Blades in Waterdeep (looking for ideas)

[Laurefindel]

So I'm running an all-rogues party. Who hasn't said "you know what would be cool, an all rogue game!" at one point in their gaming career? Except it always ends up disappointing as the game grinds to a halt when players attempts to come up with the perfect plan. Which never works by the way.

then came Blades in the Dark [edit], a RPG that aims to address all of the aforementioned problems with the heist game[/edit]

And so I'm trying to come up with a D&D/Blade hybrid. And right now you're about to reply "why don't you just play Blades in the Dark then?". Well, I do. With another group. I guess the short answer is that I still want it to be a d&d game, with urban dungeons and monsters and wizards, but borrowing from BitD's mechanics. Also my players are 14, and while I'm not the type to shelter my kids, the whole "indulge in your vice" thing of Blades in the Dark is not something I really want to explore with my son and his friends.

the first thing I did was to add a stress pool of points that can be spent for...
- grant advantage on one roll
- add 1d6 after a d20 roll
- allow a friend to automatically succeed on an ability check that you have succeeded
- call a flashback

not sure how how many points to give, so I went with proficiency bonus + WIS modifier. Player need to spend a downtime action to regenerate 1d6 stress points, no overindulging penalties.

another cool concept to port over was the "flexible equipment". Going light/moderate/heavy puts caps on weapon and armor types and number of equipment "slots". Its d&d, so players get to bring their armor and weapon of choice for free, but anything else, including extra weapons other than a dagger, requires an equipment point to produce in game.

I'm a big fan of the "fail forward" philosophy, so most failed checks that aren't 1-5 on the 20 typically translate in some form of "you succeed, but..."

In Blades in the Dark, the crew also "level-up" so I came up with basic 5-level classes for the whole party. As 1st level shadows, my party can carry thieves tools for free and are proficient with "lair" and "informants" checks. The crew thus has a characrter sheet, with the basic stats translating into different aspects (STR is thugs, wisdom is watchers etc. City watch and rival gangs will attempt attacks on the crew, chipping the lair's hp and so forth...

at this point, everything is tentative and I would welcome any suggestions and/or ideas for a d&d/blades hybrid.

'findel

 

[Paul Farquhar]

"The Heist" is quite a difficult storyline to pull off in any ruleset, because of the inherent unpredictability of players.

 

[Laurefindel]

It works surprisingly well when you can backtrack on planning and carried gear with flashbacks and abstract equipment slots. Having a mechanics that encourages teamwork (outside of combat) and can allow players to succeed, at a cost, when they would otherwise fail, also helps tremendously.

That is the whole premise of Blades in the Dark; Play now, plan later. And it works.

Still, any suggestions on how concepts of Blades can be ported in d&d would be welcome.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

A traditional heist movie will have an elaborate plan which requires the use of skills specific to each party member. Most often everything will go like clockwork until the final act when it all falls apart. I see several problems to overcome when using the 5e ruleset.


1) Who makes the plan? If and NPC (the DM) does, then player agency is reduced. If it's the players the plan will probably be simple and direct: "lets kill all the guards, grab the stuff and run".

2) Random rolls. In a heist, each specialist usually succeeds 100% of the time in their specialism. If they don't it will all fall apart.

3) Success or failure. Players usually expect to succeed. In many heist movies the interest in the plot is often how a "perfect" plan falls apart at the end.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

The greatest problem I've seen with all-rogue parties (which, yes, I've experienced) is mostly the same as when you have any party composed of only a single class: Two much niche overlap. There is a serious risk of players being marginalized, pushed aside, and/or left without something unique to themselves. To combat this, the DM really needs to work overtime to make sure that there are personalized story-arcs and challenges that need to be solved by different players. Try to encourage the players to play up character-roleplaying differences - sometimes things will work themselves out from there.

 

[Laurefindel]

I guess I didn’t express myself properly.

Running the heist works just fine. Player niche isn’t a problem either; not all « rogues » are pure rogues (there’s a ranger with no rogue levels at all).

What I’m interested in hearing from the community is, among those with experience with Blades in the Dark, how you would port key concepts to D&D. How would you play the entanglement roll in D&D. How would you progress on a project clock with an ability check, what type of feature would you give to which crew type etc.

Don’t get me wrong @Paul and @shadow, I do appreciate your comments, but these are the parts I already have figured out and that played well at the table.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I would say that if you look at a heist movie, many of the crew are not actually rogues. You have The Muscle, a barbarian would be ideal; a tech specialist, who in a fantasy world would be a wizard (someone has to deal with magical protections); and so on.

 

[Riley37]

What I’m interested in hearing from the community is, among those with experience with Blades in the Dark, how you would port key concepts to D&D. How would you play the entanglement roll in D&D. How would you progress on a project clock with an ability check, what type of feature would you give to which crew type etc.

DC 10: increment an easy project by 1
DC 15: increment a hard project by 1, or a simple project by 1
DC 20: increment a hard project by 2

Are you using standard D&D HP damage? Overnight full HP healing? Wounds? Exhaustion?
Do they have healing magic? Does everyone? That's a game-changer relative to BitD.

I would have crew type add an NPC contact, and maybe use counters for (a) reputation as dangerous and (b) reputation as reliable. I dunno about anything which adds to what each member can do on their own, though you could offer skill training on a faster basis than the standard downtime rules for adding proficiencies with tools, languages, etc.

 

[Laurefindel]

So far we’ve been playing just default D&D hp and rest, with emphasis that hp is something character spend to avoid wounds or other conditions (rather than lose from damage), but no wounds mechanics. As a party they have limited healing through the ranger’s spell slots and one of their contacts, but as I’m working a bit more on downtime actions, im thinking of making « take a long rest » one of them. Possibly even using the slow healing variant from DMG.