Andrew Shields – Page 23 – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

First some rumination on organized crime.

First some rumination on organized crime. If you can wade through that (or skip it) I unpack some new kinds of crime that I think would be available in Duskwall.

You can use that for the basis of characters, or adventures, or use it for background flavor.

One new form of crime is exorfists. “Weirdly skilled boxers who train to attack the energy in a body. They fight hollows occupied by ghosts, trying to knock the ghost out of the body before the hollow (which is immune to physical pain, and extra strong because it is possessed) knocks them out. Heavy betting on these illegal fighting events.”

Take a look!

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/07/06/the-trouble-with-rogues/

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/07/06/the-trouble-with-rogues

The Unrecommendables hired a whisper named Jettilyn to help them out.

The Unrecommendables hired a whisper named Jettilyn to help them out. She’s all fancy and spooky, she can gesture and make things move (like pulling things out of peoples’ hands and so on.) So does this whisper have telekinesis?

No. She has a harness with three magical jars connected to it. Each jar has a lid that matches a ring she wears. Using the ring, she commands the ghost trapped in the jar. So, she can have up to three ghosts doing her will at any given point (but the more she uses, the harder they are to control.)

This usage wears the ghosts out, so she periodically uses a ritual (or goes shopping) to get some electroplasm to refurbish their forms.

Here is a short play report.

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/07/04/blades-in-the-dark-professors-interruptus/

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/07/04/blades-in-the-dark-professors-interruptus

You have GOT to look at this viola organista.

You have GOT to look at this viola organista. It is going to totally make an appearance in my Blades in the Dark game tonight. It is just perfect for the flavor of the game.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2509546/Musician-replicates-Da-Vincis-viola-organista-piano-makes-sound-cello.html

Languages!

Languages! In the official version as it stands, the plan is to have languages represent more dialects than foreign tongues. You don’t have to mechanically represent any proficiency with them.

Here is an alternative. At generation, you can spend either the action for your heritage or the action for your background to get a language instead (both if desired, to be tri-lingual.)

After generation, to learn a new language, you must fill a clock (default suggestion is 10 segments, studying as a downtime project.) At the end of that time, as soon as you have 8 experience, you can purchase that language as a special ability. From then on you are fluent. When you get half the segments, you can communicate at a basic level.

I have been thinking about actions.

What if “Prowl” became “Move”? That makes it more intuitive for players to connect it to running, jumping, climbing, dancing, and swimming.

What if “Skirmish” became “Fight”? That’s what you’re doing, and that’s all it’s for.

What if “Mayhem” became “Chaos”? I’m thinking of what makes the pirate captains in Pirates of the Caribbean distinctive; when everything flies apart and all plans are lost and everything is chaotic, they are at their best with plans and battle and pressing ahead. So, you can use it for mayhem, and also for yelling “Aye, we’re good and lost now!” as your ship heads for the waterfall at the end of the world sort of moments.

One action I really feel should come back in somewhere is Stalk. It is an amalgam of moving quietly, acting unobtrusive, putting on speed, keeping an eye on a target, instinctively figuring the target’s next move, watching your back trail, seeing small movements across distances, and understanding behavior.

I feel it would be useful to be explicit about moving lock picking and safe cracking to “Tinker” and maybe consider renaming it “Mechanics.”

It is important to tread a middle ground between being evocative for the flavor of the game, and clear for the smoothness of the game. Especially when you play with people who have not read the rules, it is useful for the actions to be as clear as possible about what they cover, and even if these suggestions aren’t used going forward, maybe they spark some other ideas.

Just my .02 for the morning.

I would love to have any insight on why Blades in the Dark is laid out in landscape.

I would love to have any insight on why Blades in the Dark is laid out in landscape. For me, landscape is a lot harder to use than portrait, especially double-sided.

Is it too soon to ask that the other setting hacks be portrait? =)

The rogues visited a temple to the Ecstasy of the Flesh.

The rogues visited a temple to the Ecstasy of the Flesh. The focal point of the sanctuary was a 20 foot tall roughly woman-shaped statue made of wax.

Supplicants would write their prayers on tiny vellum strips, roll them up, and put them in brass cylinders with one open end. Then they would push the open end into the waxy flesh of the statue.

Once a year, the statue is melted, the vellum flaring and glittering away. In the meantime, the brass studs all over the statue gave it a sequined look, or a reflection of what stars must once have looked like.

The scoundrels did NOT choose to put their own prayers in the effigy.

I will be interested to see what the full rules suggest for when a crew hires an expert to help with the heist.

I will be interested to see what the full rules suggest for when a crew hires an expert to help with the heist. Should the expert have ratings and dice? Should the expert count as equipment? Should the expert participate in group actions? How could they NOT? Best practice, who rolls for the expert? Is that task assigned to the player who hired the expert, or maybe the GM keeps the NPC task close at hand?

Last night the crew hired a whisper to help out with magical stuff, and she proved instrumental to the mission. But she was an NPC, the first time I’ve run a heist with an NPC along. I could see reasonable players wanting to add an NPC as a crew member, not a ganger or hired expert. I wonder how those situations will be handled–at least, how the rules will recommend we handle them.

In my game last night, the scoundrels put on acolyte robes and tried to drift out of the temple in the crowd,…

In my game last night, the scoundrels put on acolyte robes and tried to drift out of the temple in the crowd, undetected.

With the new action list, “slip” is gone. So what would you use for that? Finesse doesn’t quite seem to fit, Prowl is a stretch, Deceive seems too high-engagement since they’re trying not to make eye contact. Maybe Discern for seeing a way through with minimal engagement?

You could turn it around and ask the players how their characters are doing it, of course. Let them pick something that doesn’t quite fit, and run with it. Or, you could make it a resist test to escape the consequences of being caught in the crowd, because Guile makes sense in the broad strokes.

You could do it without a roll, but I wanted to add in an element of potential complication (and one arose; they smelled awful from their adventure, and got stuck in a human traffic jam [delayed], stinking the joint up until they could get through.)