Looking at ‘Shadowguard’ you can see how much of Mouseguard is in Blade in the Dark. Downtime is basically a player turn, and the way engagements rolls work in missions really emulates the GM turn well. Truth be told I’d be hard press as to why I shouldn’t just play a cyberpunk version of BitD.
Mostly because I would miss the logistics? Both The Sprawl and Blades in the Dark have mechanics that kind of hand wave the planning stage. The sprawl has Tech and Intel placeholder objects that get revealed mid mission. Blades in the Dark has flashbacks that let you cover up any holes. Though to be honest I don’t mind the flashbacks too much. Resisting effects in BitD though feels weird.
When I play torchbearer, there’s a sense of tactile concreteness to it. You can easily see your carrying capacity. As your packs empties of resources and the turns keep mounting there is this wonderful pressure. Should we cut our losses? Is that even an option anymore, or are we already trapped but don’t know it? If I could get this hack to bring that to a shadowrun, i’d be more than happy.
I tried to keep this a simple reskin, because that was Luke’s recommendation. To only change the basics at first and then get the game to a table. Play with it for a bit, and then see where you should add new ideas…
But Luke and company are away at gencon, so let’s see what kind of heretical thought we can cook up.
Conditions v0.02
Cool: acts as fresh giving the +1D
Stealthed: lets you move through areas unseen, but not security check points. I’m not sure if this would break the principals behind “Let it Ride”,
Disguised: Lets you claim the access powers of someone else
Suspicious/alerted: +1ob to all rolls
Injured: -1D to all health based skills
Cornered: To me this is where your stuck in a broom closet with several guards outside. Unable to move without exposing yourself. Or maybe in a stand off situation with guns. The only problem i see with this condition, is I can see it being solved during the adventure phase. But if we use MG rules to allow recovery in GM turn / adventure phase might not be a problem
Panicked: -1D to all mental based skills. I feel its important to keep the possible skill tax that comes from conditions, so recovery for this would risk taxing mental/mental like skills
Captured: Like dead but we get to do a fun interrogation scene instead
Dead: Dead
Grind v0.01
I can see the grind going two ways. The first is we keep the grind clock and just add/remove conditions as fits.
“Every fourth turn during the adventure phase, all characters change their conditions. If your character has stealthed and/or Disguised, remove both. If your character is not disguised or stealthed, then you take the suspicious condition. If you’re already suspicious and not hidden, take the panicked condition. If you’re already panicked, suspicious, and not hidden, you become Cornered. If you’re already Panicked, Suspicious, not hidden and Cornered, you suffer an injury. If you’re suspicious, panicked, not hidden, cornered and injured, you’re captured. If you’re not hidden and those five conditions are checked on the fourth turn, your character dies, and we may never find the body.”
As for recovery. I think I may flipped the requirements. Instead of having to deal with the list of conditions from the top going down. You would have to deal with the conditions from the bottom going up. This would also mean if you’re condition laden it be very hard to regain stealth.
The second way I see the Grind going is, instead of doing conditions we make every fourth turn trigger a twist. But in the spirit of keeping things fair, we’ll do something a little bit different. The GM when prepping a facility for a run, will right down the list of twists and the order they will incur on some index cards. The GM will begin the adventure phase with these cards face down. And as each grind occurs, he’ll reveal a card and play out the twist. This doesn’t always have to incur a test, but it should change the environment and perhaps provide an opportunity.
This requires a little bit of prep and can’t really go infinite, so its kind of hard to set up. Perhaps the GM only has to prepare 4 twists, then after those are completed he’s allowed to take stock of the situation mid adventure and write down 4 more. Which will probably be harder moves since they’re more aware of the situation. I would also say that this type of grind coudln’t be reseted by camping, it would just keep moving forward.
Camping/Planning v0.01
This is really up in the air. I can see merits for just allowing checks being spent on conditions ala Mouseguard.
If we do conditions in the grind, then I think its important to have a camp/planning phase just so they can reset the clock.
I have a lot of thoughts for how this could go, but if I was going to bring this to the table, I think I would want to first just say planning phase can happen whenever the runners find a secluded spot. But if that’s pushing belief (i.e. why does the clock stop when we’re planning?) another option would be to say planning phase is done over flashbacks… but that doens’t really make total sense…
Though there is a part of me that loves the idea of recovering from a panicked condition, by remember a time when you went out to a bar with your friends and playing that out. Idk.
Inventory v0.01 AKA biggest worry
The kool things first. I love the idea of installing cyberware and the cost being that your max nature is taxed. This is fairly big though, a very hefty cost, so I have to wonder what kind of benefits cyberware grants for that cost.
Cyberpunk is a very gear happy kind of genre. So items will be hard and important. Though my biggest worry is how to handle the inventory system. Without torches or food I fear the inventory play will be very out of whack.
I would still want loot to take up space. And it would kind of make sense, in a 80’s all hardware and no software cyberpunk kind of way. But yeah its a headache to think about.
Here is a throw away item idea:
Concealed holster [chest 2]
Keep a weapon concealed on your person that can pass a pat down.
