Listen to this episode here.
If the thesis of last week’s episode was “hey the fiction of your game matters a lot and can even have mechanical effects,” how do you know how deeply to define that fiction? Maybe no one in indie games has recently faced that question on quite the scale of Tim Denee with Blades ‘68, an expansion to Blades in the Dark. I wanted to have him on to talk about when you completely reinvent the setting, how do you think about what parts of the fiction are important and need to be kept vs what parts should evolve and change?
And to do that, we picked an old mechanic from Dungeon World that cuts to the heart of it: draw maps, leave blanks. But how detailed of maps, and how big of blanks?
Further Reading
Blades 68 on Backerkit
Blades in the Dark by John Harper
Tim’s maps of Doskvol
Socials
Tim on Bluesky and olddog.games
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
Our logo was designed by sporgory, our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey, and our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer.
Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!
Credits
Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.
This episode was edited by Em Acosta.
[00:00:00] Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop mechanic and see if we remembered to drop a pin for where it is. My name is Sam Dunnewold, and my co-host today is Time Denee. The big game this month in my part of the RPG world is Blades 68, a re-imagining of Blades in the Dark set, a hundred plus years after the original, and in the style of the swing in sixties.
[00:00:29] Sam: Thinking about Blade 68 in the context of last week's episode with Nova, about do bulls, lightning barriers, the enormous electric fences in the world of Blades that keep ghosts out of the city and. More importantly, prevent players from taking their hardened criminal characters on their own without serious consequences.
[00:00:46] Sam: If the thesis of that episode was, Hey, the fiction of your game matters a lot and can even have mechanical effects, I thought it'd be compelling to take that idea and see what Blade 68 was doing with it. When you completely reinvent the setting, how do you think about what parts of the fiction are important and need to be kept versus what parts should evolve and change To do that this week I'm joined by the designer of Blade 68, Tim Denee.
[00:01:10] Sam: Tim is a graphic designer, cartographer and game designer. You might know him from Deathmatch Island or the big detailed maps of Doskvol he put out a few years ago, and he's got a lot of smart stuff to say about all of this. My resolution this year has been to get Dice Exploder back to basics, really center in on the one mechanic and episode format.
[00:01:27] Sam: And so I still wanted to find some mechanic for us to use as a way into this conversation. And knowing Tim's past work, I picked an old classic from Dungeon World. Draw maps, leave blanks. It's a DM principle, which makes it half rule and half advice in an interesting way. It's also spun out well beyond its original context in Dungeon world, and we get into all that, what this meant to start, what it's come to mean more broadly, and how we've applied it at the table, both as designers and as players.
[00:01:57] Sam: So let's get into it. Thanks to everyone who supports Dice Exploder on Patreon, and here is Tim Dunay with Draw Maps. Leave blanks. From Dungeon World.
[00:02:08] Sam: Tim today. Thanks for being on Dice Exploder welcome. Hi
[00:02:12] Tim: Kiata. Thanks for having me.
[00:02:13] Sam: Yeah. So you are here in part because this show loves Blades in the Dark and Blades in 68, or maybe just Blades 68. Uh, it's live right now on Kickstarter. People should go back. It. But I really wanted to have you on specifically to like talk about the design process of that game and like the idea of building on top of so much like pre-established like fiction.
[00:02:34] Sam: And the thing that like mechanic, I wanted to kind of bring as like an end to that is it takes us back to Dungeon World. So let's start with Dungeon World. Do you know about Dungeon World? What, what's your deal with Dungeon World? Do you know anything about this game?
[00:02:47] Tim: Uh, I do have a history with Dungeon World.
[00:02:49] Tim: It, I think it might've been 'cause I played role playing games as a teenager and, and then kind of stopped for a while and came back with Fifth Edition. Like a lot of people. And then one of my off ramps. Off back off D&D and back into Indie RPGs was Dungeon World. And so yeah, it was very formative in kind of my conception of ND RPGs and I played a lot of Dungeon World and, um, listened to all those friends at the table episodes and have a lot of, a lot of dungeon world feelings for sure.
[00:03:18] Sam: Yeah. Well that's good. 'cause I haven't ever actually played this game. I've like read Dungeon World. I know. It's like, you know, it's kind of a seminal game for a lot of people. The story you just told is I think like, so I've heard it a lot of times from a lot of friends and I've maybe played a one shot or something.
[00:03:33] Sam: I find it really interesting. But I, it has this mechanic that I think has blossomed out, like grown beyond the game into sort of like larger advice about playing, role playing games that I wanted to kind of focus on here. And that is. The mc, I guess the Dungeon master principle draw maps, leave blanks. So it's, I, I'm gonna start here by just like reading out what it says in the book about this, and then I kind of want to maybe ask you about like what this meant to you while playing Dungeon World.
[00:04:00] Sam: So in the book it says Draw maps, leave blanks. Dungeon world exists mostly in the imaginations of the people playing it. Maps help everyone stay on the same page. You won't always be drawing them yourself, but anytime there's a new location described, make sure it gets added to a map. When you draw a map, don't try to make it complete.
[00:04:17] Sam: Leave room for the unknown. As you play, you'll get more ideas on. The players will give you inspiration to work with. Let the maps expand and change so. How do you feel about this? You're a map guy. You made these like big maps for Blades in the Dark that we'll talk about later, but like play in Dungeon World.
[00:04:33] Sam: How did this actually play out at the table for you?
[00:04:35] Tim: Yeah, this piece of advice did stick in my mind. I did a lot of D&D maps as well. I even had a D&D map Tumblr that got a lot of followers and I've always been like a, both a real world map person I did in Atlas and I've also done a lot of RPG maps and so I mean not, you know, it's true that this.
[00:04:55] Tim: Uh, principle or whatever it is, was very provocative to me and challenging.
[00:05:00] Sam: Where were you at when you first read it that you became challenged by it?
[00:05:06] Tim: Well, I think I probably first heard it. 'cause Austin Walk always starts each friends at the table episode with reading out some of the principles and that kind of thing.
