I am sorry for how long it took to get this done, for your sake and my own! lol I would love to hear what you all think of the inclusion of the "Example of Play" section. It added a lot of extra work, but my hope is that seeing the rules "in action" in a way might help things make more sense. However, I am curious if it succeeded. Was it too busy and too much info? Did it feel too redundant at times? Would you like to see more of it? I am really interested to hear your thoughts, because if folks find it useful I will continue to implement it in future How to Play videos. Anyway, this was a huge labor of love, even if it was taxing. Life has been...a lot these last few years, but working on this has really reminded me how much I love making these videos, so expect plenty more, more frequently.
I think the play example is very helpful, like putting together a puzzle. Since we've already looked at the puzzle's box (the game's cover and marketing description, plus this video's title and thumbnail), we know what the end result is supposed to be (an action-focused heist game). Sorting through all the pieces (the game's vocabulary and mechanics) is a good first step, but it can still feel like a big, messy pile of pieces, especially for people whose brains struggle to process lots of new info being thrown at them at once. Walking through the example demonstrates how those pieces interlock with each other and how the game flows.
Example of play was very excellent. If I had this for every game I would love it, it would be so much easier to pick up a new game with this sort of guide.
@@TheDungeonNewbsGuide the example of play was pivotal, imho. It brought everything together in a comprehensible way, whereas the previous sections really didn't completely make sense (not your fault, it's a lot of concepts with unclear connections to each other until implemented, it's why examples in tpg books are important). 100% good use of time, imho
so our favourite GM has fallen into the "if I just make the video a little longer I can explain it better" trap... soon they will be 3+ hour epics bwahahahahahahahha
As a person who has recently decided to learn and be a GM for BitD, this video is exactly what I need! Do not worry about the supplement, it might be better to cover it separately, as some people are still figuring out the basics :)
I've been trying to play blades in the dark for nearly 6 years now. Finally got to try it last year but we struggled to get it down and there wasn't much in the way of high quality instructions. This has really helped, thank you.
This video is a phenomenal summary and the example game at the end is extremely helpful. Great job. Its also very timely as I am running a one-shot soon for some friends after having not run the game for a couple years and I needed a refresher on the basics that I have long since forgotten. I'll be sending this to my players because, even though I already went over the basics and we made characters, this video reminded me just how much stuff I forgot to cover with them. I really don't want to turn a one-shot into 2 sessions because I have to spend most of the first one going over all the rules I forgot to cover in our session 0. I never comment on videos but I can tell a lot of hard work went into this. Thanks very much!
Congratulations on the video, only from Brazil and I loved all the explanations, your video helped me a lot on how to narrate and how to explain to the players how this incredible system works!!!
As someone who already enjoys the system, this was a nice video. I always had a few issues with figuring out position and effect. I personally would love a follow up for new player points of friction. For instance, I had a player using the whisper playbook, and they had a hard time coming up with cool magic stuff because they were so used to games with spell lists, and I had a hard time helping in a way that wasn't just giving suggestions on how to play their character. Also, the world lore is intense, and while I know people say start small and only focus on what you need, it's really hard for me to do that because I need to see the big picture and then zoom in, not the other way around. Mike Shea (Sly Flourish/Lazy DM) was really excited to run this a while back, but I remember him saying he struggled with GMing it and cut the campaign after 8 episodes compared to the much longer campaigns he runs for D&D type games. I was really surprised because he's very capable, and it would be interesting for someone with decent system mastery to look at why an experience DM like him might have bounced off it.
Thanks so much (for both comments) and I totally get everything you're layin' down here. While I've absolutely grown to love Blades (and most of the FitD games) it is SUCH a departure from how other games handle things. Sometimes it just takes getting used to, and sometimes I think it just isn't the right game for some folks. I am really with you as far as doing magic stuff in the game! On one hand it gives you limitless choice, which is honestly sometimes worse than limited choices! How to you pick what to do when you can do just about anything? BUT THEN there is the fact that it should also fit in within the lore/setting, so there ARE limitations...you just don't know what they are! Honestly, I could probably even do a short video just on how that works to help folks out. Also, one of the ways I've helped some of my players with this is by not playing in the Blades setting, but doing a world-building game with my players to create our own setting, so that way players feel more comfortable not only with the magic of the world, but also the factions and everything. The world-building game I'm working on releasing actually works pretty great for it :D Seriously, you bring up some solid points, and I think I'll probably take some time to really think this over. Knowing the rules and having an example of play is one thing, but getting comfortable in the system and setting is kind of a separate beast. Brainstorming time!
