Candela Obscura | Quick Review 

Thanks, Billy! Glad I managed to thread the needle for you! It's a tricky topic.

@@TheAlexandrian would you be willing (and able) to cover role playing sanity at the table?

This system they "created" exists already and is called Blades in the Dark. Candela Obscura is a hack off Blades, and it's not even veiled that much. What's unclear to me is why the system never acknowledges that it's essentially a ripoff or never credits John Harper.

@@andrzejzielinski9213 Did you checked the latest version of the quick start guide? The Blade of the Dark is mentioned on the last page as the biggest influence along with Vasen. Also one of the designers of the Illuminated Worlds engine is Stras Acimovic, who was the consulting designer of Blades in the Dark and game designer of both Band of Blades and Scum and Villainy, so rather than a rippoff it could be though as a new iteration of the Blades in the Dark formula.

@@andrzejzielinski9213 That was my initial thought too, but then I thought about the OSR, and how we don’t give those guys a hard time for churning out thousands of near-identical iterations on the same handful of mechanics and concepts, and I think it’s just because we got used to it. What is this game doing that’s different from that? And they have apparently now acknowledged the obvious debt to Blades, so that’s good.

The people, feeling the need to tell others how to think and act, rarely hold themselves to the same rules. And no, that is solely directed at the game creator and not Brennan.

They’re going to be yelled at anyways no matter what they do. I think their heart was in the right place since a lot of older games really stigmatized mental health issues after all. That being said, they really should have worked with a few other people and come up with a much better way to described what they want to get across without having it feel like they were speaking down to their audience/player base.

_"The "shots fired"-ness of those sections is doubly weird considering that CR has run both Vampire and Call of Cthulhu on their channel over the years, which is a strange thing to do for games you consider unethical and mechanically unsound."_ Alternatively, they've come to this position as a result of having run those games over the years and having had issues with that particular aspect? I do hope they take this feedback onboard and polish and clarify the language in the final version though.

It's just virtue signaling at its finest

​@@Qri0 We can't know whether something is virtue signalling or not unless we genuinely know the other person's motives. And, since we don't know that the vast bulk of the time, it's just pointless, unsupported speculation to go assuming it. And to complicate matters, an accusation of virtual signalling often looks a lot like virtue signalling itself.

@@irrevenant3 Motives are obvious when they contradict themselves in same rules pamphlet. And it's kinda funny that you throwing "no U" at a no-name from youtube - I'm not the one who publishes a book.

I'd love to see more reviews on here myself. But *after* Justin has spilled every nugget of GM-ey goodness! :O

Hey Blizzic

Thanks, Suni! I hope you enjoy Candela Obscura as much as you enjoyed the video!

Thanks, Ed! Everyone needs to read (and run! and play!) Pendragon.

This is very much what I was thinking. There are no rules that impose limits on players, only allow more expressive choices to be made by them.

Possibly the biggest problem with rolepaying insanity is when the game gives explicit rules on how a specific condition works, and is wrong. And they are basically always wrong. When a player knows what a condition is like, up close and personal, and the game tells them "actually X condition is like Y" that mechanic has failed. And it's not a viable goal to assume that you can design any such condition in any mechanical way that is consistent with all of the multitudes of varied experiences that actual humans have. There are two other key points of nuance to consider: First there is a key difference between roleplaying “insanity” and roleplaying a specific trait. The term "Insanity"s legacy is as a catch all for cartoon crazy. It's lazy. And some game systems do it in an especially lazy way too. CR clearly dont want to associate their game with cartoon charicatures of insanity. Second is the effect of taking an open ended approach to role playing mental health; it means the players must bring their ideas, their comfort level, and their goals to the table. It requires the player to think about what they are doing. That section of Candela Obscura is clearly asking players to consider mental health complexly. It explicitly requests players think about the effects of trauma and stress. Then it follows up with the phrase in question, imo effectively saying "there is an unethical way of doing this, and we are trying to avoid that". The sentence makes perfect sense in context IMO. The page before and the page after both serve to clarify their intent in that phrase.

