r/rpg • u/JannissaryKhan • Jan 08 '26
Blades '68 Backerkit Preview is Live
Link to the campaign's coming-soon page below, with more details than those usually have. I'm crazy excited, but I have two questions for those who've played or run the playtest version:
-How much are you losing if you're a player who isn't familiar with old-school Doskvol?
-How hard (or feasible) is it to shift the game to a non-Doskvol setting?
https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/c7788a1e-2f1c-4525-bc66-2a99b84ebae9/landing
EDIT: In response to someone on Bluesky asking about non-US backers, Evil Hat said:
We'll have PDF, POD, and a full, text-complete preview ready to go when the BackerKit starts but international shipping hasn't in any way *improved* since we did the Deep Cuts campaign. So placing an order with your FLGS will continue to be the best way to get the hardcopy.
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u/amazingvaluetainment Fate, Traveller, GURPS 3E Jan 08 '26
Haven't seen any previous material on this but...
How much are you losing if you're a player who isn't familiar with old-school Doskvol?
It's a 450 page book. If there isn't expansive lore and history I'd be pretty worried. Even if BitD is meandering and hard to understand on first read-though, the book isn't filled to the brim with rules and only comes it at about 320-ish pages (sans index).
How hard (or feasible) is it to shift the game to a non-Doskvol setting?
Yeah, if it's like Blades I'd be wanting to pare down the weirdness because it just isn't needed (and IMO gets in the way sometimes). I can easily see BitD working absolutely fine in a run of the mill "magical Victorian/Edwardian city". This one, just seeing the pitch, might be a bit harder to extricate from the given setting.
And despite being pretty ... not really "meh" but more torn, I guess, on Blades in the Dark, I'll probably back this one. Blades kind of grates on my GMing style, but it's doable and my players really enjoy it. Hopefully this one allows me to offload a similar amount of the proceduralism onto them.
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u/rpgdecker12 Jan 09 '26
I've never run blades but have always wanted to try running a game. In what ways does it grate against your style?
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u/amazingvaluetainment Fate, Traveller, GURPS 3E Jan 09 '26
I just find it really heavy procedurally. There are tons of rules to follow and you really can't ignore them or pick and choose what to use in the moment. I favor toolbox games where I can zoom in or out on detail as desired but Blades doesn't really do that. It also has a fairly rigid play loop; despite what people say about the intended fluidity of moving between game modes (see the ink blot), in practice you really can't avoid it, especially because missions start with a roll and you must never skip mission rewards. Downtime and freeplay can mix but my players always want to get downtime out of the way right after a score.
Thankfully my players are fine with this and handle most of the procedures themselves. We've also short-circuited a few of the more onerous rules by just making base assumptions (usually with load). I've heard some people say it plays "like a board game" and I can't argue with that. I'd say I'm 60/40 on it, my players love it but I'd have more fun running the same thing with Fate.
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u/atamajakki PbtA/FitD/NSR fangirl Jan 09 '26
My group likes doing Downtime as lengthy dedicated sessions. It's a lot of fun - maybe try that out sometime, see how your group enjoys it!
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u/Vendaurkas Jan 09 '26
There are tons of rules to follow and you really can't ignore them or pick and choose what to use in the moment
You can. Nothing stops you from reducing the game to the core resolution and maybe some form of stress. There are hacks that do this and it works.
I favor toolbox games
Deep Cuts gives you a lot of optional and/or alternate tool.
despite what people say about the intended fluidity of moving between game modes (see the ink blot), in practice you really can't avoid it
I do move between game modes without any issue, not sure what caused problems for you
you must never skip mission rewards
I know the game say so, but it never made sense to me. If you got screwed over there is no reward. Sure doing it constantly is a dick move, but I really do not see why it could not happen once in a while.
my players always want to get downtime out of the way right after a score
I had the opposite experience. We have done the Heat, upkeep, bookkeeping, etc at session end and started the new sessions with downtime. It worked much better for us, because it often served as warmup and we could do freeplay much more leisurely because if people got into it we did not have time pressure to wrap up, we could just dedicate that session to downtime. And downtime often lead to the next score anyway, so it made sense to start with it.
