Hey Stras, since this is an AMA I feel compelled to ask, will you entertain requests to convert settings/games to Forged in the Dark? If not, would you be happy to provide comment/feedback/advice on such conversions?
1 Like
@OnyxCourage It’s an AMA though it’s Band specific. 
I’ll answer this for now.
No. And maybe.
Believe me that when I tell you that being a designer is a full time job. And I have a day job. I don’t have spare time really, and I have a list of games I want to make in queue a mile long—so derailing won’t likely happen (I think our project plan goes till 5 years from now hahaha).
Maybe on the second question because I read 2-5 games a month. It’s a combination of finding free time, and whether something catches my fancy (there’s seriously no way to predict what does). In general I’m VASTLY less interested in existing IPs (this is X movie but as a game! You play the actual characters!) and more in things that are loosely relate to stuff but with someone’s personal spin on them (this is an indiana-jonesey style pulpy action-adventure, but I’m doing it in my hometown). People have cool stories to tell, and I’m way more interested in someone’s take on cyberpunk/industrial-fantasy/whatever than an exact conversion of a specific game/property to use a d6-blades-like-die-pool.
That said, there are amazing and super talented people out there who read and playtest games. These forums are probably going to have many of them reading them. You should definitely post your stuff and listen to what folks say
7 Likes
Thanks for the response. I don’t really know what I meant by profile either - I just enjoy hearing about design choices and thought processes.
As for BoB mechanics, I ran with the specialist action as a way to add expertise and heritage/racial traits. A character can choose to have one special action (e.g. Elven traits) and select 2 tags from that action. They get one “free” push yourself per rating, but it only applies to the tag.
As a modern example, the Driver might also have expertise in interrogation and the psychic Hitter may have limited remote viewing ability.
I also have an itch to use the campaign roles / actions to create an illumimati style game…
1 Like
Thanks Stras, that’s a great answer. I love what you did in S&V and Band of Blades is equally compelling so far. Plus they both feel like different types of games rather than Blades reskins - nothing wrong with Blades reskins, but I like that they are their own thing, too.
Anyway, what I am trying to say is, I support your choice to continue designing your own stuff rather than hack other IP, given how busy you are. Please keep doing that!
Personally, I’m a bit torn between hacking IPs I love for (mostly) me and my friends to play, and coming up with my own mash up of stuff I like that might go further. Maybe one will morph into the other, I don’t know. Either way, your advice above is appreciated. Cheers!
2 Likes
I always love to home brew some of the setting in blades kind games, are you going to give some advise for that in the rule book?
Will there be a special print edition or some goodies we can order once it’s released? Would love to get something special for this game
1 Like
Hi Stras, couple of questions:
-
What was the thought process behind the Chosen and Broken included in the first campaign? Have you sketched the other Chosen and Broken out yet?
-
I recall hearing about a hack where who was Broken was flipped (so there’d be Chosen versions of Elenassa, Vlasim, etc as well as Broken Alanna, Horned One and Zora). I can’t remember, were you working on that? If so, is that going to be an option for the first campaign?
-
What made you choose to make BoB a Forged in the Dark hack? What made the hack challenging?
-
Will the origins of the Cinder King ever be revealed in a future campaign, or is that just supposed to be background we’re in the dark on?
-
Speaking of - the Crown of True Fire - what’s the deal with that? To which god does this artifact belong?
-
Apropos of nothing, do the Dar have a patron deity?
2 Likes
@aRkeoN Chapter 11 in the book is our hacking chapter. We do have some advice for making your own maps and how to drift some of the setting there.
There will be a print edition (books almost done being laid out) but I don’t know that we’ll have a special edition. That kind of fanciness usually comes from kickstarters, and since this is tied to the original blades kickstarter we didn’t feel right running a whole new one. Who knows … we will have shirts and other rad merch, and I know I’m getting a tattoo of one of the squad logos ^_~ So merch opportunities abound. We’ll see what folks are interested in! (I want some squad stickers for my laptop)
@Duan You always ask the best questions I’m happy to see you on these forums friend!
Q1. John said that it’s usually gods of war that survive, and he asked what a world looked like if the gods of healing and seasons had to go to war. I wrote some mythology and we derived some characters from that.