I think the game designer is drawing distinction between insanity and mental illnesses or disability. The correct definition of insanity is being in a mental state where one cannot control, or be accountable for their actions. Most mentally ill people are not insane, and most mental illnesses don't manifest symptoms that count as insanity. Being under the effect of many drugs on the other hand, including excessive drunkenness do count as insanity, and so does being asleep. Of course under this definition insanity does have place in RPGs, as sleeping, being under mind control spells, being effected by poisons and drugs, or failing a moral check and being forced to flee in panic are all great elements to Include in an RPG. But the problem is that there is another definition of insanity. Tye colloquial definition of "insanity" or "madness" is a condeming term for someone who acts wierd in a way that's scary or dangerous to the people around them. The Mad Scientist and the serial killer are two archtypes that are usually described as insane despite the fact that they have complete control and accountability over their actions. This is how you see tye term usedc in works such as the Lovecraft Mythos, or Warhammer, and I can see why CR would want to avoid this kind of presentation of mental illness.

@irrevenant3 Well said.

Exactly!

Thanks, Dirk! I really appreciate the feedback.

CoC has gone back and forth on this across its editions. The middle period where they tried to revamp things to include clinically accurate mental disorders was, IMO, significantly inferior to the earliest and latest treatment. I agree with you that cosmologically-induced "insanity" is best understood as a unique thing that doesn't actually exist in reality and insofar as characters in the fiction associate it with true medical disorders, those characters are making a category error due to, at best, superficial similarities.

I find it kind of funny that "pulp insanity" is so far removed from our modern understanding of mental illness that we treat it as a totally separate concept. Still, the tropes that inspired that mechanic reflected and perpetuated real, harmful stereotypes back in their day, and even though CoC obviously doesn't buy into those views I can still see why some people might feel icky about playing into them for entertainment.

I guess I just played then during that middle period. And that turned me off for good from that game.

@@stickpeoplegamedudes agree. I can see what the authors are trying to do here (and to some extent applaud them for trying), but obviously didn’t quite stick the landing (to mis-quote Shakespeare - a rose by any other name…)

CoC insanity does not simply mean that you are losing your mind (like a mental disorder) but also that *something* is *gaining* access to your mind, in essence you are becoming possessed which sets it apart from regular old PTSD, etc.

It'll be interesting to see how this works in practice when the playthrough goes up. I don't get the impression it's advocating on-the-rails storytelling. But I also haven't played BitD yet so I don't quite understand how this distinction works in practice. If a character has maxed out Study, can they use it for everything from punching to lockpicking to sneaking, justifying it as something they have studied?

@@irrevenant3 To help you see the point of the fellow commentator. As a long Blades player and GM, in Blades there are 12 actions instead of 9, and some actions can be made the argument they can be used in different ways than said in the book, explicitly because they are *actions*. So for example, in blades if a player says "I will beat up this guy until we can't recognize his face", then the gm probably could ask: "because he presents the danger of fighting back, you are skirmishing against him, yes?" (skirmish is an action). Then the player could say: "It was established the guy doesn't expect me dropping on him and beating him up, so maybe I have the element of surprise. Because I want to destroy his face, I'm wrecking him for good". Wreck is another action in blades, and it is used to destroy things, not fighting. So in blades, the gm is encouraged to let the players choose an action, and then the gm will say set the position and the effect based on the previous conversation (the fiction, the character positioning, element of surprise, and even the action chosen by the player). In this case maybe the gm see wreck is a valid option for a brutal assault. But the gm could say "even then, you will start a fight, because you are not trying to skirmish, you are in a desperate position but because you have the element of surprise, you have great effect. The point I'm making is that the way actions are written they are one of the complements for the dynamic of position and effect John Harper took around 6 years to come up. I won't say Candela Obscura is bad or is looking bad, but we will see if they expand upon the position idea. To me it seems 9 actions are very well defined, and maybe that is the reason the player don't choose, but the way the position is being worded, surely seems like a "difficulty slider". With my experience in changing position/effect with some house hacks of blades says that to use it only as a "difficulty" is not a good move, unless the game really needs it. Most of the time, in Blades (and similar games) we don't want to check if the characters are good enough, they usually are, but we want to check what are the consequences of their positioning in the fiction. Its less about the "climb a building with easy access or not", and more about "can my character reach in time to save my friend? If I climb buildings maybe it has more effect, but puts me in a desperate position"

