a bunch of you were waiting expectantly and I hope it lives up to your hype.
I’ll be updating DriveThru and Blades backers concurrently (any delays should be minimal as files get shuffled and folks post stuff). Backers should be getting their stuff soon as updates are written and files uploaded.
Good luck. Let us know what you think. ^_^
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/243347/Band-of-Blades-Digital-Edition-Early-Access
Congrats on getting this out, it looks amazing from a quick skim! Should we let your brain cool before we start burying you in rules questions?
You should post them ^_~ I may be asleep till tomorrow though.
(Holy hell this is a thorough hack.)
My early questions are focused on the Quartermaster. I’m not sure I understand the interplay between Supply as a stat and checking off boxes of Materiel, if any – and I’m not sure how to gain Materiel beyond your start of campaign five boxes.
Also, is there a more thorough breakdown in the book somewhere of what it takes to move from hex to hex on the Commander’s map?
(Humbly requesting bookmarks for each Chosen and Broken in the handouts pdf.)
You gain more assets/materiel with the acquire assets action (back of the QM sheet, check the campaign actions). Supply lets you take more actions or boost that.
what about the map? do the commander move only one hex each time he choose to advance?
also, do the Mercies ever heal from their wounds? are there any soldiers alive in the Legion at the start of the game, or are they all rookies beside the specialists?
Roe Portal The Legion advances from one named location to the next, not moving hex by hex.
Mercies heal during Rest and Recuperation, but only if you didn’t wound them this campaign action.
At the start of the game it’s just rookies and specialists, although if someone REALLY wants to play a Soldier, I believe they can make one instead of a specialist.
The Mercies thing is explicitly in the R&R rules. (Pretty sure. Don’t have the PDF in front of me.)
The other two I’m not sure where (or if) they are explicitly called out, so I’m answering from experience. (I’ve been in a number of playtest games with Stras and John LL.)
This looks really good. I love the direction given to the first campaign to really set the stage for play. I also like the tweak to “specialist actions” (specific uses, not rolls) and the replacement of Heat with Morale.
So cool to see the 2013 version of Blades font is back in style! Love it!
Roe Portal Dylan is right on all accounts (location to location, mercies are in the Rest and Recuperation rules). He’s really on top of this ^_^
Just as a fun story, we tried the hex-to-hex movement! That was one of our first iterations! Mountains and forests slowed things down, roads and plains sped it up. What we found out is that folks ended up mostly just going down the routes we had, but it added a ton of overhead both for the GM and the players and gave no benefit. So we simplified it, and made sure to incorporate some choices (horses, pressure) into considerations of when to move.
Stras Acimovic Thanks for the reply! Making it a little clearer that things do go location to location would be nice.
How long does a full campaign run (Western Front to the last stand) in your experience?
It’s in about 3 places that mention how to advance, but when we have full role writeups in the main text I’ll make sure to call it out a bit more (or at least have a small writeup added for version 1.1).
Generally our runs go 10-14 sessions. Depends a little on luck, a little on route, and a lot on how long your evenings of play are.
I only have one datapoint to draw on, but our current playtest is at about a dozen sessions and I’d anticipate we’ll reach Skydagger in the next session or two.
We took the longer route and dawdled a bit, so if you were fast I imagine you could reach Skydagger in 10 sessions.
Not sure how long playing Skydagger itself will take, but I’d imagine our whole campaign will wrap up by session 15ish?
Oooh, all this GM-facing playbook stuff looks like exactly the kind of thing I was trying to wrap my head around on my own while slowly hacking on stuff. 🙂
So hype for this one! Gives me a very “Myth: The Fallen Lords” feel, which I’ve been replaying recently. Reading now!
Nihzlet Heck yes. I have definitely ranted at Stras about how much this game reminds me of Myth.
Michael Raichelson SaV was a much more traditional hack. It make some bold moves like getting rid of turf and rep, but BoB is a way we’re trying to show people exactly how far you can stretch the Blades concepts. Part of the reason for doing it is so that folks have some cool stuff to use for their own hacks. Hope it helps you.
Stras Acimovic I think I’ll probably end up lifting most of what you just mentioned as well. 🙂 So, yes, thank you.
Wowza! This has so much good meat to sink my teeth into!
A quick question: The Mission Generation list of favors include Sacrifice, Destruction, and Craft, but the Chosen only have Mercy, Wild, and Glory (pg 13 of the text also adds Knowledge to these). Are the favor options in the generator meant to match those of the available Chosen?
