#blades of Duskvol

[indiaboeckh]

My Whisper character for the Blades of Darkness campaign I’m in

[onemorestepinduskvol]

Heartbeat Scale

Blades in the Dark has something very valuable that many TTRPGs lack; the ability to hop, skip, and step over time parameters quite easily.

It's perfectly common for you to roll to Survey a dock for traffic over a a month or two. Similarly, you may need someone's name... and to get it, one of your crew might spend several weeks Consorting to find it.

Maybe in the downtime after a big score, your crew spends months consolidating their hold while the thugs you transgressed make progress in their revenge.

I call this the Narrative Scale.

Classically, you may take a single Prowl to not just climb one wall, but this wall, cross the court yard quietly, and slip a foot between the servants door and its frame, to keep it from locking, and quietly step inside. That may take any number of seconds or minutes.

Let's call this the Action scale.

That 'scale' tends to zoom out more than it zooms in, in my experience.

But in some instances, it is neither months nor minutes but seconds, and fractions of a second, that we want to dwell in.

Sitting at a felted table, your character clocks the quiet click of a pistol. Your compatriot tries to flick you a card from his hip and you have to catch it, without anyone noticing. You can hear your breath catching and what you do in the next half a second will determine whether you live or die.

I like to call this the Heartbeat scale.

It's the kind of timeframe where time slows down as adrenaline aggressively pours through your veins and arteries. It's the kind of timeframe where it feels like the volume of what's happening is turned down... until you can hear your own, throbbing heartbeat.

It's the very moment that matters most.

Afterwards, maybe when the jig was up, the Head smuggler let the mask drop that they knew who you are all along, where they were never really going to let you leave. It's in that moment that you kicked the table, snapped a wrist and ran.

It's back to the action scale as you slide down bannisters, and crash over carts and tables to get out as fast as you can.

And it's back to the Narrative scale when you are back in your hideout and know that they are looking for you and it won't be too long before they find you.

Scaling in and scaling out helps add a tempo and contextualise the narrative arc of a score and its surrounds in a way that can feel quite visceral and taut and bitter.

[wheelie-butch]

[indie-ttrpg-of-the-week]

Blades in the Dark

https://johnharper.itch.io/blades-in-the-dark Sun's gone, lets do crimes about it

Touchstones: Peaky Blinders, The Wire, Bloodborne, Thief (game), Dishonored

Genre: Heist, Dark fantasy

What is this game?: Blades in the Dark is a game about playing as a gang of rowdy thieves in an eternally dark city, its core mechanics focus on high tension and drama

How's the gameplay?: BITD has a very complex and granular system, meant to keep tensions and drama at a constant high, trying to fully explain it would take a bit longer than i'd like but I'll try my best Blades uses a system where you roll an amount of die equal to your bonuses and take the highest, in addition the game also utilizes a Risk system, determining how bad things get if you fuck up, Characters can also take on a Devil's Bargain, guaranteeing bad consquences for better rolls. BITD also has many subsystems related to character's traumas, injuries, and more importantly, vices, things that your character falls back on if they get overly stressed. BITD's game design is entirely meant to make dramatic and stressful scenarios, as well as to make sick as hell heist scenarios, characters are scummy criminals who do bad things, and the gameplay reflects that, moves like being able to flash back to a prior preparation are a great example of this, showing how a player prepared for the current heist. Alongside this, the game also has a "Crew" playbook, which plays into faction shenanigans with your party, a crew playbook is shared across the entire party and determines your origins and methodology, while character playbooks are more about the personal character, how they're like and how they work

What's the setting (If any) like?: BITD is set in Duskvol, a city under eternal night, shit kinda sucks here! a corrupt empire calls all the shots, doing usual oppressive empire here, as well as some usual imperialism. The Courts are more corrupt than an Oblivion save file, and its often said that everyone in Doskvol's guilty, so its better to line your pockets with cash before you get caught.