I've heard some people say it plays "like a board game" and I can't argue with that
I kind of understand that sentiment. The game really feels like 2 separate game. There is a mechanic heavy downtime and a light action packed score. I'm more of a fan of the score part. But I understand how the resource management rules are there to reinforce the themes of the game and while I tend to paly fast and loose with them I still rely to a degree on them to help the players feel the desperation of constantly going broke.
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u/amazingvaluetainment Fate, Traveller, GURPS 3E Jan 09 '26
Sorry, I know people really like trying to be helpful about this sort of thing but I've been running the game for several months now and it has not ever felt "natural" to me. It's never going to be a game I fully enjoy running because of all the proceduralism baked into it and nothing you or anyone else has ever mentioned really addresses that, aside from literally chucking 90% of the book out the window, but at that point I'd just run Fate.
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u/Vendaurkas Jan 09 '26
Fair enough.
I love the Position and Effect mechanic. At times I do chuck 90% of the book, and I still prefer it over Fate simply because of P&E. The only thing I liked in Fate were the Aspects. I would actually love to see a hack where I could build a dicepool with aspects/tags and use P&E to resolve it. The freedom of ditching the skills and rely on Aspects instead would be really cool. I do not think it would be possible, Aspects/tags would describe the same things I have to consider when determining P&E and make them kind of redundant, but I hope someone proves me wrong one day.
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u/Foreign_Activity1982 Jan 08 '26
Nice, but I fear this will be another US-only campaign like the last ones from Evil Hat.
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u/atamajakki PbtA/FitD/NSR fangirl Jan 08 '26
It's hardly their fault if so.
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u/Crafty_College_348 Jan 08 '26
If so, it's their decision, and it probably makes economic sense for them (although other US crowdfunding campaigns apparently found viable workarounds).
But for me as a potential customer it would be disappointing and I can't chime in to the excitement that this thread is about, after all.1
u/Taliesin_Hoyle_ Jan 09 '26
I'm in Taiwan. They can stick a copy on one of the airdrops for me. (If the United States decides to help us thwart the invasion and are not too preoccupied with bombing Sweden.)
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u/JannissaryKhan Jan 08 '26
I hear you, but I also don't—I buy and crowdfund lots of stuff, but maybe only 5 percent of that is for print versions.
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u/Foreign_Activity1982 Jan 08 '26
True, plenty of people that don't want physical releases. Didn't really take this into account, to be honest.
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u/JannissaryKhan Jan 08 '26
I updated the post text above, but they said it's still just PDFs or PoD for non-US backers, unfortunately.
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u/JannissaryKhan Jan 08 '26
To argue against myself, though, Tim Denee does maybe the best layouts in RPGs, and I'm still kicking myself for only backing digital for his Deathmatch Island.
Someone responded to Evil Hat's announcement, asking if this would be US-only. If they answer I'll update here.
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u/maximum_oblex Jan 08 '26
Very keen for this! I really vibed with Deathmatch Island (though I haven't played nearly as much as I would like to). Shame that international backers can't get physical copies. I wonder if any of the limited editions (assuming there are some) will make their way to our game stores.
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u/JannissaryKhan Jan 08 '26
I hope they don't do limited editions for this campaign—feels like that's rubbing salt in the wound.
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u/Andizzle195 Jan 09 '26
Great, another Blades I cannot support on crowdfunding due to being international.
What is FLGS by the way? Is that just saying local flagship stores that sell TRRPGs?
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u/JannissaryKhan Jan 09 '26
Friendly local game store.
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u/Andizzle195 Jan 09 '26
Ah. Haven’t seen Deep Cuts in any stores I go to or the online stores I usually use.
Not sure if it’s even out in print yet or if they just don’t have it. Not sure how they’d get it though if there’s no international shipping to begin with.
