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[Mesa]

Recently while prepping for my space pirates Open Legend campaign, I discovered Blades in the Dark, and oh man oh man, I am so deep into it - already gathering some players, reading through the rulebook, watching a campaign (featuring the designer himself as the GM no less!). The premise and the setting and everything about it is just so well put together, and it pulled me in wholecloth.


We don't have much established yet (still need to do a proper session 0 which will most likely happen tomorrow) but I'm already very excited to play it, despite not really having much interest in these sorts of systems before (it's a PbtA derivative, so not quite like Dungeon or Apocalypse World, but closer to those than to FATE or DnD or what have you, and definitely different from what me and my group is used to) - hell, it's the first time I'm truly enamored with a tabletop game's default setting and want to use it instead of rolling one purely of my own design.


And the fact it has a free SRD, quite a few resources for sheets and handouts, and is very hackable? I might have just found my new favorite system, and it all stemmed from me offhandedly deciding to ask someone on a tabletop discord what all the Blades in the Dark rage is about.

[scriver]

What is all the rage about?

[Kagus]

What is all the rage about?

Barbarians.

[Digital Hellhound]

I have also rediscovered Blades in the Dark and my group is very eager to try it (everyone had at least one thing in the ’fiction touchstones’ list that they were really into, heh). The mechanics seem really quite clever and elegant. The setting I’m not 100% sold on, but there’s nothing stopping me from tweaking and expanding it more to my liking. I haven’t been this excited to run something in ages, though the improv-leaning nature of it will be a challenge.

[scriver]

Is it about stabbing? Stab Simulator 2000 was a pretty decent rpg system,  is it anything like it?

[Grim Portent]

Is it about stabbing? Stab Simulator 2000 was a pretty decent rpg system,  is it anything like it?

From what I've heard it's an 1800s Londonesque criminal gang RPG. Focused on general skulduggery and things like turf wars.

[scriver]

APACHE KNIVES

[Mesa]

Yeah, you play as a crew of scoundrels in a city which is a mishmash of 1870s London, Venice and Prague (so there's trains, rudimentary electricity, guns, the sorts), with some fantasy magic and magitech (powered by demon whale blood, of all things!) and ghostly shenanigans thrown in for good measure.
There's heisting, there's assassinations, there's smuggling, there's turf wars, there's faction relationships, and mechanics which help cut down on the boring parts - like planning no longer needs to take an hour by itself! And it's all presented very nicely as well, with a well-formatted rulebook and a bunch of useful printables like character sheets (which state what all the abilities and stuff do) and rules references.


On top of that, the roll20 character sheet for this is the slickest looking one I've ever seen on that website, holy hell.


Speaking of roll20, there's been some, err, drama surrounding it lately, but I honestly don't know what to think of it.
I definitely don't really want to abandon the platform since there's nothing that ticks the same boxes out there currently, and I'm not a paying user anyway; same goes for all my friends. Like Fantasy Grounds might have a better feature set overall, but the business model is a pretty big turnoff for us, and not all of us would be able to run that thing either (I mean it's pretty hard to beat something that is both free to use meaningfully* and runs in a browser).


* - sure you can technically play FG for free, but only as a player (no GMing), and only with those who have the money to shell out for the ultimate version.

[scriver]

Yeah, you play as a crew of scoundrels in a city which is a mishmash of 1870s London, Venice and Prague (so there's trains, rudimentary electricity, guns, the sorts), with some fantasy magic and magitech (powered by demon whale blood, of all things!) and ghostly shenanigans thrown in for good measure.
There's heisting, there's assassinations, there's smuggling, there's turf wars, there's faction relationships, and mechanics which help cut down on the boring parts - like planning no longer needs to take an hour by itself! And it's all presented very nicely as well, with a well-formatted rulebook and a bunch of useful printables like character sheets (which state what all the abilities and stuff do) and rules references.

It sounds excellent! But are there Apache Knives?

(also if you cut out the planning part dosn't it just end up completely unplanned)

[Telgin]

But are there Apache Knives?

Not really the question you're asking, but my very vague recollection was that equipment was very abstract and vague.  Like, I think you literally said you were "heavily" encumbered and that meant you could pull out 3 useful items at whatever point you wanted, and they could be whatever you needed for that moment, without having said what they were before hand.