@@JeandaSilvajexsnake I don't understand BitD Postion/Effect (I plan to get the game and give it a good read at some point but haven't yet). Does CO even have Position/Effect like BitD does?

Wow, that’s impressive and requires a lot more preparation for the referee to pull off. Hats off to you!

Nicely done! I'm also generally a fan of how Trail of Cthulhu handles this, turning the altered perception of reality invoked by the cosmological horror into a collaborative effort by the whole table.

Liminal Horror does something similar. Definitely an interesting way of dealing with it.

@dauchande not really! I just keep a list of their scores on hand, and I check it when I describe things from time to time. I hacked a corollary stat, “Awareness”, that is inversely proportionate to Sanity (I’m playing heavily modified 5e). Awareness equals 21 - Sanity. Awareness allows you to perceive supernatural things, but also attracts the attention of eldritch things (Compare awareness against enemy Charisma or Wisdom score, whatever’s higher; if awareness matches or is higher, the enemy and pc can perceive and interact with each other. If a non eldritch enemy passes that bar, maybe you describe them as something terrifying and tentacle-y, only for the player to discover they’ve graphically butchered a petty thief instead in full view of the local law). When an eldritch enemy calls for a mental saving throw, I switch it to a Sanity save. The player can switch it back, but lose one Sanity point by doing so. If Sanity reaches 0, you die. The players can regain sanity with dedicated downtime resting, or a Greater Restoration spell or other score-restoring features. This creates a nice push and pull of mental stamina that requires occasional deep rest to replenish, which of course allows opportunities for research to crop up organically during their recuperation! Take it and use it if you want! Just remember; you make Sanity saves, but Awareness checks. Never the opposite. Proficiency in Sanity saves gives you proficiency in Awareness checks.

@The Alexandrian thanks! Finding your website last year was a great boon to me. Next campaign is an OSE hexcrawl, thanks to your writings!

It gets sticky if you claim moral authority while not having the ability to enforce it. In example, if I take this game and do an actual play of the most offensive mental health stereotypes, the publisher can be criticized for not calling me out or "letting me do it" when the writers and publishers have better things to do than try to police the community and it sets up the publisher and authors up for accusations of criticism. The second issue is no one is agreed on what mental disease; ie, in Europe narcissism is considered a mental disease and in the US it is a behavioral disorder. By making a blanket statement, it leaves room for misunderstanding or regional ambiguity.

@@rynowatcher I mean I think you're close but if they had the ability to enforce it, it would be way worse. To be forced to submit to other's ideas of morality sounds like hell. Acting as the arbiter of truth or morality without being awarded the respect and highest authority required by the pupils, to be those things, it is not going to go over well. It's a self appointed role. I think that's where it goes wrong. You can't make yourself the ruler of all without it being a problem. You have to be granted the role by the people. Even the official laws we live under are more like things that we by and large agreed upon that shouldn't be allowed to happen lest our society spirals out of control. Even our governments typically don't dare to define morality. Because they don't have that high an authority. So it's just never going to go over well when unappointed companies or people try to do such things. We can all make suggestions and ask questions but none of us has the authority to tell others how to live life.

@@lystic9392 I am not suggesting the publishers should be able to enforce morality; just that by making claims to be able to you inherently draw criticism when they break the illusion; ie WotC does not want racists to play their game or else it is gets known as "the racist game," which hurts sales. They never say, "do not be racist" in the rule book because they have no practical way to enforce it. Putting a statement in there like that can only hurt the company because it makes them have to do something if a Nazi Magic the Gathering actual play stream starts up.

