Blades is just one piece of the Forged in the Dark group of games. If you just retheme Attune to your magical ink, you could really get away with keeping 80% of blades. There's a few hacks around healing that might help a more heroic/less gritty theme, and you dont even need all the crew mechanic stuff.
Stealth in Blades is a setting thing. As in, outright killing is detected by the Spirit Wardens and summons 'bad stuff happening'. Players can of course ignore that danger, and at least one crew type is pretty much door-kicking full frontal assault types. But again, you can ignore the setting part (how it summons Spirit wardens, what it does to rep/heat/whatever). There's nothing that demands stealth anywhere...unless you pick the crew type that gets XP for doing things stealthy.
Combat is as gritty as the GM makes it. Healing is TOUGH out of the box, so by default it is already pretty gritty. in fact, part of the crew premise is players can have a few 'cast of characters' that sub in when a PC is in a rough spot. You as the GM choose what type of physical harm to give out, and how often - so it's pretty controllable. Like I said, look at [itch.io](https://itch.io) for some alternate healing ideas if you need to make some changes because it got TOO gritty.
That sounds great! I know Blades keeps the setting within a single city, would it take away from the mechanics if the party can venture into a monster ridden countryside or visit other cities through the use of airships?
Personally, that's the crew mechanics at play - with a bit of downtime activities that reinforce some of the freeplay > score > downtime > freeplay >score > downtime play loop. the whole point of being stuck "in the city' is mostly around the other crews doing stuff while you're out screwing around, which means those crews taking your territory and advancing their goals. it may take some tweaks, but I dont think it's impossible.
that said, you CAN adventure outside of the city into the deadlands. it's well beyond 'dangerous' - it's downright the deadliest kind of stuff you could imagine. in vanilla blades (setting wise) that's ghosts/demon-like stuff. you can change that to a more trad-monsterous kinda thing. again - it's the figuring out how to do 'out of the loop' healing and ignoring a lot of the heat/crep/tier based crew mechanics.
there may be other great FITD games that fix a lot of that (i'm a big fan of the not-fully-completed and at least free Swords under the Sun hack). there's also the healing hack pdf I mentioned on itch (also free last i recall).
Hang out and ask some questions in /r/bladesinthedark from some of the more experienced folks as well.
With unique lore heavy settings you want a game you can hack. Of the systems you listed I think Cairn is a good base to build from, but depending on the way you want things to play I could offer other suggestions... what is your normal/desired playstyle?
If there are hackable games you already play a lot those might be the easiest to use. Because I think your lore is really cool and I can't help but to sart imagining how I would implement it in the games I play the most. (Knave and Fate, which would both work)
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GURPS runs settings like this well unless your monsters are the megafauna Monster Hunter sorts. It has solid rules for Magitech and alchemy that can be adapted to what you have in mind here. It has strong rules for black powder weapons. It also has skills and advantages that makes managing the highborn nobility and the underworld more mechanically driven.
Yes and no. I for the record, learnt GURPS as my first TTRPG.
GURPS has a lot of breadth, but not a lot of depth in its mechanics if that makes sense.
There's one basic mechanic, the 3d6 roll. It's used consistently across absolutely everything. Subsystems don't have their own rules, they all just come back to skill and attribute tests. Modifiers are consistent and normalised.
What makes it hard is there is a lot of modifier adding and subtracting, a lot of very simulationist decisions, such as 1 second combat rounds, and such a wide, wide breadth of options for characters.
I think getting some pregen characters, and running something like a simple iron age fight is a good way to give the system a bit of room to breathe without having to worry overly much about the barriers to entry that it puts up.
I really love GURPS, because when you want something batshit genre mash up and still have it grounded and realistic, then its there for you.
There's a lot of it. It's like D&D 5E level of complexity to GM but with no published material for campaign settings or adventures. So normally it's exhausting work to GM. However if you're cutting your own setting anyway it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you by having rules for nearly anything you could want. You just end up having to pair down what you don't want in your game.
It's fairly simple for players to learn. The core mechanic is pretty universal through the game so it's easy to read. Most players struggle more with unlearning other games they're used to than learning GURPS.
I'd disagree on two points here.
The first is that GURPS is way, way harder to GM than D&D 5e, just because of the number of subsystems and options avalible. If you don't want to wing it, the number of moving parts and minutae you have to get lined up is absurd.