The game overall looked interesting, but playing as criminals didn't appeal to me much and the one time our game group tried it, it didn't work out so great.  That was due to group dynamics much more than the game itself though.

[Mesa]

But are there Apache Knives?

Not really the question you're asking, but my very vague recollection was that equipment was very abstract and vague.  Like, I think you literally said you were "heavily" encumbered and that meant you could pull out 3 useful items at whatever point you wanted, and they could be whatever you needed for that moment, without having said what they were before hand.

The game overall looked interesting, but playing as criminals didn't appeal to me much and the one time our game group tried it, it didn't work out so great.  That was due to group dynamics much more than the game itself though.

Yeah, the game does do a lot of...some would say retconning, but there are ways to twist and bend the timeline a bit to your advantage, with how equipment is handled and with the whole mechanic of flashbacks. It's not time travel[size=78%], [/size]but you definitely do not play in one continuous, unchanging timeline either.


Take this scenario for instance - you're running away from a bluecoat (policeman), you take a turn into a side alley and whoops it's a dead end! You're cornered now. You cannot use a flashback to say that you took out this exact bluecoat the day before so he wouldn't chase you into this alley now, but you can say you brought a gun with you (even if there was no mention of it up until now), or that you went into this alley earlier this week, and you know there's a hidden door here that can lead you elsewhere.


Of course the GM can impose costs on the more out-there flashbacks (in the form of Darkest Dungeon-style stress, leading to Darkest Dungeon-style traumas) so sometimes you might just end up taking these things on the chin, but still, there's ways to weasel your way out of even very dire situations with some creative thinking and GM allowance.

[Digital Hellhound]

You might also need to roll for your action in the flashback, so there's a chance of failure. As for planning, you do have to provide one key detail (usually how you get to/approach the target) - after that... well, your characters have done the planning and you just get to choose what it was, retroactively, in flashbacks and gear choices.

Funnily enough, the game also allows for 'time travel' into the future when it comes to the resistance mechanic. The idea is that any time a player doesn't want to suffer a consequence from their action, they can choose to resist it. This automatically succeeds (usually by lowering the severity of the consequence, mind, not negating it) and they take stress for it. The thing is, the book encourages the GM to describe the consequence first in all its gory detail - which could be 'the bluecoat stabs you through the heart with her sword and you die' - and only then does the player resist and you rewind back from this glimpse of a lethal future. Most systems would have the resisting (a saving throw, generally) come before the lethal consequence, but not here. The idea is to really bring those potential consequences to life and show the players just what is at stake, I think, and it does sound rather delicious.

[Mephisto]

My budding career as a controversial game review guy has begun.

Things I've done thus far:

• Been one of the only individuals to purchase some Redditor's game
• Given the game an honest review
• Been called a sockpuppet because the multitudes of people who don't like the guy's game are all trolls and sockpuppets of one another; it's the only possible reason anyone doesn't like it
• Caused the guy to throw a tantrum and double all of his prices

The past two/three days have been a hell of a ride.

[Trekkin]

You might also need to roll for your action in the flashback, so there's a chance of failure. As for planning, you do have to provide one key detail (usually how you get to/approach the target) - after that... well, your characters have done the planning and you just get to choose what it was, retroactively, in flashbacks and gear choices.

Yeah, it's like the "you have X amount of undeclared gear that retroactively becomes whatever you need it to be" type of ability writ large, which is actually one of the problems my group had with the system: we actually like the planning phase of a heist, because it gives the PCs and the GM a framework within which to bounce back and forth and collaborate on what the actual heist is (notionally) going to be like and get everyone on the same page. Blades' ready-fire-aim approach felt like it failed to give us that einheit, and nothing breaks immersion like realizing the GM took your description of your approach to mean something completely different than you did.

It honestly felt too cohesively designed, but that might just be the issues I've had with the fan base above and beyond the usual nontrad-RPG fan superiority.

[Jimmy]

My budding career as a controversial game review guy has begun.

I guess I can say the same? I've been doing the Pathfinder Playtest for their new system, though it's likely a far bigger field of reviewers putting up their experiences than yours. It even has standardized feedback forms.

Overall, I'm rating it two out of five stars based on the playtest experience. I figure if I can't continue to find a 1st edition Pathfinder group, I'll likely swing over and start on 5th edition D&D rather than purchase the 2nd edition of Pathfinder. The material is too bland and the choices are too generic to satisfy my personal style of play.