Gotham - Forged in the Dark - Playbook Ideas (+)

[Fenris-77]

So, thanks to my munificent amounts of spare time, I'm going to undertake a BitD hack. Inspired by another hack for 80's Marvel Villains, I'm going to do a hack for the Batman mythos. The basic idea will be the same, gangs of villains running scores and dodging the long arm of the law in a Gotham populated by all the crime families and super villains we all love. I'm aiming for a pretty gritty feel, but perhaps not quite as gritty as Blades.

We have a great community of players here, so I'm going to post a series of threads wherein we can spitball ideas for the different moving parts of the hack. Provided we get enough interest and posts of course. I'd like to start with playbooks, but first a quick word about my thoughts on the project.

1. I'm going to stick pretty close to Blades with a lot of reskinning rather than wholesale changes.
2. Scum and Villainy will provide the base actions, which will undergo some changes, obviously.
3. Minions and Holds will probably get expanded to accommodate a wide range of possible super villain secret lairs and tastes
4. Jobs will target more than one resource, tentatively Cash, Tech, and Arcana
5. Those resources roughly index the three paths to power - innate powers, gadgets/science, the mystic arts (and advance both the PCS and their lair)
6. Special talents and abilities are where the super powers and gadgets will be handled

So, playbooks. I'd like to have the standard 10-12 and I'd like each of them to roughly index a particular kind of villain. Using common Supers vocab is fine, so I'd call the big hitty fellow a Tank until I think of a better term. So far I'm thinking Tank, Mad Scientist, Industrialist, Shadow, and Tech guy (so Luke Cage, Riddler, Lex Luthor, Catwoman and Micro from the Punisher). If it ends being more or less than 10 I'm cool, I just want to cover all the templates. So if you were playing a small time Batman villain, what kind of character templates would you be looking for?

Feel free to chime in with general advice and ideas as well since this is the first thread. I'll track those and add to the intro each time I post a new thread.

 

[Blue]

I don't have enough BitD experience to contribute (all theoretical unfortunately), but I'm eagerly interested in following this conversation.

 

[hawkeyefan]

To brainstorm some Playbook ideas, I’d look at some of Batman’s rogues’ gallery and then think about what playbook they’d be.

So I’ll throw out a few and see what you think. I’ll start with the playbook ideas that you mentioned.

• Tank- Killer Croc
• Mad Scientist- Scarecrow
• Industrialist- Lex Luhor (kind of funny Batman doesn’t really have one of these that I can think of off the top if my head- they’re always more crime bosses)
• Shadow- Catwoman
• Tech Guy- Mr. Freeze? Deadshot?

So I think those are a good start, although Tech Guy and Shadow may be a bit broad (which isn’t a bad thing). If we look at a few of his other big villains, then some more ideas may present themselves.

• Joker
• Ra’s Al Ghul
• Two-Face
• Penguin
• Man-Bat
• Riddler
• Bane
• Clayface
• Poison Ivy
• Lady Shiva

Based on these, a few ideas kind of jump out:

• Monster
• Madman
• Mastermind/ Schemer (or maybe these are separate?)
• Expert/Weapon Master

I think which you decide to use will depend on how you view the playbooks...are they based on a narrative role or more about the role they play on the team? For example, is Mr. Freeze a Tech Guy because he uses his suit and gun? Or is he more of a Monster because he’s become a lost soul?

I don't think there can be only one possibility or that the answers need to be uniform, but I think that’s how you have to look at it in order to shape your list.

 

[Tonguez]

I recently came across Princess World:Frontier Kingdoms a Blades in the Dark Hack inspired by Princess Cartoons, its awesome I so want to play a She-Ra inspired game now (its quite a bit different to standard BITD, doesnt have Playbooks and has a fluffier tone)

Anyway for Batman Playbooks I’d look a his Rogues thus

1 Masterminds - Riddler, Clock King
2 Trickster - Joker, Cluemaster
3 Ninja - Catwoman, Hush, League of Shadows, Catman, Sensei, Lady Shiva
4 Kingpin - Penguin, Twoface, Talia Al-Ghul (Tactical moves using their henchman)
5 Gunslinger - Victor Zzass, Deadshot, KGBeast, Hush, Killer Frost*
6 Gadgeteer - Firefly, Dr Freeze
7 Mad Scientist - Hugo Strange, Mad Hatter, Scarecrow
8 Tank - Bane, Solomon Grundy, Killer Croc, Man-Bat
9 Mystic - Gentleman Ghost, Faust
10 Controller - Poison Ivy
11 Shapechanger - Clayface
12 *
I’m not sure where to put Ras Al-Ghul

Edit: Ive decided to put Scarecrow in with the Mad Scientist sinces he’s really a ‘mind controller’ like Mad Hatter.
Not sure what to put in 12, its open to any villains I cant think of fitting elsewhere.
* I’ve included Killer Frost under Gunslinger, I think for Batman superpowered villains should be fit into the other playbooks despite their extra powers, or is she more a Controller?

 

[Tonguez]

• Industrialist- Lex Luhor (kind of funny Batman doesn’t really have one of these that I can think of off the top if my head- they’re always more crime bosses).

I’d put Lex Luthor as a Mastermind, I suppose the closest I can think of for Batmans villains is Tommy Elliot. Maybe Rupert Thorn and the other Crime Bosses. Then of course theres the Court of Owls

 

[Fenris-77]

Cool, I had many of the same ideas. I'm going to take a stab at adding a "what you do" tag to each one and some thoughts on mechanical targets. For anyone not familiar with Scum and Villainy, here are the actions (which are subject to change, but they're closer than Blades). I already swapped Spooky for Attune, and Pilot for Helm. I'm not sold on doctor, but we'll see.