What's the tone?: Doskvol pitches you a dark, opressive city, filled with corrupt officials and evil rich assholes who get away with their crimes by just coughing up the dough to get away from it, it is a very dark game, players are often the scum of the town, doing bad things to get ahead in life. BITD is a very very dark game, but goddamn does it work

Session length: Short, BITD's resolution mechanics make it so you can usually get a lot done in a short amount of time, 1-2 hours should be plenty of time

Number of Players: 4 or more is recommended 

Malleability: Blades' setting seems pretty stiff at first, but you can definitely hack it to set it in different worlds, its not the most malleable game but it can definitely be changed quite a bit

Resources: Blades in the Dark is a very popular game, so there's a ton of fan-made content out there, as well as a ton of great official content as well.

I have mixed feelings on Apocalypse World, but Blades in the Dark is phenomenal, really does deserve its legacy, its dark, gritty, and its mechanics complement it very very nicely, great game

[txttletale]

bundletober #15: the sunless seasons

almost halfway there. woah. living on a prayer and all that. today's bundletober is interesting in that i'm not looking at a standalone game. the sunless seasons is a blades in the dark--i hestitate to call it a supplement, it's more a play tool or as the cover proclaims, a toolkit--by eskur.

so, for those who haven't played it--blades in the dark is my favourite ttrpg. it's a heist game set in duskvol, a city in the middle of a blighted perpetually dark wasteland, a dark and brooding take on a world like that of dishonored or bioshock that embraces character competence, the over-the-table conversation, and cutting out all the parts of stories and games that aren't the fun parts.

the sunless seasons is a very short set of pages containing tables of plot hooks, vignettes, and weather conditions for each of duskvol's seasons.

the weather tracking works with a pretty ingenious hex grid--you roll to move a counter between these hexes at different intervals--you can base it off in-game time passing or between scenes for when you want a dramatic hard cut. it's a simple thing but it takes another element of 'being the world', of creating an immersive and breathing space to play in, off the sole shoulders of the GM.

the plot hooks provided on the 'weird weather' hex are very cool, too. this toolkit gives duskvol a pulse--i'm always talking about how games can be co-authors, and this is pure game-as-co-author, this is game as someone who interjects 'oh, and it's raining' at the most dramatic point. if you play blades in the dark, you should 100% read the sunless seasons, if not to use it, to get some inspiration for how you describe duskvol. even if you don't, it might inspire you for whatever ttrpgs you do play, or to include something similar in your own game.

this, imo, is better to make a place feel real than any amount of lore or timelines or family trees or could be. it's something material and present, something you use in play rather than just read and forget about. this is how you make your world feel real.

the sunless seasons can be downloaded for free through itch.io

[utilitycaster]

If you've read that recent article on polygon about Candela Obscura - "Critical Role’s Candela Obscura fails to differentiate itself enough from its inspiration" (6 November 2023) - I don't know much about the other systems and have trouble being objective about things I love, I was wondering what your opinion is

Hi anon!

I have! I will also admit I don't know Blades in the Dark terribly well, or rather, I have roughly the same BitD knowledge as I have Candela knowledge: I've watched (or in this case, listened) to a actual play show run in it (TAZ Steeplechase) and I've looked at the SRD. The Candela full rulebook doesn't come out for a week, so I really can't judge it for myself. So this isn't going to be objective either, but hopefully it will point out what I think the flaws in this article are regardless of the merits or failures of Candela Obscura as a game.

I think my overall issue is what I said about Polygon on the whole earlier this week: it really feels like their metric is first, is this innovative; and second, "does this reinforce my pre-existing political values in a way that allows me to feel warm and fuzzy and virtuous because I played a fun game/watched a fun show and lets me continue to ignore that I haven't actually engaged in any of that tiresome and inconvenient meaningful anticapitalist action."

