Is anyone working on a hack inspired by Indiana Jones, Uncharted, Tomb Raider, The Librarians, etc.
Is anyone working on a hack inspired by Indiana Jones, Uncharted, Tomb Raider, The Librarians, etc. etc.? Because stories of pulpy, jet-setting adventurers exploring exotic locales and interacting with powerful artifacts seems like it could be a great fit for this system.
Sometimes, when your A plot is primed and ready to go, the right decision is to set it aside and explore a B plot…
Sometimes, when your A plot is primed and ready to go, the right decision is to set it aside and explore a B plot for a little bit. But things are building to a head! How much longer can the Dockers stand idly by while the powers that be continue to add pressure to their struggle?
Originally shared by Eli Kurtz
Score #07: Leverage
After an explosive win in the canals, the crew of the Electrick EEK needs to lay low while all the fallout settles. The Dockers are finally organized and ready for action, but the crew doesn’t have a task for them just yet. While the laborers twiddle their thumbs, the EEK takes care of a certain thorn in their side: the Bluecoat Captain Laroze…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWkNcaU-y54&t=0s&list=PLNmwv04gc3RrRILd05BcpUJywUbmG88TH&index=8
How many Gangs in a Faction?
How many Gangs in a Faction?
The book says Tier defines “the quality and scale of the gangs your crew employs” (emphasis mine). To give examples, the Billhooks (Tier II, pp. 285) have “a large gang of bloodthirsty butchers” and “a pack of death-dogs” listed under Notable Assets, which to me implies two Gang cohorts of around 12 members each. The Bluecoats (Tier III, pp. 285) have “many large gangs of vicious thugs” under Notable Assets, which to me implies 6+ gangs of 20 people each. But then the Deathlands Scavengers (Tier II, pp. 288) have equipment listed under Notable Assets instead of cohorts of any kind.
I know there are no objective rulings about this sort of thing, so this is a question for individual GMs/tables: how many gangs do you give to factions at different Tiers? Do some of your factions have more Gangs/Experts, and some others have assets of a different kind? I’m thinking about the overall population of different factions and trying to get some insight into the ways other GMs approach the situation.
I’ve made peace with the fact that this campaign is probably orders of magnitude more high-octane than your typical…
I’ve made peace with the fact that this campaign is probably orders of magnitude more high-octane than your typical BitD game. The crew is still racking up trauma and careening towards a fearful reckoning, but they’re just so damn brazen! I can’t help but go along with their wild ideas.
Originally shared by Eli Kurtz
Score #06: An Explosive Comeback
Just days ago, the crew of the Electrick EEK got out of prison, finally recovered from some nasty wounds, and then killed a person in vengeance for both those hardships. Big events threaten to change the landscape of the Docks, rivals are pressing in from every side, and the crew’s got more targets than backs to paint them on. So what do they decide to do?
Remind everyone that they are the most daring and reckless skiff racers to ever touch the water in this accursed city.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWrdKvBQD3k&t=0s&list=PLNmwv04gc3RrRILd05BcpUJywUbmG88TH&index=7
I took a quick look through a few of the free Forged in the Dark hacks out there and I didn’t notice any Advanced…
I took a quick look through a few of the free Forged in the Dark hacks out there and I didn’t notice any Advanced Rules and Permissions a la the Iruvian Sword Arts found in the book. I would have expected this sort of stuff to be more popular. Anybody have any ideas why it’s not? Anybody know if the published settings (Scum and Villainy, Band of Blades) have any of these?
After an unplanned hiatus, the crew of the Electrick EEK is back!
After an unplanned hiatus, the crew of the Electrick EEK is back! And what a reunion. The choices the players made for their characters this time reminded me of the most dramatic moments of Peaky Blinders. They had a choice to get back to their identity as canal racers or lean into a life of crime. Come see what they chose…
Originally shared by Eli Kurtz
Score #05: Cruel Vengeance
CW: In the final third of this session, there is a scene of fairly graphic torture and murder
After a month of lying low, things look bad for the crew of the Electrick EEK and for the Dockers union efforts they support. Benji Overstreet endured a month of strict house arrests and grueling Bluecoat “interviews” to give Clank and Johnathan Black time to recover from the wounds they suffered in the last session. In that time, the union effort has been all but squashed: its leaders portrayed as traitors, its strikes broken by Bluecoats, and the jobs it sought to create frozen by vindictive factory owners.
After so much time twiddling thumbs and with so much progress lost, what’s the crew of the EEK to do? As it turns out, they set themselves upon a path of revenge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxNwbI93Mt0&list=PLNmwv04gc3RrRILd05BcpUJywUbmG88TH&index=6
Hey scoundrels!
Hey scoundrels! A friend of mine just asked me what are the major differences between Blades in the Dark and “other PBTA games.” I’ve already told him that Blades isn’t truly a PBTA game, it just draws on some of the principles (d6 dice, graduated success, playbooks, etc.).
I’m not all that familiar with PBTA as a design apparatus, so I’m wondering what else I can tell him about the differences. Anyone here who can contribute ideas?
Hey all, I’m thinking about the design of the game after watching the excellent “A History of Blades” videos on…
Hey all, I’m thinking about the design of the game after watching the excellent “A History of Blades” videos on John’s YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlGyUKlXVbY
One thing I didn’t hear in the video is something I’ve seen people ask quite often. What mechanical considerations are involved if you choose to trim the list of action ratings from 12 to 9 (e.g. 3 per Attribute instead of 4). My search efforts haven’t turned up previous examples of that question here in the community so I shamefully introduce it once more.
What do you think? I feel like lowering the point for character generation from 4 to 3 makes sense but I would miss the symmetry of the “1 for Heritage, 1 for Background, 2 for what you will” method.
My crew just got their first Wanted level and they want to Incarcerate one of the crew to bring it down.
My crew just got their first Wanted level and they want to Incarcerate one of the crew to bring it down. However, they also want to get him out early. They discussed a Score to break him out, but I feel like that would be counter productive (it’s unlikely a crew’s Wanted level would go down if the guy serving the time disappears before he’s supposed to). But also, Incarceration is easy enough to handle with a roll, some quick narration, and an appropriate jump forward in time. I’m struggling to see the value of expanding that to the detail of a full Score.
Any thoughts from the community?
Quite a few unexpected developments in this session!
Quite a few unexpected developments in this session! The players struggle with a mystery (as players are wont to do) but then that all gets swept away when some much more stabbing pressing issues rear their ugly blades heads.
Originally shared by Eli Kurtz
Score #04: Poltergeists
The crew of the Electrick EEK has kept things quiet for the past three scores. They’ve felt pretty accomplished, stoking solidarity among the Dockers while also living fast and making strong moves in their own favor. This time, their luck ran out and they banged around just a little too much. Now they know what it feels like when things go belly up in Doskvol. What will they do about the fallout? We’ll have to find out next time…