Category: Blades in the Dark: Discussion

Congrats on hitting 1,400 members of the community!

These are great, and I’m bumping them up so newcomers can enjoy them too.

https://plus.google.com/116311454142537645158/posts/5NEVXDhsB4b

So, what happened to the world? Why is Duskwall the way it is?

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/blades-in-the-dark-what-happened-to-the-world/

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/blades-in-the-dark-what-happened-to-the-world

I struggle with understanding quality. For a roll where there is no clock, just a simple roll, does it add 1 level of effect still? That seems big, and gets ambiguous now that there’s more than one level of quality.

For a simple roll, could it add more dice?

Long ago I suggested it could be interesting if quality granted +1 on your highest die roll. I still think that would get at both effect and coping with a very small dice pool. 

Some musings based on my most recent play experience. 

I think the resist roll would be better served as 3, 2, or 1 stress to resist based on 1-3, 4-5, 6+. Five seems like too much, and 0 seems like too little.

For time clocks, I had one with 4 segments that terminated in too much attention, and another 2 segments that would add +1 heat to the heist each. So, once the clock was full, there were two more segments with an additional cost. I can think of other applications of this that could be interesting. Like a fight where consequences are nonlethal for the first four segments, and lethal for the last two, so you want to jump over those two and get them all at once to get a KO before the fight gets nasty. 

For fights and dangerous activities, I’ve got a practice that’s increasingly comfortable for me where I say “every round this clock is not filled you will need to resist a consequence.” That is in addition to any rolled complications. So, while you’re in the fight you’re getting hit (or at least put in harm’s way) until the fight is over, even if you roll a 6 or a critical success. I really like how that feels. Complications are in addition to that.

That could apply to walking along a slippery ledge, brazenly infiltrating a bluecoat station, and other situations where danger is RIGHT THERE every round until a clock is finished.

There is an imbalance between teamwork and individuals acting independently to fill a clock. With teamwork you can’t add much, just extra dice; you’re limited to what one roll can do. With individual rolls, you can add up segments much faster. Each individual action fills a minimum of 1 segment, after all, and is less likely to add stress than a team action.

So, team actions in my game tend to focus on when the group has to move together. For everything else, different approaches with individual actions because that fills out the clock much faster.

I really like my gang rules for one-offs, or even campaigns where you don’t care to build an empire but instead want to play heists.

I am unmoving in my conviction that stress clears differently at my table. You clear 4 stress per downtime action, -1 per Trauma taken. Clean, neat, easy, and gets them right back into the game. If they only got 2 back per downtime action, some of the characters would have had to overindulge to play the second heist in my latest session. It just feels wrong to me. But that’s cool, everybody else, carry on. I’ve argued this out in two threads, and this isn’t intended to start that up again. =)

More world building, about the nature of hollows and whispers and so forth. I’ll probably get into that later. Things like a whisper hydra, the kite theory, uses for electroplasm, and rituals on the fly.

My thanks to Nigel Clarke, Charlie Vick, Adam Goldberg, and Brad Elliott for a great game!

I have been thinking about factions in Blades in the Dark.

When I do pantheons in fantasy games, I make some gods, sure. BUT, I put a lot more focus on churches that worship those gods. There is not a single monolithic religion honoring one god; instead, there are multiple churches, and they often fight more intensely with other churches of the same god than with churches of other gods. They each have their own regional and cultural take on interpreting that god in their setting.

I feel the same way about factions. I think it is fine that there are now  big umbrellas like “Criminal Underworld” and “City Institutions” and so on. I feel like the listed factions are also umbrellas, though; “Bluecoats” is too general a faction to engage, I think.

Especially in a city divided up in neighborhoods, you’ll have turf wars between bluecoats for jurisdiction. Bluecoats that serve on the night shift, or work certain areas, or units assigned to guard houses, or followers of a charismatic leader in the force.

I wouldn’t want to change the faction selection at crew generation. No, what I’m suggesting is that the faction allegiances that are chosen then should inspire a “crew” of appropriate stature to the relationship to get lined out more clearly in subsequent play or between sessions. You are not assigning faction relationship to ALL of a group, but indicating there is a group OF THIS TYPE that you have a relationship with.

Just as angering the Unrecommendables crew is not angering all smugglers, and angering the Dimmer Sisters is not angering all whispers, having a bad faction relationship with the bluecoats is not angering all the bluecoats of Duskwall. There’s a group of bluecoats you’ve crossed, and they are out for you. The higher you put that animosity, the more you want that to be part of the story.

Now collaborate on how big a group of bluecoats; the bigger they are, the more mild but far reaching their anger. The smaller the group, the more likely to directly act against you.

Just some musing.