So we DO actually have additional sketched out Chosen/Broken. One Broken (that’s f-ing terrifying) that you haven’t seen yet but is mostly done is Binder (also known as Shadow Binder) who used to be Nyx, Panyar goddess of the moon. There might be some ghosty horror involved.
We have the Twins (one of whom is Chosen, one of whom is Broken) and we have one of the Orite Chosen (who are a touch cowardly, and hiding from Breaker) who grants troops alchemicals on every mission.
I hope that whets your appetite
Q2. Yes, my friend Alice (also known as TafKat) was working on that. I’ll check in and see how that’s going (I know she had one or two done I believe).
Q3. Well. Wow. This is a much deeper question than I expected here.
So, for a long time, I just thought I liked dark fantasy. Most of my fantasy stories are tinged with horror. I never really questioned it. Love reading the fiction of it, love writing and telling stories about it.
Most fantasy these days is heroic fantasy or dungeon fantasy—which I want to be clear I’m not judging. It’s just not quite my favorite flavor. I’ve told these (dark fantasy) kinds of stories in 100 systems, but when I said “hey, I’ve always wanted to sort of do my take on the dark fantasy genre” my design partner (@worldnamer) said “ok, there’s 100 different fantasy games, what makes this one special”.
So I had a lot of things to say. I found out (hilariously I realized this just recently) that I grew up listening to very different fairy tales. East european fairy tales. Where people bargained souls, and not everyone makes it to the end. Where the supernatural is full of people with powers that look normal, but live in the mountains, and enemies have serpents coiled in their chest among 3 hearts. A lot of what you’re seeing in BoB is personal stories encoded in game format.
Chosen and how reliquaries work? Come from me being squicked out when I saw a saints hand in a gauntlet as a kid. A lot of the cultures are references to places my family lived.
I grew up listening to my grandparents talking about WW2. So these aren’t stories of heroes at the heads of shining armies playing well understood probabilities. This is multi-cultural units, making retreats, making heroic efforts and caring for each other in a war torn setting with little hope of victory, but just enough that they don’t give up.
It’s kind of a personal narrative encoded in a game It’s also totally ok if nobody gets this and everyone just has cool adventures in a Black Company-like setting. A game can be deeply meaningful to me, and also just fun for everyone else.
What was challenging? Hooh. Horror. Horror is tough. Some stuff I knew instinctively how to run, but not how to hand that off to someone and not just say “play Dread, it’s pretty great”. Figuring out how to do logistics and morale without making it too complicated or tedious. Give enough choice to commanders, but not just throw them on a map and say “go”. There were a lot of puzzle pieces we tried a bunch of stuff with.
Q4. Yes. Definitely a lot more will be revealed. Some of that will obviously come out in future campaigns, but we actually have a small campaign with specific characters we’re playing/working on that may have more to say about this (it’s follows the adventures of the Bannerguard). I promise we won’t leave you hanging.
Q5. It’s related to what the Old Empire studied more recently, and things the Living God found out a long time ago. If it belongs to anyone, it belongs to the answer to question six. ^_~
Q6. Sort of. I guess we’ll have to agree that yes, it is a deity since it created a Chosen, which by definition makes it such. Yep. Dar has a deity. Whether it’s a patron is a bit fuzzy. I mean they have a Chosen out there right now. I think you might know him. Has a crown of true fire? That one.
8 Likes
I feel like I’ve missed something - are you planning to release more than one campaigns in the BoB setting? I was sure the only planned one is the “running from the western front to the mountains before winter is coming and what comes after” from the beta.
Can you tell us more about the format of the campaign in the book and if any other BoB product is planned right now?
1 Like
Hi Stras, played in your Sunday morning Band of Blades game at Big Bad Con 2018 (I was the Heavy who was butting heads with / wildly insubordinate to the Officer) and considered it a highlight of the con - thanks for running it!
My home group is excited for BoB and we’re considering starting a game of it when we wrap up our Burning Wheel campaign, but wondering whether we ought to wait a bit longer given the upcoming release of the book. Do you know if there will be any intermediate releases of the text to Blades backers / DriveThru buyers before the Q3 print release, now that layout is happening? Or is it all coming out as one print-ready package for a GenCon release sort of thing?