Also it seems very rare that missions will randomly generate with favor type matching the one selected by players for their Chosen. Is that rarity intended? (Actually, are players meant to choose only one favor type for their Chosen at campaign start, or do all work?)
Adam Minnie Not sure about that list. Might be a holdover from an earlier version? The favours got rewritten at one point. I believe now they should be Mystic and Religious for all chosen, plus one for the culture of that Chosen’s god (Glory for Zemyati, Knowledge for Orite, Mercy for Bartan, Wild for Panyar).
The favour options should match what’s available to Chosen, but there’s no Orite Chosen playbook at the moment, so Knowledge is missing.
It’s totally rare for a Chosen to gain favour. I think in our playtest I’ve seen one Chosen advance. Spending intel on a lot of special missions helps.
You only choose one favour that counts for you, but I believe all Chosen have the option to start with an advance that gives them all three. (Forgoing early power in exchange for faster growth.)
Make sense?
Band of Blades is literally the best!! After just a quick read through I’m stunned at how awesome it is (although not that stunned given how cool SaV was). I love all the moving pieces. I’m wondering a bit about how the GM should play the Chosen. For instance, in the actual play on youtube, I believe you had Allanna return having killed Red Hook, one of the infamous, after the group’s first missions. Was that just you as the GM deciding that sounded cool, or did that interact with a system somehow? Also on Allanna, can you elaborate on “Battle-Saint: Alanna is Threat 5 and she has potency against all opponents.” I thought all Chosen were Threat 5? Is this ability just adding potency, or is it giving the group license to bring Allanna on missions?
Adam Minnie Huh … not sure how that got by. The favors on the list should be Holy, Mystic, Mercy, Wild, Knowledge, Glory. I’ll fix it and re-upload files soon as I get the chance. Sacrifice was unclear and it became Mercy, same with Destruction being Glory, and Craft (old word for Alchemy) becoming Knowledge (which includes Alchemy).
You’re right, Chosen don’t often get a lot of advances (most of them will come from picking a route that has your Favor type on special missions). There are ways to rig that game, but in general Chosen advance about once (or twice if you’re very sneaky) per campaign.
Richard McNutt If you read the adventure on the back of Alanna’s sheet you’ll see that’s a special Back at Camp scene included there.
Chosen are Threat 4 by default.
Actually, that’s very helpful. I really appreciate it. I will think on it and let you know if I have any other questions.
Glad I could be helpful! I’ve been hyped on this game for a while and I’m pretty excited to finally be able to share my thoughts with the world!
Am I correct in understanding that the only difference between increased Threat level and increased potency is that potency is usually contextual to certain fictional activities or situations, while Threat level applies to all contexts? That is to say, a Threat level 1 group of cultists with potency are mechanically equivalent to a Threat level 2 pack of blightbeasts (at least in whatever context the cultists’ potency applies).
That’s pretty close to correct. I think the only other difference would be in counting XP. PCs are awarded XP for the highest Threat level faced, not highest Threat level plus modifiers for potency or scale.
So, if you fight a huge horde of potent cultists, that’s still just 1XP. (Obviously the GM should keep that in mind and try not to shortchange the PCs on XP.)
Yep Adam. THough it’s not “always”. Things aren’t Threatening because they have a high Threat rating. The Hag has powerful hexes, and many pieces of Breaker digested That’s what makes her Threat 4. If you somehow nullify that her Threat rating probably drops quickly.
Similar to potency. If something is potent in melee, it may not be at range, or to poison, or to being talked to. Keep it in mind ^_^
Ok, so I see that as meaning basically Threat is like BitD’s Tier but applied to units rather than factions. It’s interesting that the XP thing makes me see enemies’ potency more like dirty tricks or nasty surprises that temporarily/artificially raise their Threat.
I love the structure of front-line/elite with infamous/lieutenant overlays for the broken’s units by the way.
That’s a fine interpretation of potency. And thanks ^_^ It was something we did to give them a bit of a military feel in return.
In most stories you want the enemies to be dark reflections of your own units (and the Legion deploys one squad and two specialists on missions).
Do you anticipate players complaining about making Specialists in the first session, but not being able to immediately play all of them? What motivated you to have that revolving cast element in Band of Blades?
We haven’t had that issue in playtests. We streamlined creation till it’s zippy fast. I can do a character in sub 30 seconds, and folks that have played at my tables do it in sub 2 minutes. So there isn’t a ton of “I spent an hour making this guy why can’t I play them” going on.
