Dungeon World Meets Blades in the Dark

[Ovinomancer]

STRUCTURE

I'm envisioning Blades Structure but reskinned in a Torchbearer type way but with Dungeon World moves. Further, at the outset of play, you do just like Dungeon World. You make a map and you leave blanks. That map will have The Town which is the "home base of operations" for the Company at the beginning of the game. This might stay the home base throughout the game or the PCs might change their home base of operations (there will be incentive to stay there and incentive to move on). Creation of the Town will include layout/Wards and Factions (7-10 at the outset which includes infrastructure/government, essential trade guilds, rival Companies - which can include classic Thieves Guilds, Warlock Cabals, et al).

Beyond The Town, the only other thing that goes on the map at the initial session are the immediate topographical features directly outside of the town (perhaps its surrounded by Bleakwood Forest). The rest of the fleshing out of the map will happen through play (more on that below):

So here are my initial thoughts.

Town Phase

This is the analog for Blades' Free Play/Information Gathering phase. Here, the following happens:

* Companies look for Adventures (the Score analog) just like a Blades' Crew looks for Scores. This process will start filling out the map.

* If between Adventures, Company PCs get 2 * Downtime Activities (just like Blades except not a discrete phase).

* If an Adventure takes place in Town, the Entanglement that is rolled after the Adventure phase will be Town-related.

* Post-Adventure Payoff will take place here (all relevant accounting procedures).

Journey Phase

* If the Adventure takes place outside of Town, a Perilous Journey is required to get there.

* The rules for Perilous Wilds will be used here. For each day of Journey, there will be a Scout > then Navigate > then Make Camp (in which a Manage Provisions and Take Watch move will be made). This sequence of moves will determine (a) if there are an Dangers or Discoveries that have to be dealt with along the way, (b) the resolution of any Dangers/Discoveries, (c) the attrition of resources for the coming Adventure. This phase will also further flesh out the map.

* Most Adventures will be 1 day from Town, but some might be 2, or even 3. Each day requires a sequence of Journey moves to be made, which means that Loadout for each character (which I'll work on later) will have progressive devotion to Journey supplies the further out the Adventure is from the Town. However, Payoff will scale appropriately. The further the Adventure from town, the more Danger, the bigger Payoff.

Make Camp Phase

* This will be a mini version of the Town Phase, but in the wild. When in the wild (whether its a Journey or at an Adventure site), your Make Camp Phase will feature (i) 1 * Downtime Activity and (ii) a Take Watch move.

* Take Watch will determine if any Dangers or Discoveries take place during the Make Camp phase.

* Making Camp is not free. It will be resource-intensive, Danger-intensive, Loadout allocation-intensive. As such, it will be naturally restricted and an outgrowth of decision-points (do I want to Loadout more/pay a Porter in order to enable Make Camp?...do I want to spend the Coin...do I want risk the Danger?). For instance, if you have 4 characters going out into the wild, you'll have (at least) 4 Loadout Boxes that have to tick for Make Camp. If you want to be able to Make Camp * 3 (2 * Journey and 1 * Adventure), then you'll have brought 3 * Make Camp boxes to tick. Again, Load-out intensive and resource-intensive (it costs to secure those boxes to tick). Without those boxes to tick, you can't take advantage of 1 * Downtime Activity (which will be all of the things one would imagine from Recover to Prepare Spells/Commune to Salvage to Fortify etc).

Adventure Phase

* This will either be in town or in the wild.

* It will be handled just like Blades' Scores. Each PC will have a Loadout, selected Hirelings/Cohorts will be present (eg Porter/Donkey, Minstrel, Man-at-arms, Guide, et al), and an Engagement Roll will be made to cut right to the action/first obstacle (whether you're in the wild or in town).

* Once the Adventure is completed (successfully or not), there will be Entanglements rolled for. If you're in the wild, Entanglements will be related to your return journey home. If you're already in town, entanglements will be town/faction related.

---

Loop back to Town phase.

Thoughts? Questions?

