Author: Galen Pejeau

Hacking Blades for a Mythic Approach:

I’ve been going back and forth on this one. I have a friend who’s been invaluable in helping on this project, and when we began with a Warrior and a Hunter playbook, he suggested fusing them. There’s a lot of Oceanic dna in this project and most of those folk don’t traditionally distinguish between the two.

Additionally, if these are the only humans in their world, who would they make war upon? (Later in the test it turned out that the answer was vile lantern-fish men, but that’s another story.)

Per usual, I’d love to have your feedback everyone.

Hacking Blades for a Mythic Approach: Lairs

This whole hack kind of came out Civilization games. We’d played Keep on the Borderlands and Kingmaker and so on. It just seemed a bit weird to have a whole nation spring up out of a ruined trading post within one human fighter’s lifetime.

Our group started exploring the concept of how to make immortal heroes who would still feel threatened by mortal scale events.

Hence Pellikoi, (man I wish I had better name for them, but it stuck.) Mortals wearing heroic masks and struggling to build a civilization over generations.

Blades Lairs seem like a really great fit for this, and I’ve been working on different “crews” (mystics, traders, conquerors) as well as what the different turf would do.

That’s very much ongoing, but hey, here’s our working map!

Hacking Blades for a Mythic Approach: the Trickster

In play tests I’ve had two types of Trickster tend to emerge, the Clever one, who claims the most discoveries and inventions, hoards useful items and plays somewhere between Odysseus and Loki, and the Clown, fortune’s fool, who succeeds in spite of him or herself, something like Coyote, or Inspector Clouseau.

In real-life mythology these are frequently two sides of the same coin, so I’ve tried to fuse them both into the one playbook, hopefully it doesn’t get eaten by G+ this time.

Hacking Blades for a more Mythic Approach: pt.4

(Looks like G+ ate my playbook? Maybe the image was too big..)

In practice I’ve found that having a deck of Spirit Cards is great, they serve as useful NPC’s, factions, and “power-ups” for rolls. In different games the spirit of Blood here has been the red glow of healing magic, an infusion to a “hundred bone needle” attack and, my favorite, a sticky little six-inch homunculii who guided the party out of an underground maze with gestures and little grunts and shouts.

In Blades, so much of the results of a roll are neatly spelled out in the scale and effect sections, how to give each Spirit its own portfolio of abilities to make them interesting without disrupting that neat package?

The current solution is to have a selection of icons for the most obvious benefits (key included.)

In play, the PC making a roll may select a spirit from the sideboard instead of taking a Devil’s Bargain and apply the Spirit’s Effect (reduced Harm in the case of Blood) the Spirit will be willing if the humans have its Alliance, require a price if Neutral and may be an active opponent under the GM’s control if Hostile.

In the current version I leave it to the GM and players to work out project clocks for Spirit Diplomacy, some might prefer to have all of Water or Air ally at once, others might want projects for every Spirit.

More complicated Spirits would have full plus/minus three faction meters, Blood is a more simple Spirit, only capable of one degree of alliance/opposition away from neutral.

How does this version look to you all?

Hacking Blades for a more Mythic Approach:

Cards are great. They’ll never replace dice for that satisfying moment of suspense, but they can do a great job of compactly expressing information.

For this hack we’d need a cast of spirits, somewhere between small gods, devils and imps, and talking animals like that fish from Wind Waker.

So I cobbled together a deck of 81 spirits, roughly flavored around the classic elements, with varying degrees of power. The PC’s would then have a “sideboard” of spirits available to them at all times, and this would replace the Devil’s Bargain from classic Blades.

The Devils in this case might have gonzo bonuses, (+2D is enormous!) but the Spirits would have their own little clocks and the heroes would have to earn them. Conversely, they might bone it up, anger the little gods and now there’s a powerful spirit on the sidelines waiting to ruin their roll.

The Ferryman here would be quite powerful, but that makes sense, he’d be close to humanity, and in playtest one group decided that he was like Charon, shuttling the souls of the dead to the foggy, bone bleached island at the end of the world, another declared him to be the messenger of the Queen of the Sea, delivering her taunts and threats.

As usual, this is a hack, and a beginner’s at that. Thoughts and suggestions appreciated.

Hey Scoundrel-types! Personal life intervened and I’ve been absent from this space, but I’ve got an idea I’m working on and would like to share with you.

For a while now some friends and I have been running ‘Con games about a world of early myth called Pellikoi.

The conceit was that the PC’s would be the fireside-told-tale heroes of an island people, exploring their world, contending with primeval monsters, hungry ghosts and a gigantic cast of spirits. In between sessions the village would grow Sid Meier-style, gaining in wisdom, technology, etc.

The system we used is irrelevant because in playing Blades, with it’s hideouts, Tier systems and Faction game, I’ve found a perfect rules set for this world. A couple of groups have been assembled and play testing has begun!

So, over the next however long it takes to perfect it, I’ll be posting work on this hack of the Blades rules, suggestions appreciated, and I hope you folks enjoy it.

-Galen