#doskvol

[honourablejester]

Random Blades in the Dark Question:

Can I just say, one initial impression about the Doskvol city map that makes me feel slightly itchy?

The lightning towers around the edge maintaining the lightning barrier. I’ve no idea if this is on purpose or not, but there are big dots and little dots, and I’m assuming that the big dots are the big towers described in the description of Barrowcleft: “The largest towers are over 200 feet tall and include their own internal generators to provide power to the lightning barrier that keeps the ravenous spirits of the deathlands out of the city.” So the little ones are sort of conduits, and the big ones are power sources? And it kind of makes sense, every time the lightning barrier crosses a body of water, the North Hook Channel, the Doskvol River, the little delta branch in Barrowcleft itself, at all of them, the gap is bracketed on either side by the big towers. All of this makes sense. My issue is …

There’s a huge section along the east side of the city, across the river from Nightmarket and the Gaddoc Rail Station, where there are no big towers. And it’s a section where, because of the rail station, the barrier is also pierced in two places by the electrorail lines. The book doesn’t go into detail on how either the lightning barrier or the rail lines work, so maybe this is fine, maybe the lines themselves can function as part of the power supply for the barrier, but just looking at the map for the first time …

It feels like a great big open flank to me? Like a place where the barrier is very precarious. A long stretch of barrier that is being purely conducted by smaller towers, and the nearest power generation towers are down at the split of the Dosk River and half way up Six Towers. The south side of the city also goes a bit of distance between big towers, but if you hold your fingers to the map to measure distance, the south side still has four big towers across the same distance where the east has two.

It just makes me wonder, is all. If this was on purpose. If the electrorail lines interfere in the barrier. The lower of the two big towers is right next to the southern rail line, so probably not? It doesn’t look like there’s a problem putting big towers right next to rail lines, so there doesn’t look like there should have been a problem putting another big tower north of the northern rail line to just even out the power distribution a bit more. Possibly there’s a terrain issue? I’d love to know if there’s an in-world explanation here. But it feels like a potential weak spot in the barrier to me, a place where it’s possibly more vulnerable and tenuous.

It’s also slightly baffling to me that the north shore of Whitecrown, which faces out to sea where ghosts tend not to hang out, has more defenses than the entire east side of the city, which faces directly out onto the deathlands. Or. Okay. Whitecrown is rich person central, so actually I’m not too surprised there. (And there’s also demons and leviathans out to sea). But still. Given that Nightmarket and Gaddoc are the trade links out to the rest of Akoros, you’d figure they’d want to protect that too.

Is it the electrorail? Does it necessitate a weaker barrier to run the rail through it? The two rail lines are the defining features of this section of the barrier.

Sorry. I just. I have questions?

[lichfucker]

[mickey voice] there's a hole in the world like a great black pit and the vermin of the world inhabit it and it's full of people who are full of shit and it goes by the name of doskvol

[liwaj]

recent wips

a concept art for a railjack from blades in the dark

and possibly a new design for Vincent? we'll see

+ obligatory Casper

[rosallorart]

Carus is a Whisper in Duskwall... which means he sees a lot of shit. Here he is with an amazingly designed spirit mask! Character belongs to friend @quinty-imara from a Blades in the Dark campaign I’m in!

If you like my art, take a look at some more on my blog, consider commissioning me, or check out my patreon!

[triangletoothedlockpick]

The thing I love so much about Doskvol as a setting for tension and horror is simply that it is a place that utterly denies you the opportunity to escape or move on.

Everything lingers, everything haunts you. You can run only about 10 miles before you hit a wall of lightning. Flight isn't a reliable option. To resolve a conflict you have but two options, reconciliation or violence. One is hard, requires trust, requires good faith, commitment and all the things humans struggle with the most. The other is simpler, but lethally risky, and often still doesn't resolve things either because of the way it drags in third parties, or ghosts.

Ghosts further this so much. Even if you kill those who hurt you, or those you hurt, they just come back, more dangerous than before. Now they can be anywhere, harm you in new ways you didn't think were possible.

You can't just get over it and move on. The city won't let you. Figure out how to live with it, with it still right on your doorstep, or perish (and remain ever stuck as a ghost). That's horrible, but it's also just... what it's like to be alive and experience grief. You can't run from your own head. Some part of you can't quite move on, you just have to fill your life with other experiences to make it smaller.

