Post by josephk in Bump in the Dark: Revised Edition comments

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I'm a longtime Forged In The Dark GM and was just trying to figure out whether it would be possible to hack the system for monster-of-the-week urban fantasy, so this looks perfect. Thanks for making it!

One change that stood out to me from vanilla FITD is that downtime activities ("beats") now cost XP ("hope"/"bond"). I don't specifically think this is a bad idea, but it's certainly a significant change. May I ask what your thinking was on this? Is it something you think would be good for any FITD game, or do you feel it fits this kind of story specifically for some reason?

jexjthomas114 days ago(+1)

Hello! The change was inspired by the Beats system from the imo absolutely amazing FitD game Slugblaster. In that game, Beats help ground the game (which can have a sillier tone) in real human emotion. The reason I wanted to use Beats in Bump was because downtime in MOTW-type media is not just recovery and training and projects -- it's also drama and conflict and emotions. Beats felt like they reinforce this better than Downtime Activities interspersed with free play. Now, I don't know whether I fully stuck the landing with how I implement them here, but I'm overall pretty happy with how they turned out.

Of course, it would be easy enough to swap them out for more traditional DTAs as well, if that's more to your liking.

josephk111 days ago(+1)

I see, thank you! But Slugblaster, IIUC, also has the PCs shed stress ("trouble") by buying negative beats (fights with family, etc), whereas you've kept the positive beats but just do stress reduction the usual FITD way. Any particular reason you ditched the negative beats? Just for simplicity's sake?

jexjthomas111 days ago(+2)

Yeah, that's exactly right. I think in some ways I didn't have my head fully wrapped around beats yet, and I really have always liked the sort of "indulging your vice"/seeking solace way of clearing stress, which feels in keeping with the genre. I think there's a way I could have done it more elegantly, though, and one of the games I'm working on currently will use beats much more in line with how Slugblaster does. There's maybe part of me that wanted it both ways with Bump and while I think it works, I think it could be smoother.

josephk111 days ago(+2)

Gotcha. I look forward to seeing your future work! Bump is a leading candidate for an upcoming campaign, though as a perennial tinkerer I may end up hacking it a bit, including the part we've been discussing.

jexjthomas111 days ago(+1)

Hack away! If you're up for it we'd love to hear about it on the Bump discord!

itch.io

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