Last 5 Days!
over 6 years ago
– Fri, Feb 28, 2020 at 09:07:54 AM
We're getting closer to the end of the campaign. We have only 5 more days to go.
We’ve already unlocked the first two stretch goals, but we still have time to unlock some more and get some extra cases for our detectives!
How can you help to make that happen? Share this campaign with your friends, any fan of Blacksad comic book series you know and any RPG players. Everyone is welcome! The more people we reach the easier will be to get the next stretch goals:
At 12,500€ - The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
A third case will be translated into English The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. This story written by Juan Sixto that originally appeared in Nivel 9 Magazine #12:
Miss White has been suspicious for weeks and she has finally decided to get some answers. Following her husband to his lover, taking some photos and get a generous pay should be an easy job for a detective, but everything is gonna get incredibly complicated… A case about trust, drugs and the consequences of WWII.
At 15,000€ - The Ruins of a Dream
For the fourth case, we will translate into English The Ruins of a Dream, a story written by Antonio Peiro that originally appeared in Nivel 9 Magazine #9:
Three days ago, Daniel Rivers, a well-known Rivers & Swamp’s architect disappeared. His wife Sandra hires the characters to find him. There is neither note nor motive to vanish, so the police doesn’t think it deserves its attention.
So please, help us to reach all the people out there who still didn't know about this campaign.
Sceneries
over 6 years ago
– Thu, Feb 27, 2020 at 01:12:03 PM
The sceneries are a vital part in any noir story. Sometimes they’re characters themselves. As game master, you bring the scenery to life, describe it and make it real in the players’ minds. This is something so important for the story as building a case worthy to be investigated.
Blacksad stories include many specific sceneries that you can also use in your games. These are some of them:
La Iguana
- Volume: Somewhere Within the Shadows.
- Concept: “Pool hall frequented by reptiles”.
- Descriptors: “Illuminated by fluorescent lights”, “It has a back door to an alley”, “The patrons are always smoking”.
As its name suggest, La Iguana is a meeting point for New Yorker saurians and lizards. To enter in the hall you have to climb a little stairs where always there are some young lizards sunbathing. The counter is close to the door, so there is space enough for the pool tables illuminated by fluorescent lights and a couple of tables for drinking. Behind the counter there is a back door to an alley parallel to the main street. The understanding between Poli, the fat-bellied iguana barman always with a cigar in his mouth, and the patrons is excellent, to the point they defend them each other against the undesirable “customers”.
The Line
- Volume: Artic Nation.
- Concept: “Deprived neighborhood on the outskirts of a big city”.
- Descriptors: “It’s griped by a crisis”, “The dichotomy between rich white people and poor black people is obvious”, “it was a thriving neighborhood years ago”.
At the end of World War II, many of the big American cities’ suburbs were helpless as the industrial expansion they were result of wasn’t necessary anymore. That’s what happened with The Line. After the plane factory’s closing, the unemployment, graffitis and socioeconomic differences between citizens have taken the place of what used to be a hope’s nest. The African American people faces the biggest challenge as they have to face a corrupt police, stores that forbid their access and the fear of been beaten down by some racist band when they are in the streets.
Second Stretch Goal Unlocked!
over 6 years ago
– Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 05:05:37 AM
Thanks to all of you we have unlocked a second case!
Unlocked 10,000€ - Black Leather & Red Blood
For the second case, we will translate into English Black Leather & Red Blood, a story written by Pablo Claudio Ganter, that originally appeared in Nivel 9 Magazine #11:
The newspapers talk about protests, inter-community conflicts, the breakdown of social harmony and the red danger. In spite of everything, the vegetation paints a beautiful tapestry for anyone who stops and contemplates it. There, the characters receive a call for help from a respected member of the community, the minister David Freesoul, who runs the church of a nearby guetto.
But that's not all, there are even more new cases waiting to be solved. These are our next stretch goals:
At 12,500€ - The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
A third case will be translated into English The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. This story written by Juan Sixto that originally appeared in Nivel 9 Magazine #12:
Miss White has been suspicious for weeks and she has finally decided to get some answers. Following her husband to his lover, taking some photos and get a generous pay should be an easy job for a detective, but everything is gonna get incredibly complicated… A case about trust, drugs and the consequences of WWII.
At 15,000€ - The Ruins of a Dream
For the fourth case, we will translate into English The Ruins of a Dream, a story written by Antonio Peiro that originally appeared in Nivel 9 Magazine #9:
Three days ago, Daniel Rivers, a well-known Rivers & Swamp’s architect disappeared. His wife Sandra hires the characters to find him. There is neither note nor motive to vanish, so the police doesn’t think it deserves its attention.