[00:05:14] Tim: You know, I'm sort of, uh, neurotic enough that, uh, it kind of made me feel like I was doing things wrong or like I had to fight against my own impulses to some extent. Like, um. Uh, I sort of knew my impulse is to just draw maps and not lead blanks, so, so you kind of wanna go in the opposite direction because, you know, you have this, uh, temptation and you're getting this advice and you wanna try to do things a different way.
[00:05:36] Tim: Uh, and so I probably went too far the other way and just wanted. I became sort of obsessed about the blanks. I didn't, I sort of forbid myself to map it all. I took it the other way because I knew if I allowed myself to slip, like some kind of addict that I would quickly map too much. And over time I think I've, I'm happy with where I've, uh, come to in the middle.
[00:05:57] Tim: But yeah, I mean it's interesting looking back. It's quite, it's very map specific and also like play to find out. It kind of has a sort of. Like it's a little bit cryptic and kind of fortune cookie wisdom ish. Like draw maps, leave blanks. Yeah. Like it in a way that's saying like do enough but not too much.
[00:06:15] Tim: Like it's sort of meaningless in some ways.
[00:06:18] Sam: Yeah, totally. I mean, it is, it's like two contradictory pieces of advice at once. Right? Because I was very much coming from, and still am in a lot of ways, like coming from the opposite. Place you're talking about, like, I didn't draw maps enough, and every time I draw a map I'm like, this is great.
[00:06:32] Sam: Why am I not doing this all the time? This rules. And like, I'm, I'm thinking right now about like, I play an Apocalypse World campaign and we like drew a little map of the town, like in our sixth session or something and suddenly the whole place felt so much more real and like everyone started engaging with the town more.
[00:06:47] Sam: And I'm thinking right now about like. All the things I need to add to that map that like still aren't on that map, even though we've played another, like three sessions since then. Right. And yeah, so that version of it, the first part is very trivial, right? It's like maybe you, maybe you try this out, maybe you do the maps thing.
[00:07:02] Sam: But yeah, you're, you're right that it's contradictory in that way. And then I, I think that like turning the dial on, like when are you listening to which half of this slogan is a, a matter of experimentation but also taste and context.
[00:07:15] Tim: Yeah. And I do think it. Has a lot of value in that sense. Like it's really saying like interrogate each choice.
[00:07:20] Tim: Like maybe you should draw more maps or maybe you should have more blanks because, uh, there is value to each of them. Like in a way play to find out. Although amazing advice has become so widespread, I think it does start to become a bit meaningless, not to critique that piece of advice, but it starts to become just, you know, things will happen at the table in a sense, which is like, sure, they will,
[00:07:41] Sam: you really need to be knowing.
[00:07:43] Sam: Play to find out what, like what is the question you're playing to find out an answer to, right?
[00:07:48] Tim: Yeah. And read the rest of Apocalypse World. 'cause it's all in a context. Like it's not just play to find out what happens. I did, I was interested in the precedence of this draw maps, leave blanks. And uh, so I did look at a few older games and, um, like some of the raw Edwards games and Trobe and, uh.
[00:08:04] Tim: Some other stuff. I don't think there's like a direct precedent, but what I did find is in first edition Apocalypse World, um, on page 1, 2, 1, there's a few more things to do, which I don't think is in later editions.
[00:08:15] Sam: Oh, that's in, I've not read first edition, but I have read second edition and that the draw maps like anything, is in exactly that section.
[00:08:21] Sam: In second edition. Yeah.
[00:08:23] Tim: Yeah. Okay. Right. It says, make maps like crazy. Have the players make maps like crazy too, and sketches and diagrams and any kind of ephemera. That seems good. And I do wonder if this is like, obviously when Dungeon World came out after Apocalypse World and I'm sure they would've like referred back to Apocalypse World to decide what to write and what advice to include.
[00:08:41] Tim: And I do wonder if this is a sort of, um, reaction to that advice to some extent, or. Trying to,
[00:08:47] Sam: well, it's, it's so much the, like, D&D fantasy genre is such like a map making genre, you know, like the, it's such a classic thing to be making a map of the dungeon as you're going through the dungeon crawl. Right.
[00:08:57] Sam: I think it, it probably does make a lot of sense to take that piece of advice that's already in Apocalypse World and be like, okay, but for this game. We're gonna name it more, underline it more
[00:09:06] Tim: at, at caveat. Exactly. Yeah.
[00:09:08] Sam: I find there's a whole other episode, uh, I did a blog post about this a long time ago, but like about what's a principle in your game?
[00:09:14] Sam: Like what are you calling a principle and what's just like a few more things to do and like, what's the difference there? Is there a difference there? But,
[00:09:20] Tim: and then the agenda
[00:09:21] Sam: too, right? Yeah, exactly. Like it's all, it's all blurry. Just kind of like pretty good advice. I, I don't know. We, I've got another episode coming up in a, a couple of weeks here that's about.
[00:09:30] Sam: Where's the line between advice for playing and rules of the game and like, when do you put something on one side of the line so people can look forward to that? That's about gum shoe, that's about the like, always give them the clue, right? Like, sounds great. That's, that's good advice. Even though sometimes it's a rule.
[00:09:44] Sam: There was something I was thinking about when you were talking in here. About draw maps, leave blanks of how there is kind of a call to action in here to be open to whatever's coming to you. This principle is inviting you to keep an open mind to, to just experiment, to try things out to. To play with that dial of where things are and don't be a control freak who needs to have everything mapped out, down to the street, Tim?
[00:10:09] Sam: Um, or, uh, and like also don't do the other thing. Don't be, Sam, don't like forget to bring paper to draw maps onto the table either. And I, I think that like, um, that that kind of gentle pushing in a very, very specific context is like a, a neat little thing that's going on here.
[00:10:27] Tim: Totally. And that gets to what makes this a.
[00:10:29] Tim: Such a little powerful piece of advice is obviously it's about real, it's about maps, specifically actual maps, but that very quickly transfers into like prep and legwork or whatever you wanna call it. Like the,
[00:10:41] Sam: well, yeah, it's real. It's just to be specific about it, it's really easy to take this and to apply it to NPCs, right?
[00:10:48] Sam: Uh, if you really want to know, like, I'm playing in a, a play by post game right now where one of the people is in charge of like playing, you know. A couple of dozen different characters and she really loves just like writing several page backstory for each of those NPCs, including the half of them that haven't appeared on camera after three months.
