Blades Against Darkness

Forged in the Dark
61

Unrelated, here is a move for making camp we have used to great effect:

Camping:

When the players make camp they describe how they keep themselves safe and how they arrange themselves to get their rest. The camping roll is a fortune roll used to determine how much stress a PC recovers and if something goes wrong. Each PC who is leaving themselves vulnerable during rest takes 1d for each slot of gear they spend on supplies during rest (sleeping bundles, rations, intoxicants, etc).

Then, players may take +/- dice for the following:

  • Does the crew have a comfortable and secure place to rest?
  • Is someone forgoing rest and taking level 2 harm Exhaustion to remain on watch?
  • Do you reveal something about your character as you share safety and bond with allies?

Once you’ve gathered your pool of dice, roll, pick the highest and recover that much stress. If any PC would recover more stress than they have, then the dungeon takes advantage of their complacency (ambush, wounds are corrupted with Taint, a window of opportunity closes, etc.).

If you were using the Resistance Dice pool you can regain resistance dice instead of stress.

3 Likes
62

I hope you know I’m not joking when I say I’m looking forward to “Super Turbo Deluxe”, please continue!

1 Like
63

I have a question about how your super turbo approach deals with load? I really like the approach - just not sure how the faded heavy & armor text is used, or how/if there is a load limit. Or, is there a limit of 1 per space (9).

1 Like
64

There is a limit of 1 item per space.

Armor and +heavy are if you want your character to have armor. Each one consumes a slot.

The text is faded so you can write over it with something else if you don’t want armor.

The actual GM guide I wrote for the game goes into details:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XSEZLXVzLMndDcjH_urz8TeaCFu6CoRO/view?usp=drivesdk

If you’re using the Super Turbo resistance dice, armor and +heavy each provide 2 additional resistance dice that can only be used for fictionally appropriate stuff.

1 Like
65

I expect these armor rules work really well with the combined resistance pool.

1 Like
66

You have me distracted – wanting to get back to my heroic fantasy hack, but I need to get Adrenaline done first!

A year or so ago, I created 10 playbooks (Fighter, Rogue, Mage - each with 3 “subclasses” + The Innocent) a couple of crew types and some rule changes. But, I’ve learned a lot and need to make big changes.

I have been working on a world setting though. Although it is all in draft form, I have a finalized world map, drawings for arond a dozen cities, a cover, and 10 full page illustrations…

1 Like
67

@ebrunsell I’m trying to teach myself some illustration techniques. I used to draw all the time as a kid and I’ve been doing more and more recently. I’m looking to see if I can translate that to vector art or digital painting. But I can’t imagine 10 full page illustrations.

If I can unify this Super Turbo document into a single thing I’m hoping it will be a little 'zine like thing with some illustrations.

@elstiko good to hear from you! It means a lot to know that someone out there is excited! I’m really proud of those heritage moves! Especially the human and green skin. I think I hit a cool tone with each of them.

I’m still struggling coming up with content for halfling, elf, and dwarf though…

1 Like
68

I didn’t do the illustrations myself. I have no talent for art… I’ll post one or two in a different forum.

69

Updated the Super Turbo links to include classes. Honestly, I think anyone familiar with Blades could use this to run any OSR friendly content on the fly. Reading the core BAD GM guide would probably be helpful for anyone who wants to try this:

Super Turbo
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kfWDmwk-iS47UHSMg2vb72Wf13pYJZTo

GM Guide:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XSEZLXVzLMndDcjH_urz8TeaCFu6CoRO

I got to try the Resistance Dice pool model last night and it worked amazingly well!

Because of the risk of failure, and the chance to completely avoid a consequence, resistance rolls were pretty thrilling! Players were able to determine how many dice to spend on a roll, so they could choose when to really go all in. But because the pool was finite there was some tension about how much to spend and when.

The best moment was when a our coyote pulled out a brass hairpin, a gift from their lover back home, and drove it into the heart of a Witch King cultist in an attempt to ground out all the magical energies flowing through him. He got a 4/5, sucsessfully completing the circuit and draining the magic from the sorcerer, but he and his artifact from his lover were caught in the circuit.

So, I gave him a choice, did he want to take the brunt of the magics or did he want to route the energies back to his lover?

Of course, he chose himself and took level 4 harm as witchfire scoured the flesh from his bones and left him a rune scrawled skeleton. And, of course, he threw his last 4 resistance dice to avoid the consequence. He got a 4/5 so he tool level 3 Harm “Witch Fire burns”

All in all, resistance rolls felt dramatic, tactical, and dangerous. I’m looking forward to trying it more!

4 Likes
70

Thanks for the report – Was there any issue with balancing the use of dice between resistance rolls, pushing yourself, and using special abilities? It seems like many (?) players would save the dice for only resistance rolls and severely limit use of “stress” for other things.

