I have a new player who made a Rookie for Band of Blades, were confused as to how resistance rolls are calculated on roll20.
He has 1 dot in prowess, yet it adds two dice everytime, and he took an ability to give additional die when rolling resistance.
Is roll20 bugged or is this right?
Thanks in advance.
In the crew text thread it sounds like they want to attack Strangford next session, as their hideout is in charhollow. How would you handle this?
(Our first Band of Blades game, but we're seasoned on RPGs)
We're going to play our first game on wednesday. I have read the book, and I am trying to prepare a lot. My players know almost nothing.
I have been doing some solo testing and my main concern is that I find this game extremely hard. It's very easy to end having no Quartermaster actions (low moral, and no supplies). The campaign can keep dragging, but it will be an agony.
So, the reasons I have found the moral is burnt so fast.
Is it something I'm missing? I know the game must be hard, but if I want players to keep playing until a few missions it must not feel pointless.
I’m running my second score next week and I’m trying to come up with some obstacles in our tier 0 assassins crew’s upcoming heist.
The score? Assassinate Mylera klev’s (red sashes) lieutenant. He spends most nights gambling at the silver stags casino. Do I tell them that up front, or as a “gather information”?
What are some good obstacles I can have in my back pocket for the score?
Hey all, so my group and I have done three scores now and I’m struggling to incorporate a grander narrative and backstories and magic items into this system. My crew gravitates towards the next goal on the crew sheet “turf”, “loyal fence”, etc and the session ends up being a couple different options for each score then they choose and we do that. Feels more like a oneshot machine than a cohesive narrative and my players are starting to lose interest. I would love to see if there is a way to redirect it back to a larger narrative to get the most out of the system before we drop it for something else.
What have you guys done to connect your scores and make them feel equally impactful on the fiction rather then mechanically?
Welcome to Duskvol! A moderately-steampunk Victorian city shrouded in perpetual twilight, barricaded by electric walls to stop ghostly horrors from entering...and force the roiling bucket-of-crabs that is the impoverished criminal underbelly to face the consequences of their decisions. You are a would-be gang buried in the bottom of the heap, and the only way to climb is to step on the people you pull down to your level.
Looking for interested players who want to play maybe not the nicest people on the block, willing to stab and steal their way to the finer things in life! Newbies encouraged, especially if you're somewhat familiar with the game but have been looking for a chance to play. I got my start in ttRPGs with D&D 3.5e, and then 5e, and have bounced around a few other systems, and I keep coming back to BitD. It blends mechanics and narrative, where everything that happens is based on fidelity to the fiction and treating the world like a living, breathing place, but with the mechanical scaffolding to support the narrative developments.
A big part of this game is taking initiative to put things into the world (sometimes retroactively), figure out factions and relationships between rival groups as we play, and make up the storyline as we go. So to that end I encourage proactive and collaborative players who are interested in having conversations about the flow of the game.
I work M-F 8-5 CST, so game time is going to be either Friday evenings or some time on the weekends. We will use Discord for speech/organization, and Foundry for sheets and the rarer visual element.
If this sounds like something you want to be a part of, please reach out by filling out this survey and giving me a sense of who you are as a person and player! I will try to respond to comments on this post, but please do not send me messages via Reddit because I never seem to receive them.
I look forward to hearing from you!
I was wondering if there's any exact confirmation on who exactly sits on the City Council. On the City Council faction page it lists the names of the member houses but not who represents which house.
Im trying to build a full relationship map but I am only able to confirm 100% a few members. Some are seemingly implied but I can't confirm. I know the following are city council members:
The following houses I have no confirmation on members of.
there are two known characters that may fit but none are confirmed members. One has even less reason to be a council member because he isn't listed as a city council member while others are (Lord Penderyn). Lady Penderyn would be more likely as she is on a faction that lists the city council as an ally but that's not confirmation in any way. There could be an Penderyn not described in the books not described.
Our options from the books are:
Needless to say we have a whole ton of options. Only one is vaguely directly connected to the council but he is listed on the same threat rating as other city council members in deep cuts.