And to be real rookie powers are fun, and playing rookies is such a blast that we haven’t really gotten any of that.
That said this was one of the first things we decided. Death is much more common, so being super attached to an individual is going to wreck you. in order to make that less of an overhead we made creation fast, we made rookies super fun to play and easy to pick up mid-mission, and it’s also a very military thing (squad > individual).
Picking one character and having them be the most important story element is very fantasy and very narrative in a book sense. This is a lot closer to XCom. No one person is bigger than the war or the Legion. Horror elements don’t care if you think you’re special. That horror will rip you in half no matter how long your backstory is. And this reinforces that.
Stras Acimovic A message to say: this is a beautiful game, in content and style. Absolutely blown away by this; I can’t wait to play (and to tinker). It’s almost exactly the kind of play I always wanted for BitD, but without realising until now. So cool, so impressed. Thank you for sharing this vision with us!
After my read-through today I’m thoroughly impressed, looks like everything I wanted and so much more!! Definitely want to play this at some point.
One glaring question: the only Specialist action I don’t see detailed anywhere is Weave. What is it, how does it work, and why would someone take it?
I have to say congratulations on every platform. 🙂 It looks awesome.
A second question I just noticed. On the playbook sheets, each of the attributes has two boxes on the left side with “+1 resist” written above them. I assume getting these gives you said +1 to resistance rolls with that attribute, but how do you get them?
Nizlet – you get those from things like powers or heritage traits. They’re not bought like skills.
The box is there so you don’t forget you have it, because you’re not always playing the same character.
Specialist skills? Corruption mechanic? A map with mechanical function? This looks rad as all get out! I really like how the phasing between mission and campaign would feel, offers a lot of option for other military-style stories too!
Man it would be both simple and cool to convert this into a mecha-war story like “Into the Breach” since the corruption can easily sidestep over to any kind of shell shock style stress…
I’m wondering this morning how well Band of Blades would work in a play-by-post format. I think it could be better than standard BitD since the higher-level strategic decisions require more consideration and missions/scores are a smaller part of the on-screen action. Of course, the scope of a campaign would be massive in play-by-post pace.
Yes to this! I have actually run a pbp game that used a lot of blades mechanics. Each player controlled a squad, or company, with the turns being played through “dispatches” mailed back and forth.
Ours was more Skovlan Resistance, but it would work just as well for mercenaries!
Damn, another thing to write up.
Stras Acimovic I just noticed the playbook fronts say Bartan have the trait “Huge” but the traits instead list “Pious”
Also, when missions and campaign actions mention assets, is that the means by acquiring additional Materiel like new laborers or horses?
Finally, maybe it’s just my misreading, but the top left of the Commander sheet about Pressure and advancing could maybe be clearer that the roll result adds ticks to the time clocks. At first I interpreted it as saying time added to the number of rolled dice like horses subtract from it: “When you advance, roll pressure minus horses spent and add [i.e. plus] time below.”
I love the way Commanders get to use Intel by the way, and guide mission selection but never quite entirely. When randomizing Mission types, should the GM only use the types shown as available for the current location, or do the location’s types only limit the Commander’s focus?
1) Huge used to be a trait, but we removed it because it interacted with the old load system and it was the only physical trait (arguably a parental/genetic component) and we wanted to keep things more cultural. Good catch, I’ll add it to our list of small fixes for 1.1
2) Yes. Like food or laborers or horses. Though when the commander uses channels it’s more for like grappling hooks, or a few explosives. Lots of things can be assets.
–I’m not sure the time language is a huge issue. And space is a premium there. We’ll take a look at it.
3) if you read the directions above the table for mission generation, note that if a mission type is unavailable, you use the one above it.
So if you roll a 2 (Religious mission) and none is available you check the next number up (Scout) and keep going until you hit something you can use.
I would like to second Nihzlet question about Weave. I see you can gain the ability to Weave Moonlight by wearing the Lunar Crown. I suspect having a crown of True Flame also lets you Weave Fire, or something else badass. Is Weave specific to various crowns? Can you learn to Weave or does it require an artifact?
I was wondering when someone would notice (I’m also curious when or if folks will ask lore questions).
Weave is a “specialist” skill in the effect that it lets humans handle divine elements. If there were an Alchemist playbook you’d have Weave as a specialist ability, and you’d use it to make alchemicals. Mercy’s use weave to transfer wounds onto themselves.