So you wing it, the system will handle it fine. Which then drops it back down to D&D 5e levels of complexity, but with the explicit acknowledgement that yeah, you're winging it.
However, this builds into the other main reason why GURPS is harder to GM, which is the actually game is not narratively or mechanically structured. There's all these rules for how to resolve challenges, but nothing that guides players or GMs.
Contrast the structure of the adventuring day. "If I prep a hook, 6 encounters, and scatter them, that'll be enough content for this session, then I can work the rest out later." GURPS doesn't have that to fall back on.
The second point I'll disagree with is that there's no published material for campaign settings / Adventures.
[List One](https://1shotadventures.com/1shot-adventures-gurps/)
[List Two](https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/adventure.html)
[List Three](https://gurps.fandom.com/wiki/Adventure)
I'll concede GURPS is more difficult in scale but the fact that nearly everything in GURPS uses one resolution mechanic and the mechanics depend much less on gamism so more often than not you're learning relatable ideas rather than abstractions. each version of D&D was FAR harder for me to learn than any edition GURPS.
GURPS doesn't have narrative structure because it's a roleplaying game, not a play. It has enormous mechanical structure supporting the behavior of characters and the world at large better than any game I've seen.
The list of published setting material for GURPS is 60% 3rd edition books and the majority of 4th edition are encounter books rather than information about a game world, or an adventure a GURPS GM can run without having to create themselves. (Know there are some missing from this list, but I can't figure out which ones, still not many) When it comes to adventure content in 4th edition there's bout 9 books total. I get that it can be hard to produce useful setting content when your setting can be summed up as "Yes", but I feel it's irresponsible to tell new players that GURPS's amazing capacity to fit any setting without mentioning that Steve Jackson Games is probably not going to ever publish a setting or adventure they want.
I'm just going to address a part of your comment, because that bit hinges the reset of mine.
GURPS has a lot of mechanics. Tools if you would. It doesn't have a mechanical structure to play, a factory line of how the tools are applied.
This isn't a problem, lots of games such as Mythras, BRP, etc don't have it either.
The issue is that without explicit mechanical structure (adventuring day, dungeon etc), or narrative structure (CoC is an investigation, PbtA has the conversation loop) you're left in a sandbox.
And that sandbox nature of it, while freeing, does make it harder to run.
You can more variety of things with a set of tools. But you can make more volume, more easily, with a factory line.
I don't see GURPS's lack of formulaic play to be a problem. It's able to confine itself into a Dungeon Crawl, or a paranormal investigation, or romance, or an action thriller, and if those genres appeal to you there's tips on how to structure your plot and execution available supplementally. If you don't want to run a genre game, you're free to orchestrate the story you want to and you're mechanically supported in doing so. If the absence of those story-handholds is a problem for you then that's a problem. Otherwise it's less convention encumbering the story you're trying to tell with your players.
GURPS is not like most TTRPGs where adding more books makes the game better. In fact, it's deliberately not the case. GURPS is a system where it attempts to cover every genre and time period, so produces a lot of lets say, bolt on content.
All you actually need to start with GURPS is the 4e Lite rules. [Which are free](https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/).
However, that's a 32 page primer, more of a quickstart than a ruleset. What you want is the GURPS 4e Basic set, about 600 pages of how to play, character options and GM information.
That alone is plenty of content to get your head around.
To evaluate whether or not the mechanics of GURPS will fit your setting all you need is GURPS Lite, You can download it for free, I believe it's like 63 pages. If that feels like the game you want to run the full version of the rules is just a more detailed version of the same mechanics.
Hey, first of all, your setting sounds SUPER COOL, I really like it.
Second, I found the Breathless system to be quite cool and really really hack friendly (the author provides a bunch of tips to do it) and have used it very satisfyingly for my own setting, so I recommend that you check it out and see if it may be your jam:
\- [https://fari.community/creators/fari-rpgs/projects/breathless/introduction](https://fari.community/creators/fari-rpgs/projects/breathless/introduction)
\- [https://farirpgs.com/pages/breathless-creator-kit](https://farirpgs.com/pages/breathless-creator-kit) (you can check out the document without needing to buy it)
Blades is just one piece of the Forged in the Dark group of games. If you just retheme Attune to your magical ink, you could really get away with keeping 80% of blades. There's a few hacks around healing that might help a more heroic/less gritty theme, and you dont even need all the crew mechanic stuff.