[00:11:06] Sam: Right. And like, that's great. Like, you know, more power to you if like that's what you're enjoying. But also you wanna leave some blanks in there too, maybe, you know, for like when they show up and like collide with the, the story that's going on and you know, adjusting. And again, that's all like. A matter of taste of how it, it's exactly the same thing just with like NBC backstory and, and getting familiar with the characters and, and, and on and on and on to other subjects.
[00:11:28] Tim: I mean, as a big met person, I've totally had that experience of over prepping and over mapping. Then in the session, it is like a claustrophobic feeling sometimes. Like there's too many walls around you and you wanna just like stretch your legs and follow your narrative impulses. But there's, you put all the, it's like there's too much furniture in the room and you keep tripping over it.
[00:11:47] Tim: Like,
[00:11:47] Sam: yeah, totally. That's a great way to describe it. Yeah. Another thing I want to just like touch on here, like revisiting the actual text of Dungeon World with this piece of advice, because it had taken on, uh, so much of a life of its own, you'd talked about like. Thinking, you know, you'd forgotten it wasn't draw maps, leave blank spaces.
[00:12:06] Sam: But for me, I'd forgotten that it was about literally drawing maps in the first place. But like, like it really, I'd taken the advice much more in the like NPC direction, like in that prep direction in that like, how do you think, like more conceptually, and it was, uh, it was really like relieving in a way to come back and have such like concrete.
[00:12:25] Sam: Version of this advice.
[00:12:27] Tim: Yeah, totally. And again, I think that's a pretty common experience. Like, uh, to go back to friends at the table, I think they had a Patreon podcast, I think about Austin's prep work that was called drawing maps. And so that's taking that, this piece of advice and taking half of that and making it about prep.
[00:12:42] Tim: And I think that's a very common. Way to do it. And I totally had it the same in my head. Like for me it was, um, prep advice and not specifically about maps.
[00:12:52] Sam: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. So we've been talking about how where you end up on the size of your maps and the size of your blanks is like kind of this matter of taste.
[00:13:01] Sam: What's your taste like when you think about this principle? When you think about your actual play, where are you thinking about drawing the maps and filling in the details? And where are you thinking about leaving the blanks and the room to play at the table?
[00:13:13] Tim: You know, I feel like I really wanna split the difference, which I'm sure everyone feels like they're just in the Goldilocks sweet spot, but because I know that my impulse is to over prep and over map, and so I know that the needle's going to itch that way, but I also know that, um.
[00:13:28] Tim: Yeah, that does lead to too much furniture in the room or too much the sort of claustrophobic walls all around me. So I do try to push against that. But as I said, when I first read this advice and knowing my own inclinations, I did try to go all the way in the other direction and. Leave lots of blanks and almost no map.
[00:13:46] Tim: And I didn't love that either. So I do think there's cons, the other direction, right?
[00:13:50] Sam: Yeah. 'cause if you don't, if you've got nothing to go on, if you sit down to play Dungeons and Dragons without any kind of prep or any kind of module, when the characters are, players are done making their characters like, now what?
[00:14:02] Sam: You know, like you, you need something to like kind of build on here, right?
[00:14:06] Tim: Yeah. Yeah. So much of the juice can come from that existing situation. And that's something, you know, it's interesting 'cause that's across the board, right? Like story games, you wanna start with an interesting kind of conceit or situation.
[00:14:18] Tim: And so much of like OSI adventures is about interesting sort of starting situation and prepping, uh, situations, not plots. And um, so I do think that's kind of universal advice and that does imply like. To take the broader sense of mapping, like mapping something out to some extent, having something there to work around.
[00:14:36] Sam: Well, the, the thing that's really interesting to me about you saying that is how much my taste on this changes as I get deeper into a campaign. Because at the start of a campaign, I kind of do need to do like a lot more prep to build up all this stuff for us to then play with. But then once your successions into a campaign, it's like all that work is done.
[00:14:55] Sam: You know, like I, I don't feel like I need to draw more maps in the same way, because then I'm gonna start feeling claustrophobic. We already have so many toys to play with, you know, and I, I start leaning more towards leaving blanks as much in prep as I can because we're filling in more and more details at the table.
[00:15:12] Tim: Yeah. It's like the momentum has picked up. Something I've been thinking about recently is like, it's almost like gears in a car or on a bike or something. It's like, it's like that map and legwork and prep is like low gear. You can't go as fast, but you're getting the momentum going. But once you're flying, you just wanna be high gear, like minimal friction and just blasting.
[00:15:30] Sam: Yeah. Totally. So, uh, we're kind of having this conversation here about, you know, you, you prep too much, you map too much, you're gonna get, uh, feel like hemmed in, you know, you're gonna, it's, you're gonna feel you don't have room to maneuver. Um, and if you don't prep enough, if you don't draw enough maps, then you don't have like to stand on, like it's, you have like blue sky syndrome kind of thing.
[00:15:50] Sam: Yeah. But do, do you think there are other pros and cons, uh, to one approach here or the other?
[00:15:57] Tim: Uh, you know, yeah. I think they both have different pros and cons. I think there's also an aspect of, um. Just the way any given person's brain works and, and the things they find easy or hard, like, uh, the, the legwork map into the spectrum, the, the prep.
[00:16:11] Tim: Um, for some people that's really helpful during the session, but for other people, that quickly feels like homework and lots of people hate homework. Uh, and as you're saying, once the campaign gets into it, I don't want to have to stop to read three paragraphs about the new place we're going. I just wanna keep going and keep digging into things.
[00:16:29] Tim: So that's kind of the con of too much prep. And then on the. The blank part. Likewise, for some people, that feeling of being at the table and you go somewhere or meet someone and you know nothing about them, you have no map, you have no prep. That could be very, some people improvise freely and love it, and other people find that very stressful,
[00:16:44] Sam: right.
[00:16:45] Sam: I think on a player side. There's really different tastes there also. 'cause you know, if you're leaving a lot of blanks, that can end up feeling like an invitation to contribute to the world building, right? Like when my players are in a fantasy game and they just like run off into the woods and I didn't prep anything in the woods, maybe I'm like, okay, is someone here no one NPC who lives in the woods?
