Behind The Scenes

[Blades In The Dark]: Arcus


Welcome to Arcus, an island city. Floating in the sea of clouds. Populated by refugees, academics, mystics, criminals, and entrepreneurs. All of them survivors of a shattered world. We join a group of scoundrels fresh out of Bedlam, looking to carve out a place for them and theirs. Hopefully we’ll see them grow into a powerful organisation, and overcome daring obstacles. We might also see them suffer. Strife from their past, their relationships, and their ambition will all test their resolve.

Should they endure, glory awaits them!

Join us, in our longest series to date. In a world of our own creation; built using The Quiet Year, and run using Blades In The Dark. This is Blades In The Dark: Arcus.

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Patreon; Quest Markers

If you didn’t know we have a new podcast launching over on Patreon called Quest Markers. In it we dicuss trends and news from the gaming world, our upcoming projects, and stuff happening in our personal lives that might effect the show.

One of the segments has Raymond answering questions from fans, and we’d like for you to contribute to that if you can. This is an chance for you to have your curiosity sated.
Just follow the link and let us know what you’re thinking. Or leave us a comment on any of our sites.

Adventure Base Raiding – a Base Raiders Campaign
Our second FATE campaign, and our first base raiders campaign.
In this campaign run by Raymond we explore the human nature, heroism, greed, and power through the lens of superpowered adventure.
Base Raiders is set in a world where all the heroes and villains have disappeared, but they have left their secret bases behind. Base raiders are the people that loot these places.
In our campaign our players are part of a international adventure race, where they break into, you guessed, abandoned super bases.Each adventure of this series is called a Heat, and each Heat has 2-4 parts/episodes. you can find all those episodes above in a nice big playlist, or in the ABR tag.If you’d like to read our setting primmer you can find it here.
Below we also have some reflections on the campaign from the players.

Fin(Yurei): This turned out to be an amazingly human story given it was about a ghost, a demon, and a sentient cloud. Amid all the drag races across the Nile delta, raiding of undersea hot labs, and duels with Valkyries on tropical beaches of the Hollow Earth; we found some genuine moments of companionship and vulnerability. As we kicked up dust on the moon and punched Nazis over Paris, we really explored what it was that made each of us feel at home amongst this roving semi-illegal super-sport that we lacked elsewhere in the world. The game had a real warmth in the moments we were just sitting around talking amongst our characters or with the other teams and marketing execs that Raymond gave life to. Not to say that we didn’t absolutely tear it up when the action kicked off. Boy is there some wild stunts in this! Also some excellent camping.

Alex (Gregg): I’m so glad I got the opportunity to experience and explore the incredible and extraordinary world of Base Raiders. While I feel the system is designed to be a high-tech, abstract dungeon crawl, this campaign shied away from that. While there were definitely some amazing set piece moments (like the Nazi UFO rising up from underneath Paris), this campaign was really about three non-humans finding their humanity. I loved how Raymond gave every character a chance to shine and played upon everyone’s strengths and weaknesses at various times. Every character had a chance to grow, even my ridiculous sentient fart cloud.


Ryan (Amriel):First, there were the characters. We started off as an oddball bunch—a demon, a ghost possessing a robot, and a super intelligent cloud of nano-machines that smelled vaguely like a fart—and we just got weirder as the game progressed. Each of our characters had an arc that allowed us to explore their personalities and motivations.Beyond that, the evolution of the party relationship was fun to play out. With the volcanic explosion and the lost teammate in our backstory, not to mention our wildly divergent character concepts, we got off to something of a rocky start. By the end we’d developed a real rapport with each other as players, and our in-character banter and downtime role play became my favourite parts of the campaign. Heat 5, the section of the campaign where we went camping in the Hollow Earth, had me grinning as we played, even though we got very little accomplished aside from throwing a barbecue for the other competitors.Finally, Raymond did a stellar job of weaving together all of our weirdness into a coherent story. From the huge cast of NPC competitors to the charming one-offs, he peopled the world with compelling characters who were fun to interact with. Even the Valkyr, who seemed to be the campaign’s heavies for most of the runs, were more than they appeared. In an imaginary space, you can never go over budget, and Raymond took full advantage of that as GM, taking us to various dangerous, odd and exotic locations across the globe (and on the moon). The locations, set pieces, and action sequences were all great.

Adventure Base Raiding was a blast to play, from the kick-ass fight on the side of the crashing flying saucer in Heat 3, to the fraught negotiation with the alien nebula in Heat 4. Every session had something new, exciting and interesting to offer.

Raymond(Game Master): I’m kinda touched by the wonderful things the boys have said. I wanted to take the opportunity to thank them for sticking with it and giving their best to the campaign. Make time for it every week and really focusing in on the play space.

They did an excellent job of portraying their characters and helping me bring the world alive.
I loved running this campaign, it was nice to return to superheroes (which is where this podcast started.) I liked exploring the relationships the boys built. By far my fav moments were when they had to deal with marketing people, or lawyers, reporters, or fans.
Of course there was stuff I would have done differently if I could. it was still an excellent campaign, and I think; a great series.