I also, for what it's worth, think that this mentality very explicitly conflicts with what Critical Role is doing. I think a lot of people interpret the whole "a group of friends playing games" image as encouraging parasocial behavior (which, frankly, is weird in that while the CR fandom has had a parasociality problem, it's no different than any large fandom - Laurisha shippers or the Twinnies & Husbands crowd are literally just the Actual Play Fandom equivalent of Gaylors and Larries; also like, the pitch for WBN earlier this year was basically "hey, we're four friends playing games" and no one has blinked at that, nor should they have) when I think it's intended to mean "we are friends having fun making and playing the games we want to play; it's great if you'll join us but we're doing what we want." Given that Polygon has shown something of a bias towards those shows that give them early access, I do think it might be that they're just cranky they're not being given any special treatment or catering by an actual play show they've been shitting on for years, and this is simply a vicious cycle.

All that aside, more importantly in this case, I think the article shows a notable lack of Ebert's law: "A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it." Samantha Nelson, the author of this article, appears to be both incapable of evaluating Candela Obscura outside the context of Blades in the Dark - which is frankly, in my again admittedly limited opinion, vastly overstated as an influence (the Forged in the Dark engine is certainly a strong influence, but that's purely mechanical and also it's still only an influence - more on this later) - and also seems to want Candela Obscura's rulebook to flesh out Newfaire and Oldfaire in the same way that Blades in the Dark fleshes out Duskvol.

The thing is, those wide-open spaces and the vagueness of OldFaire? That's deliberate. The Looper interview with Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall as well as the Tabletop News interview both make this clear. The aim of Candela Obscura is to be very easy to pick up, to not have a bunch of intimidating lore that players and GMs need to know before they jump in (and I say this as someone who, when invited to her first D&D game, was the person who read the PHB and sent the other new players a brief summary of each race and class; I love intimidating lore), and to accommodate a wide range of styles. They considered making Oldfaire much more detailed in the book and then decided not to so that GMs felt more free with the world. Again, my knowledge of Blades in the Dark is heavily skewed by an actual play of it that's explicitly not in Duskvol (which I think is a very interesting commentary, namely, maybe Nelson just really fucking loves Duskvol but no one else gives a shit). I genuinely think they are, as more and more Polygon TTRPG/Actual Play coverage seems to be, barely paying attention to what's in front of them and just deciding based on who put it out.

As I said in my earlier posts I do think Candela distinguishes itself from BitD in a number of ways mechanically. The gilded dice mechanic is obviously one of the biggest ones. The lack of flashbacks - a pretty core element of Blades in the Dark - is another. The fact that scars change your stats rather than dealing a permanent penalty (as Trauma does in BitD) is seen as a flaw, as is the lack of lair-building, but I think these things work in tandem. Blades in the Dark is very much about growing territory and becoming a more and more powerful crime syndicate; while four traumas will take you out of the game the same way scars will, there's a lot more opportunities to heal and I believe you have much more room to take stress. Candela Obscura, as another interview I read states (ScreenRant), is a gothic/eldritch horror game about normal people in unfathomable circumstances. You don't really get much better! You adapt, but progress against these monsters is always a long shot. Candela as an organization has been operating for millennia, and the war seems to be one of attrition, and the mechanics, from what I know from the show, reflect that.

The bit about the criminal crew and the lair is honestly kind of funny to me, because in the TAZ Steeplechase wrap-up I listened to last week the McElroys noted that the lair element of BitD was actually really hard to incorporate and they largely ignored it. Obviously that's not true for everyone, but famously D&D in the earlier editions guided high level play towards running one's own dungeon, and there is a reason that hasn't survived to the newer editions, namely, that shift from being a crew out there doing wild and exciting heists and adventures to painting the walls of your clubhouse and hiring guards is not actually fun for a lot of people.

So in summary: I really don't think the author of this article paid a single scrap of attention to the motivations behind design choices, is mad the horror game doesn't give them a kiss on the cheek and tell them they're So Good at Leftism (the comment about not understanding that the restrictions on scarlet aren't tied to anti-immigrant sentiment is particularly egregious), and generally is like "why is this game that shares some similarities but ultimately rather different goals than Blades in the Dark not literally Blades in the Dark but with slightly more aggressive ghosts."

[forgedinthedark]

Evil Hat are running a public playtest of The Dagger Isles! Remember that place that somehow manages to not have a lightning barrier? Well, we're getting a whole book about gaming there! Blades in the Dark is expanding beyond Duskvol.

