Background ideas?

[bort]

Hey everyone,

I’m about to start up a new BitD game. My main experience is with running PbtA games, and I have run a few sessions of BitD before.

The main issue that I have with starting up a new game is needing to do a lot of exposition at the start in order to explain what the backgrounds are: Akoros, Skovlan etc. I’m also not super into the different cultures being described by what skin colour they tend to have, and I feel that this exposition means we miss out on some of that awesome PtbA structured world building stuff that we get to do when we create Apocalypse World characters or Dungeon World Characters for example.

The other issue that I have is trying to make the game a bit more explicitly queer, in a world where we are breaking all of the imperial laws lets have some fun with gender as well! So I was pretty inspired by Avery Adler’sDream Askew game, and also found some of Andrew Gillis’ Girl by Moonlight worldbuilding stuff really interesting as well and had a go at making a few sheets for a BitD game to work alongside the playbook sheets.

Does anyone else have their own ideas how to make that exposition part a bit more engaging and collaborative?

[Paul_Jennings]

I’m very new to running Blades too. Minimal exposition, straight into characters, gather information and score. Think of it like you’d watch a movie and let the players learn the world as they go. “You’re daring scoundrels, Doskvol is dark and haunted. Go.” Beyond that for world creation, the learning about your incidence of Doskvol is to be developed through asking questions just like PbtA games.
As for queer and gender, just bring these things into your game in the same way, imo.

[cyberpreppy]

I love that set of questions! That’s a great adaptation of Dream Askew’s approach to worldbuilding, and I can see it elevating the backgrounds into something more than a set of transplanted ethnicities. Have you made similar sheets for the other heritages? I’d love to use them in my own game.

I’ve also been wondering how to handle LGBTQ inclusion for my own game (our whole group is somewhere in that alphabet) so it’s reassuring to see someone else in the same headspace. Have you listened to the Magpies podcast? They do an elegant job of this, I think.