It’s not the “magic” skill because there is no “magic”. But it’s the “magic” skill because when you have things that it can interact with (say crowns made of the bodies of gods) you can use it as the skill to do a thing. If a crown doesn’t say it lets you weave … then it doesn’t interact with it (your GM may decide otherwise).
The rules don’t expressly forbid you from learning it without an artifact, but the fact that the game is a conversation leads me to ask … so how are you learning it? I’m sure your table can figure that out or come up with a cool story. Just remember that sort of power is usually desperate, dangerous, or with a cost. ^_^
Great question Mark!
Are there roll20 sheets for Band of Blades?
Sort of Richard McNutt. Dylan Boates made them and I believe he’s submitting them to be official this weekend. So they’ll be up next week after all the hoop jumping is done.
Stras Acimovic so if you’ve run this several times I’m curious to know the spread of your final scores? What’s considered good? Has anybody crushed it? Was that because of careful planning or just luck?
Stras Acimovic Dylan Boates sounds great. Looking forward to them
Hopefully you get to see them very soon!
Mark Griffin as someone with a degree in statistics I will tell you that I don’t have enough data points with a few games to give you solid answers.
But as a designer running a bunch of simulations I can tell you that 100 means the legion is ready for the next leg (and if the game does well and someday we put out more campaigns, you probably want to set the number to 100 if you want an even footing start) and if you made 150 you did incredibly well, but that’s a mix of luck and planning (we’ve had plans go off the rails, and had bad ideas survive because of luck … so you need a little of both, but you can only control one).
Mark Griffin, can you edit/delete this here and post it in a fresh post. I’d prefer to mostly answer general comments in this announcement and not ping everyone who’s commented so far with extensive rules discussions. Me/John will answer there.
Glad I checked your reply before I posted my huge response…
Make sure you save it Dylan! ^_^ I’m sure there will be rules realtalk soon!
It’s sitting in my notes app for when Mark posts his new thread!
Hey Stras Acimovic, congratulations to you and John LeBoeuf-Little on releasing an awesome game! This is one I’ve been waiting on for a long while. I have a maybe obvious question: what is the Cinder King? Are they a Chosen, a Broken, or something else?
Duan Bailey Something else. Something… worse. 😛
Duan Bailey I only answer lore questions with yes or no’s generally. But since you got a few things right I figure I’ll call it out.
The correct question is “what” is the Cinder King. And Yes. The correct answer is: he is a Chosen.
Obviously there are a few more things going on there 🙂
Good guess.
Very interesting. I’m going to go reread a little closer to see if I’m missing any other clues, but thanks for the replies guys!
Duan Bailey Read the section on Dar, there seems to be some connection there, if anywhere.
Not sure I can back it up textually but, my headcannon is that the Cinder King is the Chosen of a god that died during the Godswar.
I’d also guess that Zora was involved in what killed said god, and that it went down in Dar.
Lore discussion makes me smile so hard 🙂
Just picked this up. I may have been primed after binging both Band of Brothers and the Pacific just before I picked it up, but I NEED to get this to a table post-haste.
Love that this has a fixed term campaign, that you alternate between two levels of play, and that you get to have both a tactical and narrative heavy game, all at once.
Congrats to all involved on an evocative and inspiring game.
Hope you enjoy it ^_^
looks fantastic, will hopefully give this a run soon.
is there a high quality version of the map available we could use to print / use in roll20 (maybe without the blocky location names)?
Heh. The high quality map is too big for roll20. I’ll see what I can do (the trick is getting it to people).
I got a couple of lore questions!
– What are the clan names for the Zemyati? It seems we only have names and patronymic endings.
– Is Ostarra the blue-skinned Bartan goddess?
– When the Cinder King rose, 9 were Chosen and five Broke. There are three Chosen and three Broken in the quickstart. Will we get all the rest in the final product? Did a lot of the other Chosen die? Zora and Vlaisim/Render are both Living Gods. Render was obviously one of the 9 but it sounds like Zora just recently joined the fight?
– Nyx broke at the great breaking, but one of the aldermani twins broke before that. Is that correct? Do we know who the last Broken there is?
Oh, and does Breaking mean that from then on that god is tainted and whenever they Choose again they’ll rise as a Broken? Or will they never Choose again?
1. I’d assume that Zemyati clan names follow the same patterns as family names. Either being named after a a famous clan elder or having some sort of descriptive name.
2. Not sure off the top of my head, but I believe Ostarra is the Bartan goddess of healing and the blue skinned goddess is the goddess of prophecy. Could be misremembering, but I think they’re different people.
