Play adventure
Knives of the Agate Syndicate's itch.io pageRate this adventure
In order to rate this submission you must be logged into itch.io and have submitted your own entry. Anyone with an account can leave a comment.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
This is cool and can set a whole campaign in the right direction, yet it neds something more to make wheel turns. What is in this entry is good and powerfull, but is not enough. Anyway, a storng, bold one!
Cool criminal factions! This can work as a seed for a full city sandbox.
A very nice sandbox with great factions! I would love to see an expanded version with missions, events and such. This zine is the seed for a big campaign book following the interactions of the factions and the consequences of player actions.
(Pst, last page: Azure Syndicate, instead of Agate Syndicate)
Thanks, I gotta fix that typo!
This feels like a great micro campaign setting. The factions are quite evocative and I really enjoy the fickle nature of law enforcement here.
fun setup to decide what faction are you siding on.
A criminally cool bisection of an urban underworld with dark esoteric factions vying for control.
Great art and a great setup for faction play!
This is a well-presented system-neutral thieves guild experience, and compelling setting to run it in!
Fantastic art!
the watercolor paintings work incredibly well with the writing. the setup feels like it would be fun to run in Blades in the Dark. bravo!
Art is as good as I'd expect from Chaoclypse (big fan of your art, it may have inspired me to learn to draw...), really evocative stuff, immaculate vibes. (Emerald Cabal giving me Metal Gear Rising memories...)
The layout is easily readable and clear, the factions descriptions are succinct and compelling enough to imply a really interesting and grimy S&S city, I could easily drop this into something like Black Sword Hack or something else with a level of weird grunge.
Great work that really feels like the basis for something special.
Good art! I like the factions, but I would like to see this expanded into a more fleshed-out product. What is here is a great foundation.
Me too! 😆
Great application of neat art and layout in what reads to me like a sort of 9/10th draft of a mini rpg. With a tiny carve out for a core dice mechanic you could probably submit this to a 1 page RPG jam, albeit with a swapping around of the layout.
Great job there!
I can see the influences of Blades in the Dark here and the majority of the writing provides worldbuilding for the space one would play in. As a GM this gets the gears going and it's all pretty cool but it would require some work in terms of putting it all into practice.
A very cool entry that lacks the context of an adventure in strict terms but can absolutely help you to generate this very specific flavor of Thief-y, underworld dealings.
I’ve actually never read Blades but it’s on my list!
Well there's a zeitgeist you attuned to I suppose!
Do you have any touchstones for Knives?
You might very well fall in love with Doskvol. The lore is sort of spread through the book but it's surprisingly detailed and every hook seems to snowball into another hook. There's a 3rd party (advised) map that is absolutely massive and high res that also renders every single street. Famous stuff and this module reminds me of it.
Touchstones for me were American mob movies like The Godfather, Goodfellas, and Gangs of New York.
Dripping with grimy urban flavour!
Big fan of the factions 🙏🏽☺️
Great set-up that lets both the GM and players know what is about to go down. No nonsense and straight into business.
I would love to see a bit more balance on some of the pages, such as how on page 2 the text is squished against the map. Giving everything a bit more room to breathe will do wonders to enhance the already great content.
The guilds page is my favorite and has style oozing off of it. The separated boxes in different colours combined with the bold illustrations is a very fun style that I think is absolutely worth pursuing further. The guilds also manage to be extremely terse yet very inspired. Again, great work.
I also spotted a possible mistake in the Guild Relations section where "Azure" is used instead of Agate to name the Syndicate.
Thanks for the catch! I will fix it shortly!
this is ace, the faction portraits and concepts are cracking. A little slice of awful grimy fantasy city underbelly for use in any OSR campaign
The map really does look like a city of crystals - very nice!! Excellent paintings by Chao! This seems like it would work great for a Braunstein.
Truly outstanding. The factions, the map, the writing, the theme. Great stuff all around, easily usable.
This is a tight urban crawl that could easily expand over multiple sessions. And that art from Chaoclypse is dope as hell.
Lovely art- so sparse, yet each grimace & color choice says a ton!
Huge fan of the idea of the Knives being disposable grunts in a much larger turf war amongst the gangs. Feeds that low-level, unwelcoming, seedy city vibe so well.