Author: Renaud van Strydonck

Empires in the Dark : Thoughts on Regions

So I’ve been thinking about regions, and region development, and it feels like existing 4Xish roleplaying games fall into two categories :

1. In Wrath of the Autarch and Houses of the Blooded, domains have Regions which they develop and exploit for resources.

2. In Reign and Legacy: Life Among the Ruins, domains have stats which abstract away resources, regions and development.

Personally, I’m torn.

On one hand, I feel like Blades in the Dark would most likely fall into category number two. In some ways, you could argue that it already does abstract away resource exploitation and region development into Turf and Claims.

On the other hand, I feel like one of the pleasures of a 4Xish roleplaying game would be acquiring and developing your territories, producing or trading the resources you need to build your lightning towers and charter halls.

What do you think?

Empires in the Dark – Research and Developments

I picked up a copy of Wrath of the Autarch (thanks again Jason Corley ) and read through Houses of the Blooded and Reign again and I’ve been doing some research on a 4X take on Blades.

I feel like one of the important aspects of a 4X RPG is probably the concept of research and development : researching technologies and developing regions… I for one would certainly like to be able to discover new arts and sciences, and improve my empire’s territories and culture.

Generally, I like the concept of players taking on the roles of regents of a single realm, so that the empire echoes the players’ crew in Blades, which means I’d ideally like a system that can stand up to multiple players cooperating on their empire’s development each season.

I’ve been wondering about the concept of making the empire’s equivalent of Crew Claims act as technology improvements, unlocking access to various regional developments.

There’s a few reasons I dig the concept :

1. Each empire playbook has its own tech tree, explored by taking claims on the empire’s castle map, each claim acting as prerequisites for various region improvements, these make up your empire’s default technology progression.

2. BUT just as in Blades in the Dark, if you really want a claim from another empire playbook, you can have also it, you just have to find a way to take it from someone else (with all that that entails)… and when you do, it may well be the prereq to some weird, new and exciting region improvements.

3. Using Calum Grace’s awesome concept of character-unique claims, it means player character choice effectively unlocks access to certain technologies : a Lurk in the crew could give access to the Thieves Guild or the Spy Network claims, which act as prereqs for certain region improvements

I’m still deciding how to handle resources, which will hopefully decide whether taking Claims should also cost resources or not.

What do you guys think?

For various reasons, I have recently been doing research into 4X Game Design (I’m a Videogame Designer, so that’s not as meaningful as it might seem), which led me to muse about the general concept of a 4X Roleplaying game.

(For those who might not know, 4X stands for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate and is shorthand for games such as Civilisation & Master of Orion)

There are a few games* that I think did a reasonable job of capturing a four-exiness, and the more I think about it the more it feels like Blades in the Dark has all the bones of an interesting kingdom building game.

Has anyone given any thought to creating an empire-building game out of Blades? I’m almost certain someone has but I can’t seem to find any trace of it. I suspect RoosterEma’s Crimson Blossoms will scratch that itch (and my enduring yearning for Rokugan)? Any others out there?

Does anyone know of any good references?

* I’m thinking mainly of Birthright, Reign and Houses of the Blooded but I seem to remember Infernum and Exalted had some interesting ideas… if anyone else stumbled across Infernum one rainy afternoon

Cybernetics in the Dark

Last session, our gang of Shadows stumbled across a shrine to That Which Hungers, a forgotten god under whose ambitious influence the Ironworks has been driving its factory workers to death in the name of industrial progress.

In the ensuing fight Targos, our gadget-enamored Tycherosi Sharpshooter, was attacked by the ravenous revenant of a factory worker and took a Severe Wound to the arm before suffering Trauma and falling into the effluent canal.

We took the opportunity to talk about Healing rules, and Targos mused that it wouldn’t take longer to invent and craft him a cybernetic arm (we had covered Invention & Crafting for Vey, the Akorosian Artificer earlier in the session).

It makes a lot of sense for Targos to want a gadget arm, and their Artificer seemed interested – she’s been the slowest to establish herself and I would love to help her figure out her place in the game – but I’m not sure how to handle it.

Healing is actually pretty quick, so for this to be a realistic option it shouldn’t be too slow. Under normal circumstances, I would tend to suggest that it requires knowledge of medicine, mechanisms and ghost binding to achieve but at this stage in their career that would probably seem like too high an obstacle.

Earlier in the session, she showed interest in building mechanical beetles capable of flying into rooms and recording sound (I suggested she invent a listening device first, then modify it for autonomy as another project) so there’s a good chance of Hulls in our future if she continues on this path…

What do you guys & gals think?