This is reflected in the characters I and my partner write. Sonia fled House Kellis, but she can never be rid of Roslyn, who in turn cannot let Sonia go because Sonia is still at large in the city. Cirroc escaped a cult but its members infest the upper echelons of society, escaped his family but they're the law here.

You never get to be safe. You have to live with it.

It's chilling, but it also asks important questions about how you do these things in life. Sometimes leaving isn't an option, so what then?

[a-dropdown-menu-of-smite]

Eric’s Dream.

[forlorn-plushie]

A Few Slides from my Lore Presentation for Blades in the Dark

I had a lotta fun putting this together, it's such a presentation of all time

The text appeared one at a time as I narrated for this one. This is where I started to lock in the vibe (shitpost)

The amogi flew in as I talked about the ghosts of Doskvol

This one's about leviathans and plasm, and it's just a youtube conspiracy clickbait thumbnail

[indierpgnewsletter]

Fantasy Cities Volume 1

Around a year ago, I published a series looking at city settings from various fantasy games. I looked at 7 cities including Doskvol, Spire, Eversink, The City from a|state, Into the Cess and Citadel, Infinigrad, and Endon from Magical Industrial Revolution. I’ve now taken those 7 essays and expanded and improved them, added 2 more essays on Lankhmar from DCC’s boxed set and Freeport, a Pathfinder 1e city from Green Ronin. This PDF, Fantasy Cities Vol 1, is available now on my patreon.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction

In the history of the fantasy genre, cities have an interesting place. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, which created so much of what we consider generic about fantasy, doesn't really care for cities. Which makes sense because the books themselves feel like an elegy for a time before industrialization, a love letter to the countryside - to woods and streams and the sands below your feet. The cities of Middle Earth are, at their best, noble and static, and at their worst, corrupt and fallen to the hubris of man.

The earliest thriving fantasy cities are probably in the sword and sorcery of writers like Fritz Lieber or Michael Moorcock. These stories were influenced by, among other things, the machismo of pulp magazine stories. The cities reflect this. At their best, they're a canvas for male bravado and havens for debauchery and dissolution. At their worst, they're predatory and authoritarian.

In modern fantasy, the city is ascendant. The old tropes withered under post-modernism's sarcastic glare. Now, you get Ankh-Morpork and Bas Lag and many more that capture the contradictions, potential, and romance of cities as places to spend your lives. But what about games? A city in a novel has to be interesting on the page. A city in a game has to be interesting at the table, it has to bear the weight of the imagination of 3-5 people over a shitty internet connection. That's where I started the series affectionately known (by me) as WWTAWWTAC (pronounced whatawhatac), i.e. What We Talk About When We Talk About Cities.

And here’s an excerpt from the new entry on Lankhmar:

Creating a roleplaying game supplement for an existing fantasy city is tricky. It's trickier when it's a place as famous as Lankhmar, the City of the Black Toga, the City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes. Not only are the stories well-loved, the city is an inspiration for other well-loved cities, notably Discworld's Ankh-Morpork which started out as a loving pastiche before evolving into something deeper. (Even the word "ankh" comes from Lankhmar). This means that you have to walk the line between giving fans what they want and making it a useful, usable supplement. Basically, DCC's approach is to not invent any new lore whatsoever - as far as I can see. They lay out what Leiber's originally stories say about Lankhmar and then give themselves permission to colour within the lines with small, inoffensive details. The end result isn't radical or surprising but it does seem genuinely quite good.

I’ve titled it Volume 1 because if we hit the patreon drive’s goal, I’ll do a Volume 2. Maybe I can finally tackle Waterdeep or Ptolus. Maybe I can expand to cities in novels and actually compare them to cities in games directly. Maybe I can look at cities in video games. Where does Dunwall from Dishonored end and Duskwall begin? There’s lots of things to explore!

Thanks to the 30+ folks who signed up last week, we’re currently at 94 out of 150. So if you’re doing okay and able to support, please head over to patreon and subscribe!

