I don’t see a list of touchstones in Band of Blades, so I’m just going to suggest some things I notice: I’m late to the game watching the Peter Jackson Hobbit trilogy, but after first seeing it just last weekend, Band of Blades looks splendid for playing a Tolkien-style “epic, dire road-trip harried by evil” campaign.
Granted the company/fellowship in Tolkien-stories aren’t military legions, but so much of Tolkien’s “epic road-trip” focus appears in BoB’s DNA: the omnipresent, ever-growing threat of the Shadow and its servants, richly location-based campaign arc and special missions, division of duties among the generals/heroes, the Shadow’s subtle Corruption from treasure/power/loss/blighted lands, and the reliance of most characters on the capricious presence of Wizards, regents, and named evil lieutenants.
The BoB setting is evocative and awesome. Relentless tinkerer that I am, though, I’m inclined to reverse engineer the cultures to things like Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Men, treat religious aspects as lore/magic, Chosen as Wizards or scions like Aragorn, Broken as themed evils like the Witch-king of Angmar, Azog the Defiler, etc.
Band of Blades also has a clear and lovely Banner Saga vibe, especially with the resource management and time-pressure element. I like that a lot.
Wow, talk about NOT COOL. Welcome to the wonderful world of being reported, Chance Phillips.
This is not me. I was still logged in on another computer. I would never use this language.
I’m so sorry.
I lack any authority here, so you’re gonna have to take that up with the mods and/or Google’s team. In the meantime, I’d make really sure you’re no longer logged in anywhere else right now.
I just set up 2-step verification and revoked permission for all devices. That should work. Again, I am soooo sorry.
EDIT: I also tried to log out of all other sessions via the GMail option.
Also good touchstone – XCOM (for actually caring about disposable soldiers) and FTL (for running away from advancing army with said disposable soldiers)
Adam – I agree with your “road trip” assessment. Band of Brothers has inspired me to think more about the crew aspect of my Blades in the Borderlands hack (huh, both are BoB…). I was thinking about merging the BoB GM Playbooks for Chosen & Broken into a GM Storybook to provide plots (and rule tweaks) for different styles of High / Heroic Fantasy campaigns.
I was already “sort of” doing this with my modern crime hack, by having different crews provide very different styles of play — e.g. Fast & Furious vs. Ocean’s 11 vs. A-Team vs. running an organized crime syndicate.
Roe Portal XCOM indeed, though it has less location focus than BoB. I’ve been awaiting BoB to see the generals idea for similar use in the XCom hack I’ve been sort of working on.
Eric Brunsell Following Girl by Moonlight, I’d been doing the crew sheet more as an invasion style plot guide, while the player playbooks are more like division (politics, assault, engineering, research, etc.) with various troopers of that type (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, etc.).
I love the way BoB makes rookies fun to play in their own right, with special abilities nobody else can get.
The Black Company series appears to be the primary touchstone. The game uses some similar terminology and seems to be trying to capture the sorts of characters you’d find in those books.
I’m also reminded of The Grey Wardens of Dragon Age
Definitely Banner Saga. Especially the board game variant Banner Saga: Warbands. Roles and tone are very similar.
As I mentioned in the main BoB thread, Band of Blades absolutely SCREAMS Myth: the Fallen Lords and Myth II: Soulblighter. To the point where it’s damn near a slightly-higher tech version of the Myth world (which would fit in with the lore in Myth, oddly). And that is in no way a bad thing.
Great post Adam. Blame this on me BTW. I was up till wee hours trying to grind out the final doc. Touchstones and influences were on my list but somehow they slipped through. I’ll try to incorporate them into a future version.
In terms of influences I think you’ll be surprised. The core three things that went in were: Princess Mononoke, Fullmetal Alchemist, Aliens and XCom. You can see a lot of the giant beasts, many faced beings, and the struggle of people alongside supernatural elements from the first, and some of the country and societal trappings from the second mixed with their scientific approach to the supernatural. Aliens is big for it’s horror meets military action elements, when in doubt this is a good tone. The last should be obvious ^_~
Oh another big influence were a bunch of war stories from the region of the world my family is from.
In terms of touchstones: Black Company definitely falls into the list. Certain elements of Warcraft etc. Bear in mind these are fantasy settings, and less ‘dark fantasy’ (the horror elements are toned down).
It always fascinates me what people see in a text (it definitely speaks to their touchstones, which is cool). A bunch of these things I’ve never encountered (never played Banner Saga, or Dragon Age. I think I saw a mission from Myth on a friends computer once 20 years ago).
I should also probably mention that most of the broken have different horror movie genre influences (like Blighter ties to zombie movies, resident evil and left for dead style stuff. Render falls into the war is hell category stuff… etc).
That’s great! I suspected we’d be surprised since the sources of Dark Fantasy / War Story inspiration are so many and diverse. I can totally see the similarities with the mythology and military structures of Myth but that’s such an obscure game for most. (The chosen and the broken really remind me of the fallen lords from that game).