You can register interest below. I have just done so and am excited to see the playtest.

[dungeonofthedragon]

Kiwi RPG Bundle Final Days

There's little time left to grab the Kiwi RPG Week Itch and Drive Thru bundles. Both contain a collection of awesome titles from kiwi creatives, for an 80% saving!

We've got everything from standalone games, to expansions for Mausritter and Monster of the Week. We've got adventures aplenty, and some wonderful maps of Duskvol for Blades in the Dark!

My own work is in both bundles as well. Voidwalkers and The Tower in the Meadow are in the DriveThru bundle while Explorers of the Forever City and Super Unnatural are in the Itch bundle. If there's something here you've been eyeing up, now's a great time to grab it!

[open-hearth-rpg]

Since I manage the community feed occasionally I boost some of my own work.

Age of Ravens: Volume II: Running

I've now released the first two volumes collecting work from AoR from last 14 years. This second one brings a host of tables, resources, generators, game guides, and more . This clocks in at 261 pages with 29 pieces.

You can pick this up on itch or DrivethruRPG

So what do we have in this book? The first part has lists of all kinds:

Oceans Rise, Empires Fall: 100 random kingdom events 72 Sci-Fi Heists: challenges for hi-tech intrusions Fight Scene Elements: 100 random places & items for conflicts 150 Details for Swashbuckling Scenes: inspirational details for gambles, stunts, and color There and Maybe Not Back Again: 100 random events for journeys The Fall of Summer: 36 threats for urban fantasy communities 36 Mood Elements for the Wastes: new exploration details for post-apocalyptic rpgs Wasteland Plots: story seeds for post-apocalyptic character archetypes 36 Mood Elements for an Alien Planet: exploration details for a space colony world Space Colony Events: random events for any space colony game The Many Names of Gamemasters: 202 alternate titles for game facilitators

The second part offers a host of different approaches for play

Tools for World Building: Techniques for names, shared maps & campaign maps Arcana Innominata: a story game of fantasy tarot creation On Icons: ideas for using icons and icon relations outside 13th Age Iconic Examples: a new pantheon of icons from a homebrew world Party Down: galas, celebrations, and events in rpgs More Than Coin: FitD rewards for expeditions, jobs & beyond In the Halls of the Monkey King: racing Forged in the Dark clocks Community Playbooks: using playbooks to create collaborative neighborhoods

The third part is about unpacking different rpgs

On Fate: a new player’s system guide to the Fate rpg Gumshoe Guide: A new player’s guide to the Gumshoe system Understanding 2d20: a new player’s guide to Modiphius’ 2d20 system Legacy: Life Among the Ruins: a new player’s system guide to the Legacy rpg Unpacking Voidheart Symphony: a guide to running & playing Voidheart Symphony Lessons from Duskvol: Learning Blades in the Dark Running Kuro: playing j-horror with a cyberpunk edge Strixhaven for Storygamers: exploring this D&D 5e sourcebook & setting Loops and Floods: Resources for Tales from the Loop & Things from the Flood Race and the Modern FRPG: a look at Against the Darkmaster & Worlds Without Number

If that kind of stuff sounds cool to you, I hope you'll check it out.

[citylitlena]

Callout post to my Blades In the Dark players >:()

You all brought some rancid vibes to the game in the greatest way possible for being a gang of criminals. Come to Duskvol, we have

The Shape of Water, but turned up to 11

Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss. And what do girlbosses say to death? Not today!

40K Dreadnought but more based and goblin

Socialist comrade publsher, doing *very* direct praxis. Somehow this reporter is the best fighter among them.

@kitchendeviant, @chuthulhu and the others who are not on this hellsite, thank you from the bottom of my heart for the ideas, investment and vibes, you all are wonderful!

[miraclemaya]

if i ever go back to my old blades in the dark campaign, or start a new campaign of it, i really want to go full hog into the weirdness of duskvol.

[onemorestepinduskvol]

Web of Relationships

One of the core tensions in BITD is your crew's relationship with the other factions in the game.

