Thoughts?

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.

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.

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

>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.

SJW nonsense

lolwut?

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

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

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

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

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

Do you ever get tired of embarrassing yourself in public?

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

Thief and Dishonored. A good load of dishonored

Seconding this

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.

>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

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.

What about downtime?

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

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.

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

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.

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

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?

Ever tire of being wrong?

>imgur.com/gallery/uszo6

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

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

>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.

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.

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

And I love drunken bear fighter, even the gay version

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

bump for interest

Julien ?

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

Valentin ?

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.

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

thanks my dude

It's very good, but heavy on narrative.

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