@@rynowatcher I think I misunderstood your argument. That's a good argument.

@@lystic9392 yeah, heard a Pathfinder q&a about their re-release and a similar question came up about morals in the rule book, and their answer was, "what, do you want us to fly out and take their books away if they are a bad person?" It is silly at best.

Thanks, Alex!

Also most people play poorly limps, scars and disfigurements (most likely, not at all). Also they portray poorly character's gimmicks, traits and specialisations. I mean, the fact that player portrays poorly some aspect of their character doesn't matter unless there's someone at the table who would be affected by that. But such niche cases should be resolved by players at the table on their own accord (e.g. common sense), not a rulebook that blanketly tells every reader "you gonna be bad at this so no".

@@Qri0 what kind of world are you living in where players play limps "poorly"? By coming up with false equivalencies you're just being intellectually dishonest in an attempt to be a contrarian here. In a TTRPGG, physical issues mostly result in mechanical penalties. If you have a limp, your movement speed goes down. If you lost an eye, you have a penalty to ranged accuracy, etc. These don't happen with being "crazy" or "insane" which are more often than not, really poorly realized. If anything, the game telling the player that they have specific "mental" symptoms not specifically tied to real mental illnesses is a much better way to do things. So after a player encounters the paranormal, maybe they hear otherworldly voices...not because they are "crazy", "going insane" or showing symptoms of a real mental illness, it's because they actually are hearing these voices because there's magic in this world. A game like this can get all the bells and whistles of an "insanity" mechanic without tying that to real world mental illness. Given the CDC estimates that nearly 1 in 5 Americans have suffered debilitating mental illness at some point in their life, and 1 in 25 live with on going, long term serous mental health issues, there's just no reason to continue that sort of stigma anymore given how it's the mechanic itself people like, not the wording. So instead of "broken", just say they are affected by the Bleed, problem solved.

I was not aware playing a character poorly was justification avoiding it. That kind of comes off elitist that they can play such a character while us, simple folk should avoid it. None of these game designers or the cast have degrees in psychology; seems like they are borrowing trouble by bringing it to everyone's attention. As a long term CoC player, I do think "sanity" and "madness" are poorly named for what it is and what it does. You are not playing a cluster b disorder when you have a "bout of madness" so much as having a stress reaction that compells random action, the arkham Horrors board game, mothership rpg, and alien rpg all have a similar mechanic, but call it stress, which I think is a bit more accurate for what the mechanic is doing. Even in lovecraftian fiction, "madness" is not really a disease so much as enlightenment from the ignorance that humanity lives in: monsters are real, aliens put brains in jars to steal your body, the waking world is the real dream, gods exist and are working to destroy humanity... I think the Mythos Skill inversely affecting sanity is one of the best way to mechanically represent that. The characters are usually very, very, desterbingly rational as they scream warnings that the color of the bench is out to get you when you are sitting at the bus stop. This is partially an issue of playing with perspective and the fear of loss of relation with humanity at large.

@@rynowatcher "As a long term CoC player, I do think "sanity" and "madness" are poorly named for what it is and what it does. " Yes, and that seems to be what they are avoiding. Rather than telling the Player their character is going crazy, the game is giving them specific traits that are happening and not just lumping that in with a mental break. You and I are agreeing here. "Even in lovecraftian fiction, "madness" is not really a disease so much as enlightenment from the ignorance that humanity lives in: monsters are real, aliens put brains in jars to steal your body, the waking world is the real dream, gods exist and are working to destroy humanity" But some editions of CoC _do_ equate the "madness" with real mental illness diagnoses. I'm in no way defending how they worded what they wrote, because I think they did a really poor job of articulating it, but when you look at from the position where I _think_ they are coming from (and I admit, I could be wrong), I think it's fine. They want to disassociate the "madness" game mechanic from real mental illnesses. What's funny is it really shouldn't impact the actual game at all because the mechanics are still there, so this feels like a giant nothing burger that really isn't worth the discussion.

