Olivia G – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

So I had a discussion with one of my players last session that’s been bugging me a bit.

So I had a discussion with one of my players last session that’s been bugging me a bit. Since 2 of the results are that you succeed but the danger manifests (and a 3rd offers a trade of danger manifesting for additional effect) it would seem that a multitude of obvious dangers couldn’t be present.

For instance, you’re trying to climb up a tower (4 segment clock) and you’ve gotten about half way up (2 segments ticked off). The most obvious danger I can think of would be to fall down to the bottom of the tower (and possibly break their leg). Now say you get a 6 on a risky action to make progress on the clock, and you want to better assure knocking it out. You then get a 1 on your resistance roll and you have 7 stress already. So you chose to take the danger.

Do you fall to the ground? Does that knock out the segments you’ve already ticked? What about your effect roll? Do you jump up and grab the top of the tower only to slip and fall to the ground?

Not sure if this belongs here or in a different section, but…

What are your takes on the Whisper’s Summon special ability? What do you consider to be a supernatural being (would another Whisper count)? What does this “magnitude” business mean to you?

My suggestion:

When you summon an entity you decide a set of actions that you want them to be good at. The entity gets a number of preferred actions equal to the amount of stress you take, and has a dice pool equal to 1 less than this. The entity takes -1d if it does not take a devil’s bargain when preforming actions (but does not gain +1d for taking the devil’s bargain) and will not gain the benefits of assists or background (as the entity will refuse assistance or physically is unable to be aided by it, and are already assumed to be adding their background to their set of actions).

The type of beings that you can summon include everything that is listed on page 41, as well as demons and any other whisper, or character that has any whisper powers. Summoning whispers takes 1 additional stress, and summoning someone that has whisper powers takes 2 stress if they have 2 whisper abilities, and 3 stress if they have 1.

What are your suggestions and ideas?

Not sure if this belongs here or in a different section, but…

What are your takes on the Whisper’s Channel special ability? What do you think it can actually do? What is this “magnitude” that’s referenced?

My suggestion:

The use of channel works in a very similar way to flashbacks. With a flashback you can set up an opportunity, and usually the more beneficial the opportunity, the less likely you would have had a clear chance to do it (I’d say the two are related, but not in any way dependent on each other). Instead of going back to make an opportunity, you are creating one out of channeled electroplasma on the spot. So, by taking stress you can use skills that you normally wouldn’t be able to (such as creating a blast of lightning to cause havok and justify making a mayhem roll). The first time you manifest a particular use of channel you take one stress more than you would have normally. You can negate this by spending downtime activity to work through a 6-10 clock (depending on the magnitude). Finally, you can use it to increase your own scale by increasing the magnitude (1, 2, and 4 respectively).

What are your suggestions and ideas?

Just read through the quick start and I’m loving the system.

Just read through the quick start and I’m loving the system. I’m curious though if you intend to have a variant rule about group ticks in the final book? If not, here’s the hack/variant rule that my group intends to use (it’s based on nWoD 2nd Ed’s “Group Beats”):

At the end of each session each player adds their Desperate Action Ticks into a group pool, which is then divided out evenly to each member of the crew. If this does not divide evenly, then the left over ticks remain in the group pool to be added at the end of next session.

They then do the same with Playbook Advancement Ticks.

(Alternatively, the left over ticks could go towards Crew Advancement)