Glad to see you back with this video about a great game I had the opportunity to try out at a festivale! I highly recommend it if you like dark and horrific atmospheres ;)
Thank you for this video! I'm watching a lot of tutorials and actual plays with FITD games to try and improve my MCing of those (currently on a renaissance-fantasy hack named Court of Blades). Your example score is very detailled and helps me a lot to get the structure :D
Great video! Worth noting @13:20 that gathering information can also be an action roll (or no roll; just information given). It all depends on the fiction at hand. This is commonly misunderstood, and you missed a chance to help alleviate this by saying "the GM will" do this for gather info rolls
"This game is too complicated! Let's play D&D instead with twelve bajillion subrules for everything and looking for a trap in a room takes three hours playtime because I have to describe every freasible action!"
When I started playing DnD, it took us one whole session until we realized we are playing spell slots wrong. It is the most counterintuitive magical system I have every seen in any game. DnD only has two types of rules - overcomplicated and unfinished.
Would you be able to do a Video on Icons Superpowered Roleplaying Assembled Edition. I've been looking for a good video on the basics so I can share it with friends. BTW I love your videos especially the how to play videos.
I mean ... some things were not rules as written (like the bonus die from the gather info of the spider and some other minor points), but Blades is a pretty flexible game and is heavily homebrewed by a lot of folks anyway. Besides that ... a great video!
I really like the position/effect verbiage to help hone in on the actions taken and the expected outcomes and what success/failure may look like. However there are so many little mechanics that just overwhelming me more than just playing starforged/ironsworn version of this style of game
Very timely, a friend of mine want to run Blades, cause he has this idea of a story where a Batman and Joker like character are at war, and we're the goons still trying to pull off jobs while this is going on. I'll send it his way since he likely might need some basic stuff down for it.
On a different note to Blades, I know you dig Fate and Cortex. As a rando in the comments throwing out unsolicited requests, I'd love a video about modernizing older Fudge games into newer editions of Fate. I was a big fan of Star Blazer Adventures and The Legends of Anglaire, but the sheer amount of crunch around juggling 10 aspects and building stunts got difficult. Another idea is a video on shortcuts/advice to adapting novel settings to a system (like cortex). For instance, I've always been a fan of Jim Butcher's Codex Alera books and thought it would make a fun campaign world, but I've always been daunted by how to adapt its magic system without it becoming a huge project.
Hey, we're all randos, and I always love getting requests! Can't always promise I'll get to them, but happy to see them! While I'm am not personally familiar with some of those older games, I clearly remember a friend selling me on Star Blazer Adventures back in the day, but we never had a chance to get into it. Might have to add these to my list and take a look!
Awesome video and very helpful for my group's first game of Blades in the Dark! Couple quick questions though -- 1) When the cutter takes her action to knock out the guards, why is the locked door addressed with the same skirmish action? Why didn't she have to take a separate action to get the door unlocked, then use the skirmish action to fight the guards? 2) Are the positions determined on an action-by-action basis? For example, when the cutter changed the position from controlled to risky as a consequence of her action, is that the new "crew position"? Or is that just for the cutter? Excited to play! This video has been beyond helpful, especially for a group of people that have been pretty much DnD-exclusive for close to 8 years now.