@@andrewshandle to be fair, it is hard to make absolutely statements about CoC as a game because it has passed through many hands and some handled it better than others. It is like saying "Spiderman is has brown hair," in that it is both true and false depending on which Spiderman you are talking about and who is writing it at the time. Generally, for the majority of versions of CoC, "insanity" in the game comes from you knowing that your mother's mind was replaced by a Trans dimensional alien and putting 6 bullets in her head did not kill her, just the alien. Seasoned investigators look crazy because to a normal person, it sounds like you are mentally ill while you are in truth completely, horribly sane. The question for what is real is the real horror it is trying to evoke, which does not have much to do with mental illness in my opinion. Same as the barbarian having an illusion cast on him and he not knowing if he is attacking a friend or foe in d&d. Yeah, I am not trying to read too much into it, but it leaves a lot of questions for what the game will play like as if the taboo for mental illness-like mechanics are enforced they might remove some scars or change them in the final game. Cyberpunk Jumpstart had rules changes from the core Cyberpunk Red system, for instance, so rules changes or revisions on the quick start are still in the cards. The thing that caught my eye more was the taboo on playing or exploring other cultures given there is a Victorian England vibe to the CR game. It might be a "create your own city" game where you roll on tables or something to make players or gm make the setting unique for every game and the quick start may just have a sample of a made setting to get you playing tonight.

I see what you're saying. But if you're right, you definitely wouldn't design a system where you take Brain damage that then inflicts mental illnesses after you've taken a specific quantity of it.

That's true, I wouldn't. And I agree that is what the term "brain scar" by itself would suggest to many people. But I think that name doesn't fit how they've defined and described it. It's more like bad experiences causing personality changes. They define "brain" as representing mental strain or stress, rather than something like blows to the head. And the fleshed-out examples before the table, starting on page eight, suggest that the effects are meant to be within the range where a different character might have started the adventure. In terms of roleplaying "insanity" as a quantity: There's a common mechanism of a certain number of "marks" building up into "scars," but it seems very centered around specific events building up to specific effects. There's no notion that having two scars (such as being both consumed by guilt because your friends died and afraid of deep water because you nearly drowned) moves you twice as close to stereotypical "insanity" (such as becoming catatonic or attacking all your friends with an ax). I think that's a valid distinction for the authors to make. I do appreciate the time, thought, and experience behind your analysis. The quickstart gave you a perception that very few people would intend, and I hope the full game is revised to address that.

Thanks, Jake! I hope you enjoy the book!

@@TheAlexandrian purchased a copy online a few days ago. Excited!

The original definition of "high fantasy" meant a fantasy story set in a secondary world and "low fantasy" meant a fantasy story set in the world as we know it (or history as we know it). So, like, Dresden Files would be low fantasy while Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser would be high fantasy. But "high fantasy" is now often used to mean "a fantasy story with a lot of magic in it" and "low fantasy" is often used to mean "a fantasy story with very little magic in it." Under those definitions, Dresden Files would be high fantasy and Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser would probably be low fantasy (at least most of the time).

@@TheAlexandrian Very interesting. Thanks a lot for the answer Justin.

I don't know. I don't think the problem is that it hates the "horror" part of itself, but that it tries to create a horror game that is based around things it hates. Like, it's like creating a western game where the players are expected to play cowboys against Native Americans and the rulebook including a little speech about how wrong it is to fantasize about killing Native Americans (and it is, btw, a game like that would 100% be racist af) but if you don't want that to happen, maybe don't include that in the rulebook. Horror games without sanity mechanics are not impossible, Dread being a fantastic (if short) one, along twelve candles. I can kinda see how gamifying mental illness as a "bad outcome" for your character can be quite ableist, it takes for granted that all PCs start without mental disabilities, for starters. Yet, that can be overcome by simply not doing that. Don't use real mental disabilities, have them be paranormal effects that get confused for mental disabilities but aren't (like, if you see real ghosts you could be considered schizophrenic if no one else can see them) let them even have positive sides players can use. I recognize all of this could be tricky and would require a lot of care, I'm mentally disabled but I'm in no ways an expert, but the point is: if you can't be bothered to do all the work to implement them properly, then maybe don't implement them at all! Idk, it feels like the conversation is alternating between "insanity is immoral" and "horror can't be done morally so why even bother?" which are both wrong, lol

@@guitarlover1204 You make some good points.

