Rodney Thompson's DUSK CITY OUTLAWS Kickstarter Is Now Live!

Looks interesting. Can someone summarize the similarities and differences with Blades in the Dark?

Going by the info here, DCO has the group made up of people from different gangs, the way player characters in L5R are a group of characters from different clans. Blades has the player characters forming their own gang and forming alliances with other gangs. And DCO might actually come out. Not to sound jaded or anything...

Looking forward to this. Backed it first day

So I watched the "playthrough" video on youtube, and honestly . . . there was waaaaay too much "plot hooking" going on between the GM and players for me to have any idea how the system actually plays. Of course, I was sort of working at the same time as I was watching, so I probably missed the majority of the actual mechanical interactions.

At this point I'd settle for a basic comparison --- "It's kind of like Fate, except for X, Y, and Z," or "We're shooting for something Cortex-Plus-y, but with a bit better handling of A and B."

I'm with Innerdude. I watched 30 minutes of a 90 minute video of a playthrough, and while I enjoy Sam Witwer, everything else seemed so....gimmicky. They never even got to rolling dice after 30 minutes. The dice I see reminds me of the recent Fantasy Flight Games RPGs, where you have "special dice" rather than normal.

I just wanted a rules-light heist game. This is too convoluted.

innerdude said:

At this point I'd settle for a basic comparison --- "It's kind of like Fate, except for X, Y, and Z," or "We're shooting for something Cortex-Plus-y, but with a bit better handling of A and B."

Click to expand...

It's a narrative-focused game where the players come up with a plan and then drive the action to execute their plan. There's a timer (15 minutes) each time the players sit around planning to keep things moving forward, then each player describes what they do to go out into the city and put the plan in motion.

The game is a sandbox; there's no right way to do the job, only the plan the players come up with. That's why the early parts of the video was a lot of players figuring out what they wanted to do; the players need to know what they want to accomplish in order to drive the action, and then the Judge reacts by introducing complications. The Judge has a resource, called heat, that the players generate as a result of their criminal actions, and that the Judge spends to introduce complications and plot twists.

The dice system is a streamlined narrative dice system; it's inspired by games like the FFG Star Wars, but much simplified to keep the pace of the game moving forward quickly while still creating a spectrum of possible results. The players have a resource, called Influence, that they can spend to get things done using their contacts throughout the city, and lets them bend the story in some way.

Character creation is very fast. You combine your cartel (the big, colorful criminal organizations that rule the city's underworld) with a specialty (what your role is on the crew), each of which are printed on full-color cardboard sheets that you put in front of you on the table and have everything you need to run your character on them. The game is meant to be pulled off the shelf and played quickly, once everyone knows the rules, without the need for advanced prep work.

I'm shooting for a game with simple, easily comprehensible rules, that plays like a sandbox, putting a lot of the control in the hands of the players, and relies on the streamlined narrative dice system and the heat system to produce the dramatic twists and turns of the game.

If I can answer any questions about it, I'd be more than happy to do so.

I'm really interesting in this type of game, but one of the incentives for my players is character advancement. They like to get cooler.

Are character mechanics static? Are their other types of advancement hooks like contacts, resources, or renown that are mechanically supported?

Blue said:

Are character mechanics static? Are their other types of advancement hooks like contacts, resources, or renown that are mechanically supported?

Click to expand...

There is a set of campaign rules that is not included in the print-and-play, because they're still undergoing refinement. Campaign play basically revolves around recurring characters and conflicts. Every time they come up in a session (and both the Judge and the players have the ability to bring them into play), they have a greater and greater impact. It's kind of a take-off on the whole recurring character schtick from a TV show; even though individual Jobs might be self-contained end episodic, campaign storylines will run through with recurring NPCs and conflicts.

That said! The first stretch goal is an extra 40 pages in the Traveler's Guide, which will allow me to shift all of the cartel information from the rulebook into the Traveler's Guide. IF the game funds and IF the stretch goal gets unlocked, my plan is to move the 9 pages of cartel/setting info out of the rulebook and into the Traveler's Guide, and then use those 9 pages for variants and optional rules. One of those will be guidelines for creating your own custom specialty, which will be accompanied by progression/improvement rules. But right now my focus is on getting the core game to be as good at doing its thing as possible, so that's why I'm saving that for if I have space later.

I really like the dice mechanic, where advantages and disadvantages don't give a numeric bonus or penalty but instead create boons and consequences for the roll. It is all the coolness of the funky dice from FFG without having to decipher them.

BTW, I backed the project already.