Link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/fantasy-cities-1-94754443

[honourablejester]

Ranking Doskvol’s Districts (Blades in the Dark)

Basically just, for my own amusement, going through the twelve districts of Duskwall in order of the least interesting to the most interesting to me personally. This is not remotely objective, this is a matter of my favourite tropes and personal interests. But. Why not? Let’s go through my least to most favourite districts.

Again, going from least interesting to most interesting:

12. Brightstone. Rich person central. Obviously Brightstone makes an excellent target district in a heist game, but it feels like it doesn’t have a lot of inherent interest in and of itself? There’s not a lot here besides, well, noble houses and luxury shops to rob. Couple of items of interest in the Skovlan war memorial (if your gang has Skovlander sympathies and wants a high profile target to deface), and then Bowmore Bridge itself, the only bridge link across to Whitecrown, a covered and inhabited bridge a-la London Bridge, and the largest bridge in the Empire. A gleaming white span representing all the wealth and power of the Empire, and the physical barrier to the ruling island of Whitecrown.

11. Charhollow. Going from one end of the wealth spectrum to the other, Charhollow is a working class residential district, and it feels just sort of wrong to operate there? It’s mostly just working people trying to stick together. I do like the street layout, all the twisting stone stairs and alleys, and there is some interest there with the brewing Skovlander revolution, but it’s not a place I’d want to run scores or draw heat down on.

10. Dunslough. Dunslough is honestly just depressing? It’s grim, between the prison and the labour camps and the ghetto and the quarry. But there are certain sorts of stories to be set here, and some of the tenser sorts of scores too. The Mire being a meteor impact site is also interesting, as is the strong presence of Deathlands scavengers.

9. Crow’s Foot. I feel a bit bad for not liking Crow’s Foot more, as its explicitly intended to be a good baseline district to operate in, and it’s clearly taking a lot of notes from The Barrel from Six of Crows, which is an excellent inspiration. I just. I’m not vibing with it? Not sure why. I do, however, really enjoy Tangletown, the floating shanty town and neutral ground built up around the hull of a sunken leviathan hunter in the river. Shades of Rivet City. Deeply approve of that.

8. Barrowcleft. On the surface, Barrowcleft isn’t really that interesting, and I’m not sure what’s pulling it higher than Dunslough or Charhollow for me, except that I just find the radiant farms really fascinating? Farming using the light of alchemically-bred glowing plants and animals. They’re the lifeblood of the city, so they’re heavily guarded, and I really just wanna steal a glowing plant. Though, granted, this is probably better done in Brightstone, as the nobles have gardens with radiant plants, and I’d feel better robbing them than the farms that feed the city. But. The image of the glowing fields is still a pull for me. Also, as smugglers are one of my favourite crew types, I feel like Barrow Bridge and the river fishermen around it, plus the proximity of the Old North Port, would make it a pretty decent base.

7. Whitecrown. Whitecrown should have all the same problems as Brightstone. It’s the centre of power, the home of the governor, it should just be another rich person central. Two things prevent this, and make Whitecrown significantly more interesting to me. One is North Hook Lighthouse, and the other is Doskvol Academy. The lighthouse is just … it’s a massive electro-plasmic navigation beacon whose light spans hundreds of miles, and I want to make a Cult crew and do something occult up there and bring the fucking leviathans down on Duskwall. I just. I really want that. And the leviathan hunter bloody training college beside it would also fit very neatly into that plot. Whitecrown Island, the Void Sea looming to the north beyond its lightning barriers, the massive beam of the North Hook Lighthouse sweeping its shores, is just such an image for me.

6. Nightmarket. Nightmarket and Silkshore are kind of neck-and-neck for me, having similar sorts of vibes. They’re the market districts, the commerce districts, with all the attendant shadiness attached. Nightmarket is richer and more … nouveau-riche respectable, attached as it is to Gaddoc rail station and the newfangled electro-rail connection out to the rest of the Empire. But. Gaddoc rail station is a fantastic draw all by its lonesome, the lure of the electro-rail itself, and then the looming deathlands out across the water. Nightmarket feels jangly and sort of cyberpunk. A great base for a Hawkers crew.