I'm generally opposed to railroads, but I'll make an exception for the hype train.

@@TheAlexandrian, the best reply I could have gotten =)

Thanks, Warren!

I hope to, too!

@@TheAlexandrian also, I'm surprised nobody has said that Candela Obscura is basically old Spanish for "dark candle". In modern Spanish it'd be "vela oscura"

I'm not sure this is exactly what you're looking for, but you might find this useful: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/45246/roleplaying-games/random-gm-tip-running-horror

I know a lot of people are going to take away the message that the problem is a horror game saying "don't mechanize disability." But in practice, I think the bigger problem is the opposite: A game that promises to deliver that experience, which , as you note, many people legitimately want and which is currently not well-supported by existing RPGs... but then just doesn't deliver that experience.

@@TheAlexandrian As I read the intent of the Quickstart guide (which could definitely express itself more clearly) it does provide support for character responses to mental trauma (via brain scars) it just doesn't mechanise that, and it advocates for brain scars to represent character-specific responses (like 'fear of water') rather than real-world clinical diagnoses. Less 'trying to have its cake and eating it too' and more 'lets all have this particular type of cake'. I could be wrong though and I really hope they're a lot clearer about this in future.

I really want to be able to actually play the game, or at least spend a lot more time digging into the full book, before doing a review of it. But I'm hoping that'll happen sooner rather than later. Glad you like the shirt. It's one of my favorites. :)

Thanks!

I think problem stems from one notion that other commenter noticed. In BiD players decide what to roll in situation (and what apply, including traumas), while in CO, DM decides what to roll and it would be pretty ugly if DM tells you to roll such-and-such because "you are crazy". So the fundamental problem here is that DM has too much agency in deciding what player rolls (relic of DnD system?) rather than them deciding their own approach.

Call of Cthlulhu is actually pretty clear on this. First, almost all of the mental breaks (while they could show up on some symptoms list somewhere) are not explicitly mental disorders. Breaking down and having an emotional outburst isn't a mental disorder, nor is acting out violent rage, fainting, temporary paranoia, temporarily mistaking someone for someone else, amnesia, or fleeing. While these are things which can be associated with a disorder they are not disorders. These are meant to represent the effects of coming face to face with something beyond human comprehension. Phobias and Manias (here meaning a compulsive or obsessive need to do a thing) are also not strictly mental illnesses per se, but sure I can see that as somewhat problematic, but I don't know what to tell you different people will have different lines and that seems like it'd be a grey area for most people as "compulsive kindness" is again a symptom, not an illness. Second, and this is a huge one, sanity is temporary in CoC. Finding a dead body? You might be on edge for awhile and could snap and yell at someone when you normally wouldn't. Having a month off from weird shit and returning to normal life? Your sanity increases. It's more of a mental HP than our modern understanding of the word "sanity" from a medical context. No one plays CoC and has a character suddenly have depression, anxiety, or schizophrenia. They have emotional outbursts, faint, run away, and in rare cases develop a life long fear of a specific thing. Sanity loss in CoC represents a temporary lapse in your own safe and sober decision making as a player sitting around a table somewhere safe and warm, not a disorder caused by genetics, childhood trauma, or some other cause. While you (general you, not you you) may find the language used to describe these things problematic. The mechanics and text don't support an interpretation of that little box on your character sheet that says SAN being actually related to mental illness. If you'd rather change it to be "emotional well being" or "patience for horror bullshit" nothing changes it's a word. Bad or not: It's simple to change. Finally it seems that Candela Obscura seems to be engaging in Concern Trolling. Concern Trolling, for the unaware, is when you clutch your pearls about some issue, but do nothing about it. For instance saying something is problematic and "Unethical and mechanically unviable" and turn around and include near identical mechanics and language (in fact I'd argue more problematic because these mechanics actually represent things like PTSD). No different from the person who says "But what about the environment" while doing literally nothing to actually help the situation vis a vis the environment and having no real interest in doing so. In other words: It's rhetorical use of concern. You aren't concerned, but instead are acting concerned because it's rhetorically useful. In this case rhetorically useful is actually "good marketing" (see: rainbow capitalism)