[00:17:05] Sam: Like what? What's in these woods? What stories did you hear about as children about what's in these woods? Let's figure something out together. But some players, I think, want the world's. To feel like it exists. Like some people are really playing role playing games because they want to have the experience of stepping into another world and having the walls of that world like hold up well, and when they show up at a place and they can tell that GM is just kinda like making up off the top of their head.
[00:17:29] Sam: The world feels like it's made a cotton candy. Like nothing means anything. Nothing matters. And that also is just such a taste dial. Like I think there are some people who really love both sides of that.
[00:17:40] Tim: For sure. Even again, to come back to like gears or expectations of a given game or or system, there's a difference between sitting down and knowing you're playing a sort of more collaborative game where you are all gonna contribute to the fiction versus playing a game where the GM has spun the world around you and it's all felt very fleshed out and real.
[00:17:58] Tim: And then you open a particular door and suddenly the GM is asking you, I dunno, what do you think's in there? Like, if there's a sudden shift to that, it can feel quite jarring. But I, but I think if it's there from the start, it's much more, um, there's something in there as well. I remember I was running a Blades campaign and I'd been doing more of the prep heavy stuff, like, uh, less player input, but we were running this sort of, um, session that I hadn't, um, had much time to prep for.
[00:18:23] Tim: And, uh, they were in, uh, a mansion. And in this mansion I had sketched out a rough map of some of the areas and one of them was like a trophy room. And one of the players wanted to go there just to see what weird Blades in the Dark trophies would be in there. But I hadn't prepped anything, so I asked them to, to come up with stuff, but I could feel the kind of like.
[00:18:40] Tim: Deflation and disappointment. 'cause they wanted to see the cool stuff. They didn't wanna come up with the cool stuff.
[00:18:44] Sam: Yeah. It, it's taste, it's expectation. How are you thinking about this as a designer then? Because, you know, I think that we're, we're talking about this originally in Dungeon World as like mc advice, right?
[00:18:57] Sam: As Dun master advice or as even like player advice. You know, I think you can take these same principles and apply them to your own character or like backstory what you're doing, player character creation. But the designer feels like an important voice at the table too, right? Like the reason that I'm picking up an adventure module to run.
[00:19:13] Sam: Karen is because I don't want to do that work myself. You know, like I, I, I have a day job. Like I want someone else to write a cool ass dungeon for me because they're more talented than I am. And that means you as the designer are coming in and contributing to how much maps, how many blanks are left, like in a module, in a work of fiction.
[00:19:35] Sam: And I especially, I wanna hear your thoughts like generally, but maybe also get into what it was like to take Blades in the Dark and be like. Well, I can flesh this out more, you know, like the, like the, but this isn't calibrated to the right level for me. I wanna go deeper, you know?
[00:19:49] Tim: Yeah. It's interesting because it's definitely the same conversation writ large.
[00:19:54] Tim: Like there is an impulse to sort of be generous as a game designer, I think. And like, if the potential hypothetical GM or table is looking for a given map or a given writeup, you want that to be there for them. You don't want them. To be, to feel like they're being left in the lurch and they have to do your legwork for you.
[00:20:12] Tim: So I do try to like, think about that. Yeah. Spirit of generosity, I suppose. Like I'm gonna do this work now and hopefully that will save people work in future and make this game easier run and people have more fun. But I do think, obviously, you know, even though it's in the spirit of generosity or that legwork and material can very easily become homework again, it, it can become stuff that, uh, the GM feels they have to read and, and have to memorize.
[00:20:36] Tim: And that's, that's not fun. You know, I don't like that either. So, you know, trying to, yeah, just find that balance and, uh, just really interrogate that because in a way. It can feel sort of lazy to leave things out and to leave blanks, but obviously those blanks can be very fruitful and, and so it's just like interrogating, am I, am I leaving this blank intentionally or, or is it just easier for me to leave this blank?
[00:21:02] Tim: Uh, would it be better filled in? Because I think there can be a laziness to just filling stuff in as well. Like you can just, it's not that hard to just come up with more stuff and to just.
[00:21:10] Sam: Sure. And this, this is what I'm always saying about like modules too, is like, I don't want a supplement that's gonna give me 20 random barkeeper names because I can come up with a Barkeeper name, you know, like if you wanna gimme one, that's fine.
[00:21:24] Sam: That I can like use. Sure. Great. But like I, when. When you're offering like 10 adventures in the bar, like a D 10 random table of adventures or whatever, I don't need kill the rats in the cellar. Like I've, I've, we've done that for decades. You know, like the, like, you don't need to fill in those gaps for me.
[00:21:41] Sam: Like if you're gonna fill in the gaps, I want them to be interesting, something that I would not have come up with myself.
[00:21:46] Tim: Yeah, it's like all design, right? Graphic design or game design. I mean this is kind of, I dunno, setting design, I suppose the kind of maps and and law of it all. But like with game design, obviously, I think we'd all agree that.
[00:21:58] Tim: You don't wanna just keep adding rules for the sake of it, but at the same time,
[00:22:01] Sam: well most people would agree, but,
[00:22:06] Tim: uh, so it's just about the right amount and designed well. So they, you know, hopefully have a lot of like, leverage, like, you know, do a lot with a little, that kind of thing. And even graphic, graphic design wise, like, um, I think about that as well, like coming from a graphic design background, you think about white space on the page, and I hate layouts without enough white space.
[00:22:25] Tim: But working professionally, uh, a lot of clients and a lot of people sort of have this allergic reaction to white space, and they think it's, um. Wasted, wasted opportunity. And so you really have to defend against that. And I, I do think like the, the blanks of the maps is the kind of white space of, of the design, if you like.
[00:22:41] Tim: And it's so important, uh, in terms of the, like the composition and leading things breathe and, and all that stuff.
[00:22:46] Sam: Yeah. I, it's interesting to take this and apply it to that too, because of course it applies there. I'm dealing, I'm, you know, I'm putting out a game called Band-aids and bullet holes in a couple of months in May in, in that game, like.
