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Author Topic: What book series is most like Blades in the Dark?  (Read 2121 times)

Batjon

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What book series is most like Blades in the Dark?
« on: September 05, 2021, 04:13:03 PM »
With the news that a new tv series is going to be coming out based on the Blades in the Dark RPG, I am completely stoked.  I looooove the setting of this game.  I am pulling out my stuff for the game again and going to push to finally play the game.  I've wanted to play this for sooooo long.

What book series out there is the most similar to Blades in the Dark and which should I read as inspiration? I've heard Six of Crows and Gentleman Bastard mentioned, but do not know much about either.  I do not know what series is the most like BitD and would be worth reading.

swzl

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Re: What book series is most like Blades in the Dark?
« Reply #1 on: September 05, 2021, 04:37:56 PM »
Stand by for wikipedia dump: ...

The Dragaeran books by Steven Brust

The Vlad Taltos series, written as high fantasy with a science fiction underpinning, is set on a planet called Dragaera. The events of the series take place in an Empire mostly inhabited and ruled by the Dragaerans, a genetically engineered humanoid species, having characteristics such as greatly extended lifespans and heights averaging about seven feet. Referred to as "elfs" by some humans, they refer to themselves as "human." The Dragaeran Empire controls a region that is "enclouded" by a perpetual overcast that blocks the sun from view.

Vlad Taltos is one of the human minority (known by Dragaerans as "Easterners"), which exists as a lower class in the Empire. Vlad also practices the human art of witchcraft; "táltos" is Hungarian for a kind of supernatural person in folklore. Though human, he is a citizen of the Empire because his social-climbing father bought a title in one of the less reputable of the 17 Dragaeran Great Houses. The only Great House that sells memberships this way is, not coincidentally, also the one that maintains a criminal organization. Vlad proves surprisingly successful in this organization. Despite being a human and a criminal, he has a number of high-ranking Dragaeran friends, and often gets caught up in important events.

Brust has written 15 published novels in the series, which is proposed to run to nineteen novels – one named for each of the Great Houses, one named for Vlad himself (Taltos), and a final novel which Brust has said will be titled The Final Contract. The first three novels resemble private-eye detective stories, perhaps the closest being Robert B. Parker's Spenser series. The later novels are more varied than the first three. Though they read like fantasy, there are science-fictional explanations for some things.

Brust has also written another series set in Dragaera, the Khaavren Romances, set centuries before Vlad's time. Since Dragaerans live for thousands of years, many characters appear in both series. It is partly an homage to Alexandre Dumas père's novels about the Three Musketeers, and is five volumes long, following the pattern of Dumas' series. The books are presented as historical novels written by Paarfi of Roundwood, a Dragaeran roughly contemporary with Vlad. Paarfi's old-fashioned, elaborate, and highly verbose writing is explicitly based on Dumas', though with a dialogue style that is, at times, based on Tom Stoppard's wordgames in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (according to Pamela Dean's introduction to Five Hundred Years After). The Baron of Magister Valley, an additional Paarfi novel, is modeled after Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo.

The two series are finally brought together in the thirteenth novel in the Vlad series, Tiassa, which can also be viewed as the sixth novel in the Khaavren series. Tiassa comprises what are in effect three related novellas, each told in a different style and connected by a common theme. The first section reads like the first three novels in the series, with a first-person narration by Vlad but including Khaavren's son, Piro; the second section has a different viewpoint character in each of its chapters; and the third section is narrated by Paarfi in the style of the earlier Khaavren Romances, with Khaavren as the viewpoint character and interacting with Vlad.

Dropbear

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Re: What book series is most like Blades in the Dark?
« Reply #2 on: September 05, 2021, 05:45:26 PM »
The setting for Blades in the Dark really caught my eye hardcore. But the system for play is lackluster to me. I dislike it. And I did get a game in for about two months before I just couldn’t really stand it any longer. I ripped the setting out and figured on using different mechanics for it but wasn’t sure what yet. Honestly thinking SotDL at this point.

Batjon

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Re: What book series is most like Blades in the Dark?
« Reply #3 on: September 05, 2021, 07:31:32 PM »
What alternative system would those of you out there choose to run the Blades in the Dark setting?

