Adam Brimmer – Page 2 – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

Advice requested

So I’ve been quietly working on a hack for some time called “They Come”. The premise is aliens are invading and you have a finite amount of time to gather resources and intel to be able to upgrade your operations agency before the alien endgame (parallels to XCOM are fair). I wanted to up the strategy side on the downtime – making how you invest your resources critical, and have a fixed endpoint before it’s game over. Been crunching a lot on how to make the mechanics work and I’ve hit a major stumbling block: the missions themselves.

The missions keep boiling down to: go to place, defeat aliens, try not to damage their stuff too much.

There seems to be little to no need for social skills. It’s a major stumbling block and I haven’t managed to get my head around making the mission segment fun and interesting.

Have you had any similar experiences with combat heavy games?

Special hagfish smuggling run goes awry.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/14/truck-eels-overturns-slime-cars-highway

Nights in Old London…

http://spitalfieldslife.com/2016/10/14/nights-in-old-london/

Can you give me some examples of how your group uses GHOST ECHOES?

Deals.

Can you guys suggest ideas for pacts, deals and exchanges one may make with demons, gods, whispers and the dimmer sisters? Mid-session I tend to hit a creative wall when my PC whisper calls on the sisters to trade favours, and the idea of more fiction-first devil’s bargains are quite a thing in our world.

TRAUMA

~~TRAUMA~~

How does “Cold” work for you? All games of BitD have resulted in players being utterly merciless or destructive by default. When one of the group took cold he found it very difficult for it to be “an issue” that would yield xp. How do you face challenges with this trauma?

STASH

~~STASH~~

One thing I hoped to see in the final edition was a better explanation of what stash looks like in game before the character retires. I like the fortune dice rule a lot, and in the recent Bloodletters AP I saw Oskarr reaching for a butler and Arcy talking about owning property. I pitched my values lower in my mind, prefer them this way for sure. What do levels 1-4 look like in your world?

I would pay sick money for a BITD adaptation of China Mievilles Bas Lag world.

I would pay sick money for a BITD adaptation of China Mievilles Bas Lag world. If you haven’t read Perdido Street Station or The Scar then you’re missing out on some truly bizarre magnificence.

I am certain a similar tool exists in Doskvol that spells out occult characters. Don’t ask about the ink though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uctqHxzkNYI

Vice.

Vice.

So as a GM I tend to keep the mechanics of a game running in my head and they help (and sometimes hinder) me when making decisions. Vice has the overindulge option “Lose your purveyor” which seems to imply you need one ‘fixed’ purveyor to use the indulge vice action (and from the Bloodletters AP, this can lead to some interesting stories).

But one of my players essentially whores around and has a regular brothel she visits. At some point she was invited elsewhere for some partying and I was asked if this can count as the de-stress action and I said “well no, because if you overindulge etc etc” So I’ve limited the players to have that one contact or at least, that one contact until they LTP for a backup.

Am I over fixating on the spirit of the rules or do they exist for a reason?