Okay, I'm thinking on this, and I don't get it. I mean, I get it, it's pretty clearly cribbed straight from DW, but what I don't get is when it suddens says that the score will be like a Blades score. That's where I'm lost -- this is a pretty hard transition. We have a Perilous Journey, where things seem like they'll be at risk, and this happens before the score, but how do you map in the engagement roll for the score? This seems like it doesn't really click together, or I'm not seeing how it clicks together. I think we need to back up a tad and start with "what will the PCs be doing in this game?" If they will be plundering dungeons, the play loop needs to focus on this. If it's more, then we need to establish those broad boundaries of what, in general will be done. Then we can look to these kinds of mechanics to see if they fit what we're doing. As it is, I see a mechanic to handle travelling the wilds to a distant destination where some adventure will take place. That's dandy, but what's the adventure like?

I also think some thought needs to be put into how the perilous journey maps to the Actions set up above, and how Blades lets players decide which skill they use to approach a problem. The journey mechanic seems locked into a different set of checks from the Actions, and that's a tad jarring. If that's how it works, cool, but then I think it needs some other integration into the play loop, like having the Journey BE the engagement roll mechanic, to see how well the adventure is going when we join it, and establish that it's because of bad things on the trail. I'm not quite sure how that looks, but I'm also pretty sure it doesn't look quite like what you've laid out above.

I think some higher level consideration of what the focus of this game will be is needed to map the play loops onto that, rather than starting with the nifty ideas for mechanics and then figuring out how it maps. I'm starting to see a game where the players are dealing with a BBEG in each game, and adventure to seek the needed equipment, locations, intelligence, and skills to defeat it. But, then, I don't see how a faction setup like Blades works with this, but rather see things like Fronts being the primary way that PCs discover the big evil and also define it. I'm rather taken with the idea that removing the equivalent of Wanted means advancing the big bad in a concrete way, but this isn't my game.

 

[Manbearcat]

Alright. @Ovinomancer and @hawkeyefan .

You've both got many questions and I feel like its going to be less productive to answer them individually (we can do that later) for now. I think it would be more productive to lay out exactly what inspired my thought for this prospective game and unpack that with more depth. The opening sentence under the STRUCTURE heading is below. This is what I'm going to unpack:

I'm envisioning Blades Structure but reskinned in a Torchbearer type way but with Dungeon World moves.

I bolded Torchbearer there because I haven't talked enough about this. This is the inciting thought that triggered this project:

"How would I best PbtA/FitD Torchbearer (its depth of decision-points and the consequential, Sword of Damocles nature of a play loop that gets away from you) but with more of a Dungeon World type of protagonism rather than the oppressive and brutal lives of adventurers in Torchbearer?"

So let me talk about what is necessary to extract from Torchbearer to hew to this idea:

STRUCTURE (LOOP)

* Town phase > Pending distance from town = TBD "Journey" phase (just Pathfinder Test or Conflict that is basically a mini-adventure Adventure phase?) > Adventure phase > Camp phase > Pending distance from town = TBD "Journey" phase (just Pathfinder Test or Conflict that is basically a mini-adventure Adventure phase?) > Town phase.

* There is also a Winter phase but I'm not including that.

What does this look like? It looks like Blades (if you take out the "Journey" phase). So what I did in the structural implementation is (a) map the necessary parts of Torchbearer onto this prospective game using (b) FitD Structure + (c) Dungeon World Journey mechanics.

1) I know the Torchbearer structure works.

2) I know the Blades structure works.

3) The two are entirely compatible, if not symmetrical, so just map job/reskin.

4) I know Dungeon World Journey mechanics works.

5) Integrating (3) and (4) is trivial (because, again, you're basically just subbing in DW Journey mechanics for TB's Pathfinder Test or Conflict).

TOWN EVENTS

* Torchbearer post-Adventure Town Events can be looked at like (a) Blades' Faction or Fortune Clocks ticking to full and going off at Downtime or (b) Blades' post-Score Entanglements (with the gamestate and mechanical fallout).

* Again, the level of compatibility or symmetry is there so its a trivial map job/reskin.

ILLUMINATE (ORIGINALLY LORE) AND CONSORT (ORIGINALLY RAPPORT) VS WISES AND CIRCLES

* So Torchbearer, being a Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard game, uses Wises and Circles. I'm fairly confident you guys are both very familiar with these mechanics (from our conversations if not firsthand yourselves), but I'll elaborate if not and/or for any readers:

1) Wises are dredging up obscure facts to help your situation.

2) Circles are dredging up relationships with NPCs to help your situation.

Those should look familiar because they map pretty much directly to Illuminate//Consort as I'm envisioning them and as Dungeon World uses them (as Burning Wheel was a primary inspiritation for the game); Spout Lore is the Wises Analogue and Carouse + tons of Playbook-specific moves are the Circles analogue.