[00:22:58] Sam: A lot of my work actually has been like thinking I need more rules than I do. I want people to have like enough levers to pull or like, you know, they'll come up to a particular point of friction over and over again and I wanna have an answer for them there. But also sometimes you're like putting in too much and then people don't use the tools or they get confused by the tools or they, yeah, they run afoul somehow.
[00:23:19] Sam: Like you're saying in graphic design too, like leaving blanks so that people can kinda like process the thing. Feels important.
[00:23:25] Tim: Yeah, for sure. And for me, the trick is that. I think when you're excited about design, another mistake you can make is to feel like the best way to do your thing is to like go for the extreme.
[00:23:36] Tim: So like if you have discovered the beauty of white space and the fruitful void and this kind of stuff, it can be easy to sort of make yourself minimalist and just think, I'm gonna use absolute like minimum I can. And it's kind of like a design exercise in a way. It's like you're challenging yourself. Uh, and I would have definitely had those phases as well, but I kind of think.
[00:23:55] Tim: The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. As much fun as it is to kind of go through the exercise of either total Maxism or total minimalism, like, um.
[00:24:12] Sam: I wanna bring us back to your maps of dus wall for Blades in the Dark. So for me, Blades in the Dark is like perfectly calibrated to what I want in terms of like level of detail that I think the, the list of districts and factions in particular, I cannot tell you how many times I've just like read over those pages and gotten or skimmed them over in the middle of a session and like been able to pull out something that I need and.
[00:24:38] Sam: One of the things I love about 'em is that like each individual one is like pretty bite-sized, you know, like, uh, the districts are like a two page spread, but there's like, half of that is art, if not more, or like little graphical details. Um, the. Factions are like half a page each typically. And like those are, you know, there, there's a lot of info, uh, crammed in there with the font size.
[00:25:02] Sam: But like, you know, it is, it's the, a similar thing where it's like you're meeting someone from this faction, there's a list of MPCs, here we go. I like that. There's a lot of each of those things too. So like when I'm sitting down to play Blades, you know, there's like. 25 factions or something, laid that in the book.
[00:25:15] Sam: And the game is kind of asking me to just pick my favorite three of them, you know, so I can pick my favorite three, find a way that they're all yelling at each other. And then like later in the campaign, if it feels like maybe we need someone else, maybe I like go back and skimm through the factions and find another to bring in or whatever.
[00:25:30] Sam: But it's, it's a lot of choice, but also a lot of stuff that is like. Easily falls away. You know, I think, I feel like that's a, a nice way to handle the balance here, right? Of like, John Drew a lot of maps, but each individual map has a lot of blanks on it. Right? Um, and then you. We're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:25:51] Sam: But we need like really detailed, like cartography. I'm gonna like block by block, like map out the whole city. Which for me is like too much. Like I, I, I respect the absolute hell outta your maps, but I was like, if we're on a score and it becomes clear that it would be cool if next door there was like a, a slaughterhouse or something, then like now there's a slaughterhouse next door.
[00:26:12] Sam: And if we're using your maps, we like can't do that. And so I'm curious to hear you just like talk through your taste in. Providing that level of detail, like what you, you like detail more than Me? What do you like about it in particular?
[00:26:24] Tim: You know, it's, I feel like there's a bit of preamble to that answer, which is, so I, I work, uh, an Atlas co-author, an atlas before, and I work in, um, mo day job as in GIS adjacent, so like Google Maps, that kind of stuff.
[00:26:36] Tim: And. So I don't tend to think know, maybe this is controversial. I don't think of my maps as, as necessarily more detailed. I think of them as a different Zoom level. So Zoom all the way out on Google Maps or any, uh, mapping software. All the detail disappears and you just get national borders and country names.
[00:26:56] Tim: And then as you zoom in more detail starts appearing like major roads, cities, states. And then if you zoom in more, you start to get, uh, you know, minor roads and suburbs and things like this. And we're all just kind of used to that, but it's actually quite fiddly. Well, I know that from experience having designed some of these things, like it's really fiddly to say at the zoom level, you have to show this and it looks like this, and then at the next zoom level you have to do that.
[00:27:19] Tim: Like it doesn't just happen. Someone has to go in and find all these things. But it's so important because depending on your zoom level, you want a different level of detail. Like if you showed everything at the national, at the global level, it would just look. Uh, bonkers. You know, if you showed every minor road it would be eligible, but if you show nothing when you're zoomed in, then all you see is is blank maps and you need to get that zoom level just right.
[00:27:38] Tim: So that's a long-winded way of saying, you know, when John Harper was working on a Flame Without Shadow, the Blue Coat supplement a few years ago, they released a detailed map of Coleridge to go along with it because that. Supplement came with a starting situation that was entirely sort of set in this one district of Coleridge.
[00:27:56] Tim: And I mean, I don't know John's thought process, but the way I read that was that if you're going to have a whole campaign set in this one district instead of the whole city, you want more fidelity because you're more zoomed in like the maps as presented in the book. At a district, if you're just focused on one district, you don't really get anything below that.
[00:28:14] Tim: So you don't know suburb names, you don't know much about the internal geography. And so, yeah, at that kind of like single district campaign level, John obviously felt it was beneficial to have this like zoomed in map and to render things at a new level. I think it's totally in keeping with the higher met, by which, I mean, although it labels streets and suburbs, what it doesn't do is.
[00:28:37] Tim: To go back to your slaughterhouse example, it doesn't tell you where all these businesses are. It doesn't actually define a lot more, it just gives you street names and suburb names, which to my mind, I mean, to go back to question of like the intentionality of designing this stuff, something I do ask is.
[00:28:53] Tim: Is this something that would be fun to improvise at the table, or is this boring legwork? And I think coming up with a street name or a suburb name is kind of boring and I'd rather just have that there. Like, I don't need to invent a new Coleridge suburb on the spot. I'm happy for the game to give me that.
[00:29:09] Tim: And so I think John's map for Coleridge did that really well. And so, um, not to discredit myself, but all I thought was, you know, I'm running. A very zoomed in Bravo campaign at the time set in crow's foot. And I wanted that same zoomed in experience because I, I knew I wanted to do like a lot of Peaky Blinders, turf war stuff like block by block.