Combat
over 6 years ago
– Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 05:05:32 AM
One of the most important elements in the Blacksad stories is combat. Violence is one of the key ingredients in the noir genre, and in the Blacksad roleplaying game we have opted for a quick system in order to represent this. This system is born from the basic game mechanics we’ve seen and it is nurtured by the same concepts. Generally, combats are resolved by means of challenges where the difficulty is defined by the Defense of the target. To understand better how an action is carried out, the combat is divided into a series of sequences that will serve as a way of defining the time in the scene.
Combat sequence
Combat is a constant where the characters attack and respond to the attacks they receive. The combat sequence allows us to encapsulate the combat in pages, much like a comic book. Each page is divided into strips, which correspond to each character’s turn. Thus, a page is made up of strips of each character and, once everyone has taken action, it moves on to the next page. A page is a way to measure time in an abstract manner and it is equivalent to a time range of five to ten seconds within the story we are playing. Each strip is a fraction of this time range and many successive strips can practically occur at once, but they are sequentially resolved to make it simpler. The basic combat sequence is developed in the following manner:
1. The game master decides which characters are aware of the presence of their opponents. If there exists a fighter who is unaware of the presence of his opponents, an initial page of surprise is created before starting normal combat. On this surprise page, only the characters aware of the combat have a strip, those who are to be surprised are unable to act yet. If all of the characters are aware of their opponents the surprise page doesn’t exist and it directly starts on a normal page where all characters have their strips to take action.
2. On this page, characters act in turns and in order based on their Initiative stats. If one of them wants to get a head start, he can spend one Drive point to act whenever he wants. On the contrary, if what he wants to do is delay the action, spending a point isn’t necessary. In any case, the order is reestablished in the following page. In the surprise pages, the surprised characters do not participate and, therefore, cannot take action.
3. Once all of the characters have had their strip and have carried out their action or actions, the page ends and a new one begins: the character with the highest Initiative stats act once again and step 2 and 3 are repeated until the end of the combat.
Initiative
Initiative stats are fixed values that are analyzed by adding the character’s Intellect and Reflexes. This means that, under normal circumstances, the characters act in the same order.
If a main character and a secondary character happen to have the same Initiative stats, the player who interprets the main character is the one who decides who gets to act first on each page. If the characters happen to reach an impasse or if we are dealing with secondary characters, the game master must be the one to decide the order of the strips.
Nevertheless, during a combat page, any player can spend one Drive point to give their character an advantage and start before their turn according to their Initiative stats. When many players decide to spend their Initiative to gain an advantage, the one who acts first is the one who has first declared this gesture.
Attack
The attack action should be, according to the logic explained previously in the section “Basic mechanics”, a conflict. However, to reduce the number of dice rolls and the purpose of making it thrilling and brief, it is resolved like a conflict. Additionally, one single dice roll will help determine if the attack has had an impact and, if that’s the case, how much damage it has inflicted.
To perform an attack, we will make use of the character’s Reflexes stats along with a trait that seems appropriate. As opposed to other challenges, the difficulty of dice rolls isn’t a value fixed by the game master, rather it is determined by the target. The difficulty level of an attack corresponds to the value of the target’s Defense stats, since it’s presumed that the target will be defending itself. If by any chance the target weren’t defending itself, the Defense would be considered a 0.
Like in any challenge, the character rolls the dice that correspond, rerolls if there exists the possibility to do so, applies the appropriate trait and, last but not least, adds up the successes. Remember that the target’s Defense is the attack’s difficulty, hence, the failures that nullify the successful results of that dice roll. If the final result has one or more successful results, the attack has had an impact and the harm inflicted will depend on the number of successes obtained.
Damage
When an attack is successful, it’s time to determine the damage it has caused. This will depend on the obtained successes in the attack dice roll (after discarding those that are nullified by failures, including the target’s Defense, which as we can recall, acts as extra failures). Each success inflicts damage that will depend on the kind of attack performed, as seen on the next chart. It’s convenient to remember that a 6 on a tension die equals two successes, so it will inflict double damage. By choice of the game master, a result of “No, but…” (A balance of zero between success and failure) could be considered a scratch instead of a failure with a temporary positive aspect. A scratch will only inflict half of the damage shown on the chart, which will be rounded to a lower value.
Attack or weapon | Damage | Reach
No weapons | Fortitude | Immediate
Knife | Fortitude+1 | Immediate
Saber, sword | Fortitude+2 | Immediate
Iconic characters 2
over 6 years ago
– Fri, Feb 21, 2020 at 05:01:42 AM
The world of Blacksad features so many interesting characters that we want to share all of them with you. The characters from the comic books pages can be your allies, your enemies or the suspects in your cases. Or you could play any of them in your games.
These are only the character sheets of three of them, but Blacksad: The Roleplaying Game corebook includes the stats of 18 main characters from the comic book series (and their backstories). You will also find more than 30 examples of secondary characters to employ as minor characters in your games.