Thanks so much, and excellent questions! 1) I completely forgot to highlight when I did that in the video. Ack! So, the reason I, as the GM, let them get into the locked door as a payoff to the 6 Gather Information roll that gave them info on how to easily unlock the truck, basically making what would have been an issue into a non-issue. Sadly, in writing an re-writing the script, I must have completely omitted explaining that. Though I would also say that sometimes, just to keep things from getting too granular, you could absolutely include unlocking a door, or other smaller-scoped actions, as part of bigger action rolls. If unlocking the door to the truck isn't too interesting or focal, or would just slow the narrative down, it might not be worth its own roll, but I could be woven into the narrative for a Consequence (if the roll was a fail, maybe that locked door is why!) 2) So, often times you might want to have an overall Score Position in mind, the severity of which is determined by the Engagement roll. By default, most rolls would fall within that overall position, but certain actions/items/flashbacks/etc could allow players to temporarily roll outside of that position. Like, if everyone is currently in a controlled position, but someone decided to do something that is unlikely to work and dangerous as heck, it doesn't matter how controlled things are, the might make things Desperate. So yeah, in that instance of the Cutter's actions resulting in a worse position, that is something that affects everyone, as the guards are moving in on them. I hope that helps! Thanks again for the lovely comment and questions!
The best game of FitD that actually teaches you how to use Position and Effect correctly is actually Quietus by Oli Jeffrey, which is funny because it’s actually very bare bones and purposefully gutted FitD game but it has a very nice explanation on how to use position properly.
Thank you for this video, it's very well-done and informative. I've owned Blades In The Dark for more than a year, and have been honesty too anxious to try it with players. I'm on the autism spectrum - I like hard rules and guidelines for how a game works. I find myself "paralyzed by freedom" when I think of how to run this game. The example I keep returning to is when it's time for a player to fight someone (because combat is the easiest scenario to default to in any TTRPG). If my player says they want to "beat this thug up to get past them" that could be handled very simply with a single roll and result (as the Cutter example in your vid with the two guys in the car). OR I could make a clock out of it that mimics HP of the thug and player and do a roll per punch attempt. Am I thinking about this correctly? When would you tend to favor one approach over the other?
Glad I could be of help! I think you are absolutely thinking about those combat examples correctly. As far as when to do which, it is so left up to interpretation and preference, but when I'm running a game, here is how I think of it. "Are these enemies interesting enough to be focal to the action, or are they just a hurdle to overcome?" Sometimes, an guard or small group of thugs trying to fight with one of your players is just one of many obstacles during a huge chase scene through the alleys of the city. Drawing that out might slow down the chase as a whole, so I wouldn't make a clock for them (unless, perhaps through some bad rolls, the situation changed). However, if the players just nabbed some loot, and these guards/thugs just showed up to to stop them, that feels a little more like the players new main problem, so get a clock going. I suppose another thing to consider is do you already have some clocks going that are a major focus? If so, another clock will draw focus from the big clock(s) already in play, so just ask yourself "Is this worth taking focus away from the main thing that is happening?" Sometimes it might be, other times, not so much. I like to have one or two main clocks, and maybe just one or two secondary clocks. Too much going on, and things get bogged down. Sorry, I know it still lacks really hard guidelines to go by, which can be one of the toughest things with systems like this, but hopefully this helps clear it up a little. I am still considering running a short Actual Play 'n' Learn of Blades in the Dark to help folks further, but we'll see if my schedule lightens up enough to do so
@@TheDungeonNewbsGuide Awesome, thank you. I think the freedom and "squishiness" of this game is what both makes it so intimidating and so appealing as a GM. I would definitely watch that actual play if you get a chance to make it.
Honestly, Ive never been particularly interested in playing BitD but with it being one of the most inffluential titterpigs out there I was always curious what was the deal. I really appreciate the example of play, it really helps visually and explain how typical game might go like and all of the peculiarities of the system in regards to narrative structure which I wasn't really getting from just rules explanations. Really good work as always, keep it up! (though not the video lenghts necessarily, we don't want you spending so much time just working on a video, get some rest :3 )
@TheDungeonNewbsGuide awesome! The creator has a discord server for it, but they haven't been super active recently. But when they are active they are really good at answering questions.
It is definitely a little intimidating at the start, but honestly aside from some of the side systems ends up being really easy and smooth to run. I've also heard the new supplement helps streamline and simplify things. But no shade if you just don't connect with it! To each their own!
