Adapting Blades in the Dark to Discworld’s Ankh-Morpork

Hi, I’m new here so please be gentle. :grinning:

I’ve been considering doing a “City Watch” type campaign in the Discworld setting, where the PCs are new recruits at a recently-opened City Watch precinct, and when looking for an appropriate system it occurred to me that Ankh-Morpork, with its various districts, political intrigues and profusion of guilds, places of learning and other organisations, seems like it would do very well as a setting for a Blades in the Dark campaign.

I’ve never really tried to adapt the system for anything else before, so I don’t want to make too many tweaks to what’s there. Here’s what I’m thinking of so far:

The game would retain the same structure as Blades in the Dark. Rather than Jobs, the party would undertake Operations. I might increase the focus on carrying out investigative work during downtime to feed into subsequent missions, possibly making downtime activities more plentiful.

Nobody ever got rich in the Ankh-Morpork City Watch (well, not since Commander Vimes cracked down on taking bribes), so rather than Coins, each mission would earn Street Cred - essentially goodwill earned as a result of their successful policing. Street Cred can be spent to call in favours of various types, essentially operating much the same way as Coin. Characters can add Street Cred to their Stash, which converts it into Seniority. Earn a stack of 10 Seniority and you get promoted.

Reputation would function as normal. Heat would represent how much trouble you’re stirring up in the community, and would lead to levels of Notoriety. This can lead to reprisals from criminal organisations, or investigations by Ankh-Morpork’s equivalent of Internal Affairs (generally Carrot, Angua, Detritus and a very big stick).

I haven’t really considered potential different Crew types in detail, but I’m thinking maybe specialisations in Beat Cops, Detectives or Forensics.

What do you think of the concept? Any suggestions for better ways to make it fit the subject matter? Are there existing products or adaptations which already provide some of what I’m looking for?

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I have no specific answers for you yet, but I know there is now a Flame Without Shadow supplement (in the supplements page of the BitD site), which has already done the job of adapting the rules to playing a Bluecoat, Inspector or Warden. I guess if you want to play law enforcers, more or less honest, it would be convenient to check this supplement.

Thanks, it looks like there are some good concepts in there. I particularly like the structured building of a case against a powerful suspect or organisation.

A few years back I saw a copy of The Compleat Ankh Morpork City Guide. It was a neatly put-together volume detailing factions, businesses, etc., etc., in the city. If you can dig up a copy somewhere, it might be handy in your efforts. My memory is that it was chock full of atmosphere.

I’ll check it out. I used to have a copy of the Ankh-Morpork Mapp, which is awesome and would be really useful for this campaign, but I lost track of it in my last move.

Did you get anywhere with this idea?

Just had the same thought, love the idea of running a hard nosed noir detective up against unknown horror’s in Ankhmorpork is a great mix of mind crippling horror and silly goofing around that my players end up doing without breaking the setting.