Lairs, Upgrades, Statblocks - BitO (pt.2)

Character bases and NPCs

Oct 06, 2024

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We’re on a journey to run Blades in the Dark’s (Blades) setting of Duskwall with Into the Odd (ItO), using my free hack Blades into the Odd.

Last time we looked at character creation. This week we are looking at lairs and upgrades, some statblocks templates, and some tweaks to ItO’s ‘detachment’ rules.

We’ve also got a summary of all the Mork Borg content Murkdice has been making for Morktober!

Lairs and Upgrades

I like that PCs have an upgradable base in Blades, and I also like that ItO has prices for stuff like houses. So I’ve combined the two, cherry picking the concrete upgrades from Blades and costing them based on ItO prices for large assets:

You can make PCs foot the bill for the initial lair, but you don’t have to. Some situations might imply starting with a lair. If players decide to be Bluecoats (Duskwall’s law enforcement), maybe start with a local office.

The example upgrades serve as a good guide if players have custom work (stuff not on this list) added to their lair. I’ve built the ‘enterprise’ rules from ItO for running a business into the ‘Business’ upgrade, but it can apply to other business they acquire.

Note, the PCs don’t have to have a lair, it’s their choice.

Statblocks

This is more of a cheat sheet than anything, a way to build what I need on the fly.

Players will be facing people much more often than ‘monsters’ in this game, but I have the infamous Ghosts and Vampires covered if they do come into contact with one.

The people are split by ItO’s ‘experience levels’, have a daily hiring cost, and an equipment budget if I want to be precise in how I outfit them.

Detachments

Detachments are a concept from ItO where you give a group of 20 individuals a statblock just like an NPC. Detachments do very high damage against individuals and individuals do very low damage against detachments, to account for scale.

This is perfect for street warfare. If a group of 20 bluecoats rush a gang of 5, they will likely destroy them in open combat. The only change I want to make is the cost to maintain them.

As written, the cost to form and keep paying detachments is the same regardless of how ‘good’ the detachment is. I’ve changed that:

It also gives a way to outfit the starting gear of a Detachment.

Now, let’s see what Murkdice has been making for MÖRKTOBER!

MÖRKTOBER

Murkdice is taking part in MÖRKTOBER, releasing a piece of Mork Borg content every day in October. Here’s the 6 pieces that have been made so far! Written, designed and illustrated by me. If you haven’t played Mork Borg before check out my article on how to run a Mork Borg sandbox for free.