If you draw a dodecagon (12 sides), each point can represent a faction and you can keep your crew's relationship with them clearly displayed in the same (nice) diagram.

Yes there are more than 12 factions in Duskvol but realistically your crew will not have a relationship with all of them.

They won't even have a relationship with 12, quite possibly, so it's advisable to start with a line or trianble between the crew and one or two factions they encounter first and add more as they appear.

What's fun about this is is that you can then connect those points to each other as your crew discovers the relationships those factions have between each other. Very valuable information indeed..

[wheelie-butch]

The Old Things Comic #8

Gay ear

i made this as a text post ages ago but decided to doodle it. Orianna is extremely nosy and Cross hates to talk about his personal life. She's actually totally oblivious that he's gay (she's quite sheltered in some ways) but it's a funny running joke we make that she's always trying to "prove" it.

Comic #1 , Comic #2, Comic #3, Comic # 4, Comic #5, Comic #6, Comic #7

[digital-magus]

Starting a Blades In The Dark campaign tomorrow.

The chances of my players recreating Late-2000s rave culture in the grim, haunted, steampunk streets of Duskvol are low...

...but not zero...

[chimerabal]

SCREAM I wanted to self reblog some stuff about my Blades in the Dark cult NPCs to show off and I HAVE NONE HERE??? WHAT???

---

"Theres a group offering 4 Coin to make someone disappear. For more details, pull out a compass near the butcher on Front St.”

You take the job, a street urchin brings you behind, and then under, the butchers' to a secret chapel hidden within the cliffside. The room is built in a natural cavern. Dark waves crash against the cliff-face and occasionally a spray of cold, salty, water mists the room. The smell of blood from above, and coals from below, remain strong on the air despite this.

The urchin, and three others, are in the room. A woman being fit for a wedding dress hands you a photo of who they want to disappear... He appears priestly. You wonder what he could have done to make these four people what him gone... She instructs you to, in her words:

"Feed his miserable corpse to the stars below."

You take this to mean 'throw his body in the ocean', and accept the job. It's not until you return to collect your payment that you begin to worry.

You walk in on the group finishing some kind of ritual; the light it generates reveals that all four have matching tattoos. You recall rumors that the reason the west end is in chaos is because of a coup; the cult that held the area was destroyed from the inside out.

Shit. That explains the marks injuries. You didn't want to get caught up in all that.

The woman who was being fit for a dress approaches you. She hands off the money before gently reaching up to grasp your face in her hands.

"Our Lady in the Darkness thanks you, you will be forever in the watch of The Consuming Star."

She kisses your cheek and your vision fills with light. A painful, blinding, pure white- unlike any you have ever seen in Duskvol before. You lose consciousness.

You awake topside next to the butchers' shop, lying on top of your earnings. You quick crack open the case; it's all there. Despite the weirdness they paid, and you are mostly unscratched... but there is a compass rose scarified on your wrist that you suspect is going to haunt you.

---

BAM abridged version of what my players encountered if they took this job 💃 The Cult of the Consuming Star started as the PC crew- built of Me and two friends- in a BitD game that only had one session 🥲 It was then recycled into an ally for a game that I was GMing that never even started 🥲🥲 Then AGAIN for a game that we got two sessions out of as a rival cult 🥲🥲🥲 I got really super attached on that third iteration and now they just... Live in my head rent free.

BitD Crypto, is one of the members, the other three, Sidewinder, Vee, and Stove, don't have tags. The entity that they all serve has... little built for her so far 🤔 I have an aesthetic, and a goal. For a sleeping God do you really need more though?

Roselyn also is part of this setting, typed up a whole job with her too.

“An independent is offering 4 Coin for underworldly folk to do a favor at the docks. Go to dock post ### at the hour of Honor for more info."

[powerwordcrit]

Calling all scoundrels! A new crew is about to hit the streets of Duskvol in this Blades in the Dark one-shot.

Check out "Desperate Tides: Character Creation": https://linktr.ee/powerwordcrit