[00:29:30] Tim: And so I wanted to know like what street corners they held and what suburbs they were based in and where the other. Gangs of crow's foot were based, and I wanted that higher level of fidelity. And so I did crow's foot and then people liked that, and so I started doing more and then I ended up doing the whole city.
[00:29:45] Tim: But it was always the intention that they are used to zoom into one district, not necessarily to always look at the whole city in that level of detail. Does that make sense?
[00:29:57] Sam: No, that makes total sense. And um, you know, another thing that makes me think of like the, the map levels thing makes me think of is, one of the things I like about Blades in the Dark is it kind of leaves it open-ended.
[00:30:08] Sam: Like how big is D Wall as a city? You know, like maybe it's the size of New York and maybe it's the size of Minneapolis and like, those are two really, really different dust balls. Right? And I like the idea of looking at your detailed maps and being like. Well, are we at the all the way zoomed in level or are we at like a mid-tier level?
[00:30:31] Sam: Like between the, the all the way out and all the way in? Like are we actually, when I look at the, uh, the map of Char Hollow here that I opened up on my computer, like, is pissing alley and Fletcher's way, like those are like right next to each other. But are there additional alleys between the two of those, like maybe like that, that you can kind of maybe make that.
[00:30:50] Sam: Decision for yourself also, like are we zoomed in all the way yet or not?
[00:30:53] Tim: I think there's certainly a big part of that. I mean, something I sort of struggled with to some extent is like the book makes a big deal about how multilevel dos fall is, and you can't really show that on a two dimensional map. So I mean there are like blanks here in terms of what's the subterranean map look like and what does the sort of first story and third story.
[00:31:13] Tim: Yeah, there is a lot of like detail that is implied but not, but not shown. I think
[00:31:17] Sam: that's very interesting.
[00:31:18] Tim: I mean another, another example just because I've been thinking about it with with Blade 68 is um, a question I see a lot on like the Blades, Reddit, and Discord and other places is people want to know which gangs are based where in the city.
[00:31:32] Tim: And John kind of gestured it this loosely in deep cuts. But in general I think they've been pretty reluctant to say like, this gang is specifically here. And I think that kind of shows some of this draw maps leave Black's tension where people want granularity of knowing exactly who is where. Across the city, but it totally works against you at the table because I mean, to your earlier point, like, um, as the campaign progresses, you want to just be able to grab affection you find interesting and throw them into the mix and not have to worry about, oh, well the gang have chosen to base themselves in six towers, but this gang is based in Silk Shore, so it doesn't really work.
[00:32:07] Tim: And. You know?
[00:32:09] Sam: Yeah. Well, and uh, that gets back to my thing about like cotton candy world earlier, right? Where like that is what you were describing is how I wanna be able to run Blades. And I think how my tables typically do, but I do know other people who are like, no, no, no, I want all that info because like, I want to be able to look at the map and be like, well, you're not fighting with those people because they're in silk, short shore.
[00:32:27] Sam: You are fighting with the dimmer sisters because they're right next to you in six hours. Right? Like they, they want those answers. So the world feels like. Air quotes reeler to them, you know?
[00:32:38] Tim: Yeah. It's kind of like another sort of slightly tortured analogy, but, um, you know, there's these like movie YouTube essays about great high scenes in action scenes, and often they focus in on, um, the way the good ones will, like, set up a location ahead of the high scene or the action scenes so that you as the viewer know, like, oh, there's a basement here and a window there, and everything's very consistent across shots and everyone working on it.
[00:33:03] Tim: Understands that location and all the moving parts like clockwork. And so when the action scene happens, you as a viewer kind of get, even just subconsciously that satisfaction of understanding everything that's going on rather than just randomly having someone like jump through a window and you're like, where did that window come from?
[00:33:18] Tim: And it this kind of chaotic feeling. And so I think that's kind of like the draw map side of things. But you know, a lot of other shows are all blanks and I think that works really well for them too. Like, especially more like I was thinking about soap operas, like, you know, like if you've got a show set in a hospital, there's no map of that hospital.
[00:33:36] Tim: And on any given episode, the arrangement is whatever's most interesting for story. Um, or X-Men. Like obviously there are maps of the mention, but really. On any given arc, the mansion is laid out, however,
[00:33:48] Sam: in, in which ocean is the evil island that we're going to this week also. Right. You know, like,
[00:33:55] Tim: yeah.
[00:33:55] Tim: Yeah, exactly. And so there's a ton of examples in that vein as well where like, you know, whatever that vagueness lets you just make whatever's the most dramatic interesting choice for, for today's story.
[00:34:05] Sam: Yeah, so I wanna take all of that and like bring it back into the context of Blade 68 because I feel like you're doing a version of this with Blade 68 where you are taking like the established world of dust wall and you're changing it significantly.
[00:34:22] Sam: That's like the big difference in what you've been doing with Blade 68 is like the first thing that you're doing is. Twisting everything. But then I think you also are like providing a lot more detail in all of this, and not just in the literal map of the districts that you made before, but also in terms of, okay, let's take scurlock from the original Blades.
[00:34:44] Sam: Like what scurlock up to now, or like what let's which factions have ebbed and which factions have flowed, you know, like what all, all, let's riff on the past, but in doing so, get deeper into it. What has been different about that process for you and what, like what's been the most compelling stuff for you to like dive deeper into as you're exploring the fiction more?
[00:35:09] Tim: Yeah. I mean, I have been aware that there's a lot here. Obviously the page account is like four 50 or roughly, which is like bigger than Blades, which is sort of absurd. For an expansion that doesn't even contain the core rules. Like, so I'm aware that like there's a lot here. I mean, I think it is all in that spirit of hopefully generosity and, you know, it's like Blade 68 is kind of a stretch, like it's uh, kind of off the wall idea in a way, like Blades in the Dark.
[00:35:36] Tim: Is this quite grim, dark? 19th century sitting quintessentially like industrial fantasy, Victorian steam punk, even with a very dark premise, like a post-apocalyptic fantasy world with eternal night and the gates of death have been broken and et cetera, et cetera. So the idea of like a swinging sixties vision of that is, is, is a stretch.
