Thoughts?

Read it, looks good. I like the basebuilding and faction game, they're the sort of tools I've always put together for myself to run sandbox campaigns but having it built into the system this way is great. Core resolution mechanic looks flexible and fun. Having no dedicated combat system is a wonderful idea.

Will probably run it next.

Check out Cryptomancer for some similar ideas, though Blades does it better imo.

yo bump because I picked this up a year ago and never got around to opening it

Played it on Roll20 a bit before our GM disappeared forever. Really liked the system and session-based mechanics, although some long-term planning is required.

>>54760648
>although some long-term planning is required.
From the GM's side? What kind of long-term planning?

>>54760325
I looked at the PDF not too long ago.
Made a good first impression. The clocks are a very neat idea, and even if you don't end up liking Blades, they are something you could easily scavenge out of the system.
Gotta say I really like how you can progress through classes. You start out as one of the normal classes, when you die you may progress to the ghost class, and from there progress to 2 or three other classes. I kinda like that.
Also, what the first anon said.

I'd like to give it a shot.

>>54760662
I think more from the players side. They run a company / guild / whatever so they need to plan out their moves to boot out competition and grow their own group. From what I gathered. Haven't looked deeply into that part of the game yet.

>>54760325
Played it yesterday for a one-shot, it's a good heist simulator, crunch is minimal and it plays fast and loose like an anti-shadowrun. You don't have to plan much (vaguely give a broad way of getting in, and how much shit you'll be able to carry). Then you make shit up on the fly as long as you have room in your inv and spare Stress.

Basically if you like the crunchy autism of SR you'll be disappointed.

Overhyped.

>>54761120
It's my second time hearing about it, and it looks pretty good.

What would be the correct amount of hype? Nobody ever talks about it because it's not a big brand?

>>54760325
I like it a lot, core game is very solid, but I will admit i'm more excited for some of the hacks. There is a cyberpunk one coming that I'm interested in, as well as a gonzo scifi one that I'm hoping will scratch the itch that Rogue Trader put in my mind before i realized the system sucked cock.

GMed 2 sessions so far.

It's a great narrativist system. The stress mechanic is cool, making it so that the outcome of the game does not land squarely on the randomness of the roll.
I'm also a fan of how combat is treated just the same as any other skill test, and how every roll is a negotiation between the GM and the player with room for input from everyone. Having other players suggest cool devil's bargains or contribute flashbacks to assist on the roll makes everyone feel more involved.

It does what does do very well but not much outside of that, however. Outside of scores a lot of stuff comes down to roleplay and GM fiat which might not suit some groups/players, especially those who are used to more exhaustive simulationist systems.

Cool game; would reccomend.

>>54760325
It'd be nice to have more info on the places outside Doskvol, not really a lot to work with as-is. It's pretty good other than that, IMO.

>>54762946
The special edition or whatever has another city, and the bluecoats stretch goal will have a third. So it's coming.

>>54762967
>special edition
Oh cool. Totally missed that they did one. Hoping it's not sold out when I can afford it plus international shipping.
Do you, per chance, know if the SE will have a separate PDF? Would hate to miss out on that additional content just because I can't buy it this instant.

>>54760325

SJW nonsense

>>54763383
lolwut?

One last bump from me.
Is there any good podcast to (preferably) watch? Or listen to if need be.

>>54763692

The creator is a huge, flaming SJW. It wouldn't surprise me if he infected his game with it.

>>54760325
Weird that it's clearly fake-Victorian with trains and everything but everyone's still using swords.

>>54766887
>hasn't read the thing
>>grr I'm sure it's nothing but feminisms
>reddit spacing
Wew my man you sure convinced me.

>>54766917
It's based on Thief isn't it? Same deal.

>>54763383
>>54766887
Do you ever get tired of embarrassing yourself in public?

>>54766917
Pistols are generally available for PCs and one class specializes in pistols and rifles for fighting, and gets both as starting gear.

>>54766934
Thief and Dishonored. A good load of dishonored

>>54766552
Seconding this

>>54762789
is about right. It feels generally player-favoured, although that may have just been our group all falling into niches pretty quickly and being able to stack bonuses for them, and not being challenged with enough stuff that pushed us to use abilities we weren't good at.

Main problem Blades has is that it only does heists, and would have extensive hack/rewriting just to play heists in a different setting. I'd like to see some full rewrites of Blades come out, trying to do different things.