Also: thanks again for being the person who made the RPG I’ve desperately wanted since I was a teenager statting up The Black Company characters in AD&D2E
1 Like
Hi @stras, thanks!
I’m going to more fully reply, but I have to - funnily enough - head out to my Band of Blades game 
I just wanted to say I’m glad you mentioned Binder, because the Broken of Nyx is supposed to make a cameo in my game tonight, and it’s nice to see I’m on a similar wavelength at least (in that I’m planning on giving her a ghostly theme)… can’t wait to see what you come up with and how much I’m going to have to retcon 
1 Like
@The_Time The core book will have the first campaign (what you describe as running to the mountains). It’s already a big beefy book atm, so we can’t really add a ton to it.
But we’re pretty up front with the fact that we have additional materials we’re working on (we have a 2nd and 3rd campaign planned). There’s rules for scoring in the first game so you have a starting point for followup campaigns.
We’re definitely planning more! Bear in mind that the core book isn’t out yet, and the format of anything following will depend on how well it does. But I’m certain we’ll at least release PDFs
Right now the thing we have the most figured out is a second release which should have the 2nd campaign, some extra chosen (2) and broken (2), a few new heritages (including Dar), and two non-legion playbooks (Mercy and Alchemist).
We have some loose notes for things past that (like the Bannerguard) but nothing concrete.
5 Likes
Hey @KindledSky – I want you to know I had an ABSOLUTE BLAST at that game (it was one of my con highlights) to the point where I may have thought about asking sean for all your contact info to see if we could continue the game online or something Your group was amazing and running for you folks was effortless.
To answer your actual question (instead of just gushing) we should be releasing the book PDF before the actual physical copy release. I’ve talked to Sean and it’s likely going to be sans art, but it should have the full text, and that should be out probably around the start of May.
And you’re super welcome—it’s been a white whale of mine, so I’m glad we did a good job for folks You can only make games your own group enjoys, and then hope others do (haha).
1 Like
It sure does! I can’t wait to see what you do with them. That does raise another question, though: in subsequent campaigns, do you add additional Chosen (and/or Broken) to the existing Legion, or do you only ever have one Chosen / 2 Broken at a time?
Right, I must have heard it on the actual play you did last time. As is becoming a running theme, I’m always up for more lore/options so I’ll keep my eye out for Alice’s work.
Thanks for this answer, but especially for this. I really like learning how people design and how they put some of themselves into their designs. I didn’t get all the references but I appreciate that they helped to make the game feel more full, even though you really just get a brief sketch of the world - at least in the quickstart.
Was studying these things what caused the last Emperor to be killed by a Chosen? Does it have to do with granting immortality in general, or undeath in specific, or is it more encompassing than that?
Thanks again for all the answers 
Hi Stras! I have really enjoyed reading Band of Blades and I cannot wait to see the final version.
One thing I’ve noticed about both Scum & Villainy and Band of Blades is that you like giving playbooks equipment where the use isn’t immediately obvious or isn’t spelled out in the description. Sometimes these are obviously just for character development such as the Mystic or Speaker’s Mementos where they take up 0 load and just represent something from their past. Sometimes they are fine items that aren’t immediately useful such as the Scoundrel’s Fine Coat but you could guess at a situation where they might come in handy. Sometimes they are incredibly useful 0 point Fine techniques such as the Stitch’s Fine Bedside Manner or the Muscle’s Fine Martial Arts Style.
And sometimes they are 100% inscrutable! You have given all Rookies in Band of Blades a “Naive Sense of Hope”. I love this! But I have no idea how I would treat it mechanically. Could it be used as armor like a Ghostbane Charm in Blades in the Dark? Should I destroy it as the GM when I think a Rookie has had a particularly harrowing experience? What do you see these types of equipment as being used for mechanically?
Similarly, what is the point of putting something abstract and ephemeral like a Fine Bedside Manner or Fine Martial Arts as equipment? Is this just a way of getting an extra “power” into a character through the equipment sheet? Could you “lose” a Fine Martial Art? One common consequence I like to inflict in Forged in the Dark games is equipment loss, which doesn’t seem really appropriate here.
