Database of Blades Resources

I’m a spreadsheet/database nerd and hate to flip through PDFs t find things. I also like to create new things and it is easier if I can quickly compare what I have in mind to what is already out there.

So I’ve created some AirTable databases that anyone should help themselves to copy from.

  1. All items/equipment from the core book + a bunch of my own design
  2. Character playbooks’ Special Abilities
  3. Crew Upgrades
  4. Crew playbooks’ Special Abilities

You can find these in the “Equipment, Upgrades, Abilities” Base at this link:
https://airtable.com/invite/l?inviteId=invcuE61nZvn7Td49&inviteToken=d707c2bcbb6aac5b64d745f7f2c24c61416f59b6e7bb87dce070ede1c39d8fbc

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I have a separate base that is really meant to help you keep track of campaign-specific things. For instance:

  • Factions
  • Friends & Foes
  • Suppliers/merchants
  • Characters/NPCs

Yes you can keep all of this stuff in ROll20, but the interface was not great for me. I wanted to be able to quickly filter things down, re-sort them, etc. AirTable makes that much easier (for me).

I designed these tables to allow cross-linking. So, the Factions table has a spot for key NPCs, which are actual links to the relevant records in the Characters table.

Friends & Foes provides one place anyone from the crew can look to see ALL the friends (and foes) that crew collectively has.

Suppliers links to relevant character and faction records for quick cross-referencing.

The Updates table is extra nerdy but I love it. At the end of each score I type up the after-action-report. But I put it into this table and tag the relevant factions and characters, THEN whenever I want to remember something that happened to a character, BANG, it is automagically linked to already.

The Clocks table just allows me to embed clocks right into other tables, which makes them more visually appealing and more Blades consistent.

OK, that is way more than anyone wanted to know about my database habits :). But if they can be helpful, please copy at will! Constructive criticism is also always greatly welcomed.

Look for the Campaign Base at:
https://airtable.com/invite/l?inviteId=invcuE61nZvn7Td49&inviteToken=d707c2bcbb6aac5b64d745f7f2c24c61416f59b6e7bb87dce070ede1c39d8fbc

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Neat! That’s Expert bookkeeping…

I’ve never seen Airtable before but it looks like a nice balance of the simplicity of spreadsheet and versatility of database.

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You can do a ton on it with the free tier. And once you have the data loaded up like that, you can do an analysis. So, for instance, I put in all the character abilities, then I added the “mechanics” column and tagged the types of mechanical attributes each ability had. Then I exported everything into Googlesheets and was able to do a simple count of how many of each mechanic were used. By seeing which mechanics were used the least (only one special ability gives XP rewards for instance) inspired me to create new special abilities for the less-used mechanics. It also makes it easier to see patterns of similar mechanics (special armor + push for instance) so that I can model my own after things that we know are pretty well balanced.

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I also meant to ask: tips? Suggestions for improvements?

Also meant to include: I believe AirTable gives you a way to clone a database, so feel free.

Hey, you inspired me to make my own, I used roll20 and scrivener to manage my campaigns but often ended up frustrated by how inefficient as tools they were. I just took a passing look at your work to allow me to experiment with my own organisation without being influenced.
It still fairly early in its development but I already see the huge potential in organizing my games.
I really like your idea to link session reports with tags such as npc involved and I am gonna do it too, although i haven’t looked at how you did it yet and the quick experiments I’ve done on this were not satisfactory. I’ll come back to it after I’ve setup a proper npc database.
Most of my efforts where put into the faction and district database, cross linking information to identify which faction operate where (which is Imo a crucial information). I may have to rethink how the information is setup tho, because right now I’m not satisfied by the results I get when grouping the factions by district. Since I’ve assigned several locations to each factions when needed, the group are a bit messed up and lack clarity.

Anyway thanks for the website, definitely gonna use it a lot!

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Yah, deciding how you want to link tables is one of the major design decisions. I’ve done a fair bit of remapping. But be sure to take note how you can use lookup fields also. By combining links and lookups, I was able to embed clocks onto factions or characters or anything else I like. Glad it’s been helpful for you!

As a huge Airtable nerd, this database template is everything I ever hoped to make and more. Thank you so much for sharing it!

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I’m trying to get ALL factions from the book into my database (for everyone to use). However, the only way I can see to do it is to manually copy paste each bit of text out of the PDF :(. That is too much work to be worth it, meaning I’ve only copied over the factions that my campaign are in direct contact with. But if someone had a CSV file listing all the faction info from the rulebook then I could import them all in and share it back to everyone in turn. Anyone know where I can find one?

I myself have imported all factions and all npc of the book in a database, unfortunately I’ve taken the time to translate all names in my language to avoid using to much English and breaking immersion so I doubt it would be useful. But still I’ll make it available when I get back home.

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I’ve checked my work, it happen that i’ve indeed translated the name of factions, BUT in my infinite wisdom i have kept the english name in another field for reference.
Also, my npc list contain most npcs of the book and very little of my own that i have yet to add.
I also have a table for complication that might be useful.
I am gonna make a copy of my database and publish the link here.

https://airtable.com/invite/l?inviteId=invvWnHqARD8q3a12&inviteToken=1806a6e6119eef2081399d99a0eb12794e551a22bda5aba7b98c3689bd09699f

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Thank you kindly for sharing! I see you also use Airtable. If you have any tips on how to get the most out of it, I welcome you advice. Thanks!