>>54767817
>Main problem Blades has is that it only does heists
I'd say that's my biggest criticism of it as well. Anything that isn't a heist is basically forced to be lead-up to a heist otherwise the mechanics don't cover it properly

>>54767743
Not sure about podcasts but John Harper is running 2 groups on YouTube. One is on his main channel (they play tested it so it uses some outdated material) and another on Rollplay.

>>54768648
What about downtime?

>>54768774
You can improve your attributes to be more effective in the upcoming heist, reduce stress to be more effective in the upcoming heist, work on a long-term project to be more effective in later heists or to work on a personal goal like tracking down someone, reduce the heat of the group to not get fucked in the upcoming heist and the GM will roll for a small encounter that is still somehow related to the previous heist

>>54768818
No, I meant you can do things which are not heists during downtime, so I don't see how the system doesn't cover it.

>>54768841
The game's mechanics just don't cover anything in that field that doesn't relate to heists in some way, shape or form

>>54768893
When you say heist, what are we talking about exactly? Explicitly ''break in and steal stuff''? Or do the mechanics allow for any kind of infiltration-objective-exfiltratration mission structure? If so, I think you could handle a fair number of other scenario types by clothing that skeleton diffently.

>>54769018
By heist I mean any job/score. Sorry, English isn't my native language

>>54768893
It gives you the means to resolve an action with a skill check - how do you not have the ability to resolve a non-heist? Can you give an example of what the system won't cover?

>>54766925
>>54767173

Ever tire of being wrong?

>http://imgur.com/gallery/uszo6

its a game about poor oppressed gay orcs, tell me its not SJW

>>54769397
...which has nothing to do with the game that you're ranting about without having read, genius.

>>54769397
How does some game about poor oppressed gay orcs existing make Blades SJW nonsense, exactly?
Ah wait. I see. by "The creator" earlier you really meant "One of the kickstarter backers".
I think I get it. You will tell us in a minute or two that you were just pretending to be retarded, right?

>>54769540
No no. It's got everything to do with it. You see, the guy who wrote that gay orc shit, hold on to your seats, dared to back Blades. That means blades is now forever ruined and riddled with SJW nonsense. RIP.

>>54769397

Still being an embarrassing twatwaffle. Fuck off to /pol/.

>>54769112

From what I've read of the book, the problem isn't that the rules aren't there. It's that you'd have to throw out so many of the rules that it likely won't be worth using Blades In The Dark over some other system. Imagine trying to play a Nobilis game as ordinary humans. You have stats, a resource, and a resolution mechanic, and that's about it.

>>54769576
Even better, a bit of research indicates the guy who wrote Big Gay Orcs also wrote Drunken Bear Fighter, which has been passed around /tg/ for years.

>>54769653
I'm not seeing it. You have the skills, you have the resolution mechanic, what are you lacking?

>>54769397
And that has exactly what to do with the system that's actually being discussed in this thread?

>>54769397

Thanks for showing me this. This is the guy who made Honey Heist, right? Big Gay Orcs looks like it could be a fun exercise in hilarious machismo and humorously-incongrous tenderness.

>>54760325

Haven't played but have looked through the rules. It seems to do heists really well with minimal DM overhead.

One criticism that I've heard is that since "flashbacks" take care of all the planning, and since they also cost stress, a limited resource (albeit one that works in a very cool way in the system, imo), it doesn't really cater to players who really want to spend the time planning out every detail. Everyone just has to jump in feet first and spent stress to have retroactively "planned for this." Which then gets into weird time warp issues, like what if you take an serious injury during a flashback, do they come out of the flashback with one? Would you have gone ahead with the heist if you had a broken leg?

It seems like it can be adapted to a lot of mission based situations. I've looked through Scum and Villainy which is sort Star Wars meets Firefly. You could probably also do a revolution using it. My first thought though was to run something in Russia in 1917.

>>54769791

The mission structure that the game is built around. There are some nice mechanics like flashbacks that don't really work outside of that structure, and the entire game is written under the assumption that that's what you're using. Skill-based systems aren't hard to come by, so if you're not using that structure, I'm not sure what you gain from using Blades In The Dark over any other system. It's like using Pendragon for a game that has nothing to do with knights.