4 Likes
Not an official answer to your question, I know, but I personally love those choices of gear. They make for really interesting arguments/discussions at the table.
“I really feel my ‘naive sense of hope’ should give me extra effect here!”
2 Likes
I’ll be interested in hearing the official answer, too! On first thought, I’d consider letting the Rookie use it like Armor and allow them to resist an appropriate consequence. I haven’t thought yet if it would be a one-time use or if they could use it again in future missions.
1 Like
@Duan those hot questions Let’s do this.
Q1. In the second campaign maybe not, but if we ever make it to the eastern kingdoms there are fronts and theaters of war. Your Chosen leaves you and you fight under whomever runs that particular area, and against whomever is there on the Cinder King’s side. That’s the short answer ^_~ But I hope it whets your appetite.
Q4. Yes. The first and the second are somewhat related. It’s more encompassing, but at this point you might have to wait to find out pieces you’re missing to put the whole picture together ^_~ (But I dunno, you guess pretty well).
1 Like
@Udanchik We do!
Let’s talk about gear! Sometimes, gear is a thing you need in order to function. Like a Heavy probably needs a serious shield and armor right? You give people those things so they can do their jobs, or so they can be better than the common person at their job. You’re not going to hire a Mechanic in SaV to hack on a job, when they don’t have a decent hacking rig. So you give most characters functional gear.
Some character classes are really gear dependent. You can’t be a good muscle without some weapons. So we often have more ideas for their gear than we have room for (we had to cut a couple).
But sometimes you have classes like the Mystic, who don’t depend on their gear. You can MANUFACTURE gear (like focus crystals or some nonsense) but that’s adding gear where it’s neither genre appropriate (yes, clearly Pa’u Zolta Zhann can’t function with 30 griblies that give +10 to some skill or another >_>) nor necessary. However playbook design has these spaces that you don’t want to feel are empty. So let’s talk about the OTHER thing gear does.
We have to communicate setting and character to players in an INCREDIBLY short amount of space. Things like Forgotten Realms bypass this by having 30 novels, and tomes full of world detail that are the size of encyclopedias. We have some genre constraints and references. How do you paint a world in 7 lines with roughly 54 characters per line? A bunch of our decisions are incredibly space constrained (and let me tell you often that’s a challenge).
So what does a typical scoundrel LOOK like? What makes a Rookie a Rookie? Gear is INCREDIBLY flexible. It can be a concept, it can be a skill. It’s painting a world, and what an individual in that world looks and acts like. Mystics have offerings, and simple robes frequently. It says what they look like (they’re not nobles, they’re not dressed in finery) and what they value (not usually the physical) which is a way we can communicate tropes, even if the gear doesn’t actively do much in say a fight.
Finally, you have to realize that designers are not these deep introspective people who change one letter and nod because it speaks to the deep meaning of society. We’re goofballs who love games. We make jokes and have fun. I think our first pass on the Muscle had a weapon in every gear slot, and a weapon in every friend slot. We laughed so very hard, but it was enough for a first playtest. We throw out stuff and polish stuff as we go, but sometimes touches of these jokes remain (see the handgun which is in the friends column).
Sometimes it’s not there for a specific mechanical reason. Sometimes “naive hope” is there because it tells you who a rookie is. And because when they let their friend die in order to survive themselves, all our hearts break when the GM tells them to cross out that line permanently on their sheet. And that’s a powerful moment, without it being special armor, or adding quality to a roll. And we don’t think that removing it for another gun (or worse nothing) is worth it.
Maybe you agree And if not … … well I often say I design games for me and my table. If others happen to like them GREAT!
I will say though, hearing people rise to the challenge, and use gear that wasn’t obvious is usually a great story though.
@Dissonance We have done this in Pc v Pc arguments, where a rookie tells a commander they LITERALLY refuse to give up hope, and abandon people.
@andurion That’s a cool house-rule.
NOTE: Thanks to everyone chattin’ it up and giving likes to the good questions above This whole thread’s been super fun.
8 Likes