Adam Sexton – Page 7 – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

I have a point of curiosity!

I have a point of curiosity! If you have a Strong Crew, can you go up in Tier by picking the strengthening Hold option again, or is the advance wasted if you don’t have the coin?

Also, here’s an “I think I missed this when the last version updated” question: since you lose a level of hold when you advance, can a weak-hold crew keep choosing to go up in tier, or do they need to advance hold by one so that they don’t go from Tier 0 Weak to Tier 1 Weak and lose a hold taking them back to Tier 0 Weak?

I am perfectly fine with getting the patented John Harper “Oh look I left it out of the rules, oopsie daisy, who did that!? sigh guess you’ll have to make that decision yourself based on the fiction” response.

Blades Community! Look at yourselves. You were not on the ball with the Bloodletters fanart.

Blades Community! Look at yourselves. You were not on the ball with the Bloodletters fanart.

EXHIBIT A: https://youtu.be/rIbBj4kqlUs?t=6m

We were commanded to make fanart of She Who Slays in Darkness. I waited for weeks, and people of far more artistic skill than I did not HEED ORDERS FROM OUR OVERLORDS! It would seem that I am the one true fan in this community! WE HAVE MORE MEMBERS THAN JESUS CHRIST HAS HAD BIRTHDAYS AND YET NOT ONE OF YOU WOULD DO WHAT I WAS WILLING TO DO!

So behold this picture with great pleasure, yes. BUT REMEMBER. This is not your gift; this is your punishment! You made me, a photoshop novice, produce my best work ever. This is your fault.

Now seriously: thanks! I loved making this.

Household Renovation of Great and Terrible Power is going through the mill of some really fun alpha playtesting with and having some mechanical chaff threshed away before I make a pdf for Beta version 1 to throw here. Have a lovely day, everyone!

Gosh.

Gosh. It’s kind of hard to make a playlist for Blades. It’s really easy to make one that does dark, criminally stuff well. Furnace Room Lullaby is all about that shit. It’s harder to find music that “paints with a haunted brush” and “surrounds the listener in industrial sprawl”.

If any of you have found any good songs, throw them at me. I’ve had a little bit of luck recently with delving into witch house music. Best artist I’ve found so far is “Bruxa”.

Question about Cohorts!

Do they need to be human? What are the ramifications of making them a team of fighting dogs?

Our crew of breakers decided to have our Thugs be Loyal and Savage Rottweilers, and we didn’t see any terrible results off the bat. They need to be commanded, they fight alongside us, you can just roll quality if you need them to track something, etc.

Having played Blades in player mode for the second time, now, I’m astounded by the amount of difficult strategy this…

Having played Blades in player mode for the second time, now, I’m astounded by the amount of difficult strategy this game will let your brain ponder about.

I presumed spreading out the action dots would be good so I could grab an action dot in several different places and have my vice roll always be 2d6, along with having fabulous resistance rolls, right? Sure… but having fewer action dots means consequences happen all the time (should’ve taken another dot in Command).

Also, is the appeal of XP so sweet that I should make desperate rolls? Is my Vicious trauma worth playing up? That’s an instant shot of 2 heat, but that’s giving me 2 XP as a Cutter!

Having to practice the foresight to navigate seemingly equal decisions = Strategy. Only other game I can think of that does that similar mesh of mechanical and fictional strategy is Burning Wheel. Do I break the tie in their favor for the extra fate point? Do I sacrifice my character for deeds points?

Question: Is it okay to start a Cutter with a Forgotten Gods advance if I give them the trauma level?

Answer: No. It is not okay, it is UNFATHOMABLY AMAZING. MAY THE TWISTING MAELSTROM OF GRATER BLADES IN THE MAW OF THE VOID REND THE SOULS OF MY ENEMIES AS I HAVE RENT THEIR BODIES.

Look! If we can just get at least 2 memes from the culture of Blades, I’ll be happy.

The first is misspelling Baskjo Baz’s name in increasingly creative ways.

The second is saying that anything of good quality is Iruvian. I.e. “Eric, you’ve finally trimmed your beard and you’re looking very sharp in that dress shirt.” “Thanks! It’s Iruvian~”

I have a lot of questions about designing Crews from scratch.

I have a lot of questions about designing Crews from scratch. This kind of got buried in other posts last time I posted it and maybe bears further clarification:

I’m writing a crew type for a Hack I’m doing. Things are going mostly well, except I’m hitting snags on where the lines should be drawn between crew upgrades, claims, and whatever generic name exists for the “hunting grounds / products / smuggling routes / artifacts & supplications” feature is. I’m also having difficulty figuring out what’s the most important to design first, and what can just be figured out through playtesting. Almost entirely sure, I don’t I need to design an entire claims map for an alpha playtest, right? How many crew upgrades should I start with, and how should I go about brainstorming them? What does my “hunting grounds, etc” part of the character sheet need to fulfill?

If you want my examples to draw off of, my 2 crews are Flippers (a crew who buys and renovates houses to sell within the same year) and the Blaze (revolutionaries, whistleblowers, anarchists, and arsonists)

Thanks, y’all!

I’m designing crews and the distinction between claims and crew upgrades is kicking my ass!

Does John or anyone else have any mental constructs they use to figure out what to write next on the claim map and list of crew upgrades? I’m understanding that claims exist to be seized/traded from factions whereas crew upgrades are not so much. I’m kind of stalling thinking of new claims. Should I ditch claims for now and slap an off-kilter, skeletal claims map on the crew sheet until I get to watch more playtests, and direct my attention to fattening the anemic list of crew upgrades?

Alrighty! I’m right in the middle of an exciting few days!

Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 7:00 PM EST at twitch.tv/DarkLavenderVoid we’re going to be streaming the first playtest of my Blades Hack, “Household Renovation of Great and Terrible Power”. If you miss it, you’ll be able to find it in my Archived Videos. I believe in taking the game design process out of the box and putting it on display for all to see. Successes, failures, and the transcendence of those failures.

Come watch our game! We’re going to be playing a crew of Flippers, so we’ll probably buy awful houses so we can renovate them and sell them at a profit. As we tear apart the dry wall of our enterprise, what sickening terrors will we uncover? As the money runs dry and our patience with each other wears down to bones grinding against bones, can we make a last sprint to escape the growing Beast: this Household Renovation of Great and Terrible Power?

http://twitch.tv/DarkLavenderVoid