Interesting World tweak idea, First game excitement

Hey, all! I’m gearing up to run my first game of blades and I thought it would be fun to share my excitement/some details.

Firstly, pretty early on when I was reading through the rulebook the thought occurred to me that if the sun is shattered and greatly diminished, things must be cold! So although it is a subtle change in detail it has a pretty far reaching impact. Duskwall has to be heated, right? And of course they would use leviathan blood/electroplasm and steam for heating, but it occurred to me that they are probably more than capable of some form of geothermal heating as well! Anyways, I really like the idea of heat management being a consideration, sometimes small and unimportant and sometimes paramount depending on location and situation. I think it also adds a cool dimension to the city in terms of little unheated or frozen over pockets in districts, etc. that allow further nuance of detail.

Obviously the sea and larger bodies of water will be unfrozen, and I don’t intend for the entire world to be a snowy wasteland or anything. Just… distinctly lacking in thermal energy.

My second reason for making this was to talk about the start of my game! My group chose to be a crew of Hawkers that specialize in arms dealing/gun running/maybe some arms production. I’ve got a Lurk, a Slide, a Leech, and a Hound. The Leech is a University professor who is a major proponent of Steam power and actively tries to stop the use of Leviathan blood and its products because he believes it is an unsafe and unsustainable method of energy production. Because of this he is going to become embroiled with the rest of the crew, trying to balance his increasing involvement with this group of scoundrels with his desires to disrupt the Leviathan blood industry and replace it with Steam. To add further complication to that, his vice is drinking urefined leviathan blood, which affects him more or less in a hallucinogenic fashion.

I haven’t 100% decided on a starting scenario yet but I think I am going to start in the middle of the first time the Leech meets the rest of the crew to work with them and the deal gets intruded upon by a fight between two conflicting factions

Thanks for reading! Comments and suggestions welcome! Also, if you guys have any cool ideas for a gun-centric blades game/crew to share, I’d appreciate it!

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Sounds great, good luck! The cold temperature aspect is interesting, I hadn’t actually considered that before. Frostpunk (the video game) has an aesthetic that would be a good match for Blades in the Cold, imo.

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I also thought of Frostpunk!

Cold Doskvol sounds cool to me.

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Frostpunk + the Shattered Isles? And I thought life in this world couldn’t be more desperate and brutal. Pathetic me.

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If you’d like another frozen touchstone there’s a defunct webcomic by Faith Erin Hicks called Ice which you may be interested in. Set in an apocalypse where the poor are left to freeze and the rich have decided to cosplay Victorian times.

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Thanks for the replies!!

@timdenee/@John_Harper I just downloaded Frostpunk and I’ll be dipping my toes into the ice soon!

@Cochlearia I will give it a read today!

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Awesome idea. I’m imagining ice-slick rooftops, snow revealing your movements with footprints, frozen canals, festivals on the frozen river, and lamplight reflecting off the ever-present snow. (Or maybe it’s too gross from smog, urine, and blood to be reflective…) Sleighs pulled by goats instead of carts. Leviathan hunter fleets have icebreaker escorts. The old coal mine gets much more important, and the faction fight around it gets nastier. Fun!

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Great images!