ALL factions, you say… :sunglasses:

I’m prepping to GM my first ever session of Blades (woo!) and ended up going absolutely bonkers with your original template. I tweaked some stuff (not much tbh, your template was pretty perfect) and then filled in… everything.

https://airtable.com/shrf1NItIsAtyAdZJ

Here’s a breakdown:

FACTIONS

  • LISTS: All Factions listed in the original Blades in the Dark handbook, along with additional factions of note, including: 6 Major Noble Families of Duskvol (Strangford, Dunvil, etc.), Iruvian Houses (Anixis, Ankhayat, etc.), and various other assorted factions (Magistrates, The Vultures, The Empty Vessel) that were mentioned in passing in the materials.
  • INCLUDES: Pretty much all the info I could glean from the materials available to GMs – this includes all the sections listed in the handbook (Notable Assets, Quirks, Situation, Allies, Enemies, etc.), as well as their default Progress Clocks. Every NPC and District is linked to their own entry in their respective Sheets.
  • CUSTOMIZATIONS: I reorganized some of the factions into more specific types based on what made sense to me, and also adjusted the wording in some sections (particularly the Descriptions) based on a) combining information from multiple sources, and b) making things more ~mysterious~ for my players, since I’m sharing a couple fields with them. Please also note the Iruvian Houses have had their info a bit truncated, since I wanted to keep it to info that’d be relevant within Duskvol.

NPCs

  • LISTS: Pretty much every single NPC I could find mentioned is in there. I’m sure I missed a couple here and there, but aside from NPCs who don’t explicitly reside in Duskvol, I’ve been pretty darn thorough. Doesn’t include appearance/dress/voice/playbook quite yet, since I wanted to figure out those as my group went along.
  • INCLUDES: Basic description, species, heritage, faction role (if applicable), what vice they purvey (if applicable) and – crucially-- are linked to the Faction(s) and District(s) associated with them.
  • CUSTOMIZATIONS: There are some edits based on who my players decided their characters would have history with, and I also merged a couple characters here and there (e.g. Byarri and Lady Ankhayat are not explicitly supposed to be the same person, so I made a guess to tie a loose end). Was making educated guesses on gender and heritage based on the information I have, so apologies if I messed any of that up! (Also: for the Factions & Roles, I sorted it by a Rollup field that shows each NPCs primary Faction, since some had as many as 3 or 4 and it made the groupings difficult to read.)

DISTRICTS

  • LISTS: Every Duskvol district, with a couple bare-bones entries for The Lost District, Gaddoc Station, Old North Port, etc. (my crew’s gonna be Smugglers, so gotta be ready).
  • INCLUDES: All descriptions, landmarks, +/-1d bonuses/penalties, and a star-system mirroring the “ratings” from the original source material. All relevant NPCs and Factions (along with their descriptions from the area pages) are linked to their respective sheets.
  • CUSTOMIZATIONS: Created stripped-down versions of the area illustrations for players to look at, so that I could give them some flavor for that area’s surroundings without giving away info on NPCs, etc. Also, there’s both a Gallery view and a Spreadsheet view depending on what you prefer.

SOURCES & NOTES
There might be a couple of bits of flavor I added in here and there as a GM, but for the most part everything is pretty meticulously sourced from the following materials:

  • Blades in the Dark (original handbook)
  • Guide to U’Duasha (included in special edition BitD handbooks – used for Iruvian Houses and their assets, people of interest, etc.)
  • Flame Without Shadow (Bluecoats/Spirit Warden expansion – used for additional context on Dunvil family, workhouse foremen, and laborers)
  • Leviathan Song (Leviathan-hunting expansion – used for additional context on noble houses’ leviathan hunting interests)
  • Duskvol Academia (Additional information on Duskvol Academy and Charterhall University – used to help determine Tier/Hold of each)
  • Broken Spire (Immortal Emperor assassination expansion – used for additional context on NPCs aligned with or in opposition to the emperor (Emperor’s Quicksilver Guard, Strangford’s imminent Imperial ladder-climbing, Iruvian ship captains/scions and their interests, etc… Please note the Immortal Emperor entry is super big and super disorganized with my own thoughts on how to eventually present him to my players.)

And I thiiiink that’s it! Phew! Again, I can’t express how helpful having a fully kitted-out Airtable template was for me to organize everything to my liking, and it’s only because of your work that I was able to jump into things like this! Thank you again SO much for sharing and hopefully this is an appropriate gesture in return. :smiley:

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Damn I’m jaleous, you have way more npc in your list than in mine! I wish I had more time to put into my own database, i seldom work on it those weeks. There is many NPC I don’t even recognize, I really need to read again the book from cover to cover to find those.
Nice job!

Thank ya kindly! I’ve had lots of time on my hands lately, so that’s… pretty much what I blame for this. Also, you should be able to copy the text/sheets/base in their entirety, so that should hopefully be a good starting point for using/translating the content, if you’re interested in doing so!

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This is absolutely amazing!!! @LaCidiana, this is a wonderful gift to the entire community. Is there anything I can contribute back to help you?

So glad to hear it! And you’ve already contributed plenty with the original template – just glad to give back after all the fan resources I found during my prep. :smile:

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Excellent work!

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Thanks so much for this. I’ve started using your templates, though I’ve removed some NPCs that clash with my own. Not sure if they are specific to your campaign or ones I’ve missed. I’ve added a flag to the NPC table to mark those that are core and those campaign specific.

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Oh, that’s a great idea. @LaCidiana’s database looks to be 100% characters from the book, yes? Mine was mostly my own + ones from the book my players had interacted with.