Snowman0147

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Re: What book series is most like Blades in the Dark?
« Reply #4 on: September 05, 2021, 07:51:36 PM »
What are its key mechanics?

palaeomerus

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Re: What book series is most like Blades in the Dark?
« Reply #5 on: September 05, 2021, 11:18:30 PM »
I have a Blades In the Dark IN SPAAAAAACE rpg called Scum & Villainy. Sort of a Firefly/Starwars crooks thing.
Emery

Batjon

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Re: What book series is most like Blades in the Dark?
« Reply #6 on: September 05, 2021, 11:37:20 PM »
I have a Blades In the Dark IN SPAAAAAACE rpg called Scum & Villainy. Sort of a Firefly/Starwars crooks thing.

I have that one also.  It looks interesting.

Sable Wyvern

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Re: What book series is most like Blades in the Dark?
« Reply #7 on: September 05, 2021, 11:57:27 PM »
What are its key mechanics?

As I recall:

D6 dicepool, one to five dice, I think. Take best result. 6 is success, 4-5 is success with complication, 1-3 is failure.

It focuses on constant action, and the complications and failures typically cause any tense situation to rapidly spiral completely out of control, with the PCs racing to keep up with events. The pre-mission check can result in a mission essentially starting after the first obstacle has already been overcome or, conversely, things may have already spiralled completely out of control before you even start (eg, just as you're breaking into the rival gang's lair, you discover the city watch are launching their own raid).

It requires a lot of improvisation from the GM to come up with interesting complications and prevent things from getting boring or repetetive. It's also the only game I've ever run where I rocked up to every single session after the first having done zero prep, with no clue whatsoever what the PCs would decide to get up to, and every session was still fun.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2021, 11:59:21 PM by Sable Wyvern »

Snowman0147

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Re: What book series is most like Blades in the Dark?
« Reply #8 on: September 06, 2021, 12:08:57 AM »
So explain to me how D&D couldn't do that with simple tweaks over the roll result? 

Seriously make nat 20 the best possible outcome.
Above DC as a good outcome.
Exactly DC as success with complication.
Below DC just a bad outcome.
Finally nat 1 for worst outcome.

With proficiency die (DM Guide) improving your chances while offering risk.

Sable Wyvern

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Re: What book series is most like Blades in the Dark?
« Reply #9 on: September 06, 2021, 12:36:15 AM »
So explain to me how D&D couldn't do that with simple tweaks over the roll result? 

Seriously make nat 20 the best possible outcome.
Above DC as a good outcome.
Exactly DC as success with complication.
Below DC just a bad outcome.
Finally nat 1 for worst outcome.

With proficiency die (DM Guide) improving your chances while offering risk.

I assume that question isn't actually directed at me, since I'm not involved in discussions of which system to use.

However, in my opinion, if you're trying to emulate the way the the BitD system plays out, you'd use the BitD system, which does what it sets out to do extremely well. However, since Dropbear doesn't like the system, I assume they also don't like the way it plays out ... in which case, pretty much any system you're comfortable with using for a fantasy, steampunk or fantasy noir game should work just fine.

Zelen

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Re: What book series is most like Blades in the Dark?
« Reply #10 on: September 06, 2021, 02:46:41 AM »
So explain to me how D&D couldn't do that with simple tweaks over the roll result?  .

Explain to me how Monopoly can't do that with simple tweaks to the dice roll mechanic?

Dropbear

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Re: What book series is most like Blades in the Dark?
« Reply #11 on: September 06, 2021, 06:37:04 AM »
What are its key mechanics?

As I recall:

D6 dicepool, one to five dice, I think. Take best result. 6 is success, 4-5 is success with complication, 1-3 is failure.

It focuses on constant action, and the complications and failures typically cause any tense situation to rapidly spiral completely out of control, with the PCs racing to keep up with events. The pre-mission check can result in a mission essentially starting after the first obstacle has already been overcome or, conversely, things may have already spiralled completely out of control before you even start (eg, just as you're breaking into the rival gang's lair, you discover the city watch are launching their own raid).

It requires a lot of improvisation from the GM to come up with interesting complications and prevent things from getting boring or repetetive. It's also the only game I've ever run where I rocked up to every single session after the first having done zero prep, with no clue whatsoever what the PCs would decide to get up to, and every session was still fun.

