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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Breaking Star Games" data-source="post: 9306617" data-attributes="member: 7042067">It includes my favorite game, Scum & Villainy that hits on being a Space Scoundrel amazingly. I have also run quite of a bit of Blades in the Dark and read through a few other FitDs that were very close to the original. CBR+PNK and Band of Blades are very solid differentiations from the original formula but many others felt more like coats of paint on BitD with 95% of the same core mechanics.While I do love it, there are these 2 major pain points were painful enough that I took it onto myself to create my own system (and one year later, its almost playtestable!!)Improvisation of Consequences and Devil's Bargains: This is a serious mental toll for me even though I am pretty experienced in the genre (Firefly+Serenity is a yearly watch, Cowboy Bebop+ its Movie twice a year) of space operas, space westerns. No other sessions of running TTRPGs do I feel more mentally exhausted than running Forged in the Dark. What I found was that many tables deal with this by having the entire table contribute when it comes to coming up with these. I can definitely see how that can work nicely at those kind of tables. But if you are player that likes to be in the traditional Actor Stance (as I do), I can see how you may not want to literally pick your poisons. Its not necessarily fun and you are rewarded by picking things that are the least painful from that actor stance. I find the GM is always in the best position due to their guidelines/principles and their knowledge of the world (thinking offscreen) to create consequences.Several of the tables I ran these games didn't cooperate with this playstyle well. They actually would want to pull out of options once I came up with an interesting set of consequences and telegraphed what may happen thinking maybe a different option would be better. This goes against a key player agenda for BitD (which again breaks that Actor Stance), you are meant to use your PC like a stolen car.<a href="https://youtu.be/-V7pegCfRfo?t=567" target="_blank">As John Harper puts it, the game is designed player should act like a GM of their own PC.</a> He cut this line from the book because it was intimidating, but you really see that in the XP Triggers. Where Masks, Cartel, Apocalypse World and Urban Shadows all use Playbooks to create these issues that the GM has control over, Blades in the Dark just says that the PC should struggle with their Vice or Trauma. There are no GM tools like the other systems to make that happen, so really its left to the players to find opportunities to make this happen.So what I fixed for my own game is using a lot of FitD elements like its Coin/Cred economy, clocks and downtime but with a suite of Basic Moves, so the players already are informed and expectations are set on what they want to accomplish and what mixed success looks like. And Playbooks who have full GM guidance on how to make them struggle in their lives reminiscent of Masks or Urban Shadows. The main goal being to feel a lot like playing Scum & Villainy but in the traditional player Actor Stance.</blockquote>

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