5. Silkshore. Silkshore, by contrast, is the older of the two, the red light district, with a slightly shabbier and more … dignified? Sort of vibe. It’s very Venice-meets-Montmartre, and give the proximity of Barrowcleft and the farms, it would not at all surprise me if there was a red windmill-themed brothel somewhere on Fogcrest hill. I just enjoy the canals-and-flophouses vibe it has. Again, great place for hawkers or smugglers, and I feel like canal-hauntings and interactions with the Gondoliers would be fun. (If you are noticing a theme, and that theme is boats and me preferring locations that are good for them … you are not incorrect).

4. Six Towers. A once-wealthy district gone to seed, old money turned to decay. Maybe it’s just the amount of Call of Cthulhu I’ve been watching (and my fondness for classic ghost stories), but Six Towers feels like such a good district to get in trouble trying to rob haunted houses in. The fact that the Lost District is just across the river absolutely doesn’t hurt either, and the little detail that Mistshore Park is where lovers go to commit suicide together is a nice cherry on top. If you want to get involved in the haunted end of the setting, Six Towers feels very much like the district to do it in. Also, a decaying mansion lair for your crew never went astray either.

3. Charterhall. Into my top three districts, and we’ll start with the seat of government (or at least civil service). And why, you ask, would that be in my top three? Well, aside from the fact that I actually have a fondness for paper-pusher type characters, Charterhall actually has a lot going on. Between the University as the base of the Sparkwrights, Bellweather Crematorium as one of the bases of the Spirit Wardens and the centre of death processing in the city, the Archive of Echoes as the base of the Path of Echoes, the artist colonies and the remnants of the first lightning barrier on the old walls, and the inherent heist-related draw of all the paperwork here, this is genuinely one of the most interesting districts to interact with. The little detail of the eldritch trees in Jayan Park that are alive and growing without daylight or radiant energy also doesn’t hurt at all. Heh. I wouldn’t necessarily base here, but as hunting grounds? Hell yeah.

2. Coalridge. If Six Towers is genteel urban decay, then Coalridge is rude, industrial urban decay, the original industrial heart of the city, centred around the coal mine, and it carries all the evidence of the cycle of industry. The coal mine waxed and waned in operation, the Old Rail Yard was once the industrial and cargo hub of the city until Gaddoc was built across the channel from it. Coalridge is a study in contrasts, the furious operation of the factories and the ship works vs the dwindling mine operations and the abandoned tracks and rusted rail cars of the greatly reduced operations in the old yard. Coalridge is a district of industrial horror and union agitators and hard men and women, the secrets of ship construction, the secrets of the old mines and the origins of Duskwall itself, as well as the lure of raised tracks and abandoned rail cars. I love it. Would totally base bravos or assassins here, or shadows. It’s less overtly haunted than other districts, but the mine is right there. And the tracks. Plenty of room for ghosts, or older, more eldritch things.

1. The Docks. Is anyone surprised? Probably not, especially given my kneejerk first instincts for character and crew creation. Honestly, though, the docks are almost always one of my favourite areas of any fictional city, and Duskwall doesn’t hurt itself in this department at all, what with the looming spectres of the massive leviathan hunter ships out in the channel, the raised streets teetering out over the underground docks and canals, the smugglers and sailors and tattoo artists and journalists knocking around. I absolutely adore the decision to put the printers lane, the home of the press, in the Docks, because it’s tattoo central and they both need ink. Spectacular. The Docks, as a district, just really feels like something out of a noir film? All newshawks and smugglers and fog and chiaroscuro. Also, a bit like something out of Sunless Sea, given Duskwall’s everything, the Void Sea, the leviathans, demon blood, and it’s all centred here. Where the sea and the city interact. No other district was going to be my favourite. It had to be here. Heh.

This is a great city, you know? I do enjoy a good haunted noir city by the sea.

[dungeonofthedragon]

Favourite Fanmade Blades Playbooks

There is so much cool Blades in the Dark content out there. Here are three of my fave fanmade playbooks!

I have taken a feature from The Drowner playbook for my Leech who has a powerful connection to leviathans. It's a spooky and evocative playbook that feels perfectly at home in Doskvol.

Want to play a master of weird lil critters? Always! Swarmkeeper is one of my favourite Ranger subclasses in D&D 5E. It comes as no surprise then that I also really love The Swarm, a BitD playbook all about controlling little critters.