3. I think some day we’ll get to see more Chosen and Broken, but not necessarily all of them. I believe Stras and John want to leave some blanks for fans to fill in stuff.
Zora is actually VERY old. She was around before the 9.
4. You’re correct. The Chosen of Nyx is now Binder and one of the twins was Broken three years before that. As far as I know, there’s still one mystery Broken.
Hey Dylan, thanks for the quick response!
1. Hm, I’m not following. Do you mean Zemyati clan names follow the same patterns as first names? I don’t see any family names under the Zemyati heritage.
2. Okay, thanks. The blue-skinned goddess sounded different from Ostarra but I wasn’t sure.
3 & 4. Figured as much. Thanks for the confirmation!
5. Oh, that’s interesting! I wonder if killing Blighter fixes the taint on Alchemy? Or is there more than one Broken of the Orite gods?
Patronymics are the family names! Check the “Cultures of the East” section on the last page of the sheets for more about Zemyati names!
As for what effects killing Blighter would have on Alchemy… Guess you’ll just have to try it and see!
There’s no real cannon answer there, so it’s up to your table to decide what would happen.
I do think Blighter is the only Broken amongst the Crafter gods though.
Duan, to answer your original questions.
1. We haven’t really talked a ton about Zemyati clan names, but that’s a solid question. I’d expect something for the next major revision (there’s a minor update coming that won’t have it).
2. Nope! (Dylan there is no prophecy in this world you’re using some outdated lore—sorry friend! ^_~)
3a. No. But you may see some in other campaigns.
3b. No.
3c. No. Zora was not one of the Nine. She was chosen long ago, and she stayed away until recently for reasons. Your reading of her sheet is correct.
3d. Yes, Yes and Somewhat. There’s not a lot of details on the First Broken since they’re at the Cinder Kings side elsewhere. You should check page 30.
4a & b. This is not information in the book at this time. 😛 But it is probably WHY gods are worried enough to create this many Chosen.
Followup Qs.
1. If there was say a “Red Spear” clan (there isn’t I’m just using a fantasy name for a placeholder), folks would be called Vlaisim Red-Spear, or Eleya Red-Spear. Since that’s pretty confusing, they tend to go with patronymics. Vlaisim Boryevich, or Eleya Fire-Hair. Technically their full name would be Vlaisim Boryevich Red-Spear
“Hey did you talk to Eleya Red-Spear yesterday?”
“Which Eleya? Eleya Olvarovna or Eleya Fire-Hair?”
“The last.”
“No I went hunting undead with Olva’s daughter. The other was busy being scolded by the Marshall.”
It keeps things clearer.
5. That’s technically not a question that’s answered at the moment. 😀
I have a question about the Quartermaster’s Acquire Assets campaign action.
If I have it right, you would declare what asset you’re looking to acquire, then you roll the location’s asset rating. How does the quality of the asset relate to what you put down under Materiel?
For example, if I wanted to acquire food while the Legion is at the Barrak Mine, I’d roll one die. What’s the difference between rolling a 1 (Poor) and rolling a 6 (Fine) on that roll?
In play tests we’ve just awarded more or less of the Material, unless there’s a more interesting option.
Quick question about ‘Pressure’ and ‘rolling for Pressure’: I understand the concept (and I dig it), but I’m not clear about how it works mechanically. What do you actually ‘roll’? What are the possible outcomes of the roll? How does increasing ‘Pressure’ add to the roll? Apologies if this is just me having missed out the paragraph that explains it in the rules.
It’s on the commander sheet “When you advance, roll pressure minus horses spent and add time based on the result. (1-3: One. 4/5: Two. 6: Three. crit: Five) Then reset pressure to 0. Add pressure when time passes (after campaign actions), or when there is a pressure penalty for a failed mission.”
So you advance to Plainsworth. Your pressure goes to 1, and because of a mission you skipped it goes to 2. You stay another rotation hoping to get supply. Your Pressure goes to 3. You decide to advance to the Long Road.
You’d roll 3 dice and take the result in Time ticks (so if you rolled a 4 you’d get 2 ticks as per above). If your QM spends say 2 horses you’d roll 1 die.
Another question that’s come up. How does Broken advancement work? On the Broken sheets, it mentions something about referring to ‘undead advance’ on the Commander sheets, but I don’t see anything on that sheet beyond the entry to Skydagger Keep. Did this just get removed?