>>54769887
>it doesn't really cater to players who really want to spend the time planning out every detail.
It absolutely does not. In fact the rulebook specifically tells you not to. If your group can't roll that way I'd advise giving the game a pass. I don't feel it's a problem unless your group is unable to break from the "gotta plan for everything" attitude, though. The idea is that by skipping at-table planning you get to the 'good stuff' faster. If super in depth planning is the good stuff for you, obviously that's not gonna be fun for you.

>Everyone just has to jump in feet first and spent stress to have retroactively "planned for this."
I don't have the rules with me but IIRC if it's an easy thing to have planned for you and dealt with you don't have to spend stress necessarily.

>Which then gets into weird time warp issues, like what if you take an serious injury during a flashback, do they come out of the flashback with one? Would you have gone ahead with the heist if you had a broken leg?
That's a good point. In that case I'd judge it's on the group to come up with consequences for actions that don't cause injuries serious enough to immobilize the character but still are significant. This is kind of what the game is all about so I'd say that's fair. But then again you occasionally get the dumbass player who insist on jumping off a roof or whatever. In that case, maybe force them to spend stress on a resist roll to keep the injury manageable. Or make a devil's bargain so they get away with it at a price (how about losing a bunch of gear when you jump in the river?). The game does give you a lot of mechanical tools for adjusting consequences.

Also looking at the Kickstarter page apparently some of the stretch goals were conversions (I see Wild West and Cyberpunk). Those would be neat.

>>54769966
Well there's room for scores other than literal heists - like using violence to intimidate a rival dealer into finding new turf, using social skills to infiltrate a conspiracy, etc. The book lays out ideas for how to structure that. The whole "score" structure the game uses is really simple once you break it down - lay out a goal, a means of entry, and make a roll for initial condition. Avoid planning and use flashbacks when necessary. I think you could make that work for a lot of things.

>>54770206

I'm not denying that. As long as you work within that framework, you can certainly make a lot of things work.

>>54769773
And I love drunken bear fighter, even the gay version

Hey hey hey... But does it have magic?

>>54770640
Sort of. People can "Attune" to the ghostfield thingy to do ... stuff. That's the thing I have the most problem with scoping out. I didn't really get a feel what Attune can achieve. Well aside from the Whispers "Compel" special ability that explicitly states what it can do. Which is to summon a ghost and command it to do something.

Then there are also rituals that seem to be quite flexible. Basically, you and your GM create rituals together.
And there is alchemy and stuff.

>>54770640
The world is suffused with a "ghost field". Everyone is able to sense and interact with it (though some don't because they consider it unnatural and all that). Some people are good at it, they do magic. One of the classes is a mage, and one of their upgrades lets them shoot lightning or play with some small scale weather effects. You can also summon demons and the like, potentially. Ghosts are very important to the setting, and Attune lets you interact with them in various ways. It also lets you interact with the ghost of locations and stuff. It's worthwhile to remember any character can attempt to attune even if they aren't skilled in it.

Also, the setting's version of electricity comes from processed eldritch horror blood.

>>54760325
The Heist-Downtime balance and Crew XP is likely the most solid campaign system ever. It just moves forward unless the players take efforts not to.

PCs are never too experienced to fail unless you have 4 dots and some ability supporting the rolls. Even then, there'll be many other angles where they aren't the strongest.

The game's way of thinking about position vs effect has changed how I GM games.

>>54766917
No not really. Even in the 1800s RL you see find swords so I can suspend my disbelief with them in a "Gaslight fantasy" setting.

>>54760325
Only played in two sessions so far. >>54762789
Pretty sure that's my GM. It's fantastic and has potential for a good campaign or two.

bump for interest

>>54762789
Julien ?

>>54760365
>Having no dedicated combat system is a wonderful idea.
D R O P P E D

>>54777286
Valentin ?

>>54777729
Nah, handling combat on the same level as the other important parts of the game is totally kosher.

If you really, really want, just use Strike's tactical combat module with the 2d6 variation for the important/setpiece battles.

do someone have a pdf of this ?

Forgot to mention a little thing I kinda like: how attributes are derived from your action ratings. Overspecializing in an action doesn't really make you good at it's "governing" attribute, but dabbling a bit in the different facets of an attribute does.

>>54778216
Sure: https://files.catbox.moe/sww0eo.zip
contains:
The different character sheets
The cover artwork
and, of course the Rulebook

>>54779063
thanks my dude

>>54760325
It's very good, but heavy on narrative.

There's a lot of thinking for the players to do as well.