RPGaDay 2023 # 7

SMARTEST RPG I'VE PLAYED

This is my seventh post for RPGaDay 2023, if you’re not sure what that is you can find Autocratik’s blog post about it by clicking here.

Basically a list of prompts is provided to generate discussion around RPG topics, with creators making a blog post, video or podcast each day during the month of August, the list of prompts is included below:

The Smartest RPG I’ve Played

I had to think long and hard about this, and I was tempted to say Burning Wheel, but—since I talked about that in my previous post—I decided to try and find a different game. Eventually I decided on the Band of Blades.

This is a game that uses the Forged in the Dark system (popularised by the game Blades in the Dark) which is itself an adaption of the Powered by the Apocalypse system, Band of Blades is currently available from Evil Hat Productions.

In this game the forces of the civilised world have been threatened by the Cinder King, an undead necromancer of massive power (think a lich crossed with Sauron and you won’t be far wrong), the forces of light gathered to confront the undead armies of their foe… and lost… massively.

You play the commanders of a remnants of this army, trying to flee across increasingly occupied territory to make their final stand in the last remaining fortress Skydagger Keep.

So what makes this so smart?

Well, one of the selling points of this game is that you don’t just get to play as a single character, in-fact you take on the role of the commander, quartermaster and various other top level people who manage the legion’s supplies, troops, route, etc and you attempt to get your forces—through various routes—across the campaign map to Skydagger keep, harried by the forces of the Cinder King and his generals, whilst also trying to manage morale, supplies, etc.

Along the way you get to choose various missions that you can send your roster of heroes and troops out on, some of these might gain you tangible benefits in terms of more supplies, horses or artifacts that have magical effects, and when you undertake these missions you send a crack team of troops on them, and then get to play the actual troops undertaking the mission. I love this as a concept since you start naming your people and then advance depending on what missions they go on, but some may have abilities that are better used elsewhere or are still recovering from previous missions so it’s a real balancing act to get the right people in the right place at the appropriate times.

When you eventually get to Skydagger Keep (assuming you do) then there are a series of final confrontations you have to undertake to hold off the forces of the Cinder King until reinforcements can arrive, there are even some guidelines in the book for continuing the game after this. In the campaign we played, we made it to Skydagger but there were times when a few bad rolls could have spelled the undoing of our brave force and we were lucky to acquire a knight as a result of a mission, whose combat skills saved our bacon on a number of occasions (including kicking a werewolf off a bridge into a chasm as we were besieged at Skydagger Keep).

The reason I think this game is smart is because the mechanics all reinforce the core concept of the game, that of withdrawing across a world increasingly falling under the sway of a great evil, desperately trying to reach a distant point of light and, at least the hope that, the forces of good may live to fight another day. As the game progressed—running from left to right across the campaign map—locations start becoming occupied by the Cinder King’s forces making back-tracking a perilious endeavour and really hammering home that feeling of a being pursued and time being extremely limited.

Is it a game that I’d play every day? Probably not since it captures a very specific flavour and style of campaign, I certainly don’t think it would be to everyone’s taste, however if you enjoy grim and gritty military fantasy and don’t mind a bit of the old resource management game then I think there’s a lot of enjoyment to be had from it. I certainly still remember our campaign fondly.

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