I agree with DNG - BitD looks very intimidating at first, but if you focus on the basics (the action roll), most of everything else will eventually fall into place. IMO, it's the sort of system that really benefits from learning thru play. Really, it's the subsystems that really jumble things up, as some of it is a bit kludgy to approach. In execution, it's not so bad, but the learning curve is a little rough. Still, there's few systems that handle scoundrel action quite like the FitD framework. If that's a narrative angle that interests you, give it a shot if you get a chance to.
@jasonGamesMaster well then, you're in luck. There's two (and likely more) Forged in the Dark games specifically designed for cyberpunk: Neon Black and Runners in the Shadows. Neon Black is an interesting community focused game, where you're a key member of a group trying to stay afloat. Meanwhile, Runners in the Shadows is both a generic cyberpunk game but with optional magic rules to make it into Shadowrun. That said, understandable that it might not be your thing. But I still recommend giving a FitD game a shot if the chance arises since it's an interesting experience.
@yamazaki752 Runners might be the one I saw over on Bluesky? Is it fairly new? It was weird, because it was literally the same day this vid dropped that someone posted something about it and it looked cool
I am sorry for how long it took to get this done, for your sake and my own! lol
I would love to hear what you all think of the inclusion of the "Example of Play" section. It added a lot of extra work, but my hope is that seeing the rules "in action" in a way might help things make more sense. However, I am curious if it succeeded. Was it too busy and too much info? Did it feel too redundant at times? Would you like to see more of it? I am really interested to hear your thoughts, because if folks find it useful I will continue to implement it in future How to Play videos.
Anyway, this was a huge labor of love, even if it was taxing. Life has been...a lot these last few years, but working on this has really reminded me how much I love making these videos, so expect plenty more, more frequently.
Yeah, when books dont have a lot of examples, I end up having to look up actual plays. Detailed examples definitely help!
I think the play example is very helpful, like putting together a puzzle. Since we've already looked at the puzzle's box (the game's cover and marketing description, plus this video's title and thumbnail), we know what the end result is supposed to be (an action-focused heist game).
Sorting through all the pieces (the game's vocabulary and mechanics) is a good first step, but it can still feel like a big, messy pile of pieces, especially for people whose brains struggle to process lots of new info being thrown at them at once.
Walking through the example demonstrates how those pieces interlock with each other and how the game flows.
Example of play was very excellent. If I had this for every game I would love it, it would be so much easier to pick up a new game with this sort of guide.
You keep making vids and we'll keep watching. Take care of yourself first.
@@TheDungeonNewbsGuide the example of play was pivotal, imho. It brought everything together in a comprehensible way, whereas the previous sections really didn't completely make sense (not your fault, it's a lot of concepts with unclear connections to each other until implemented, it's why examples in tpg books are important). 100% good use of time, imho
so our favourite GM has fallen into the "if I just make the video a little longer I can explain it better" trap... soon they will be 3+ hour epics bwahahahahahahahha
Forged in the Dark is by far my fave system now, and in no small part because of you!
You were a big part in it becoming a favorite of mine as well! Now we just need to play together again!
@@TheDungeonNewbsGuide Don't tempt me! I've fallen hard for band of blades lately and am working on a hack for it lol
I am so so happy you are doing these videos, they are so invaluable
As a person who has recently decided to learn and be a GM for BitD, this video is exactly what I need!
Do not worry about the supplement, it might be better to cover it separately, as some people are still figuring out the basics :)
Glad to see you posting again. Love your work.
I want to thank you, i'm new to this game and this video helped me a lot to spread out the mist of confusion, well done! :)
You’re amazing at teaching games! Thanks for another great video :)
I've been trying to play blades in the dark for nearly 6 years now.
Finally got to try it last year but we struggled to get it down and there wasn't much in the way of high quality instructions.
This has really helped, thank you.
This video is a phenomenal summary and the example game at the end is extremely helpful. Great job. Its also very timely as I am running a one-shot soon for some friends after having not run the game for a couple years and I needed a refresher on the basics that I have long since forgotten. I'll be sending this to my players because, even though I already went over the basics and we made characters, this video reminded me just how much stuff I forgot to cover with them. I really don't want to turn a one-shot into 2 sessions because I have to spend most of the first one going over all the rules I forgot to cover in our session 0. I never comment on videos but I can tell a lot of hard work went into this. Thanks very much!