Our options from the books are
But none of these 3 houses have confirmation of who is their city council representative like the others.
Is there anything from John Harper on who the city council members are?
Roderick Dunvil is the council seat for the Dunvil house ignore the guy saying no there aren't more.
Since a new group of players is interested in a setting that lends itself more to fantasy, intrigue among nobles, and a world of satin and duels, I recently purchased Court of Blades.
I have always been a big fan of trying to connect my different worlds and player groups. It is one of the things that makes it more fun to me as a GM - and the reveals when players understand one of the connecting threads are incredibly satisfying.
I am currently reading through to lore of Court of Blades and trying to see if I can fit it into the original Blades in the Dark setting. Since Ilrien gives me strong Italian Trade Republic vibes I immediatly thought about placing it in southern Akoros, possibly having Ilrien be an old/local/informal name for the city of South Point or have it as a new city on the peninsula/little islands east of Ilysia.
Most of the described cultures/heritages seem easily mapable to what's established in original Blades:
Maur, desert kingdoms across the ocean to the south = Iruvia. (Probably also where House Al-Mari "mercenaries from across the seas" is originally from.)
Iberican, unestablished nomads and wanderers = Severos, or maybe an original wandering people of Akoros.
Clarais, wild country of grasslands, mountains and forests. Localized government and resisting foreing invasion = Skovlan.
More difficult:
The Jewel Cities, three strange, ancient and arcane islands, now sunk beneath the waves. Rich in advanced technology, with magic everyday part of life = reads more like Atlantis than anything from Blades. Possibly a sunken part of the Dagger Isles? Or once situated near Tycheros, with Tycheros being the only of the four who prevailed?
Altori, a distant kingdom, romantic, poetic and rich in beauty = no clear match. Maybe another part of Akoros, which alludes to romanticized ideas of medieval Europe? Maybe an area around Wintercliff?
The biggest issues I have is in regards to the dread empire and Ilrien's history. The present day is given as the year 794, with year 0 being the founding of Ilrien.
The Dread Emperor is described as arriving in the year 125 in an attempt to conquer the whole continent. He commands legions and Warweavers, sorcerer-generals, who use powerful ritual magic unparalleld in power today today.
In 313 the city rebels and frees itself from the empire. The current system of government, based on rivaling houses, is established.
The dread empire gets completely defeated by "the deathless" in 430.
Ilrien finances the containment of the deathless, the last of which is sealed in 477 in the necropolitan hill in the city.
Successor Wars on the mainland are waged and Ilrien rises to power until 651.
Present day is 794.
I am unsure if there is a good way to connect this to official Blades history. The Deathless obviously match the ghosts and spirits from blades quite well. The setting further implies a special way of handling the dead, with The Death Watchers faction specifically described as continuing to search for ways to keep dead who is dead. This seems easy enough to expand on since Blades and Deep Cuts hint towards other ways than electroplasm to contain rising spirits (most notably: Protective magic used by the Immortal Emperor himself).
More difficult is the Dread Empire and Dread Emperor. It can't be the same person as the Immortal Emperor, as the latter is still around and ruling. So it has to be some kind of older empire that came before. The Successor Wars are difficult as well. It isn't really cear when the Immortal Emperor started ruling, although he must have been incredibly powerful already at the point of the cataclysm. It probably makes sense to assume that it took him some time to establish himself as the emperor of Akoros, since he had to fight ghosts and figure out the protective magic. Some more regular wars could fit here as well.
My final idea: The Dread Emperor arrives in Pre Cataclysm time. At some point before 430 in CoBs timeline the cataclysm happens. At this point the immortal emperor becomes a player, fighting against the deathless/undead until 477 CoB. He may even have thought against the Dread Emperor himself and dethroned him. The Immortal Emperor then conquers the rest of Akoros, winning the Sucessors Wars, until 651 CoBs. Ilrien's status could then be similar to a free imperial city of the HRE - widely self-governing but direct subject to the Immortal Emperor.
