Lady Blackbird is an outstanding minimalist game available for free. John Harper’s approach to gaming is simply great: he gives you a pre-made adventure set in an original steampunk setting, pre-generated characters and just as many rules as you need to play the game printed right on the back of each character sheet.
The result is that in 16 pages you have everything you need to play, provided that you are a veteran player. Its rules, derived from The Shadow of Yesterday are quite open to interpretation and that, of course, means troubles if the players want to win, win, win and nothing else. Its setting is also quite sketchy, which is absolutely grand for a imaginative and resourceful Game Master. I’m not so sure about newcomers.
The whole thing makes me remember bits of Last Exile, Miyazaki and – why not – Firefly and Star Wars. You have a single sun and tens of little planets orbiting it yet air (or breatheable gasses as the game states) and not vacuum fills the void. I don’t know how compatible is that with the Laws of physics, but it makes for a great Steampunk setting.
But I’m not trying to make a review of this game. Just to say that I’m taking notice of it to build the adventures of Newsies and Bootblacks. I hope nobody would consider this statement as “stealing”. In fact, these are the ideas I’m going to use in N&B Book 2 Adventures:
- Rules Summary on the back of the Character Sheet.
- Include Pre-Generated Characters
- Include Suggested challenges for the most probable situtations.
OK, I think 1 and 2 can be understood on their one. As for number 3, the thing is that if I anticipate that the players would probably try to sneak into a building, it can be a good idea to suggest what challenges and options could be ahead.
Option A: Sneak through into a window -> Challenges: Sneak through the guard sentry (Stealth TN 12), then climb (Climbing 10) and get into the room without making any noise (Stealth TN 8).
Option B: Pretend to be errand boys and enter through the back door -> Challenges: Convince the porter (Sweet Talk TN 8 to 14 depending on how well they have prepared their story).
These instances should never be taken as general rules or neither to substitute the players’ good sense, but a tool to speed up the game, and make the Game Master life so much easier.