Lets gooooo! One of my favorite rpg professors posts in time for christmas.
Congratulations on the video, only from Brazil and I loved all the explanations, your video helped me a lot on how to narrate and how to explain to the players how this incredible system works!!!
A masterful demonstration! Thanks a lot for this illuminating vid
This is a FANTASTIC video! Super helpful! Thank you so much for making it!
Great video, I cannot wait for the update with the mechanics from Blades in the Dark: Deep Cuts. Which simplifies many of thee systems.
Excellent video, it's definetly going to be my first recommendation to anyone asking "how to play" BitD!
Thanks for this kind of videos, they are very helpful!
As someone who already enjoys the system, this was a nice video. I always had a few issues with figuring out position and effect. I personally would love a follow up for new player points of friction. For instance, I had a player using the whisper playbook, and they had a hard time coming up with cool magic stuff because they were so used to games with spell lists, and I had a hard time helping in a way that wasn't just giving suggestions on how to play their character. Also, the world lore is intense, and while I know people say start small and only focus on what you need, it's really hard for me to do that because I need to see the big picture and then zoom in, not the other way around.
Mike Shea (Sly Flourish/Lazy DM) was really excited to run this a while back, but I remember him saying he struggled with GMing it and cut the campaign after 8 episodes compared to the much longer campaigns he runs for D&D type games. I was really surprised because he's very capable, and it would be interesting for someone with decent system mastery to look at why an experience DM like him might have bounced off it.
Thanks so much (for both comments) and I totally get everything you're layin' down here. While I've absolutely grown to love Blades (and most of the FitD games) it is SUCH a departure from how other games handle things. Sometimes it just takes getting used to, and sometimes I think it just isn't the right game for some folks.
I am really with you as far as doing magic stuff in the game! On one hand it gives you limitless choice, which is honestly sometimes worse than limited choices! How to you pick what to do when you can do just about anything? BUT THEN there is the fact that it should also fit in within the lore/setting, so there ARE limitations...you just don't know what they are! Honestly, I could probably even do a short video just on how that works to help folks out. Also, one of the ways I've helped some of my players with this is by not playing in the Blades setting, but doing a world-building game with my players to create our own setting, so that way players feel more comfortable not only with the magic of the world, but also the factions and everything. The world-building game I'm working on releasing actually works pretty great for it :D
Seriously, you bring up some solid points, and I think I'll probably take some time to really think this over. Knowing the rules and having an example of play is one thing, but getting comfortable in the system and setting is kind of a separate beast. Brainstorming time!
Great. Great . Great video! Thank you for making this.
Glad to see you back with this video about a great game I had the opportunity to try out at a festivale! I highly recommend it if you like dark and horrific atmospheres ;)
Thank you for this video! I'm watching a lot of tutorials and actual plays with FITD games to try and improve my MCing of those (currently on a renaissance-fantasy hack named Court of Blades). Your example score is very detailled and helps me a lot to get the structure :D
I'll be using this guide tonight, first time my table will be playing this!
Great video!
Worth noting @13:20 that gathering information can also be an action roll (or no roll; just information given). It all depends on the fiction at hand. This is commonly misunderstood, and you missed a chance to help alleviate this by saying "the GM will" do this for gather info rolls
Yes! I needed this. Thanks. ❤
"This game is too complicated! Let's play D&D instead with twelve bajillion subrules for everything and looking for a trap in a room takes three hours playtime because I have to describe every freasible action!"
When I started playing DnD, it took us one whole session until we realized we are playing spell slots wrong. It is the most counterintuitive magical system I have every seen in any game. DnD only has two types of rules - overcomplicated and unfinished.
Well, I'm beyond sold. I NEED to play this now
Would you be able to do a Video on Icons Superpowered Roleplaying Assembled Edition. I've been looking for a good video on the basics so I can share it with friends.
BTW I love your videos especially the how to play videos.
Hello, you were my favourite Character in all of Joyville! I reviewed the game in one of my vidoes! :D
I mean ... some things were not rules as written (like the bonus die from the gather info of the spider and some other minor points), but Blades is a pretty flexible game and is heavily homebrewed by a lot of folks anyway. Besides that ... a great video!