[00:35:57] Tim: It's a stretch. And I think that that contrast is, is part of the appeal of the pitch is like. You know, that's, that's unexpected. That's fun. It's, um, quite literally it's like something you only even knew as black and white and then seen it in color. It's like kind of mind blowing. But because it is such a stretch, I feel like, I felt like I wanted to really offer a lot of that support and.
[00:36:17] Tim: Not just to kind of say, what if we did Blades and duck in the sixties and then throw the ball to the gym? Like, I wanted to make sure, um,
[00:36:25] Sam: you wanna give them like a, a mitt to catch the ball with, right?
[00:36:28] Tim: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, or like a net behind them or something. Um, so that's kind of how I see it is like, yes, it leads more into a sort of maximalist approach, a little bit, like there's more factions, more districts, but I hope it's all helpful.
[00:36:46] Tim: And I mean, the, the other thing I'd say is to go back to your point about how clever the presentation of the Blades in the Dark, like factions and districts and, uh, setting if you like. Um, and I totally agree, and I think it's one of those like parts of Blades in the Dark that I kind of wish was copied more.
[00:37:03] Tim: Like, um, obviously forged in the Dark exploded, but I think the presentation of, in terms of the content edit and uh, but also the graphic design and layout and um, the way things are chopped up, like that's so innovative and effective. Uh, I think it's really worth copying. And so as soon as I knew, as soon as I was doing Blade 68, I was like, I'm definitely gonna follow that format and I don't.
[00:37:25] Tim: I think of Blades in the Dark as like kind of a grab bag, right? Like as you're saying, you just grab out a few factions and you throw them on the table and, and that's what you're playing with. And so I don't really see Blades in the Dark as homework. And so that kind of gave me permission to add more to the grab bag because it doesn't feel to me like I'm adding homework to someone's plate.
[00:37:45] Tim: Um, it feels like I'm just giving them a bigger grab bag to pull out of, and that's kind of the spirit. I tried to maintain.
[00:37:52] Sam: Yeah. Uh, I've been, I've been thinking for a couple of months now about what I'm calling, uh, Apollo 47 Core.
[00:37:59] Tim: Yeah. I have this noted down. I wanna talk about this.
[00:38:02] Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:38:03] Sam: Well, I mean, wait, people who listened to last week, we kind of got into this a lot there also, but Apollo 47 is this game by Tim Hutchings. That's like your astronauts doing boring space stuff because you're on the 47th. The pilot mission, not. The 11th anymore or whatever, and the game has like, you know, one or 10 pages of rules or something and then like 500 pages of like technical manual for, from like NASA that you could like flip through and be like, oh yeah, I'm like talking about like whatever kind of bolt this is or whatever.
[00:38:32] Sam: Like the point of the game is that you are just talking about like boring shit while you're up. But I think this is like, that's the most like maximalist extreme version of something that I'm seeing a lot. You know, in games like Wanderhome, I think it's like big with this, right? Where you have like initial playbooks, but then like so much of that book is just NPC traits and location stuff.
[00:38:50] Sam: And then you're combining those things in different combinations to like create places and people that you're gonna go, uh, deal with or mythic bastion land is the other like, big example here for me of like, that game is 20 pages, 25 pages of rules and 72 nights. 72 myths, like a bunch of MPCs. Each of those 72 night and myth pages has like someone's name at the bottom and like an idea for, um, an Oman and you know, all this other kind of crap.
[00:39:15] Sam: It's just like most of the book is, here's a grab bag for you to pull from. I think that grab bag is like a great way of describing it. It's been really interesting to look back and realize how much Blades was that and is that, and is doing that, that it, the factions work exactly like that. Right? I, uh, the lists of scores and NPCs and stuff like, it might not go as extreme as mythic Bastian land, but like a, a huge section of the book is dedicated to that stuff, and I think that stuff is super, super valuable.
[00:39:45] Sam: Like when I sit down to play any game, it's important to me what system we are using to play that game, but also the like. Fiction, like where are we? Like that stuff is also so important and games that are coming back to the gills with that stuff. Also, like then that gives you direction on how to use the mechanical portions of the game too.
[00:40:04] Sam: You know, it's like how do we like combine the peanut butter and chocolate to those things? To, to push forward. Yeah.
[00:40:10] Tim: Yeah. It's such a clever way to hit that sweet spot as well in terms of homework, like, um, I think about the way John, both the districts, but especially the factions like that section, 'cause Blade's 68.
[00:40:21] Tim: Uh, it's trying to evoke the graphic design of Blades in the Dark. I've been looking at that book a lot. And, uh, the way the faction section starts with a table of all the factions, and then after that is a short description of all the factions. And then after that is all the detailed writeups and it's kind of like a cascade of like, if you really hate homework, you can just use the table.
[00:40:39] Tim: You don't have to read anymore. You just grab something off the table and make some stuff up. If you want a bit more, you can read. The little one paragraph, uh, blurb. And if you want more, you jump to the full writeup, which is still, as you say, only like half a page. But there's, yeah, this kind of cascading thing.
[00:40:52] Tim: The districts too. That section starts with an overview of the whole city and a paragraph on each district, which gives you enough, like, you know, white Crown is the richest district. Most people have never set foot there. Uh, that's kind of all you need, but then if you do want more, you can, you can jump to that page and grab a bit more.
[00:41:06] Tim: So that, that kind of, um, yeah, that sort of sliding scale of how much you use that stuff is so. Clave. I think
[00:41:14] Sam: the other thing that's really wonderful about that stuff in Blades is, um, it's a template. You know, if you're making your own factions, like, oh, here are some things you might wanna include in that faction, right?
[00:41:22] Sam: You might wanna know who's in charge or who the important players are. Some rivals, like maybe roughly where they're based, their assets and like what their goals are. Okay, cool. That's what a faction looks like. Now when I'm like coming up with the new gang that's coming up based on the. The rivals that the PCs fucked over in the first season.
[00:41:41] Sam: You know, like I know what to put together for myself.
[00:41:45] Tim: That is really clever. And I think if you kind of put it into that format, you start to see if you're going wrong because it's like, oh, I've got three pages and this, it's not what they look like in the book, so maybe I've done too much.
