Author: Marcus Shepherd

I’m considering porting the BitD / FitD SRD to Fate Core, working with a long-term GM friend on some of the specifics.

My reasons for this are basically to do with my typically GMing platform: I don’t have a lot of free time, nor a regular gaming group, so I’m usually playing RPGs by play-by-post or play-by-forum. BitD is a wonderful system, but the pre-roll negotiation causes some issues for PbP; Fate is much more easy-going in this respect, with the negotiation occurring post roll instead. Whilst this changes some of the setting-mechanics mixture that is inherent to BitD, I think I can probably make it work.

That said, I’d probably need somebody to actually test the damn thing in a tabletop or virtual tabletop environment.

Is there any interest (a) in such a port and (b) being a playtester / GM?

Calum Grace Whoa, A NOCTURE might just be my favourite hack of BitD that I’ve seen thus far.

Please, please, all – I encourage you to check it out. It’s pretty awesome.

Politicos

A Parliament of Owls

After some wrangling and hand-wringing, I’ve written up some ideas (many of which are pretty substantial) about Politicos, my game of party politics which is Powered by the Apocalypse, Darkened by Blades.

Have a look, make comments, add comments here if you like. It’s out there in the public domain for you to read, play, modify, feedback. If you want clarification, or want to critique something, or want to comment, or anything at all related to Politicos, message me somehow.

I don’t know if it would be fun to play, but it might be. Play to find out.

The Google Doc (comment’able) is available at: http://bit.ly/2x0ENea

Tommies

Taking a bit of inspiration from the excellent game Night Witches, the BBC radio plays Tommies and Home Front, and other WWI media, I have been bouncing around an idea of a hack which focuses on the action of (probably British) infantry on the Western Front in the First World War.

This would be called Tommies and sounds like it could be a gripping, if rather gritty, game. Yes, it would be bleak, but it feels like an incredible way to explore the tragedy of early 20th Century warfare, and to honour the memories of the fallen.

Taking additional inspiration from certain Iron Maiden songs, I was thinking of bringing a little occult inspiration into the game, too. Nothing that would break the immersion of the setting, but phwoar, what could be better for a ghost-filled world than a theatre of war where pretty much everybody is terrified for their lives the entire time.

Once again, I have to point out that I’m not exactly enrichened with time to run games, except by PbP. Would anybody be interested in trying something out? It would be a relatively simple hack, no major changes to the system – just playbooks, a Western Front setting, and some minor tweaks to the faction game.

A gentle plea to Blades fans

I’m putting out feelers for someone to take my tenebrous, fragile new hack A Parliament of Owls and go playtest it in the wild. I don’t have a regular RP group anymore, and I’m not going to be able to get one. So I’ve got to out-source it to someone in this lovely community. Any takers?

I feel like I should provide a trigger warning – Owls is about party politics. So if you’re easily offended or rattled by that kind of thing, then it’s not for you.

I’m, uhh, planning to build a Blades in the Dark hack called Ravens where the protagonists are politicians vying for power for their parties in a (parliamentary?) democracy.

The whole thing is going to be a pretty heavy edit. There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary is that my general mode of play is play-by-post. BitD has a lot of moving parts that we’ve found don’t translate well to the PbP paradigm (games move slowly, and people forget about some of the things, for example).

Instead, I want the focus to be on narrative, fiction, inter-player power struggles and character development, so the whole environment will be more free-form.

Yes, I’m going to be running this by play-by-post, and yes, it’d be swell if I could have some playtesters / co-conspirators.

I was going to wait for the SRD, but I’m not going to – I’m going to get started.

I have at least two ideas for hacks and no time to formalise them. Instead, I donate these ideas to medical science.

First one is Clerks in the Dark, being a kind of crazy office sim. You have your lowly team, trying to up your pay grade and resources. It’s set in the kind of faceless, horrible corporate entity represented in Office Space, Clerks and The Office (the British one), where nobody is entirely sure what the purpose of the company is.

The second idea is that of a crew of writers, producers, directors, actors and others putting together a sitcom. I was thinking Blades in the Perk or some other 90s sitcom reference, but I can’t quite nail it. Anyway, here scores are clearly episodes, tier translates roughly to a network, and coin is ratings or budget. But woe betide the crew who gets too many complaints. Here the actions should be forked from comedy, tragedy and backstage skills.

Actually I don’t really see why this wouldn’t work for programmes other than sitcoms, but the idea was delicious.

I did also think of one about intelligence agencies versus terror cells, but it was probably a bit close to the bone. It could only really be good if it was in the spirit of Four Lions or War on Terror!, because otherwise it would totally take itself too seriously.

Anyway, enjoy or don’t, your call.

I have this memory of seeing a typography style guide having been released for Blades in the Dark. But either my G+ fu is incredibly weak or it’s been removed. Does anyone know to where this blessed document might have gone?