If I'm going to hack this sort of game, those are necessary to have.

WHY USE FITD AS THE ENGINE FOR THIS?

* Simply put, I know it works as an engine...and I know it maps to this specific content I'm working toward. Functionality + Utility + Fun.

* The Faction/Company game provides:

- A certain type of player-facing hierarchical form to the setting that is missing from Torchbearer (Torchbearer has hierarchical structure but (a) its not player-facing and (b) its not a minigame - more on this below).

- The prospective hierarchical form to the setting that this gives allows for (a) greater diversity of obstacles (Fronts in DW) than Torchbearers and (b) Adventures to take place in the city that basically map entirely to Blades Scores.

- The hierarchical form it gives to the setting broadly and DW Fronts works beautifully in terms of mechanical interactions. If I need to (a) set Position/Effect with Tier-inequivalent parties (evaluating the level of threat/danger for Position and then assessing factors for Effect) or (b) come up with a Fortune Dice Pool or Opposing Faction Mission Clocks and resolve that stuff...its trivially done! Just use the Blades rules!

- The hierarchy game is fun! And it maps beautifully to 4e's aesthetic of play (which, again, I know works). Growing your Company and making decision-points within that mini-game and expanding your profile/exposure (Folktale) in order to martial further resources to take on bigger threats is fun! This already happens in Dungeon World, Torchbearer, et al! The Blades mechanics just gives it form and well-oiled machinery to make it happen!

DUNGEON WORLD (PERILOUS WILDS REALLY) JOURNEY MECHANICS MEETS BLADES ACTION RESOLUTION

* Who is Scouting? Who is Navigating? Who is Making Camp and Managing Provisions?

* Great * 3. Risky/Standard across the board for day 1 of this Journey.

* Scout, here are the conditions of the journey (describes the scene and including topographical features with likely a decision-point on where they're scouting from and some potential threat info). How are you Scouting? <Describes and picks Action Roll> Ok. Success with Complications. You take point and do your thing. Choose 1 of these; Did you find a Discovery...did you find a beneficial aspect of the terrain...if the Navigator gets you guys into a Danger you can ensure that it doesn't get the drop on the Company.

* Move to Navigator > rinse repeat > resolve any Danger/Discovery.

* Move to Make Camp/Manager Provisions > rinse repeat.

* Do Camp phase > Downtime Activity * 1 > Take Watch + Fortune Roll for Danger > resolve.

* Make Engagement Roll if at Adventure Site or move to Day 2 if multi-day Journey phase.

* Just like in Torchbearer, Adventures further from the Town are higher threat (Tier in this case) and the danger/resource drain is more significant (because Journey goes from being elided to just a single Test to an actual Conflict).

ENGAGEMENT ROLLS AFTER A JOURNEY? WHAT?

- I'm not feeling the weight of the concern here. When you make an Engagement Roll, we're already adding +1 d for Major Advantage or subtracting -1 d for a Major Disadvantage. This trivially mapped to the outcome of the Journey phase:

- Did the journey go as expected (Danger didn't snowball out of the ordinary, resources weren't disproportionately burned through, exposure wasn't above normal)? Swell enough, no take +1 or -1.

- Did the journey go particularly badly (Danger snowballed above normal, resources were burned through disproportionately, the exposure was above normal)? Crap! Take -1 to Engagement Roll which increases the chance of bad Positioning when I frame the opening scene of the Adventure phase (maybe the bad guys had a scout and saw the Company on the move...maybe the Company is particularly road-weary or demoralized).

- Did the journey go particularly well (Danger was either minimal or it was handled beautifully, resources were stabilized entirely or perhaps a Discovery was made along the way and a cache was found, the exposure was below normal)? Great! Take +1 to Engagement Roll!

---

Alright, all I have for tonight. I'll pick out things from you guys' specific posts tomorrow or early next week and respond (or I'll get a response up to a response to any of the above should there be one).

 

[Manbearcat]

LOADOUT, FLASHBACKS, AND DEVIL'S BARGAINS

Brain is sorting through some of this right now so I wanted to get these thoughts down in this thread.

One big thought I'm having right now is a deviation from standard FitD Heist ethos and this game:

This game is only going to be an Act Now, Plan Later in part. Loadout will not be that part.


