Category: Blades in the Dark: Rules & Sheets (Official)

I have been thinking about actions.

What if “Prowl” became “Move”? That makes it more intuitive for players to connect it to running, jumping, climbing, dancing, and swimming.

What if “Skirmish” became “Fight”? That’s what you’re doing, and that’s all it’s for.

What if “Mayhem” became “Chaos”? I’m thinking of what makes the pirate captains in Pirates of the Caribbean distinctive; when everything flies apart and all plans are lost and everything is chaotic, they are at their best with plans and battle and pressing ahead. So, you can use it for mayhem, and also for yelling “Aye, we’re good and lost now!” as your ship heads for the waterfall at the end of the world sort of moments.

One action I really feel should come back in somewhere is Stalk. It is an amalgam of moving quietly, acting unobtrusive, putting on speed, keeping an eye on a target, instinctively figuring the target’s next move, watching your back trail, seeing small movements across distances, and understanding behavior.

I feel it would be useful to be explicit about moving lock picking and safe cracking to “Tinker” and maybe consider renaming it “Mechanics.”

It is important to tread a middle ground between being evocative for the flavor of the game, and clear for the smoothness of the game. Especially when you play with people who have not read the rules, it is useful for the actions to be as clear as possible about what they cover, and even if these suggestions aren’t used going forward, maybe they spark some other ideas.

Just my .02 for the morning.

In my game last night, the scoundrels put on acolyte robes and tried to drift out of the temple in the crowd, undetected.

With the new action list, “slip” is gone. So what would you use for that? Finesse doesn’t quite seem to fit, Prowl is a stretch, Deceive seems too high-engagement since they’re trying not to make eye contact. Maybe Discern for seeing a way through with minimal engagement?

You could turn it around and ask the players how their characters are doing it, of course. Let them pick something that doesn’t quite fit, and run with it. Or, you could make it a resist test to escape the consequences of being caught in the crowd, because Guile makes sense in the broad strokes.

You could do it without a roll, but I wanted to add in an element of potential complication (and one arose; they smelled awful from their adventure, and got stuck in a human traffic jam [delayed], stinking the joint up until they could get through.)

Just some ongoing reflections about actions.

So now we have three actions for combat, and one for movement. Stealth, swimming, climbing, running–all of it is Prowl. If you are good at stealth, you are good at sports. If you are good at climbing, you are good at swimming. Movement is movement.

An individual can no longer cultivate skill in managing contacts and buying things. Jean Reno’s character Vincent from Ronin is no longer something you can mechanically represent in the game. You don’t have a fixer, and if you want to buy things or fence them or whatever you must fall back on your gang’s tier as the only method to do so.

To clarify, that means the only way you can get better at fencing things and purchasing esoteric materials is by getting in a bigger criminal enterprise. You can’t do it freelance. Even if you were once really good at it, you change affiliations and you suck again.

I believe Secure has been broken down into Discern and Finesse. Lock picking and sleight of hand are conflated into a single action, as is safe cracking, escaping bonds, and disarming traps. I’m not delighted by this, but I can live with it I guess.

What if tinker, a VERY specific concept, was broadened to mechanics? What if it was then used for locks, traps, and devices? 

I do not think this needs a mechanical change, but I hope in the full version of the game there is a treatment of how to do art. If doing a painting, you may mix discern and finesse to fill a clock, and to get a masterpiece there must be at least one critical success. Playing music could be finesse, or sway. Sight reading music may be cipher.

I do think there is room to make a whole set of special abilities for applying actions to art to gain certain effects; forgery, shifting the mood of the audience, distraction, applications for dance for seduction or movement, composing or virtuoso playing for fame and fortune, and that sort of thing.

I would not make a playbook of it, but I would make it available so any playbook could take the special abilities to make art and performance part of their characters in a way that could be useful to downtime or heists.

I have a hard time getting comfortable with spending experience on elements outside the character, unless there is a way to recycle that experience if something happens to the external element.

What happens if a Hound invests special abilities in a pet, and it dies? Is the upgrade about learning how to invest this power in a pet, so the Hound can start with a new one and add the ability? Can the Hound sell it, and then invest the power in a new animal for free as a down time project to make some extra coin?

Or does the character just lose the experience and special ability until it is purchased with Coin by getting a similarly gifted animal? Is it impossible for a Hound to buy an animal with special qualities because it requires experience and a playbook special ability?

If a Lurk wants to buy a pet with a special ghost ability, does the Lurk need to get the Veteran special ability and take this off the Hound’s playbook to do it? Is that in addition to coin?

Because experience is involved, there is this abstract cost that is added to the potential concrete cost of having to pay coin (which you don’t have to do in picking up other special abilities.) Or you just get lucky and find one, or conduct a heist to steal one.

Just something I’m reflecting on as I review the playbooks.

My recommendation: give the Hound the ability to BOND with animals who have special abilities. That’s entirely within the character, who can choose to get an animal it will work with.