The actual present year in Blades timeline would then be 364 or later. One could argue that the cataclysm led to the establishment of the Esultare or made the rebellion of Ilrien possible in the first place, which would put our current year to 474 or 481 in terms of Blades.
Thanks for reading through my figments of imagination. What do you think?
I'm looking for an online group to join for a few sessions just to get a sense of how other people/groups play and run this game.
is there a site to check out, a discord channel, or even people here wanting to stick a group together?
I was with a local in person group and we played it for several months, took turns GMing, but I never quite felt like we were getting the BitD experience. I think a few of the players were really just wanting to play haunted steampunk 5e, and so thats what they tried to force it to be. (the phrase, I dont want to metagame with my flashbacks was said more than once).
anyway, looking for a different experience as a player, so that I can try running this game in the future again with a new perspective.
if anyone can point me in the right direction, id appreciate it. thanks.
I have have been player and GM for several campaigns in Blades and other FitD systems. I don't recall ever having a player declare enough items that load becomes an issue.
We will say our loads before we go in, and we have declared light or heavy as thematically appropriate, but in practice, no one actually ends up using their Loadout much--might as well have gone in Light just to say we can be inconspicuous.
What's your experience with this?
it looks like the first is way more detailed.
just curious if people have opinions on either!
My Piecing Together the Shattered Isles series has been a lovely excuse to collect scattered bits of Blades lore, and this third installment is about properly laying out all of the tangential Factions and plot hooks surrounding the default Starting Situation.
Sure, we all know that a coup within the Crows has left them too weak to stop the Lampblacks and the Red Sashes from fighting over street turf... but what about how it intersects with labor tensions at the Docks, the intensifying Iruvian cold war, and the highest-Tier criminal Faction in the city? Read on to learn more!
Hello everybody, I am Benji, the creator of Dusk Companion, one of the most used Blades in the Dark discord bots.
As some of you have already noticed, the bot is no longer able to join new Servers. This is due to discords security policy, which requires me to verify the bot in order to break this limit. This is obviously unfortunate for those that wish to use the bot on their own servers, but have not invited it yet.
- So why don't you just verify it?: In order for verification to happen, I need to send discord my ID, which I already did once in the past when I first verified it years ago. However I was informed that I am required to verify my identity again.
I have decided that I am no longer comfortable sharing this data with discord. They should not need my ID for anything and until this limit is removed I unfortunately can't restore the invite functionality to Dusk Companion
- What does that mean for the bot?: The bot will keep working. For those that added the bot, the bot will stay on your server and will continue working as it did previously. However it cannot be added to new servers. This is obviously disappointing to the users and honestly to me as well, but I have decided to put my own safety first.
- So you are abandoning the bot?: No, I just do not wish for discord to have my ID. The bot will stay online as long as I can keep it running
- Is there anything I can do to get the bot on my server?: It is impossible to add Dusk Companion to more servers, however, that does not mean that you cannot create your own Dusk Companion. All of the bot's code is open source and you can run your own Dusk Companion by following the instructions here https://github.com/benjo121ben/Discord-Bot-DnD-BitD#how-to-install
This will be your own bot, for your own personal use. It has exactly the same functionalities as the official Dusk Companion.
I am sad that the bot will not be as accessible as it was previously and it is disappointing that discord is forcing this arbitrary restriction on me in order to pressure me into giving them my data.
Hopefully many of you are happy to host your own bot, but either way, I apologize for the inconvenience and I am sorry that I had to make this decision.
Stay safe on the internet everybody :/
Some games derived by FitD, such as Wildsea and Grimwild are using a similar frame of d6 pool & tiered results. However, they add Cuts (for difficulty, precision, and impact) and Thorns (for difficulty, and conditions) respectively, which can decrease the result (in different ways). I wish to add also Freeform Universal 2e/Action Tales/Neon City Overdrive, that has a very similar narrative scope & d6 pool to FitD (indeed, there is a Universal in the Dark hack combining the games). There, Danger dice cuts the dice rolling. Importantly, all those games uses a simplified/less codified Position & Effect.
