General question: if you were considering running a play by email game of Glen Cook's Black Company series designed to replace the Books of the South, what would you use as a game engine?
I know Green Ronin did a d20 adaptation but it's wildly out of print, and I'm not sure how well d20 translates to the grittier action of the books.
@SubplotKudzu Band of Blades is a version of Blades in the Dark that's adapted to be extremely close to the Black Company set-up. I haven't played a game by email, so I'm not sure how a BITD hack would work in that format, but in terms of tone, character types and scenarios, it's already very close.
@Crowstone@SubplotKudzu Band of Blades also has the typical bookkeeping and details of a Blades in the Dark game and I don’t know well that works for email. I’d probably favor something where all things are resolved quickly with a few dice rolls. Personally, I’d use something like Classic Traveller where combat is so harsh you tend to avoid it. I’d probably use my own Fantasy Traveler rules and have no advancement, either. Just weird skills and open ended magic, if at all.
@kensanata@Crowstone That translation to e-mail experience is one of my main concerns. I've played in very successful 3E PBEM and run V&V and Marvel Super Heroes PBEM, and the biggest time sink is the granularity of combat response and sequencing.
"combat as threat/sink" and "not combat as reward" (something Croker goes in to several times) design is key, along with low granularity for individual action (likely per side initiative) would work, but I don't want to OD&D it either.
@SubplotKudzu@kensanata "translation to e-mail experience" - this would be my primary concern. I'm not sure the structure of a BITD hack would work well, considering that it's divided into phases of differing intensity - between missions and downtime. It would take some thought.
@Crowstone@kensanata having just watched some “how to play” videos for BitD it’s feeling very much like a Reign hack, with the shifts between scoundrels and crew being close cousins to the PC and Company phases in Reign.
The granularity issues for individual action are a little different but… I still need to get a look at the BitD spin off to see how it works.
@rivetgeek@Crowstone@kensanata Reign isn't too far from that - the players act on a Company level as well as a Character level, and their actions as Characters give big boosts to their Company effectiveness. So it's not so much the command character and the soldier character as a Star Trek Bridge Crew model where you have highly skilled command characters leading a much larger group of people and other resources to accomplish things.
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