I am brainstorming a hack for blades in menzoberranzan. A small house would attempt to fight it’s way to the top against opposing houses and threats.
Being a dnd knock off I would love either some racial moves or playbooks. I’m thinking most players would play drow with maybe a slave playbook for other races like humans deurgar illithids etc. Maybe have duel playbooks for race and class.
To play up the backstabby nature I would like to add in a mechanic the promotes a little inter player rivalry. Something like providing an re roll to players who purposefully cause other characters stress or something.
What other changes are needed? What else would you add in?
I took inspiration from 5E’s Inspiration rules: I incorporated Ideals, Bonds, Flaws, and Personality Traits. If the player played to those, they got Inspiration and could use it for Advantage on a future roll. Borrowing from Fate, I would also offer Inspiration to “compel” a character to play to a trait. Sometimes it caused other characters stress; sometimes, that character would willingly cause themselves stress.
That’s a neat idea. Build bonds and if players use them against each other they get inspiration. Do you think that would undermine the whole heist thing too much? I’ve never had PvP in a blades in the dark game although I feel it is appropriate to this hack
Treat race like a playbook that PCs of that race can dip into without using their Veteran advances. You can also encourage them to list their race under Heritage and select an action dot for that as well.
re: backstabby nature. The bonds system from Apocalypse World comes to mind, as a way to track how well each PC knows the others. Also, you probably need an Interfere action that works opposite to Assist (players may take 1 stress to take away 1d, or roll dice equal to quality of relationship to do it at some risk). You could also bring in the highlighting system from the same game (except they choose an action, not an attribute).
I don’t think it’d interfere too much with the heist concept. Consider various TV shows and movies where each member of the heist has a secret agenda: everyone wants to accomplish the goal, but there’s a secondary objective that each wants to do separately. As long as it isn’t directly oppositional, it should work fairly well.
This sounds really cool. I’d be cautious about introducing mechanics that support PvP but if done very carefully and tested a lot there is certainly lots of potential!
Here’s a thought to riff on.
To benefit from Teamwork maneuvers, you must have Trust with that teammate (say who you trust when you pick your load for the score).
You can force any character who trusts you to perform the protect maneuver on your behalf (they suffer a consequence instead of you).