A gentle plea to Blades fans
I’m putting out feelers for someone to take my tenebrous, fragile new hack A Parliament of Owls and go playtest it in the wild. I don’t have a regular RP group anymore, and I’m not going to be able to get one. So I’ve got to out-source it to someone in this lovely community. Any takers?
I feel like I should provide a trigger warning – Owls is about party politics. So if you’re easily offended or rattled by that kind of thing, then it’s not for you.
I don’t really have time to run another game but i would love to take a look at this. I’ve had a half-finished boardgame about parliamentary in-fighting on my Drive for years
You sound like my target audience, or a possible co-conspirator…
I found another couple of players in another thread (similar to this one) who had an interest in playtesting. Do you have time to be a playtest player, if not a GM? The format would be PbP.
i could try to participate in a PbP đŸ™‚ don’t have time to GM another game though, i’m already running three XD
What’s the hook? What’s the elevator pitch for a group?
Good question. I do need one.
Owls is a game where wily politicians try to put their party – and themselves – into the upper echelons of a democratic society. There are elections, leadership races, referenda, parliamentary votes and backstabbing. Lots of backstabbing. You’ll help yourselves get ahead, and make others fall behind. You’ll forge a political dynasty from next to nothing but your wits, and your party.
Mechanically, it’s a slightly lighter version of BitD, with an expanded faction game and world creation elements from Fate, Spark and Questlandia. It’s optimised for PbP, and fiction-first. It’s hopefully fun – but if not, it’s your chance to fix that.
How’s that sound?
These are things you do. Which is fine.
What makes this game interesting or unique? What’s the hook? What makes it awesome?
Are you in a steampunk society, where water is rationed, and the goblin underclass doesn’t have representation? What kind of important bills are there? What secrets do the different groups hold? Is there a house of commons and a house of lords? Do the Lords houses have bloodline powers?
Why should I be interested in playing a game about politics? Or rather why should I be interested in THIS specific game and not just wander over to Model UN? (if the answer is, because it uses dice and BitD you may want to narrow your scope)
That’s fair. Thanks Stras.
As with Fate, I’m not trying to build a setting. I’m trying to get the players to build the setting they want. If they want to play where gobbers are suffragists, then I’m down with that. If they want a game which is about a real parliamentary system, then they can build that too.
This is about stratifying society into NPC factions. Make facts about each; answer questions in the fiction. Build a world which you want to explore. Then build characters to inhabit it.
This specific game? Well, yeah, because it’s Darkened by Blades; but also, because it’s inspired by everything I love about narrative-driven RPGs.
It’s a work in progress, and it’s entirely likely that it might not really work as a game that appeals to people. But it appeals to me.
I do want to also point out that I am proposing to add a kind of setting, which is a new democracy in a post-dictatorial Latin American island (largely inspired by Tropico). I don’t want people to get hung up on reproducing real world analogies.
I want this game to explore issues and ideas about power. What does it do to you? How does it change you, your principles, your relationships with others? Paul Czege does this kind of thing well, so this is an homage to his kind of games.
Sorry to keep spamming. I really appreciate your help.
Best of luck friend ^_^ Genuinely.
I am also person who may be interested in playtesting this. And I also have a half finished intrigue based game concept lieing around in my brain. Thought it’s game of nobles infighting and is mechanically Risk crossed with Mafia.
I’m also leaning on Stras’ side with regard to setting/flavor. If you want to use a playtest and/or discussion to help build a vibrant and interesting world for these rules to exist within, I would be down to join!
Blades-hacks I’ve seen all seem to follow the lead of the core game by building the rules within a setting. After all, Attune is meaningless without the Ghost Field and lightning barriers and so forth… it is utterly dependent on the way that Doskvol is. Incarceration in Ironhook prison matters both in the fiction and has entire pages of the rules devoted to it. Etc. Is there a reason that Parliament wouldn’t also benefit from this sort of entanglement with a specific and compelling setting?
Tim Groth​​
Also, I’d be very interested in taking a look!
I am going to add a setting for playtesting, and perhaps more.
I’m dissolving the actions into a much smaller superset, because it generalises things and allows for closer focus on narrative (that’s my shtick). That means that things like supernatural effects get lumped in with a lot of other things. It’s a nod more to the way FAE handles things with Approaches rather than Skills. Nominally I think this is broadly in line with the spirit of BitD, but it’s a mechanic that needs investigation.
I’ve been thinking about incarceration too. It’s a great mechanic, and really builds player-crew friction, but fictionally it needs smoothing over in Owls. I’ve got some ideas, but… I’m not sure they’re all coherent, yet.
Ideally, I’m tending towards avoiding supernatural effects for now. But there are things that might look like a Dark Art.
Incarceration could be modeled as exile, ostricization, or publically accepting the consequences of a scandal and eating the media fallout. Any kind of disgrace removing you from the halls of power.
Yeah. I had something like that in mind.
As an analogy, the phrase ‘political wilderness’ gets bandied around for politicians who, for whatever reason, are disgraced. Often they resign (which is kinda equivalent to taking a fall to lower Wanted Level, donchafink?) and have to do Other Stuff for a while. Back to an old career, or writing memoirs, or gardening. Staying out of the limelight, biding one’s time until it’s appropriate to return.
‘Course, sometimes politicians do end up in prison. Geoffrey Archer, anyone?
Anyway, it does work, but the narrative definition of the mechanic seems a little broad. Maybe that’s okay for Owls though.
There are a bunched of folks +’d into this thread, so I’ll repost the link to the Tavern-Keeper campaign where I’m hosting the rules. You’ll have to sign up and send a join request, because the information (Character Creation and Crew Creation) is in the Discuss threads, not the wiki (intentionally).
tavern-keeper.com – TavernKeeper
You could also have several flavors of disgrace. Or the incarceration roll results could run from exile to boring ministry to actual jail.
Marcus how can you possibly be English and not see the obvious “Yes, Minister” political cartoon-iverse setting this idea is just begging for?
That’s a fair question, and the answer is something to do with my vintage, and something to do with my intentions.
HOWEVER, if you wanted to build a setting for Owls that emulated the world of ‘Yes, Minister’, then I’m all for that. Alternately, something comedy/savage like ‘Twenty Twelve’ could also be great fun – although the focus is subtly different. I was sure there was something political on which Twenty Twelve was based, but I couldn’t find it with a shallow search.
I can’t promise anything, but if you get the documents to me I’ll run it past my group.