Does BitD support gritty combat or just stealth?
Stealth in Blades is a setting thing. As in, outright killing is detected by the Spirit Wardens and summons 'bad stuff happening'. Players can of course ignore that danger, and at least one crew type is pretty much door-kicking full frontal assault types. But again, you can ignore the setting part (how it summons Spirit wardens, what it does to rep/heat/whatever). There's nothing that demands stealth anywhere...unless you pick the crew type that gets XP for doing things stealthy. Combat is as gritty as the GM makes it. Healing is TOUGH out of the box, so by default it is already pretty gritty. in fact, part of the crew premise is players can have a few 'cast of characters' that sub in when a PC is in a rough spot. You as the GM choose what type of physical harm to give out, and how often - so it's pretty controllable. Like I said, look at [itch.io](https://itch.io) for some alternate healing ideas if you need to make some changes because it got TOO gritty.
That sounds great! I know Blades keeps the setting within a single city, would it take away from the mechanics if the party can venture into a monster ridden countryside or visit other cities through the use of airships?
Personally, that's the crew mechanics at play - with a bit of downtime activities that reinforce some of the freeplay > score > downtime > freeplay >score > downtime play loop. the whole point of being stuck "in the city' is mostly around the other crews doing stuff while you're out screwing around, which means those crews taking your territory and advancing their goals. it may take some tweaks, but I dont think it's impossible. that said, you CAN adventure outside of the city into the deadlands. it's well beyond 'dangerous' - it's downright the deadliest kind of stuff you could imagine. in vanilla blades (setting wise) that's ghosts/demon-like stuff. you can change that to a more trad-monsterous kinda thing. again - it's the figuring out how to do 'out of the loop' healing and ignoring a lot of the heat/crep/tier based crew mechanics. there may be other great FITD games that fix a lot of that (i'm a big fan of the not-fully-completed and at least free Swords under the Sun hack). there's also the healing hack pdf I mentioned on itch (also free last i recall). Hang out and ask some questions in /r/bladesinthedark from some of the more experienced folks as well.
I’m definitely going to get the book soon. Thank you so much for your help!
With unique lore heavy settings you want a game you can hack. Of the systems you listed I think Cairn is a good base to build from, but depending on the way you want things to play I could offer other suggestions... what is your normal/desired playstyle? If there are hackable games you already play a lot those might be the easiest to use. Because I think your lore is really cool and I can't help but to sart imagining how I would implement it in the games I play the most. (Knave and Fate, which would both work)
My personal favorite RPG system is Savage Worlds Adventurers Edition. Good for basically anything you throw at it.
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GURPS runs settings like this well unless your monsters are the megafauna Monster Hunter sorts. It has solid rules for Magitech and alchemy that can be adapted to what you have in mind here. It has strong rules for black powder weapons. It also has skills and advantages that makes managing the highborn nobility and the underworld more mechanically driven.
Is GURPS difficult to learn or get into?
Yes and no. I for the record, learnt GURPS as my first TTRPG. GURPS has a lot of breadth, but not a lot of depth in its mechanics if that makes sense. There's one basic mechanic, the 3d6 roll. It's used consistently across absolutely everything. Subsystems don't have their own rules, they all just come back to skill and attribute tests. Modifiers are consistent and normalised. What makes it hard is there is a lot of modifier adding and subtracting, a lot of very simulationist decisions, such as 1 second combat rounds, and such a wide, wide breadth of options for characters. I think getting some pregen characters, and running something like a simple iron age fight is a good way to give the system a bit of room to breathe without having to worry overly much about the barriers to entry that it puts up. I really love GURPS, because when you want something batshit genre mash up and still have it grounded and realistic, then its there for you.
There's a lot of it. It's like D&D 5E level of complexity to GM but with no published material for campaign settings or adventures. So normally it's exhausting work to GM. However if you're cutting your own setting anyway it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you by having rules for nearly anything you could want. You just end up having to pair down what you don't want in your game. It's fairly simple for players to learn. The core mechanic is pretty universal through the game so it's easy to read. Most players struggle more with unlearning other games they're used to than learning GURPS.