Insight - Doctor, Hack, Rig, Study
Prowess - Pilot, Skulk, Scrap, Scramble
Resolve - Spooky, Command, Consort, Sway

My take on playbooks so far, tip of the cap to the ideas upstream:

Mastermind - Cunning plans and misdirection are your bag. Targets: engagement roll, command, sway, synergy. Examples - Penguin, Riddler, Lex Luthor

Gadgeteer - If you build it, it will work. Armies of drones, power armour, freeze rays? All check. Targets: rig and hack, crazy tech and traps - Examples: Clock King, Mad Hatter

Mad Scientist - If you sew people together, make radioactive spiders, or have tanks of your own clones, this is you. Targets Doctor, Study, chemicals, strange science. Examples: Mr Freeze, Hugo Strange

Ghost - Infiltration, stealth, general sneakin'. Targets: Skulk, Scranble, security systems. Examples: Catwoman

Gunslinger/Mercenary - Have gun will travel. Shootin;, throwing', whuppin', you do it all. Targets: Scrap, Command, weapons.

Psycho - your best skill is always being the craziest person in the room. Targets: Resolve to soak stress, not being fashed about naught. Examples: Joker

Mystic - Master of the Dark Arts, Hell, the Undead, that's you. Targets: Spooky, magical of weirdness of all kinds. Examples: Gentleman Ghost, Faust

Mentalist - Mind control, fear, telepathy, illusion, 5e Psionics. Targets: command, sway, spooky, mental attacks of all kinds. Examples: Killian, Scarecrow

Tank - Jayzus, look at the size of that fella. Looks like a fighta. You're about the crumpin' and looming. Targets: Scrap (vs groups) feats of strength, various hard to damage type abilities. Examples: Bane, Solomon Grundy, Killer Croc

Ninja - this could be mystic, ghost or mercenary, but everyone likes ninjas. Cool martial arts, moving unseen, puffs of smoke to disappear in. Targets: Scrap, Skulk, nunchuks. Examples: Lady Shiva, League of Shadows

Freak - If you talk to your petunias or have other wacky inborn powers. Targets: control and shapechange type stuff, extra ability to realize a complicated power at the expense of action points. Examples: Poison Ivy, Clayface

A lot of Batman's foes could be built using more than one playbook depending on what aspect you wanted to highlight. PCs will be to take some special abilities from other playbooks, so that's fine, it's really the starting ability and Xp trigger that's the key character creation choice and the key mechanic to define the playbook.

I'm no longer sold on Industriaist. I think that could fit under mastermind. Where possible, I've consolidated ideas, with the exception of ninja, which I like too much to dilute I think.

 

[Aldarc]

Number of Playbooks:

• Blades in the Dark: 7
• Scum & Villainy: 7
• Band of Blades: 7

The pattern suggests about 6-8 playbooks, so I would focus on paring down the playbooks to about 7 broad archetypes. Also, you could maybe replace "spooky" with "weird" or even "crazy" for Batman.

I would not necessarily focus on the archetypes that the super villains represent because they are often more solo acts (with minions) and not cooperative gangs.

You could also focus on gangs in Gotham before Batman. I would probably be more interested in that. How did your gang degrade Gotham to the point that it even needed bat-themed caped crusaders?

 

[Fenris-77]

The playbooks are going to be able to support super and non-super versions of the same character concept, and the plan is to pare the list down, yeah. Mystic and Mentalist can probably merge, as can Ninja and Ghost. Psycho might be surplus to needs as its own playbook and poof we're down to 8. I wanted to get a comprehensive list of ideas before I start merging though, just to make sure I haven't missed anything.

It would be pretty trivial, I think, to play the game pre-Batman. Take Gotham the show as the base model, and take the costumed heroes off the faction chart, plus maybe remove some of the costumed foes). |The rest of what I'm envisioning is about exactly what you want. I'm planning to buff the variety in the downtime to really highlight building a criminal empire, and I was planning on a timeline that was Captain Gordon and Commissioner Loeb, so the GCPD could still be as immensely corrupt.

 

[Aldarc]

Using or updating the existing BitD playbooks would not be too difficult due to how broadly they are modeled after criminal archetypes.

• Cutter ("dangerous and intimidating fighter") -> Enforcer/Heavy/Muscle
• Hound ("deadly sharpshooter and tracker") -> Hitman/Assassin
• Leech ("saboteur and technician") -> Tinkerer/Bomber/Mechanic
• Lurk ("stealthy infiltrator and burglar") -> Burglar/Cat/Ghost
• Slide ("subtle manipulator and spy") -> Trickster/Charlatan/Swindler
• Spider ("devious mastermind") -> Mastermind/Brains
• Whisper ("arcane adept and channeler") -> Freak/Weirdo

 

[Fenris-77]

That is true, but I also wanted to model some archetypes from the Batman mythos as well. The match is close, for sure, which is why I was excited about using BitD for it in the first place. Your list above does look good though, I was just soliciting ideas to see what else might work, or what kind of tinkering could be done.

I think the real change will be in the abilities, which is where most of the power modelling will happen. There I was going to use the SaV approach, where a Xenos can replace the starting ability with a Xenos ability. The same could be done to add more superpower feeling elements to the playbooks, giving the players a knob to twist for the super-ness of their character. I'll also likely add in some ability to grow powers through experience, probably with additional abilities that buff existing abilities somehow. I'm still working on that part.