@@katjalehtinen8101 I cannot tell about the motivations that Critical Role has with their system, so I am not doing that. But I can say that you are not entirely correct on CoC. Sure, many things work like you say, but you left out the part in which permanent mental disorders can manifest in that game after a severe shock. Or at least that was how it worked for any edition I have ever played, maybe that was addressed in the 7th edition, but then it surprises me that nobody took the time to talk about that.

@@katjalehtinen8101 I don't really see this as concern trolling (neat term BTW!). Effectively they seem to be advocating handling brain scars as similar to your CoC example above: Brain scars are your character's specific reaction to stress and trauma, not mental illness per se. That's why it uses generalised terms like "fear of water". Brain scars differ in being permanent though (which they acknowledge as being an oversimplification based on the assumption that _Candela Obscura_ agents are unlikely to get away from the horrors of their job long enough to heal and recover).

@@Drudenfusz Yeah, in the 7th edition if you SAN score drops your mythos score goes up and if it gets low enough you usually retire. If it hits 0 you know too much and are just obsessed with the mythos and basically become a character from a lovecraft short story, driven but impossible to understand from the outside. It's a "non-death" dying.

Thanks!

Thanks, Justin!

I do talk about that a bit in the book! The first part of the book is focused on adventure design and core procedures for running the game, but the back half is a big Extra Credits section that delves into material like campaign status documents and other practical tips.

@@TheAlexandrian Thank you! I look forward to reading it. I want to be a better GM, but I've been looking for published adventures that serve as a good "template" for organizing my campaign info.

Yup. Corporate meddling most likely. Because it's much easier to slap that sentence on top rather than other way around - make a table of injuries and traumas afterwards.

There's also (paraphrasing): "If you're playing an Explorer, make sure you only explore your own culture." In the game that seems to be centrally positioning "explore the ancient city from a different culture" as a major pillar of play. This division between "lecture about what you shouldn't do with the left hand, pay no attention to us doing exactly that with our right hand," unfortunately, casts a pretty wide net over this book.

@@TheAlexandrian I took notice of how many times they used "colonialize" given this taboo on going out of culture too. I kind of look at this as a draft, so the player advice might have been added by an editor to cover their butts without much thought or review, so i do not want to read too much into this... but a lot of this makes the theme the game is going for very confusing and hard to follow. I am also wondering how the final book will define the setting if we can only explore our own culture, does that mean they are not going for the Victorian England esthetic the show is? Is this a "create your own city to play in" game where everyone contributes to the setting? Putting this in a rule book in a rules section is also a but weird because it makes it sound like these are rules on par with the dice mechanics and that gets into "your fun is wrong if you," territory. Ie, d&d does not want you to be racist and play in their game, but it is not actually a rule because how would they enforce it?

Thanks!

Thanks!

Fred: [rips the mask off] Shaggy: Yoinks! It was Blades in the Dark the whole time! Scooby: Ruh-roh!

Agree

Re: Calls to action. Thanks! I was particularly happy with this one.

Not really, although a GM could use them as a scaffold for doing so if they wanted to. You can gain magical abilities, however, by advancing your Circle.

The Quickstart guide doesn't have a lot to say on magic. It says "Magick can become infused in mundane objects, places, or beings, permanently altering them. If a thinning is opened wide enough, creatures from the beyond may also come through". One of the pregen characters has the "magician" speciality though that lets them have **one** trick (levitate, throw voice, Summon mundane object etc.) which requires a successful roll, and incurs bleed damage. I imagine the full manual will flesh it out a little, but it seems like a setting where powerful magic will mostly not be in human hands and that which is tends to be in the form of artefacts.

