Blades in the dark is such a monkey’s paw for me. I’m happy people are playing something that’s not dnd nor a close relative, but I don’t actually like it very much.
It felt very downward spiral to me, which I do not like at all. I’ve got “and you’ll never fully recover” enough in real life. The book (or maybe just a quick start pdf the guy in my old group gave us) was like “horrible things will happen to your character! They’ll suffer and break! It’s going to be fun” and I was like no thank you.
Also I didn’t really like the group I played it with that much, so that didn’t help.
It’s fine to not want the dark tone, classic d&d heroic fantasy is much more of a feel-good vibe and there’s nothing wrong with liking that. There are a lot of Forged in the Dark games (i.e. Blades hacks) with different themes, I imagine a load are much less dark!
Maybe! The way stress, harm, and trauma worked seemed to be pretty baked in, but I haven’t done a lot of digging. You could probably make some hacks to allow easier recovery, but I’ve been happy with Fate instead.
Yeah I would think removing stress and trauma would fundamentally change the game into something else, but you could still reskin them to change the tone. For example stress could be your mana, and traumas could be your soul ascending, or something like that in a heroic fantasy setting; the mechanics are still the same but it doesn’t have the same dark vibe.
Ya several of the Forged in the Dark games change the way these mechanics work. They’re great fun still.
That meme format only works if the last 2 panels have the same message.
Idk it works well enough here
I’m playing in a Mountain Home campaign which is based on Blades in the dark. One of the best systems I’ve ever experienced.
Oh, ive been wanting to jam this sooo bad.
That sounds like an incredibly exciting moment in the fiction! I always ask the other players what they think about character X bringing heat down on the crew.
One of the tensest most dramatic scenes i’ve seen in blades started with the characters doing a very threat-of-violence based intervention on the addict who kept mouthing off about their scores (+heat after indulging their vice). The target of the intervention made some very good points about the character who organized the intervention and there was this moment where everyone, one by one, changed the target of their drawn weapons.
Damnit, we need more details
Seconding that, we need more details.
Man I love the Blades system. We’re actually running the Shadowrun hack of it, and it’s been a hoot.
There’s a Shadowrun hack?!
Runners in the Shadows, I’ve not played it but I’ve seen comments describing it as ‘Shadowrun without the crunch’
Thank you :)
Ooh, that does sound like a good plan. I was discussing what I would like to use for Shadowrun earlier, and thinking maybe Gurps, but Blades could be a very good call. Do you have a link?
I don’t have a link for it unfortunately, our GM is running it in Foundry and I think he got the module in there. Runners in the Dark I think it’s called? Its part homebrew and part Scum and Villainy/Blades mashup is kind of how he described it. It’s not perfect, but it’s still fun!
Thanks for the description. Someone else linked it so we’re all good!
Runners in the Shadows, I’ve not played it but I’ve seen comments describing it as ‘Shadowrun without the crunch’
Thank you, I’ll take a look and try to talk my group into it
If you do play it then I’d love to hear what it’s like!
