Chris McDowalls' Blighters or heist me to the moon
Before I finally come to write some things about Electric Bastionland here, I want to take the time to talk about a smaller game of Chris McDowall that didn't got much spotlight in the web so far.
Blighters, a game about horror and heists. In space!
And since this is a post about McDowall stuff, we will of course follow the rule of 3. Let's go, crickets!
What is Blighters?
- A rules light combination of Elements from Mothership and Blades in the Dark
- It has Blades' improvisational gamestyle and some of it's' core mechanics in a trimmed down form.
- And it has Motherships' style of very evocative items, that let you directly dig into applied setting ideas.
What is it about?
- The PCs are Blighters, former crew of a now nano-liquidated ship
- They are in desperate need of a job. So you go on missions. No matter how dangerous they are.
- Your missions are mostly heist-like action trips, where you try to achieve three objectives and then get out alive.
What are it's' best mechanics?
- The gauges: A unified and streamlined version of Blades' clocks. Used to keep track of nearly everything important in the game. Very usefull, yet very simple.
- The items and the cost gauge: Everybody gets a randomized set of usefull items at character creation. For anything more you can tick the cost gauge before a mission. Pro-active planning done right. Creative, yet quick and without the risk of tedious discussions.
- The naming tricks for the different departments. So much fun!
What do I like about it?
- The reduced logistics: Finally I can play a Blades-like game without the play books. Blades is an awesome game, but I need this to be uncomplicated to get me even started with a system.
- The pro-active planning: I like the idea of the players picking their extra stuff before going in. Even though I normally hate those discussions in other games. But the cost gauge seems to limit that perfectly on just a few items (like 2 - 4). It's nice to have the players bring in stuff that I can react to, instead the other way around.
- The limited prep-work: Creating a mission with the template of the example missions is a thing of minutes. I need a bit more improv-training to get the maximum out of this in game, but this already took so much stress from me. Perfect.
What will I take from this?
- The gauge mechanic: This is a nice tool to kind of haggle with consequences
- The location template: Each mission has three different locations. Each location has about 3 "rooms" and 3 interesting elements. Dead simple. Will use that for Electric Bastionland and Into the Odd.
- The cost gauge: I never thought I would hype about proactive planning that much. But look at me ...
What will I add to this?
- The Intel gauge: A version of Blades information gathering. Works like the cost gauge, but instead of items you buy information or special preparations with it. You could get informations about the events of the heat gauge or about the location or weakness of a target. Or you could establish that you have a secret entrance to the location or a double agent within the ranks of the enemy.
- Maybe I'm already working on a hack for this game. Maybe it's for a different setting, where certain "dark-elves" are living in a tower-like structure and are plotting revolutionary acts against their "frosty" opressors. Maybe ...
- Apart from that? Not much. It already is a realy funny game.
Go check it out!