I am going through the process of converting the characters I had for the Middle Lands from Cepheus Engine to Blades & Black Magic. Aside from the game mechanics, there are a few other issues that I need to think through, though.
New Plan For Party?
One thing I had to consider was tearing up my plans for my party and starting fresh. My original idea was almost like a Traveller group, where the party went on various missions for a powerful patron.
I still like that idea, mostly because it gives a reason for the characters to be venturing into the borderlands and dead lands, without just being murder hobos. It also establishes some connection between the noble, higher class patron and the lower class adventurers. And really, I just like the storyline that it provides.
So the plan is for the party to still be a chartered adventuring crew, venturing into the areas devastated by the Great Death. The closer areas will have been picked clean over the last 400 years, but they will still be deadly from other scavengers living in the dead lands, preying upon anyone who travels the highway between the city-states. The areas further from the borderlands that have not been picked clean will also be sources for a number of adventures, with new dangers, treasures and artifacts.
Different Feel, A Few New Faces
Most of the characters will stay the same, but a couple will change cultural backgrounds to better match the new setting. I am also thinking of adding another fighter to the party because of the change to a more swords & sorcery campaign.
And that is the key: the change from a normal fantasy campaign to a low magic one. The basic concept may stay the same, but the emphasis will be more on action than on the supernatural. That change affects the tone of the party and the adventures they will go on, as well as the characters themselves.
Not only will the characters be more suited to action, but less likely to be wizards. I thought long and hard about whether to have a sorcerer in the party, too. I finally decided to keep the wizard, just to give the party an edge–but that story has to be provided.
Converting Characters to Blades
The biggest changes, however, are to the characters themselves. When converting them from Cepheus to Blades, not only do you have to change the attributes, but you have to take into account ages and skills.
The original concept for the characters was to have a mix of ages and skill levels for the party, from relative beginners to experienced veterans–even an older sage was included. That means the party also had a wide range of skills and skill levels. That is not the case with Blades, especially if the characters are beginning level.
I’m not a slave to starting characters, so we will see how I get the characters created. I believe more in the story, and less in hard and fast rules for the characters. I will go more by feel, too, than by any formula. I want to make sure that the story of the characters stays in place, rather than starting everyone as 32-point characters.
What I am going to do is have the experienced characters have 2-3 more attribute points, to reflect age and experience, while keeping the less experienced at a starting level. For the skills, I am going to add 1-3 more skills for the experienced characters, and only 1 for the starting ones. None of the characters are really just starting characters, right out of the box, so I am OK with that. That keeps the party in line with what I had visioned, while still keeping them lower level.
So let me finish that generation process, and I will post them in the Middle Lands area of the site. I still need to flesh that area out, so please be patient with me… Otherwise, what have you done when converting characters from other systems to Blades? How did you do it? Let me know!
Marko ∞
(Originally published on middle-lands.com, on 4/5/2019.)