Hey, thanks for this. Wanted to learn this system, but needed someone to warm me up first😅
I will watch now.
I really like the position/effect verbiage to help hone in on the actions taken and the expected outcomes and what success/failure may look like.
However there are so many little mechanics that just overwhelming me more than just playing starforged/ironsworn version of this style of game
Very timely, a friend of mine want to run Blades, cause he has this idea of a story where a Batman and Joker like character are at war, and we're the goons still trying to pull off jobs while this is going on.
I'll send it his way since he likely might need some basic stuff down for it.
On a different note to Blades, I know you dig Fate and Cortex. As a rando in the comments throwing out unsolicited requests, I'd love a video about modernizing older Fudge games into newer editions of Fate. I was a big fan of Star Blazer Adventures and The Legends of Anglaire, but the sheer amount of crunch around juggling 10 aspects and building stunts got difficult. Another idea is a video on shortcuts/advice to adapting novel settings to a system (like cortex). For instance, I've always been a fan of Jim Butcher's Codex Alera books and thought it would make a fun campaign world, but I've always been daunted by how to adapt its magic system without it becoming a huge project.
Hey, we're all randos, and I always love getting requests! Can't always promise I'll get to them, but happy to see them!
While I'm am not personally familiar with some of those older games, I clearly remember a friend selling me on Star Blazer Adventures back in the day, but we never had a chance to get into it. Might have to add these to my list and take a look!
Awesome video and very helpful for my group's first game of Blades in the Dark! Couple quick questions though --
1) When the cutter takes her action to knock out the guards, why is the locked door addressed with the same skirmish action? Why didn't she have to take a separate action to get the door unlocked, then use the skirmish action to fight the guards?
2) Are the positions determined on an action-by-action basis? For example, when the cutter changed the position from controlled to risky as a consequence of her action, is that the new "crew position"? Or is that just for the cutter?
Excited to play! This video has been beyond helpful, especially for a group of people that have been pretty much DnD-exclusive for close to 8 years now.
Thanks so much, and excellent questions!
1) I completely forgot to highlight when I did that in the video. Ack! So, the reason I, as the GM, let them get into the locked door as a payoff to the 6 Gather Information roll that gave them info on how to easily unlock the truck, basically making what would have been an issue into a non-issue. Sadly, in writing an re-writing the script, I must have completely omitted explaining that.
Though I would also say that sometimes, just to keep things from getting too granular, you could absolutely include unlocking a door, or other smaller-scoped actions, as part of bigger action rolls. If unlocking the door to the truck isn't too interesting or focal, or would just slow the narrative down, it might not be worth its own roll, but I could be woven into the narrative for a Consequence (if the roll was a fail, maybe that locked door is why!)
2) So, often times you might want to have an overall Score Position in mind, the severity of which is determined by the Engagement roll. By default, most rolls would fall within that overall position, but certain actions/items/flashbacks/etc could allow players to temporarily roll outside of that position. Like, if everyone is currently in a controlled position, but someone decided to do something that is unlikely to work and dangerous as heck, it doesn't matter how controlled things are, the might make things Desperate.
So yeah, in that instance of the Cutter's actions resulting in a worse position, that is something that affects everyone, as the guards are moving in on them.
I hope that helps! Thanks again for the lovely comment and questions!
This is what hes doing when he's not dancing
The best game of FitD that actually teaches you how to use Position and Effect correctly is actually Quietus by Oli Jeffrey, which is funny because it’s actually very bare bones and purposefully gutted FitD game but it has a very nice explanation on how to use position properly.
Learning FitD will also just expand the way you play ANY game!
Patiently waiting for Savage Worlds 🙏😬
Thank you for this video, it's very well-done and informative. I've owned Blades In The Dark for more than a year, and have been honesty too anxious to try it with players. I'm on the autism spectrum - I like hard rules and guidelines for how a game works. I find myself "paralyzed by freedom" when I think of how to run this game. The example I keep returning to is when it's time for a player to fight someone (because combat is the easiest scenario to default to in any TTRPG). If my player says they want to "beat this thug up to get past them" that could be handled very simply with a single roll and result (as the Cutter example in your vid with the two guys in the car). OR I could make a clock out of it that mimics HP of the thug and player and do a roll per punch attempt. Am I thinking about this correctly? When would you tend to favor one approach over the other?