So when it comes to Loadout, I'm thinking you will still select Light, Normal, Heavy, Encumbered. However...unlike Blades, you will tick your boxes before the Adventure phase (and before Journey phase if your Adventure will be in the wild). This is a pretty different orientation to play from Blades, but (a) it is necessary for this sort of game and (b) you will be able to make limited amendments to Loadout selection (include a new item if it keeps you within your Load limits or, if it takes you over your present Load limits, untick a box for a piece of gear that hasn't come into play and retick another box of same Load or less) during the action Adventure/Journey phase via Flashback.

Quick example of what I'm imagining:

Bob the Fighter is heading out with his Company on an Adventure in the wild to Slay the Chimera that is laired in the valley a day from the Town. Because he is a Fighter, his Load is better than others'; 1-7 = Light, 8-9 = Normal, 10 = Heavy. He's bringing:

Scale Armor - 3 (Load)
Heavy Weapon - 2 Load
Hand Weapon - 1 Load
Camp Supplies (3 boxes) - 1 Load
Rations (4 boxes) - 0 Load
Adventuring Gear (3 boxes) - 1 Load
Healing Potion (1 box) - 0 Load

He's at 8, so that puts him at Normal with 1 Load to spare to keep him there. So, should a situation call for it, Bob's player can use a Flashback to say he packed Throwing Knives (3 Ammo boxes) or a Lantern (2 Use boxes) as each are Load 1. He wouldn't have to untick any boxes for that.

Further, Flashbacks could be used in combat as a "self" Setup move whereby you either improve your Position or Effect (always requiring an Action Roll and cost either 0 Stress if enemy is lower Tier, +1 Stress if enemy is same Tier, +2 Stress if above Tier). Outside of that, Flashbacks would have their same typical use (eg changing the situation on a Score in Town because of a setup prior).


Devils Bargain

I'm thinking of making this tied to playbook. Each playbook has 3 thematic choices of the players devising that they can choose to complicate their lives with (eg a Paladin might have Crisis of Faith + Needs of the Many vs the Needs of the Few + The Priest Tends to the Spirit...I Cut Out the Infection that Kills the Body). If they want a Devil's Bargain, the player announces it to the table, picks a thematic complication from the menu and the GM or another player proposes a Bargain in kind that addresses the present situation.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Alright. @Ovinomancer and @hawkeyefan .

You've both got many questions and I feel like its going to be less productive to answer them individually (we can do that later) for now. I think it would be more productive to lay out exactly what inspired my thought for this prospective game and unpack that with more depth. The opening sentence under the STRUCTURE heading is below. This is what I'm going to unpack:



I bolded Torchbearer there because I haven't talked enough about this. This is the inciting thought that triggered this project:

"How would I best PbtA/FitD Torchbearer (its depth of decision-points and the consequential, Sword of Damocles nature of a play loop that gets away from you) but with more of a Dungeon World type of protagonism rather than the oppressive and brutal lives of adventurers in Torchbearer?"

So let me talk about what is necessary to extract from Torchbearer to hew to this idea:

STRUCTURE (LOOP)

* Town phase > Pending distance from town = TBD "Journey" phase (just Pathfinder Test or Conflict that is basically a mini-adventure Adventure phase?) > Adventure phase > Camp phase > Pending distance from town = TBD "Journey" phase (just Pathfinder Test or Conflict that is basically a mini-adventure Adventure phase?) > Town phase.

* There is also a Winter phase but I'm not including that.

What does this look like? It looks like Blades (if you take out the "Journey" phase). So what I did in the structural implementation is (a) map the necessary parts of Torchbearer onto this prospective game using (b) FitD Structure + (c) Dungeon World Journey mechanics.

1) I know the Torchbearer structure works.

2) I know the Blades structure works.

3) The two are entirely compatible, if not symmetrical, so just map job/reskin.

4) I know Dungeon World Journey mechanics works.

5) Integrating (3) and (4) is trivial (because, again, you're basically just subbing in DW Journey mechanics for TB's Pathfinder Test or Conflict).

So, I have issues with 3 and 5, in that these systems are similar, yes, but are actually designed to do slightly different things and absolutely in different ways. Torchbearer is using these phases in the OSR style to generate the naughty word that happens. It's impersonal, and brutal, and puts pressure on the skilled play aspects of the game's design. Blades uses these phases to create new complications and enmesh the characters in a wooly ball of narrative problems. These are similar, yes, but they aim for different things. Plus, the implementation of these systems is pretty different. I don't think they are nearly as easy to integrate as you claim.