We have an orphan child in our Shadows crew. Between the severed digits, demonic encounters, and the crew being locked in Lord Scurlock's basement, he's had a rough time of it. Play an Urchin crew and you ruin the life of not just one kid, but a whole bunch of them!

[gurguliare]

It's Arc 3 of our Blades game and @catchaspark's Aphra Chesky recently became a god! Well...... recently found out she was a god. The other one depends on your definition of "recently."

Good thing she has a friend around to give her the low-down-- or in this case, the high-up, courtesy of long-term frenemy Leo "Royal" Tomanek, once a cracksman, addict, and repeat offender; now the two-faced lord of many ways.

They've gone for a spin above Doskvol so he can explain the pros and cons of immortality. What are they sitting on? Not important.

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Blades In The Dark gets a lot of attention for being tough and gritty, with a constant struggle to balance your resources and keep your character physically, mentally, and financially stable. But that doesn’t mean it can’t have some light-hearted filler episodes!

Use your downtime to recreate your favorite relaxing or character-developing tropes! Maybe you take your crew to indulge your respective vices on the sandy beaches near the edge of the lightning barrier. Play volleyball and eat caramel termite ice cream beside the abyssal darkness of the ocean! Or how about encouraging an argument about which goat-polo team is the best? Get the Hound and the Spider sabotaging each other’s teams…

One last idea: work with each player to give them an opportunity for a fun backstory or growth moment, and then include an NPC villain or ally as they all go about healing or acquiring assets. You could call it “Tales of Doskvol”!

[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

[stupidstupidratcreatures]

they should make a term for when a ttrpg author's game writing is really sharp but everything they've written about that game outside that game writing is just really dumb and bad. anyway if you wanna add some juice to your blades in the dark downtimes doskvol breathes is free on itch and really good

[a-dropdown-menu-of-smite]

Gabe and Astrid, also from our campaign of Blades in the Dark.

[thebazilly]

Gonna shout into the void about my Blades in the Dark game some more. We are gearing up for the last session in this story arc and a bunch of cool shit has happened.

Session before last, the Whisper overindulged his Vice of "obsession with the occult" and went missing. He was also working on a ritual that would let him enter the ghost field, so there's really only one conclusion on where he went.

The other two PC's, a Slide and Leech, decided they wanted to go after their companion and rescue him. No man left behind! You love to see it. Having no magical powers themselves, they ask their ally Lord Scurlock for help.

Hilariously, I had a clock running for Lord Scurlock just so happening to be making a homonculus copy of the Slide, using the blood presented to him as a gift. This opportunity was too good to pass up and I offered the Slide's clone to the Whisper player as a temporary PC for last session. Everyone *loved* this. Turned out so funny and great. The Whisper's player did a fantastic job impersonating the Slide and they played off each other so well.

Scurlock sets two conditions for his assistance. First, bringing the clone with them. Second, find the means to kill a Sea Demon. Scurlock has been working on his project, he is going to free all the sea demons in the harbor as a means to lure Setarra into the open, and he needs to make sure the party can kill her.

The group has a spooky time in the ghost field, stalked by an entity known only as "the psychopomp," meeting ghosts, monsters, and, worst of all, metaphorical representations of the city. Until eventually they find their lost companion, staring out at the crystal clear sea that's normally dark, where a horde of hundreds of demons is visible.

(Then the players rolled a 6 on getting back to the portal, dammit!)

Once they returned, Lord Scurlock dumped his whole backstory, thinking it is too late for the party to stop him. He is the son of the Immortal Emperor, the person that the Emperor broke death itself to save, and he *hates* it. Scurlock has been living a cursed existence tied to Setarra for centuries while the world suffers and withers. He never asked to be brought back. He wants to be free. Anything else is your problem. The demons will destroy Doskvol, but the world is already destroyed.

However, Setarra made a counter-offer. Side with her and imprison Scurlock, and she will make the party rulers of the city. Nevermind that it will be a demon-haunted hellscape where she can harvest souls like fish in a barrel. You wanted power, right? You've done terrible things already for it. What’s looking away one more time?

Of course, there's always a third option... Maybe the players can stop the ritual. The world has been doomed long ago by people vastly more powerful than they. Do they think it's worth saving? Only time will tell. So excited to play again!