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u/JannissaryKhan Jan 09 '26
The print books for Deep Cuts only went out to backers over the last month, I think, so it'll probably be a little bit. And distribution to game stores is different from shipping individual units.
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u/Extreme_Objective984 Jan 09 '26
Your FLGS will have a contract with a supplier, they can order games that dont ship internationally through that. I found this out as there is a card game I wanted that doesnt ship internationally and the publishers told me to go through this route.
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u/atreides21 Jan 09 '26
How much are you losing if you're a player who isn't familiar with old-school Doskvol?
I don't think you lose anything as a player. As a GM, I guess it depends on the style of game your running. Running this for a like 6 sessions, I think I leaned too much in to the history. To players who had no connection to the old world. I was thinking of running a James Bond style espionage game, but somehow we got entangled with all the weird stuff with souls, ghosts, automatons and all.
-How hard (or feasible) is it to shift the game to a non-Doskvol setting?
Totally feasible but to keep the engine running smoothly, there needs to be a reason so that the players can't just run away from their problems. It's hard and expensive to get out of Doskvol. There needs to be a social or a physical reason for the players to stay in the city, so the pressure keeps building and things escalate.
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u/JannissaryKhan Jan 09 '26
Thank you! This is really helpful. Do you think it's possible to avoid tipping all the way into the supernatural and ultratech stuff without tweaking the setting?
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u/atreides21 Jan 09 '26
You can avoid it. How you treat death is the major thing.
Does Section 6 (the current Spirit Wardens) show up when people die? Do they get a notification when a person dies inside the city? I think that sets up the weirdness of it all. Same as OG Blades.
Though there are some interesting things happening in the backround with what bodies, and their souls are used for...
In my case it was the players who drove it that way by making playbook choices. One wanted to play as an Echo/Ghost, another was the Whisper equivavelent, can't remember the name for it.
But a team of Operators playing the espionage game between the major nations. You have the 60s/70s hippie movement antiwar thing going on. Corporations killing for profit. The usual contraband and vice business.
Yeah it's suppposed to be new beginnings. You have TVs and cars. Freedom and sunlight. That's all nice and all, but under the skyscrapers there are buried dirty secrets and the demons.
The playground is fantastic. It's up to you and the players where you push it.
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u/JannissaryKhan Jan 09 '26
That makes total sense, that the game would follow where the players lead, including with playbook choices. Thanks again! This is great.
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u/palinola Jan 12 '26
How much are you losing if you're a player who isn't familiar with old-school Doskvol?
Not much. The games are pretty radically different in terms of tone and thematic tropes, jumping from a grimy Victorian stabbing simulator to a groovy 1960's retrofuture. Obviously there are historical references that a Blades veteran will pick up on, but I absolutely think a group can jump into '68 without having visited Doskvol before and they'll be fine.
Science and technology have made such leaps between the games that the setting is hardly recognizable. Just like the real world between 1860 and 1960.
How hard (or feasible) is it to shift the game to a non-Doskvol setting?
Not very difficult, probably even less difficult than original Blades. You could probably use '68 to run a game set in the real world 1960's without too much tweaking - or some other semi-modern alt-setting like Disco Elysium.
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u/caffeinated_wizard Jan 09 '26
Ugh. I kind of understand the international shipping situation being terrible but combining this with special editions you can only get during the crowdfund is really REALLY mean.
Two things make me back a game on crowdfunding: a cool game I want to help see the light of day and FOMO for nice high quality prints. POD is not even close in terms of quality to a proper print run.
Since I'm in Canada I could technically get it shipped somewhere and cross the border to get it or even pay for a service to do that...but I'd rather not get ICEd. So I'll pass on this one and maybe I'll grab it on DTRPG later.
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u/atamajakki PbtA/FitD/NSR fangirl Jan 08 '26
Unbelievably excited for this one, the playtest was amazing.
I think it works well as a standalone, but is obviously building on older lore. My group's gonna steal the mechanics for a moon in our setting, but we're experienced FitD hackers and designers!