That said, I'm looking at a pure design standpoint, where these systems need to be clearly laid out to a new person learning them, whereas if you're making a personal hack, such problems can be papered over by you exercising GM fiat to do so. Which is a fair solution.

The Dungeon World journey mechanic also feels very different from the other two, and is starting to feel like an AD&D pastiche of mechanics rather than an integrated whole. Which, again, is just fine as I just said above -- it might not be great for a published work, but it can work a champ for a personal hack.

TOWN EVENTS

* Torchbearer post-Adventure Town Events can be looked at like (a) Blades' Faction or Fortune Clocks ticking to full and going off at Downtime or (b) Blades' post-Score Entanglements (with the gamestate and mechanical fallout).

* Again, the level of compatibility or symmetry is there so its a trivial map job/reskin.

ILLUMINATE (ORIGINALLY LORE) AND CONSORT (ORIGINALLY RAPPORT) VS WISES AND CIRCLES

* So Torchbearer, being a Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard game, uses Wises and Circles. I'm fairly confident you guys are both very familiar with these mechanics (from our conversations if not firsthand yourselves), but I'll elaborate if not and/or for any readers:

1) Wises are dredging up obscure facts to help your situation.

2) Circles are dredging up relationships with NPCs to help your situation.

Those should look familiar because they map pretty much directly to Illuminate//Consort as I'm envisioning them and as Dungeon World uses them (as Burning Wheel was a primary inspiritation for the game); Spout Lore is the Wises Analogue and Carouse + tons of Playbook-specific moves are the Circles analogue.

If I'm going to hack this sort of game, those are necessary to have.

I don't think this is so, and also, again goes to the pastiche of mechanics. Again, I go back to Indiana Jones, and don't really see the need for these kinds of mechanics in creating that fiction, from start to finish. If it's important to do this -- to have a mechanic where the player is using a setup move to create new fictional positioning against an established obstacle -- I think that the existing mechanics in Blades do this well enough -- you can absolutely use those moves as setups, just like any other moves. My complaint is that you're positioning these as only setup moves, which bucks the trend in the rest of the actions.

WHY USE FITD AS THE ENGINE FOR THIS?

* Simply put, I know it works as an engine...and I know it maps to this specific content I'm working toward. Functionality + Utility + Fun.

* The Faction/Company game provides:

- A certain type of player-facing hierarchical form to the setting that is missing from Torchbearer (Torchbearer has hierarchical structure but (a) its not player-facing and (b) its not a minigame - more on this below).

- The prospective hierarchical form to the setting that this gives allows for (a) greater diversity of obstacles (Fronts in DW) than Torchbearers and (b) Adventures to take place in the city that basically map entirely to Blades Scores.

- The hierarchical form it gives to the setting broadly and DW Fronts works beautifully in terms of mechanical interactions. If I need to (a) set Position/Effect with Tier-inequivalent parties (evaluating the level of threat/danger for Position and then assessing factors for Effect) or (b) come up with a Fortune Dice Pool or Opposing Faction Mission Clocks and resolve that stuff...its trivially done! Just use the Blades rules!

- The hierarchy game is fun! And it maps beautifully to 4e's aesthetic of play (which, again, I know works). Growing your Company and making decision-points within that mini-game and expanding your profile/exposure (Folklore) in order to martial further resources to take on bigger threats is fun! This already happens in Dungeon World, Torchbearer, et al! The Blades mechanics just gives it form and well-oiled machinery to make it happen!

So, to me, the biggest challenge to adapting Blades is what you're calling a strength, here -- the Faction game. This is so tightly integrated into the concepts in FitD games and into the settings of those games that it is, in my opinion, the single largest point of design in any remapping of the FitD system. This, to me, is the majority of the design work, and it absolutely requires a strong statement to what play will be about so it can reinforce it. Your mission statement, to do Torchbearer with protagonism, is good and high level, but it doesn't have the setting theme necessary to really build a faction game. YMMV, but I'd love to see some more about the faction game you envision rather than more on how you plan to integrate the Journey mechanic. This is, IMO, a bolt on mechanic and so doesn't integrate into the setting tightly but rather sits upon it to achieve a specific mechanical end -- ie, applying stress to the PCs prior to the adventure.

