Last night, three friends and I made a start on the Blades in the Dark Quick Start.
We’ve been having a ball co-GMing the last few systems we’ve played (Monsterhearts and Dungeon World Funnel) so we didn’t hesitate to co-GM Blades in the Dark.
We all made characters and then the crew called “The Twelve”. The backgrounds, looks and occupations were easy to flesh out into interesting characters.
We wanted to pick all the crew upgrades, which is kind of good I guess. To narrow down our options, we did the crew creation out-of-order and asked lots of questions. We first fleshed out a few things like where our lair was located, what brought our crew together, what’s motivating us to keep working together.
For the record, our lair is an abandoned library sealed off from the rest of an otherwise occupied house because it’s considered possessed. The haunting should be good cover should we make too much noise. A few of us are on the run from the bluecoats and have aspirations of grandeur and taking a few factions down a notch or two.
The questions on Starting the Game were good and helped make explicitly some of the tensions and stories that were bubbling between and within our characters.
Then we dived into the intro scene. After quickly agreeing with Basco, our Slide started to haggle on the crew’s cut of the treasury score. I picked up GMing Basco and pushing back hard that “the Twelve” were a two-bit operation, get off my turf, etc. After a Risky Action roll (-1D against a prepared opponent) and an Effort roll avoiding the danger, the Slide landed the crew +1d on the Development roll after the score, at the cost of taking two stress herself, two stress on the Hound as her backup, and word leaking out about “someone’s gonna raid the Red Sashes.” We could already see this was going to get messy fast.
We settled on a plan smartly: infiltration. We agreed everyone knew the Red Sashes were Allied with the Cabbies, possibly because we were on helpful terms with the Cabbies. So, in lieu of gathering info, we used the Cabbies as an in, and the Whisper barrelled into the Red Sashes temple forecourt in a cab with our Lurk and Hound hidden on-board.
The plan was the Whisper would set up a diversion to allow the Lurk and Hound to infiltrate the HQ. We wanted a short diversion, Set Up and Follow Through as part of one plan, but misunderstood how it worked and ended rolling effect against a 4-segment clock. This muddle up of course led to a longer scene but it was entertaining so no one minded. The Whisper, a noble trained in the curved sword, challenged the school champion to a duel, which was clearly a desperate action against a veteran opponent. It took two goes to fill the 4-segement clock, he took some stress, made some enemies, and all together wishes to forget the whole experience, but he survived and made enough of a commotion to let his other crewmate’s infiltrate with ease.
We’re shall continue to co-GM weekly, with one player playing fortnightly, so we’ll have plenty of time to see how co-GMing works with Blades in the Dark.
Very cool. Co-DMing sounds like a great option for Blades. Does one person usually take the role per scene, or are you all contributing most of the time?
That sounds awesome.
Fantastic AP Ollie. Sounds like a great session!
Dan Hall, since we only played a short session, I can’t be sure I fully grok co-GMing Blades. But this is what we did last night.
In the first scene, I kept my Lurk out of it, so I just ran Basco.
In the planning phase, I facilitated by asking the three questions, but it was otherwise an open discussion where we all chimed in. We reminded each other about rules, about gathering info, details on our crew sheet; no need for a GM here.
One the diversion plan, the Whisper was acting alone, so the rest of us chimed in with descriptions, funny voices, calls for actions rolls, etc. There’s a certain boldness needed and trust. Building trust that you’re ideas won’t be shut down is key.
I imagine that’s how things will more or less continue. If my PC is not in the scene, I’ll GM or co-GM for that scene. Same goes if my PC is in backup, just maybe only for as long as the player on point has the spotlight. I mean, it’s a conversation, so if my character is not in the spotlight, I talk with the other players whose characters are in the spotlight and ask what they’re doing, challenge them and make their spotlight time fun. I don’t try shoe horn my character in or contrive them into relevance. No need to limit my contribution to just my character, I just join the conversation as another person at the table.
Our group has got into the habit of asking lots of leading questions and probing situations and characters. I think asking questions is like a gateway to issuing challenges, and then advocating for more than just your character. It’s like getting to GMing by stealth.
The nature of this sort of play reinforces Play to find out what happens and Let everything flow from the fiction. Knowing the GM goals, principles and actions is useful, so I print the GM reference sheet on the back of every Action & Effect roll sheet so everyone that handy.
Co-GMing has worked great for us in other games. I think what’s important is having an enthusiasm for making shit up, embracing failure and uncertainty, actively listening for ideas and opportunities, and curiosity. Knowing the rules helps too.
Great write up, Oli. Was a fun game 🙂 I think the co-GMing went well, but we’ll probably have to play a few more sessions to get a better feel of it.
Have to say, this system is very engaging and fun. We all had a go at suggesting Devil’s Bargains for the Whisper, and he had to take them cause he needed the dice! Good times.
Good times indeed!
Yeah, I can see the stress, heat and devil’s bargains in this game are going track that snowball really well, and not just individually but for the whole crew. So when someone misses a session, on return they can look at the crew sheet and go “WTF have you done!”
It’ll all make the downtimes that much sweeter. Mmmm sweet vice.