Blades in the Dark: Game Questions – Page 3 – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

Scum and Villainy: Heavy Armor

Heavy armor exists on the character sheet and is briefly mentioned on page 57 (PDF version) but otherwise I can’t seem to find it explained anywhere else.

At a guess it seems like the game is expecting me and mine to fictionally decide if one of the PCs has heavy armor or not.I am totally cool with that but just want to make sure that I’m not missing something.

So, my actual question is: How does heavy armor work and, if it’s mostly a fictional idea, how do you apply it at your table?

Beliefs and Drives – anyone got solid list of examples to coax players?

Beliefs and Drives – anyone got solid list of examples to coax players? Additionally heritage wise people from Duskwall what would strongly indicate a hit on their heritage?

Scum & Villainy: Attribute action dots

Pg. 10 says “Each attribute has a rating (from zero to 3) that tells you how many dice to roll when using that attribute,” however, the character sheet shows four dots, one for each action and pg.11 says “The rating for each attribute is equal to the number of dots in the first column under that attribute (see the examples below).”

Do I just ignore ignore it if/when the attribute gets a fourth dot or did I miss something on another page?

S&V Question;

On p297-289 there is a description of magnitude. It describes artifacts working essentially a bit like the “old” tempest move; you go for an effect and the group decides what a reasonable stress cost for it would be. Seems fine to me, i get how it works, and i’ve used it before to great effect.

Now, the problem is in the Mystic move “the Way”, which allows one to spend a gambit in place of any stress cost. It even specifically calls out that for abilities with variable stress costs, it counts the entire thing.

My question is, given a powerful enough artifact, can a mystic with this move essentially spend a gambit to use the artifact to insane levels of effect? regardless of the other consequences of such an action, do we think it makes sense, or is intended this way? and if not, how would you solve a situation where a player wants to use a combination like that?

Hey Scoundrels.

Had a question about the mechanical interaction of two of the smuggler special abilities and wondered what you’d make of them. In question:

Like Part of the Family: Create one of your vehicles as a

cohort (use the vehicle edges and flaws, below). Its quality is equal

to your Tier +1.

All Hands: During downtime, one of your cohorts may perform

a downtime activity for the crew to acquire an asset, reduce heat,

or work on a long-term project.

Would taking both of these special abilities mean that your vehicle would count as cohort allowing it to take downtime actions during downtime? If so, how would you play that out fictionally?

Cheers!

Scum & Villainy: Boldface Items for Loadout

I know italics are “free” items, large/heavy items are 2 boxes, but what do the bold items signify?

I’m getting ready to start a game of Scum and Villainy, having run a game of Blades in the Dark already.

I’m unable to find rules for faction status anywhere in the Scum and Villainy book. Does it work the same way it did in Blades? Are the penalties for being at war the same?

I’m running a play-by-post game over Facebook for some friends.

I’m running a play-by-post game over Facebook for some friends. The only thing that’s starting to alarm me is that I have a lot of players – seven, in fact! I’m looking for advice from folks who have run this game before. Given that folks yelling and talking over each other in excitement at the table isn’t a concern here, do you think this game will run well enough with seven players? Or am I going to have to make some hard choices?

Scum and Villainy

I’m looking at the modules for ships (p118), and specifically in regards to the initial choice made during crew creation (p114) and crew advancement (p51). Each ship seems to have some modules listed as “Installed” and some listed as “Available” (or pre-checked/pre-listed but unchecked boxes on the sheets).

Taking the Stardancer (p122) as an example:

What does it mean that the Afterburners are available?

Can they be installed at any time for free?

Are they recommended starting modules?

If they are meant to already be in the crew’s possession, does that mean that other modules that aren’t listed on the sheet have to be purchased or otherwise aquired in order to be a legal pick for advancement?

A jumble of questions that all probably won’t need to be answered for me to work the rest out. Help appreciated!

Hi everyone!

Hi everyone! I’m running my first game of Scum and Villainy, using a homebrew setting, and it’s going pretty great so far. This is my first time being a GM since high school, and my first time working with this type of flexible, narrative play focussed system.

I was hoping people might have advice on setting up a transport job for my players to be mechanically interesting. The crew is flying a stardancer, and consists of a blue collar speaker, a precognitive AI pilot, a recently created muscle, and a stitch who used to be a mortician. The next job for the crew is to smuggle some prototype technology into another system, avoiding pirates and customs agents.

I have a broad idea of what kind of hazards might exist for the smuggling part of the mission, but I’m not sure how to best design things like progress clocks. In particular, I’m not sure how to design the job so that all of the players have a way to participate. Like, a job that is “fly the ship from A to B avoiding these various hazards” doesn’t provide a lot of opportunities for anyone other than the pilot to do interesting things until/unless the players encounter a hazard.

One of the things I’m thinking about is the way that Dungeon World’s “Undertake a Perilous Journey” move has roles for multiple party members, so I’m wondering if I could try to create something like that, but I can’t quite figure it out yet.

Any advice you have would be very welcome. Thanks very much for making such an excellent community.