Blade Bind Designs, Part 2

Well the face-to-face playtest didn't go ahead last night, but hopefully I can reschedule it in the next week or so. I should probably try to set up another online game as well, but they do take a bit of energy to coordinate and run.

In the meantime, here's the second set of three Blade designs.

I'm particularly pleased with this set!

Glass Edge was an attempt to think outside the box and come up with something unusual and outlandish. This Blade made an appearance in the first whole-game playtest — the player described the windows breaking and the glass falling and then hanging in mid-air as the hilt materialised. Very cool!

Miko is probably my favourite design so far. The blade-shape is certainly not Japanese, but the red cylindrical shaft reminded me of Japanese temples and shrine maidens for some reason. The use of flesh-tones on the blade also give it that "is it metal or is it organic?" vibe that the original Blade, Vargr, gives off.

Oni's blade has been carved out of the horn of a Japanese ogre. The lower jaw makes it a little impractical, but hey, it's a sword longer than a person, so practicality kind of doesn't get a look-in. I used Oni in the playtest, and described it growing and morphing out of my arm. The Blade-manifesting descriptions very much put me in mind of a fighting-game's character intro, which is no bad thing.

I'm planning on including thirteen Blades in the book, each with a unique design and set of Techniques. You can mix and match Techniques to create your own Blade, and going with thirteen lets me provide random card-draw tables for people to either pick a random pre-made Blade, or randomly select a set of Techniques for a custom Blade.

I currently have thirteen Blade concepts in mind, although if I come up with any others I may end up short-listing the best thirteen and maybe including the others as inspirational images. At the moment I only have twelve Techniques for each of the three ranks, so I need one more 1, 2, and 3 point Technique to round out my tables.