DUNGEON WORLD (PERILOUS WILDS REALLY) JOURNEY MECHANICS MEETS BLADES ACTION RESOLUTION

* Who is Scouting? Who is Navigating? Who is Making Camp and Managing Provisions?

* Great * 3. Risky/Standard across the board for day 1 of this Journey.

* Scout, here are the conditions of the journey (describes the scene and including topographical features with likely a decision-point on where they're scouting from and some potential threat info). How are you Scouting? <Describes and picks Action Roll> Ok. Success with Complications. You take point and do your thing. Choose 1 of these; Did you find a Discovery...did you find a beneficial aspect of the terrain...if the Navigator gets you guys into a Danger you can ensure that it doesn't get the drop on the Company.

* Move to Navigator > rinse repeat > resolve any Danger/Discovery.

* Move to Make Camp/Manager Provisions > rinse repeat.

* Do Camp phase > Downtime Activity * 1 > Take Watch + Fortune Roll for Danger > resolve.

* Make Engagement Roll if at Adventure Site or move to Day 2 if multi-day Journey phase.

* Just like in Torchbearer, Adventures further from the Town are higher threat (Tier in this case) and the danger/resource drain is more significant (because Journey goes from being elided to just a single Test to an actual Conflict).

ENGAGEMENT ROLLS AFTER A JOURNEY? WHAT?

- I'm not feeling the weight of the concern here. When you make an Engagement Roll, we're already adding +1 d for Major Advantage or subtracting -1 d for a Major Disadvantage. This trivially mapped to the outcome of the Journey phase:

- Did the journey go as expected (Danger didn't snowball out of the ordinary, resources weren't disproportionately burned through, exposure wasn't above normal)? Swell enough, no take +1 or -1.

- Did the journey go particularly badly (Danger snowballed above normal, resources were burned through disproportionately, the exposure was above normal)? Crap! Take -1 to Engagement Roll which increases the chance of bad Positioning when I frame the opening scene of the Adventure phase (maybe the bad guys had a scout and saw the Company on the move...maybe the Company is particularly road-weary or demoralized).

- Did the journey go particularly well (Danger was either minimal or it was handled beautifully, resources were stabilized entirely or perhaps a Discovery was made along the way and a cache was found, the exposure was below normal)? Great! Take +1 to Engagement Roll!

---

Alright, all I have for tonight. I'll pick out things from you guys' specific posts tomorrow or early next week and respond (or I'll get a response up to a response to any of the above should there be one).

So, again, I think that this statement that it's trivial to integrate the Journey mechanic into the Engagement roll is very fraught. Of all the things in this post, this is the one that stands out as the most abrupt and disjoined. I say this because, as I understand it, the Journey mechanic creates fiction through play -- it establishes the story and danger of a trek through the wilderness to arrive at your destination. The Engagement roll, on the other hand, it meant to elide everything from concept to execution and drop the PCs directly into the action right at the point things go wrong. These things fight each other. And, if you're using Journey results as inputs to an engagement roll, you are double counting things -- the failure in the Journey mechanic has already exacted a cost and some fiction, and that's not feeding into the Engagement as another negative.

Plus, there's the thing that the Journey ends at arriving at the location, but the Engagement is supposed to get to the first obstacle. What's the bridge between arriving at the adventure and then skipping whatever is between that arrival and where the action of the adventure starts?

I also like the Journey mechanic -- I really do -- I'm just not clear on how this is integrating into a score mechanic well. If anything, I'd look at Journey as a type of score, rather than a lead into a score.


And, all that said, I want to caveat this as constructive -- if you ignore it I will not, in any way, be offended. And, I hope, in giving it, that it's received as a friendly concern and in the constructive manner it's intended. I think it would be just fine if you hack these things together and use your appreciation of how it's supposed to work to run this. There's enough here for that, and I can see it. I'm pointing out places where I think it's relying on this, though, and not on independent design. Not a bad thing at all.

 

[Fenris-77]

I don't have any issues using the Journey rules to modify Engagement rolls. In Blades there are a list of things that can modify engagement rolls anyway, and some of those aren't going to map well onto a different genre. So rather than the list in Blades, you have the Journey. Provided there is the opportunity to both positively and negatively affect the engagement roll I think it will work just fine. Getting the granularity right will be a task, but that's a details level problem IMO, not a design level problem. Some transparency in the design phase about how X and Y modifiers are being replaced would be essential of course, as a reskin requires that those mods be mirrored appropriately in terms of ease of acquisition and whatnot. It's not that hard in Blades to get a extra die or two to engagement based strictly on planning and aproach, so that should continue to true in the reskin.