I currently am planning on using the ladder approach 4>3>2>1>0 at my next session. However, I could also see giving them a pool of 10 resistance dice to use. Then, instead of having the roll determine how much is resisted, instead have the roll determine how much stress is gained.

Perhaps 1-3 = 4, 4/5 = 3, 6 = 1 Crit = Recover 1.

71

The Super Turbo sheets look fantastic. Is the intent that you can pick both a heritage and a class? If so, I’d change the formatting a bit. Format the heritage & class cards so that they each take up about a 1/4 of a landscape page. Then, only put one character card on a page. That way, you can easily tape the heritage and class card to the right side of the character card page.

I’m doing something similar with my heritage cards for Adrenaline (and my unnamed backburner fantasy hack). My playbook is a full page landscape (like most FitD). The heritage card can easily be taped to the right edge of the playbook as an expansion. It works well to keep everything together.

For what it is worth, I also re-arranged my playbook last night so that I have room for players to add a post-it note directly to the sheet to track harm tags.

72

People pushed themselves and resisted about as often as they did in the basic game. There were 2-3 of each. Actually, teamwork actions were the biggest threat to people’s resistance pools. Potentially losing 2 or even 3 dice on a botched teamwork action was kinda scary. There’s room to tinker here. Maybe 12 dice would give the game a less gritty feel and more pulpy. If that’s what you want it’s easy to hack in.

I think the larger hazard is recovering R-dice. We used the standard recovery rules and everyone had to take at least 2 recovery actions and almost no one ended up fully refreshed. The one player who did fully refresh ended up overindulging. So im trying to come up with a maybe better way to handle vice. Maybe a straight modifier to the dice roll. Maybe roll however many dice you want to recover and the result determines a fictionally appropriate result for carouse.

Regarding card size/shape I’m not really interested in making these tape to a sheet. They are meant to fit in card sleeves or be printed as a deck.

I did neglect to make Trauma cards though…

73

I decided to try out the resistance pool idea next week. I’m going to use 10 Adrenaline dice. Pushing will only cost 1 Adrenaline instead of 2.

I also changed harm a bit. Instead of having level 1,2,3,4 there is just harm. Instead of getting a level 2 harm, you get 2 harm. Each consequence that results in harm, you get a harm tag. When players use a harm tag, they decide if it is -1D or less effect. Once they get 6 harm, they are incapacitated.

When they used to get level level 3 harm, they are incapacitated. It can be resisted down to 1-2 harm.

I hope this will place more emphasis on roleplaying with harm tags.

1 Like
74

Of course, if you would prefer that I don’t include your pool mechanic in my game, I am fine doing it differently!

75

By all means go ahead! Just credit me if you put it in anything published.

I too adjusted the cost of pushing down to 1. So that effected the resistance dice economy.

76

Trying something here and it contains some new/better content on how to the briefing and “Cold Open” for jobs. This essentially replaces the “Engagement and Getting started” section in the GM Packet:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E2KLHmluM6PKjP7AOtuB5nBpav9TXN0h/view?usp=drivesdk

I’m shooting to include all the necessary rules and GM advice as a 32 page document that is setting neutral and usable with the “Super Turbo” rules.

1 Like
77

It looks like you got rid of approach and let the fiction dictate the position. Does the structure of determining an approach vector increase the time players put into planning?

78

No for a couple of reasons:

1.) Because I’m clear about all the information in the job. I tell people the approach vectors and I tell them what hazards they know about.

2.) After this there is usually some question and answer as they try to come up with their own solutions. I answer these questions to the best of the characters knowledge. They can always roll if they want to know more, I’ll just tick some clocks.

3.) After about 5 minutes of chatter people settle in on a plan and we figure out who is taking the first action, then we cut to that action. The stakes are set, the path is clear, we require only the will to follow it.

Honestly I’ve always struggled with Engagement Rolls. Everyone feels very fictionally at sea. Every group I’ve played with has been very distrustful of choosing a plan and creating a detail. I spend more time just fighting the rules than it would take to just let them tell me what they want to try and then figuring out where that action takes place. It’s more responsibility for the GM, and I acknowledge that the Engagement Rules are deliberately meant to release me of that burden, but I’ve somehow never managed to make it land.

Eventually what I settled on was just being totally honest and open about all the enemies (known) defenses because the characters know more about the world than the players. Just tell them what their characters know and then ask them what their characters do.

You can still use Engagement Rolls, btw. I won’t come to your house and stop you. :wink:

3 Likes
79

I’m ok with that. I took a different approach by adding specific operational planning scenes. Each player narrates one planning / gathering information scene and makes an action roll. Success grants a specific approach type. They then pick one of the available approaches and can use the remaining “Intel” to add dice to the engagement roll, use as a gambit-like pool or spend in downtime to add facts / rumors to the world.

1 Like
80

That’s exactly what I do when I run. It gives a job a bit of context. Remember that the engagement roll is an escape hatch, so you can short-circuit the players over-planning. But a little planning isn’t a bad thing.

2 Likes