I’ve just updated to version 7, and I felt I must mention how much I love the new district vignettes and artwork. When jumping into such a different fictional setting such as Blades, getting a visual idea of the atmosphere and landscape can be one of the biggest difficulties in communicating the environment, and these ‘slice’ views of each district communicate that street-level feel perfectly. Seeing the vertical dynamics from steel dock beams, rooftops, merchant bridges and lower sewers instantly gives me a clear idea of things to keep in mind when the PCs are running their score.
This is something I would love to see echoed in other RPGs and adventure modules when trying to establish their setting.
I love the bite-sized location and NPC descriptions below them. I love how the format of that page forces those descriptions to be succinct. And then the overwhelming picture sinks into my mind subliminally. It is a thing of true beauty.
Yea the imagery and inspiration blocks add so much. It’s got something I liked about the setting chapter in Numenera too (that they add intrigue and make your brain juices go, without describing a mega detailed history). It’s also reminding me how such a focused setting like this can be shared but not over-chronicled. I 100% agree that it’s a thing of beauty
It reminds me of side scrolling puzzle games, and that’s a good thing!