Inept Writes Games

Welcome back to my review of Deep Cuts by John Harper - for my overview and introduction, click here . We’ll be going over the first third of the book here, the Setting. The book goes through three broad sections to expand on the setting - though in the way that Blades is, some of these expansions are also woven into the other sections. They fall into three categories; innovations (new technology), factions (expanding the old and introducing some new), and a catalyst; a world-changing event.

Deep Cuts is an expansion and set of alternate rules for Blades in the Dark , released late October 2024 and updated earlier this year, written by Blades author John Harper based on his evolving experiences with the game as it has matured over the past eight years. It contains a mix of setting and systems that expand on or tweak mechanics and lore, fleshing out a few more of the factions (and adding some new ones), new technology, and a lot more. It is a fantastic resource - I’ll say that from the jump - it’s great, not just because of the content, but also the way it's presented as a series of individual tweaks and changes; it’s not an overhaul, it’s a la carte.  The book is laid out clearly and effectively. After each module is a list of all the things in the core rules that would need to change - and, more importantly, how to change them - to fit the ruleset in the module. At the back is an extensive, module-by-module set of designer’s notes, going into a great amount of detail ...

Worldbuildify! is a new series where we’ll be taking a non-interactive property; a book, a movie, a concept album, a series of nightmarish paintings daubed on the walls of an abandoned house, etc, and looking at what we would do if we were tasked with creating a ttrpg setting based on that property.  In this, our first foray,  we’ll be looking at Gareth Hanrahan ’s The Sword Defiant for a couple of reasons. 1) Gareth is an author who straddles both literature and ttrpgs; Trail of Cthulhu, Delta Green, 13th Age, The One Ring, Traveller, and a tonne more on the ttrpg side, and several book series on the lit side; and I think he’s extremely cool and inspirational - there’s a really big section of the ttrpg world that wouldn’t exist without him. 2) As part of his Black Iron Legacy book series, he created a ttrpg adventure called The Walking Wounded , which was exactly what we’re going to do here, taking the world of his book series, and making it gameable, and reading that was th...