You're speaking very vaguely and saying nothing as a result.

@@TheAnthery Let me translate for you: "Review good. CR try do two things that match bad. Better to warn about one thing and do it. Similar approach is prevalent in other media."

Which, as I say in the video, is just fine. Except if it's true that the game shouldn't include mechanically defined mental disabilities, then the game shouldn't include mechanically defined mental disabilities. QED. This is what I mean about the book wanting to have its cake and eat it, too: "You shouldn't do the thing we do on the facing page" is incoherent.

@@TheAlexandrian Very true. Hopefully they take the feedback onboard and come up with a clearer, more consistent approach for the final version. And hopefully they express it a bit more delicately.

"Most of us can at least crudely understand and imagine what it means to have non-working legs, or an inability to see. " whoo boy...I wish you wouldn't said that

@@Qri0 How so?

@@irrevenant3 to put it lightly "not very smart statement"

Except that line isn't super clear. Sure this is just talk here, but things like this in rulebooks are *extremely* often ignored and are almost always super important. An example that springs to mind is that in 5th edition (and every RPG book in the last decade, decade and a half) says explicitly in the very first few "just talking" pages to never just default to rolling dice. Dice come out during uncertainty. The example goes something like if you look for keys in the place the keys are you don't need to roll. Like I keep my keys in a bowl on the table. If the players say "I check the bowl on the table" they always find the keys, because the keys are there it's not an uncertain moment. Now, if the players say "I search the kitchen" or they say tried to get the keys before someone in the same room who was an enemy of theirs then we'd bring out dice. This is explicitly in the Player's Handbook in 5e, yet almost no one follows it. You see it in actual plays, local games, memes, etc yet it's in the rules, explicitly. But because people see that section as "advice" or "just talk" it gets ignored in spite of just being non-mathmatical rules. It's not advantage, it's not a bonus or a penalty, it's vague and needs the judgement of the GM but it's just as much a rule. I'd argue Candela Obscura is also doing the same thing here. This is the book telling you to no roleplay those things because they are inherently problematic. To not tie homebrew mechanics to them because that is problematic. It's a vague rule, that could be interpreted wrong, but it's still a rule.

@@katjalehtinen8101 I don't think it's the case, though. We don't have 1 vague rule, we have two rules. Between them, one is vague and talk, the other is pretty specific. Obviously we'll follow the specific one when we actually have to sit around and play. The less vague rule is one that would actually prod us and the one that we would refer to when trying to clarify something - that's just the nature of using the rules.

In practice of course, you're right. The game that's played is not the game that's written, it's whatever the group ultimately decides - but you've got to at least admit it's internally incoherent when the stated goal of a work conflicts with its own procedures.

100%. When there's a conflict between mechanics and advice in a rulebook, mechanics will almost always win out.

I've got my fingers crossed that the full game gets it right!

well that fits with matt being on a power trip for all of C3.

Hi, Kay!

If we let people know that I'm magic, I'll be constantly tied up doing kids' birthday parties.

Given the shirt he's wearing he's basically CR's target audience anyway.

at least CO could be a gateway system to better systems for forever-DnD players

@@Qri0 Thats the hope because in all honesty I do think vaesen is a way better game than this is.

If those games better fit the flavour of setting you want to play, absolutely. A main point of PbtA and its derivatives like BitD is for other games to take the same basic core engine and apply different moves and playbooks to it to better suit other genres and settings. Blades in the Dark is very heist-oriented, and if that's what you're after, go for that rather than Candela Obscura. If you want more of an occult investigation vibe, Vaesen or Candela Obscura. I'm not familiar enough to say what the differences are between Vaesen and CO - it seems mostly a matter of setting (turn-of-the-century Sweden vs a fictitious dark fantasy city), role (CO characters are professional occult investigators, where Vaesen characters seem to be more people accidentally thrust into this life) and consequence (CO seems to have more of a focus on magical bleed affecting and transforming the characters). Literally just play whichever game best fits what you're after.