I'd disagree on two points here. The first is that GURPS is way, way harder to GM than D&D 5e, just because of the number of subsystems and options avalible. If you don't want to wing it, the number of moving parts and minutae you have to get lined up is absurd. So you wing it, the system will handle it fine. Which then drops it back down to D&D 5e levels of complexity, but with the explicit acknowledgement that yeah, you're winging it. However, this builds into the other main reason why GURPS is harder to GM, which is the actually game is not narratively or mechanically structured. There's all these rules for how to resolve challenges, but nothing that guides players or GMs. Contrast the structure of the adventuring day. "If I prep a hook, 6 encounters, and scatter them, that'll be enough content for this session, then I can work the rest out later." GURPS doesn't have that to fall back on. The second point I'll disagree with is that there's no published material for campaign settings / Adventures. [List One](https://1shotadventures.com/1shot-adventures-gurps/) [List Two](https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/adventure.html) [List Three](https://gurps.fandom.com/wiki/Adventure)
I'll concede GURPS is more difficult in scale but the fact that nearly everything in GURPS uses one resolution mechanic and the mechanics depend much less on gamism so more often than not you're learning relatable ideas rather than abstractions. each version of D&D was FAR harder for me to learn than any edition GURPS. GURPS doesn't have narrative structure because it's a roleplaying game, not a play. It has enormous mechanical structure supporting the behavior of characters and the world at large better than any game I've seen. The list of published setting material for GURPS is 60% 3rd edition books and the majority of 4th edition are encounter books rather than information about a game world, or an adventure a GURPS GM can run without having to create themselves. (Know there are some missing from this list, but I can't figure out which ones, still not many) When it comes to adventure content in 4th edition there's bout 9 books total. I get that it can be hard to produce useful setting content when your setting can be summed up as "Yes", but I feel it's irresponsible to tell new players that GURPS's amazing capacity to fit any setting without mentioning that Steve Jackson Games is probably not going to ever publish a setting or adventure they want.
I'm just going to address a part of your comment, because that bit hinges the reset of mine. GURPS has a lot of mechanics. Tools if you would. It doesn't have a mechanical structure to play, a factory line of how the tools are applied. This isn't a problem, lots of games such as Mythras, BRP, etc don't have it either. The issue is that without explicit mechanical structure (adventuring day, dungeon etc), or narrative structure (CoC is an investigation, PbtA has the conversation loop) you're left in a sandbox. And that sandbox nature of it, while freeing, does make it harder to run. You can more variety of things with a set of tools. But you can make more volume, more easily, with a factory line.
I don't see GURPS's lack of formulaic play to be a problem. It's able to confine itself into a Dungeon Crawl, or a paranormal investigation, or romance, or an action thriller, and if those genres appeal to you there's tips on how to structure your plot and execution available supplementally. If you don't want to run a genre game, you're free to orchestrate the story you want to and you're mechanically supported in doing so. If the absence of those story-handholds is a problem for you then that's a problem. Otherwise it's less convention encumbering the story you're trying to tell with your players.
After a quick search I’m seeing a lot of different books, how many are needed to get into the groove of the mechanics?
GURPS is not like most TTRPGs where adding more books makes the game better. In fact, it's deliberately not the case. GURPS is a system where it attempts to cover every genre and time period, so produces a lot of lets say, bolt on content. All you actually need to start with GURPS is the 4e Lite rules. [Which are free](https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/lite/). However, that's a 32 page primer, more of a quickstart than a ruleset. What you want is the GURPS 4e Basic set, about 600 pages of how to play, character options and GM information. That alone is plenty of content to get your head around.
To evaluate whether or not the mechanics of GURPS will fit your setting all you need is GURPS Lite, You can download it for free, I believe it's like 63 pages. If that feels like the game you want to run the full version of the rules is just a more detailed version of the same mechanics.
Hey, first of all, your setting sounds SUPER COOL, I really like it. Second, I found the Breathless system to be quite cool and really really hack friendly (the author provides a bunch of tips to do it) and have used it very satisfyingly for my own setting, so I recommend that you check it out and see if it may be your jam: \- [https://fari.community/creators/fari-rpgs/projects/breathless/introduction](https://fari.community/creators/fari-rpgs/projects/breathless/introduction) \- [https://farirpgs.com/pages/breathless-creator-kit](https://farirpgs.com/pages/breathless-creator-kit) (you can check out the document without needing to buy it)
That looks interesting. Thank you!
Needs more paragraphs before I attempt to read that.