Circles and Wises, however, I have a bigger design issue with. Not that those two things don't conceptually map with Consort and Lore, because they do, but rather the stakes of a character being proficient, or not, in those areas ends up being very different. In Torchbearer those two things are related to class choice and answering a series of questions. They are not related directly to a stat. So an Elf in Torchbearer gets wises X and circles Y independent of their statline. However, by tying those things to stats in Blades you are making circles and wises essentially a stat, and something that a character can only be good at by sacrificing being good at something else (something probably more directly indexed to journeys and delves). That is a very different inflection point in character creation.

The game of Blades is always happening, so speak, within the confines of the faction game. The action of the game doesn't escape the orbit of faction relations at any point. That tight bit of design is part of why Blades works so well. However, in a more DW approach, with journeys and whatnot, the game will escape that orbit on a more regular basis. Town factions are relegated in many instances to impacting and being impacted by just a part of the game loop. This is different from Blades. What I've seen of the design choices so far seems to potentially shrink the impact of the faction game overall, but also increase the opportunity cost of being good at the social moves that impact that same faction game. This seems like a poor coupling to me.

I'm not sure what the answer is here. Possibly faction relationships can add dice to consort moves with that faction. So my fighter might not be generally good at consort, but within the confines of his friendly factions he's significantly more impactful. IDK. Wises could be handled the same way, as tags generated during chargen that add dice to Lore rolls in specific instances.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don't have any issues using the Journey rules to modify Engagement rolls. In Blades there are a list of things that can modify engagement rolls anyway, and some of those aren't going to map well onto a different genre. So rather than the list in Blades, you have the Journey. Provided there is the opportunity to both positively and negatively affect the engagement roll I think it will work just fine. Getting the granularity right will be a task, but that's a details level problem IMO, not a design level problem. Some transparency in the design phase about how X and Y modifiers are being replaced would be essential of course, as a reskin requires that those mods be mirrored appropriately in terms of ease of acquisition and whatnot. It's not that hard in Blades to get a extra die or two to engagement based strictly on planning and aproach, so that should continue to true in the reskin.

Circles and Wises, however, I have a bigger design issue with. Not that those two things don't conceptually map with Consort and Lore, because they do, but rather the stakes of a character being proficient, or not, in those areas ends up being very different. In Torchbearer those two things are related to class choice and answering a series of questions. They are not related directly to a stat. So an Elf in Torchbearer gets wises X and circles Y independent of their statline. However, by tying those things to stats in Blades you are making circles and wises essentially a stat, and something that a character can only be good at by sacrificing being good at something else (something probably more directly indexed to journeys and delves). That is a very different inflection point in character creation.

The game of Blades is always happening, so speak, within the confines of the faction game. The action of the game doesn't escape the orbit of faction relations at any point. That tight bit of design is part of why Blades works so well. However, in a more DW approach, with journeys and whatnot, the game will escape that orbit on a more regular basis. Town factions are relegated in many instances to impacting and being impacted by just a part of the game loop. This is different from Blades. What I've seen of the design choices so far seems to potentially shrink the impact of the faction game overall, but also increase the opportunity cost of being good at the social moves that impact that same faction game. This seems like a poor coupling to me.

I'm not sure what the answer is here. Possibly faction relationships can add dice to consort moves with that faction. So my fighter might not be generally good at consort, but within the confines of his friendly factions he's significantly more impactful. IDK. Wises could be handled the same way, as tags generated during chargen that add dice to Lore rolls in specific instances.

Okay, this seems like I didn't make my point well about Journey/Engagement. What I'm trying to say is that these two mechanics are doing the same thing, but in different ways. Journey is used to see how well you get to the adventure, and Engagement is also used to see how well you get to the adventure. These are at different resolutions, sure, but they're doing effectively the same thing in the design -- putting the initial situation under stress. That's my main point -- these don't synergize because they're doing the same thing, and you really only need do that thing once. And, the space between these two resolutions is unclear -- how do I move from the higher resolution Journey mechanic, to a sudden low resolution Engagement mechanic, to a very high resolution Score mechanic? It's this shift in resolutions without clear lead ins. I think things need to move from low to high resolution smoothly, as it does in Blades, or stay at a consistent level of resolution, as it does in DW. This sudden shift in resolution without moving places in the playloop (were still in "what happens on the way to adventure" with both Journey and Engagement) feels weird.