Glad I could be of help!
I think you are absolutely thinking about those combat examples correctly. As far as when to do which, it is so left up to interpretation and preference, but when I'm running a game, here is how I think of it. "Are these enemies interesting enough to be focal to the action, or are they just a hurdle to overcome?" Sometimes, an guard or small group of thugs trying to fight with one of your players is just one of many obstacles during a huge chase scene through the alleys of the city. Drawing that out might slow down the chase as a whole, so I wouldn't make a clock for them (unless, perhaps through some bad rolls, the situation changed). However, if the players just nabbed some loot, and these guards/thugs just showed up to to stop them, that feels a little more like the players new main problem, so get a clock going.
I suppose another thing to consider is do you already have some clocks going that are a major focus? If so, another clock will draw focus from the big clock(s) already in play, so just ask yourself "Is this worth taking focus away from the main thing that is happening?" Sometimes it might be, other times, not so much. I like to have one or two main clocks, and maybe just one or two secondary clocks. Too much going on, and things get bogged down.
Sorry, I know it still lacks really hard guidelines to go by, which can be one of the toughest things with systems like this, but hopefully this helps clear it up a little. I am still considering running a short Actual Play 'n' Learn of Blades in the Dark to help folks further, but we'll see if my schedule lightens up enough to do so
@@TheDungeonNewbsGuide Awesome, thank you. I think the freedom and "squishiness" of this game is what both makes it so intimidating and so appealing as a GM. I would definitely watch that actual play if you get a chance to make it.
Honestly, Ive never been particularly interested in playing BitD but with it being one of the most inffluential titterpigs out there I was always curious what was the deal. I really appreciate the example of play, it really helps visually and explain how typical game might go like and all of the peculiarities of the system in regards to narrative structure which I wasn't really getting from just rules explanations. Really good work as always, keep it up! (though not the video lenghts necessarily, we don't want you spending so much time just working on a video, get some rest :3 )
Have you ever gone over Fantasy World? It's a really cool system and I've ran it before, but it'd be nice to see someone explain it in English.
I'm not actually familiar with it, but I'll put it on my list to look into! Thanks for the recommendation
@TheDungeonNewbsGuide awesome! The creator has a discord server for it, but they haven't been super active recently. But when they are active they are really good at answering questions.
I've never been this early. Hi mom!
I'm pretty sure peaky blinders is not set in London.
Good video though
Geeze, BitD is so weirdly complex. I think I'd rather play Mythras, lol
It is definitely a little intimidating at the start, but honestly aside from some of the side systems ends up being really easy and smooth to run. I've also heard the new supplement helps streamline and simplify things. But no shade if you just don't connect with it! To each their own!
I agree with DNG - BitD looks very intimidating at first, but if you focus on the basics (the action roll), most of everything else will eventually fall into place. IMO, it's the sort of system that really benefits from learning thru play.
Really, it's the subsystems that really jumble things up, as some of it is a bit kludgy to approach. In execution, it's not so bad, but the learning curve is a little rough.
Still, there's few systems that handle scoundrel action quite like the FitD framework. If that's a narrative angle that interests you, give it a shot if you get a chance to.
@yamazaki752 narrative isn't generally my cup of tea, but I do think this would be interesting for a cyberpunk game. At least in theory
@jasonGamesMaster well then, you're in luck. There's two (and likely more) Forged in the Dark games specifically designed for cyberpunk: Neon Black and Runners in the Shadows.
Neon Black is an interesting community focused game, where you're a key member of a group trying to stay afloat. Meanwhile, Runners in the Shadows is both a generic cyberpunk game but with optional magic rules to make it into Shadowrun.
That said, understandable that it might not be your thing. But I still recommend giving a FitD game a shot if the chance arises since it's an interesting experience.
@yamazaki752 Runners might be the one I saw over on Bluesky? Is it fairly new? It was weird, because it was literally the same day this vid dropped that someone posted something about it and it looked cool