I’m hacking Blades into a game about renovating houses and the stress and trauma that come from it, inspired by my…

I’m hacking Blades into a game about renovating houses and the stress and trauma that come from it, inspired by my…

I’m hacking Blades into a game about renovating houses and the stress and trauma that come from it, inspired by my own teeth-grinding experiences with renovating, and synthesized from media like Property Brothers, Flip or Flop, House Hunters, Long Island Medium, Welcome to Night Vale, Darkest Dungeon, and American Horror Story, loosely framed by The Matrix cause it’s all in a…ahem… (spooky voice activated), “REALITY”, WELL LIT AND FAKE, EVERY MORTAL SET ON STAGE FOR THE AMUSEMENT OF BEINGS OF GREAT AND TERRIBLE POWER.

But I digress. Can we discuss what the potential consequences might be if I just smoosh together Coin and Heat into Charging your credit card and accruing Debt Levels if you don’t spend downtime actions paying your bills? I’m not seeing any currently, but I’m not at my first playtest yet, so I just don’t know yet.

Payoff needs to be tweaked and it gets a little weird. But if you pick “Remove the Satanic paraphernalia and blood from the basement, then turn it into a bright, open concept game room for the three boys” as a score (or this game’s equivalent) for the session, ARE YOUR REALLY GETTING PAID AFTER THAT PART? Thoughts?

(I didn’t know if I wanted to put this under Hacks and Add Ons cause I’m wondering if that’s specifically for the kickstarter hacks and settings?)

7 thoughts on “I’m hacking Blades into a game about renovating houses and the stress and trauma that come from it, inspired by my…”

  1. The point of Coin and Rep (the payoff) is to help you do more stuff and also rise in the ranks.

    So what in this model lets you do more stuff and rise in the ranks? Fan numbers? Ratings? Production budget?

  3. You’re asking really good questions.

    You probably rise up the ranks when you impress clients, total transformations, etc. I.e. “This is not the same house! You’re kidding me! We didn’t even fill out our budget! When I go to church this Wednesday, I’m showing everyone the before-and-afters, can I get your business card?”

    You can probably do more stuff when you have the budget to pay someone else to do a job you’re bad at. I.e. Unless you have a Freak in your crew with the “What’s that Thing Up There?” special ability, you’re going to have to hire a professional to paint or put shingles/sidings on your ceilings, roofs unless you want to risk falling off a ladder due to your sheer lack of balance or crippling fear of heights.

    One of my main points of curiosity was about Merging Heat and Coin into a Budget/Debt track like Heat is. I don’t know how Heat fits into this setting, because presumably you’re not doing anything criminal. I kind of want to swap out Heat for Debt, because it’s still a, “If you keep spending recklessly, you’re getting into deep, deep shit with an entity much more powerful than you” mechanic, it’s just coming from the bank and all the people you hired instead of from the city watch. Maybe the solution is to give the Crew a Budget/Debt track and allow the characters to collect coin/the benefits of payoff.

  4. Heat is there to produce increasingly worse entanglements (and eventually put a clock on the life span of the crew). So if Debt produces worse entanglements, then you’re on the right track.

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