And, also, if I have consequences for a failure in the Journey phase, that exacts costs right there. Adding it to the Engagement roll seems like doubling down.

And, all this said, I'm not really seeing a place for Engagement at all right now -- how will this work with the Approach and Detail for adventure sites?

 

[Fenris-77]

No, I heard you, I just dont really agree. I think your reservations stem from just looking at those two things in isolation, whereas I am assuming some other parts are involved. It depends, for me, on the extent and manner in which the journey replaces or modifies the current bonuses and penalties to engagement. Basically, I'm saying I can picture how to accomplish it, so the devil is in the details. YMMV, of course.

 

[Ovinomancer]

No, I heard you, I just dont really agree. I think your reservations stem from just looking at those two things in isolation, whereas I am assuming some other parts are involved. It depends, for me, on the extent and manner in which the journey replaces or modifies the current bonuses and penalties to engagement. Basically, I'm saying I can picture how to accomplish it, so the devil is in the details. YMMV, of course.

Well, no, a big part of my reservation is that I don't see how they work together -- the abrupt shift in resolution seems jarring to me, and the suggested intermeshing of the two is to pull failure in one into the mechanical resolution of the next, whereas I would prefer something that using the fiction generated in one to establish the foundation of the next. Taking in a +/- die for a result doesn't really do this. Sure, you can paper it over by tailoring the initial situation of the Engagement roll to reflect the failure fiction from the Journey, but that's a coupling that skips a few steps instead of rolling through.

I'm mostly trying to make sure that my point is well understood here, and not dismissed due to a misunderstanding. If it's dismissed because people have a different opinion, then great, no issues.

 

[Fenris-77]

Well, no, a big part of my reservation is that I don't see how they work together -- the abrupt shift in resolution seems jarring to me, and the suggested intermeshing of the two is to pull failure in one into the mechanical resolution of the next, whereas I would prefer something that using the fiction generated in one to establish the foundation of the next. Taking in a +/- die for a result doesn't really do this. Sure, you can paper it over by tailoring the initial situation of the Engagement roll to reflect the failure fiction from the Journey, but that's a coupling that skips a few steps instead of rolling through.

I'm mostly trying to make sure that my point is well understood here, and not dismissed due to a misunderstanding. If it's dismissed because people have a different opinion, then great, no issues.

Ok, so to start I do understand your reservations, and they are completely valid. My conception of how this could be made to work is also not the same as MBCs, Im sure, so this isnt quite me agreeing with his post and disagreeing with yours. I think the Journey could be made to incorporate most the nesessary mechanics to modify the engagement roll. Not just the outcome of the journey itself, but also incorporating various DT activities before and during. What's missing is a more granular account of exactly what that looks like. I'd probably do something like this:

1. Journey results effect geography and resource use, both of which can easily be framed as engagement consequences.

2. DT stuff like Lore, rumours or equipment that could change positioning in terms of knowing weaknesses or secrets.

What doesn't fit are things like Hunting grounds and some of the specifics from the Blades list. I'd elide those and reinsert them in one of the above. My model splits engagement modifiers between the journey results and preparedness.

So again, in my head I can see how I'd make that work. I'm not sure the extent to which that maps to MBCs answer to the same question.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ok, so to start I do understand your reservations, and they are completely valid. My conception of how this could be made to work is also not the same as MBCs, Im sure, so this isnt quite me agreeing with his post and disagreeing with yours. I think the Journey could be made to incorporate most the nesessary mechanics to modify the engagement roll. Not just the outcome of the journey itself, but also incorporating various DT activities before and during. What's missing is a more granular account of exactly what that looks like. I'd probably do something like this:

1. Journey results effect geography and resource use, both of which can easily be framed as engagement consequences.

2. DT stuff like Lore, rumours or equipment that could change positioning in terms of knowing weaknesses or secrets.

What doesn't fit are things like Hunting grounds and some of the specifics from the Blades list. I'd elide those and reinsert them in one of the above. My model splits engagement modifiers between the journey results and preparedness.

So again, in my head I can see how I'd make that work. I'm not sure the extent to which that maps to MBCs answer to the same question.

I guess, then, the bigger question here is what does a score look like so that we can make sure these things are actually feeding into the score?