I’m not super fond of the pre-mission roll and hinging a session’s state of affairs on that, using flashbacks to describe what happened to get to that point. The task resolution is okay, but not thrilling or anything. Everyone found that easy to use, but hinging everything on that first roll and then improv acting why it was the way things were rolled was not really an attractive feature of the game to myself or the rest of the group I play with. Nor was the mechanic embedded to handle the gear you carry, with flashbacks of picking up just the right item to get the job done.

I guess we are just more attuned to pre-planning and buying gear for the jobs with our years of Shadowrun that this style of play espoused by BitD’s system just wasn’t all that appealing. We gave it a shot, but it wasn’t our style.

But the setting is cool.

Thondor

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Re: What book series is most like Blades in the Dark?
« Reply #12 on: September 06, 2021, 02:54:36 PM »
What are its key mechanics?

As I recall:

D6 dicepool, one to five dice, I think. Take best result. 6 is success, 4-5 is success with complication, 1-3 is failure.

It focuses on constant action, and the complications and failures typically cause any tense situation to rapidly spiral completely out of control, with the PCs racing to keep up with events. The pre-mission check can result in a mission essentially starting after the first obstacle has already been overcome or, conversely, things may have already spiralled completely out of control before you even start (eg, just as you're breaking into the rival gang's lair, you discover the city watch are launching their own raid).

It requires a lot of improvisation from the GM to come up with interesting complications and prevent things from getting boring or repetetive. It's also the only game I've ever run where I rocked up to every single session after the first having done zero prep, with no clue whatsoever what the PCs would decide to get up to, and every session was still fun.


Seems like a good summary. The Blades in the Dark engine has become a bit of a darling for indie publishers/designers. There's lots of fairly new "Forged in the Dark" games, they have an SRD. This is a lot like Powered by the Apocalypse, or Fate before that, being a kind of base engine that you adapt with some custom rules and a setting/genre.

The ones I know of off the top of my head are:
 the aforementioned Scum & Villainy,
Galaxies in Peril (superheroes) - Samjoko Publishing also has - Hack the Planet,

The 13th Fleet -- I'm dying to get this one to the table, it's about treacherous and incompetent ship captains backstabbing each other as they "advance backwards" from the "nearly victorious battle." Heavily inspired by Jack Campbell's The Lost Fleet series.   unfortunately as far as I know, you had to back the kickstarter to get this one.

Sig: City of Blades, is waiting on delivery of it's print run. The setting has been explored by Genesis of Legend before, but it's basically a love letter to planescape. So... planescape + Blades in the Dark.


I’m not super fond of the pre-mission roll and hinging a session’s state of affairs on that, using flashbacks to describe what happened to get to that point. The task resolution is okay, but not thrilling or anything. Everyone found that easy to use, but hinging everything on that first roll and then improv acting why it was the way things were rolled was not really an attractive feature of the game to myself or the rest of the group I play with. Nor was the mechanic embedded to handle the gear you carry, with flashbacks of picking up just the right item to get the job done.

I guess we are just more attuned to pre-planning and buying gear for the jobs with our years of Shadowrun that this style of play espoused by BitD’s system just wasn’t all that appealing. We gave it a shot, but it wasn’t our style.

But the setting is cool.


I feel like not all Forged in the Dark games are this heavy on the "pre-mission", though they do tend to lean towards more on the go improv and such. 13th Fleet has event cards for the GM to help randomize what kind of things happen in the solar system the fleet has just jump to, but there isn't much in terms of "flashbacks" resolving things. Mind you it also operates at an atypical scale, in that each player is responsible for a ship, and it's captain.

soundchaser

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Re: What book series is most like Blades in the Dark?
« Reply #13 on: September 06, 2021, 03:33:39 PM »
Setting cool.

Our group’s ‘meh’ on mechanics meant… Leverage in the Dark. A fun time.

Rob Necronomicon

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Re: What book series is most like Blades in the Dark?
« Reply #14 on: September 06, 2021, 06:29:33 PM »
Setting was good... But it felt like a very cookie cutter game beyond the mechanics. Game play was very samey too.

Not really my thing.
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