Setting the Stage Episode 8 – Atti and Blades in the Dark

Published by

Isaac

January 18, 2023

I talked with Atti about the Blades in the Dark system and setting produced by Evil Hat Productions. Blades is set in a gothic, steampunk ci ty centuries after an apocalypse closes the gates to the afterlife. Without a way to their eternal rest, ghosts wander a world where the sun and stars are gone from the sky. Blades has simple, narrative-focused mechanics for resolving action. The system is similar to Powered by the Apocalypse games, but with a new name, Forged in the Dark. It’s spawned many offshoots that tweak the rules to fit a number of different settings and play ideas from westerns to teenage school dramas.

If you’re interested in Blades in the Dark, the basic rules are available for free on the Blades in the Dark website.
Also the system has excellent integration into Roll20 and is easy to pick up and play online.

Here is a map of Blades in the Dark’s established setting world, the Shattered Isles.

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2 responses to “Setting the Stage Episode 8 – Atti and Blades in the Dark”

talaraska

January 20, 2023

I’ve been meaning to check this out. Would you say that Blades in the Dark could support a full campaign or would it be better suited for something limited to an adventure or two?

Reply
1. Isaac
  
  January 20, 2023
  
  We didn’t get into it during the podcast, but Blades definitely works for both. It varies between each person, but I really enjoy how the heists play out. There’s also a deep downtime system for what your characters do between heists.
  
  Each character is allowed one free downtime action between heists. Typically you’ll spend that action relieving stress by indulging in your character’s vice to recovery stress. Additional actions can be purchased with Coin. Coin is an abstract representation of wealth and currency that you get from completing heists. One Coin gets you one downtime action. Other actions include training to improve your character’s skills, inventing new items to use, upgrading old items, and managing your character and your crew’s relationships with other people and groups in the city.
  
  The basic goal for each character is to reach 40 Coin as that allows them to comfortably retire. You have to balance how much Coin you spend on downtime actions versus how much you save.
  
  And all these downtime actions are changed up a bit if you use a different Forged in the Dark system.
  
  Reply

I’m Isaac

Welcome to the GoCorral website! I’m Isaac Shaker and this is a place for me to write about D&D and occasionally other topics. I host a podcast called Setting the Stage that interviews different DMs about their campaigns. I’m currently focused on completing the Cimmeria campaign setting and turning it into a book.

Setting the Stage Podcast

89 – Bunnies vs. the Borg D&D (Avery and Traumwald) – Setting the Stage, Campaigns for D&D and Other RPGs

Avery presents her world of Traumwald which means Dream Forest. Traumwald was a peaceful, magical world inhabited by anthropomorphic animals of all kinds. Their peace was shattered by the attack of the Ichal, a biomechanical hive mind species similar to the Borg. The Ichal are led by the dark god Ulvakros who seeks to absorb all life into himself. The Ichal have spread across different dimensions and now they have come to Traumwald as the next stop on their mission of multiversal conquest.Traumwald has a D&D 5.0e supplement that Avery made. It's a setting and a campaign in one book. Species generation rules allow you to create any sort of animal species for your PC. There are lots of new subclasses to play and a new base class, the Ascetic. The campaign is adaptable with a dynamic faction system for tracking the events as they unfold at your table. Each campaign run in Traumwald is guaranteed to be different as the factions fluctuate and change to player actions. You can lift the faction system for your personal campaign as well!You can find Traumwald on Avery's itch.io page.Check out the Setting the Stage website!Want to be on the show? Fill out this survey.Join our Discord!Support Setting the Stage on Patreon! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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