I think P & E are a great idea, so it feels better that the dice pool does not get affected by difficulty, which can be found strange in PbtA (they even dropped the -1d from harm in Blades '68).
However, how do you personally feel about Cuts, Thorns, and Danger dice from those other systems?
I am FitDing The One Ring 2e for my own solo campaign, where I like to be more generous with the dice pool creation (you know when you hit 3 action rating + push yourself/aid is almost auto success) but also often using negative tags (from disadvantages & conditions). Well, being solo I can do what I want, right, but I'm still interested in the community opinion.
Have fun!
In our first score, My party assassinated the red sashes iruvian consulate contact, and stole his briefcase.
What are some fun ideas for what’s inside?
Hi scoundrels! I made some tools for my games that I wanted to share with all of you. I hope they are helpful to your table! I posted them on my itch.io but they are free.
https://kcyrpg.itch.io/blades-in-the-dark-factions-by-location
https://kcyrpg.itch.io/blades-in-the-dark-clock-counters
https://kcyrpg.itch.io/blades-in-the-dark-playbooks-reformatted
https://kcyrpg.itch.io/blades-in-the-dark-map-of-doskvol-with-names-and-color
https://app.alchemyrpg.com/marketplace
get it now! FreeVTTDay only today!
and much more, like Degenisis and music and czepeku scenes.
Blades is beautifully implemented in Alchemy, give it a try!
Two weeks ago, I've finally picked the Ritual special ability. I didn't really want to, but the story of the campaign now involves a powerful supernatural creature messing with us, and it was either Ritual or Strange Methods to begin working on a way to defend against it. I have no Tinker, so the choice was really made for me. I'm now doing clocks to research this defensive ritual.
But this still leaves me with one ritual I get just for picking this ability. I've been agonizing with trying to come up with one for quite some time, and I just can't. I'm too DnD-brained for this system.
We're a vigilante crew, most of our scores are about entering a hostile turf and either killing everyone there, or just beating them up. Despite being a whisper, I'm living my best lurk life by sneaking around and choking people out. Sometimes I like to throw a spirit bottle with a ghost into a room like a flashbang grenade. NPCs don't have resistance rolls, so they freeze up nicely.
I've joined this game to larp as Corvo, and I've been thinking about a ritual that stops time, but what would it really achieve? What can it do, that a good Prowl roll or Ghost Veil can't? It's only one ritual I get, so I've gotta make it count. We're already great at doing scores, I don't need any more help in that regard. I want to be able to do something special. I want to solve problems we can't normally solve with the muggle means.
And I guess our main problems are these:
So I guess I want either some sort of a social ritual that somehow improves our standing, or some kind of a detective ability that allows me to point at Lord Scurlock and say "It's him, he's the hidden benefactor behind the Crows".
But what would such rituals look like? What would they actually do?
Any one else use easy healing?
I find the standard healing rules a bit much and tend to sub in "easy healing"
Rather than a clock characters reduced 1 harm a level by spending a down time.
Going to be running 68 in a few weeks and am wondering if I should go Raw or easy ,
What do you lot think?
Coming from only running DnD before now, I’m pretty chuffed over how much fun the group had. It was a little clunky learning the rules as we went but I think it’ll smooth out in a couple weeks.
Our Assassins took the score to kill the red sashes connect at the iruvian consulate. Whisper summoned ghosts to distract the guards and accidentally summoned several ghosts, while the slide slid in, talking her way to a hidden window to let the lurk and Leech in, found the target playing billiards with his bodyguard. A tussle ensues and the assassins narrowly make it out in one piece.
We had a blast but I think I need to work on creative consequences. There’s five players, so I’m being a bit rough with them, but one player took three wounds and 6 stress, and another was traumatized. Is that a bit much on a first score? With how unforgiving healing and stress are it seems like I overcorrected in the difficulty department.
