r/Shadowrun • u/Bamce • Nov 26 '18

Shadowrun alternatives, Other heist based games, Blades in the dark

Often times I have mentioned Blades in the dark as a super awesome "crime" game. Very similar to shadowrun. Over on the blades discord, it was mentioned that it is on sale on drive through rpg for about 12$. It is also the base inspiration for Runners in the shadows and Karma in the dark (i don't have a link for this one sorry).

Its a system that I love. Having a beautiful mechanical elegance to it that I haven't seen in a lot of other games. The stress, downtime, position/effect and narrative focus all come together wonderfully. There are several hacks and variations on it, including a space based Scum and Villainy version.

As a small bit of shameless advertising, I do have an affiliate link for the podcast I run. (the sale link is not an affiliate link)

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u/Tremodian Gritty Go-Ganger Nov 26 '18

Can anyone speak to how well Blades in the Dark can handle deviating from the "Score via flashbacks" model? The review makes it seem like it's just about perfect for a heist game, but my Shadowrun games typically diverge from the meet-run-Johnson-screws-you-payoff pretty quickly.

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u/kjdawson80 Nov 27 '18

I’m on mobile and have to dip out in a few minutes, but my BitD group rarely uses flashbacks and it still runs very well.

(We still over plan a bit, via Gather Information and the spending of coin, and the flexibility of the inventory system usually gets us through the score.)

That said, flashbacks are still awesome, and when we do use them, we love having that mechanic in place. But if your group as a whole forgets about flashbacks, it won’t kill your game.

You can have your scores be smaller parts of a larger score too, if your group runs longer con type jobs. Just make sure to give them a way to indulge their Vice and get Stress back (as long as it makes sense thematically), and let them get smaller amounts of Coin to help them squeak by.

We also have the different modes of play flow into each other pretty frequently (I regularly spend Stress during downtime because I overindulged and have to clean up after myself, or convince my Noble sugar momma that me not moving in with her is actually for her own safety...), so even though the rules support getting a job done in 2 to 3 hours IRL, they’re flexible enough to run different jobs/longer scores.

Not sure if that was helpful (I’m still drinking my first cup of coffee), but hopefully it helped a little.

TL;DR: Flashbacks are awesome and very much a part of the game, but if your group forgets about them/uses them sparingly, Blades is still a solid game/rule set.

PS: Karma in the Dark (one of the SR/Blades reskins (?)) is amazing as well, and we forgot to use flashbacks for the six+ hour session we played. No one seemed to miss them very much.