Our upcoming patreon launch

We thought it would be a good idea to share with you all some information about our Patreon launch.

First of all; if you haven’t heard about this yet, don’t feel bad. We only finalised it last month, and we haven’t posted about it here yet. You might have heard us mention it during some recording though, and if you follow us on Twitter.
We’ll be launching our Patreon on November 17th, 2016.
To celebrate we’ll be hosting a 12 hour live stream; full of special guests, gaming banter, and some role playing. That will go from 8am to 8pm AEDT. You can find some more info here.

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Game ideas

This page features brief descriptions of future scenarios and campaigns we want to run. It’s so listeners and players can see what is coming up, make suggestions, and maybe even ask to be a player in one of them. This list will expand and contract. At the moment it’s only Raymond’s ideas, but it will likely include other people’s in the future.

Space Road Truckers: Players are long haul space transporters trying to get their cargo to port. Could be Eclipse Phase(and serious) or something else, like Dungeon Planet(and campy.)

When one door closes, another opens [version2]: An Eclipse Phase gatecrashing game, where the players are sent through a Pandora gate to explore an exo-planet but end up at a different location than intended.

Luna Hell Hunt: an Eclipse Phase one shot where all the players are adolescents on Luna. It’s Halloween, and a large group of teens is terrorising youngsters. inspired by the Bob’s Burgers episode “full bars”.

Homesteading: a gatecrashing team arrives on a newly discovered world, lush with vegetation. while searching it they find an abandoned wooden homestead, clear signs of having been built by humans. It shouldn’t be there. How did it get there? who built it? where are they?

Castle in the border lands: I’d like to do an Eclipse Phase dungeon crawl, set in the Scum swarm, “There’s No Going Back”, on their la France rig Castle on the borderlands.

The Liberation: You are communist heroes! You must free the capitalists from the oppressors.

Agents of The Empire: War has been outlawed on earth, by mutual compact. However, with the invention of aether drives the old empires have been spread to the stars! You play as secret agents of the Immortal Empress Victoria. This’d be a FATE game.

Under The Sea: You play as a Tritons! It’s a Dungeon World game, but underwater.

Quest for Fire: a Numenera game where the players hail from a town fuelled by a burning nuclear heart. Where the heart has almost burnt out all it’s fuel rods. The players must become Numenera hunters in order to save their home.

The New World cometh: a fantasy game where the players are starting a colony in newly discovered land which is thought to be uninhabited, only to be proven wrong.

Bootstraps: a modern setting campaign where the players build a criminal empire. Could be urban fantasy, could just be a modern tale.

Weapons of the Divine: You play as one of the Divine weapons, prophesied to rise at the end of every great epoch. Agents of change, what injustices will you combat with god like power? A FATE game. So far the Divine weapons are: The Sword, Bow, Spear, Axe, Shield, Body, Knife, Club. Each one would have a list of archetypal character traits.

Rollin’ City: An Apocalypse World game, set in nomadic town of drifters, drivers, haulers, and choppers. A town on wheels, chewin’ up resources, and whatever remains of the tarmac.

Long Stretch: An Eclipse Phase campaign. You are criminals, put into suspension prisons before the strife and destruction that was the Fall. You awaken into a new world, unsure of your place in it, or how to navigate the new social structures you find yourselves in. The only skills you have are the ones that landed you in lock up. What will you do to survive?

Means Of Production: An Eclipse Phase campaign. You are Firewall sentinels, investigating a series of hostile take overs of various hypercorp facilities. Some of them have been retaken, others are being held quite securely. Find the cause, and inform your handlers if you think it’s an X-threat.

Pain//Recovery: An Eclipse Phase campaign where all the players took part in a shared traumatic holding action during the fall. 10 years later, 10 years into their new lives and old “war buddy” contacts them posthumously via the mesh after deleting all his back ups. He tells them it‘s back, what ever it is.

Pirate Bait: An Eclipse Phase scenario where the players are drift pirates. Waiting out in the interplanetary shipping lanes for automated cargo ships to drift by so they can jack the cargo and try not to starve. But something is off about the near by prey, this ship don’t move right.

Parole Hearing: You wake up in a loud room, lit by low red lights. You can’t move. You can barely feel your body. It’s hard to breath. The last thing you remember is a prison doc telling you to count back from ten as they slipped the ego probes onto your head. A silhouette emerges from the red. “This is your parole hearing. If you are willing to kill monster to your last breath then your sentence will be commuted. If that sounds like too much to ask, we’ll leave your egos in cold storage we abandon this rock. Make your choice.” -An Eclipse Phase one shot set during the fall.

The Long Road Home: A fantasy game where the players characters are survivors of a disastrous invasion of another nation. Now stranded in a foreign land they have to try and get home.

Those are the ideas I have at the moment.
Farewell from the past, I’m Raymond.

This page is linked to on our About page.