[00:41:55] Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:41:56] Sam: But it's also true that, you know, like then sort of the challenge of the way they're formatted in the book is like, you are gonna take these and you're gonna fill in more of the blanks. Like the, the point is here's half a page, but like, by the time it, but by the time your six sections. By the time you're six sessions into a campaign, like I know a lot more about who the leader of the Crows is.
[00:42:18] Sam: You know, like, I, like we've met that person. Like we, they've died and like, like they're a ghost now and they're the tenants also. Then we've added all these other NPCs involved and like you are constantly like filling in more of those blanks as you go.
[00:42:30] Tim: Hmm, for sure. To go back to like what's boring legwork and what's interesting, um, the reality wardens, for example, they get their half page writeup.
[00:42:38] Tim: I'm sure John could have written a whole book of cool reality war and powers and assets and things they have. But the point being that's all like cool stuff and it's fun to come up with. And I think any gm, if they need to give it reality warden some powers, they, that's fun to, uh, come up with yourself and to build that out to your own tastes.
[00:42:54] Tim: And so that, that's left as a blank. And it kind of goes back to like what might have benefited Dungeon World more is, you know, we're talking about how kind of short and high level that advice is really. Like you almost kind of want like an example of. How much map, how much plank, like what does draw, map, sleep, planks even mean, which I think Blades does, uh, successfully.
[00:43:14] Tim: Yeah.
[00:43:15] Sam: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. We talked about a lot of interesting things, but it is interesting to me that everything always comes back to, in this conversation, it's just a matter of taste. It's like none of this stuff is wrong. You know? It's like this is something that is gonna benefit you when you approach it with.
[00:43:31] Sam: Strong intention that like all, you know, how you only you can know for yourself what's the right amount of prep to do, or blanks to leave or, you know, uh, and maybe it's different for literal maps versus NPCs for you or, or whatever the thing is. Like it's, these are dials. It's cool to know the dials exist.
[00:43:49] Sam: It's fun to experiment turning the dials one way or another. And also, like, probably you're gonna find the level that you are most comfortable at.
[00:43:57] Tim: Yeah, and I think it kind of goes back to your question about how you approach this differently as a designer versus a a gm. Like as a gm you just put in the amount of detail, you know, works for you and your table, and that's.
[00:44:09] Tim: Not easy, but you know, it's kind of straightforward. But as a designer it is more to go to your a polar 47 core thing. It's like, I think the, the way forward is to build in that responsiveness and that dynamic approach and to really make it so that people can dial that in. How they want. Like if you think about the trade games or whatever, like, I dunno, the worst examples of D&D adventures or whatever, like you do have to read it all and it is all dense and it's not modular and uh, it is a lot of homework.
[00:44:37] Tim: And yeah, so that, I mean, I'm playing mythic Baine land at the moment and I think, um, I think mythic Baine land is, is a great example as well, because. Because I've been busy on Blaze 68, that book did it, it would've felt like homework to read that whole book. I didn't have time to read a whole book, but I, so I haven't read all the myths or the nights and I just roll on the table and read the one that's that's relevant and it's, it works fine.
[00:44:57] Tim: It's great.
[00:44:58] Sam: Yeah. I think it is actually. It's especially interesting to me in all of these examples, but especially like Wanderhome, um, how. There're a bunch of pieces that are meant to be combined into something new for you. Like, you know, in mythic BA land, you see that with the myths of like, Hey, you're going to use a half dozen of these tops and you're gonna like, put 'em onto a map.
[00:45:21] Sam: And that's, you know, you can find someone who's done that online. You can find the Tim today of, uh, uh, mythic vascular land or whatever, and do that. Or, you know, you put six of 'em on the map, but then they're gonna start like. Smacking against each other. They're gonna be doing like crazy crap together that like the designer never expected because like, you know, it's unpredictable.
[00:45:38] Sam: People will do crazy crap and that like mashing up of these modular pieces. There's just so much juice in that. And like the more disassembled they become as pieces, the more obvious I think that. It is that you are supposed to mash them together and like create something new out of them and that as a designer, maybe there's something to that, you know, that and, and to, like, I think in, um, the Hard Zones, apocalypse World third Edition, like they come with a, like, here's some locations that might be in the frozen waste.
[00:46:06] Sam: Like, like all of these exist, but maybe you'll never find half a dozen of them or whatever. Or throw some of 'em out. You know, like there's a little bit of that. Like here's this like resource if you need it. And then like. The, the fact that in this instance of the game, like the rim and sword town are right next to each other makes it feel really different from like when they're really far away or when one doesn't exist at all.
[00:46:25] Sam: And like the, the same is true of Blades, factions, the same is true of, uh, of everything else.
[00:46:30] Tim: Yeah. That kind of pellet approach. And I think what's really powerful and all this to me as well, is that, you know, when we were first talking about this episode. It's easy to kind of think of draw maps, leave blanks along as sort of like almost OSR story game spectrum where like OSR adventures are a lot of map and often come with maps and you know, a lot of what I think of as story games are very improvised and, um, more on the blank end.
[00:46:53] Tim: But actually there's no such axis and like mythic basting land. Comes from the OSR tradition, and it's extremely like draw maps, leave blanks. Literally, like when you draw your map, it's full of like blank spaces to allow the myths to happen. And you know, a lot of that OSR tradition of like, uh, random tables all the way down.
[00:47:10] Tim: Like that's, that's essentially the same kind of like providing that modular content that you sort of bring to the table and fuse and you get that, that juice at the table from, from assembling it yourself.
[00:47:19] Sam: Yeah, and I, I mean, I think a lot of Blades is built on that kind of thing too, right? Yeah. Tim, thanks for being on
[00:47:25] Tim: Dice.
[00:47:25] Tim: Hey, what a pleasure. Thanks, Tim.
[00:47:30] Sam: Thanks again to Tim for being here. Blade 68 is on Backer Kit right now, and you can find everything else, Tim at Old Dog Games. Thanks to everyone who supports Dice Exploder on Patreon. As always, you can find me on Blue Sky at Dice Exploder, and you can find my games at sdunnewold.itch.io Our logo is designed by Sporgoree
[00:47:48] Sam: Our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray. And our ad music is Lily Pans by my boy Travis Tessamer This episode was edited by Em Acosta. Thank you Em! and thanks to you for listening. See you next time.
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