Last Saturday I ran my first game of Blades for my group of five.

Last Saturday I ran my first game of Blades for my group of five. It’s rare we can ever all be there so we wanted to play Blades as a drop-in drop-out from week to week but for the beginning we all wanted to be there. None of us have played anything other than 3.5 and Dark Heresy. Warning: a bit long winded.

The crew had a blast with character and crew creation and though I expected the heritage to be glossed over it turned into a great time as this was the first game where we really felt encouraged to paint the world ourselves (never played any –World games). Skovlan turned very Skyrimesque and our Slide, who’s never read or seen Dune, came up with Sand Leviathans that haunt the deserts of Iruvia and have important minerals growing in their bodies. I encouraged the group to learn more through play and it was on.

We started in Bazso’s office as suggested in the QS and immediately hit a snag. Baz is one of the friends listed on the Slide’s sheet, but the crew chose the Red Sashes as the faction that had helped them set up in Crow’s Feet. There was confusion as the group wasn’t sure what to do and had to make a hard choice.

We flashed back to the crew getting two invites, one from each boss and the crew went to the Red Sashes first. They agreed to plant a box of unknown purpose inside the Lampblack HQ and then went to the Lampblacks to gather information while talking to Baszo. He asked them to rob the Red Sash treasury.  He’d heard they met with the red sashes but the slide was on point and overcame with deceive–with the Trust Me special ability she passed perfectly and they returned to the Red Sashes under cover of night.

They met up with Mylera (sp) and asked her to pretend to be robbed and give them some items to make it look like the Red Sash had genuinely been robbed. They offered her 1 coin from the Lampblack vault without prompting and supplied half the supplies from their “Packrat” lair: one of the PC’s decrepit ancient family home. With that offer it didn’t seem necessary to make any action roll: agreeing to those terms seemed natural for her so I just let them succeed. Next they asked her to create a ruckus in the morning, and they took the “loot”, mystery box in tow, back to the Lampblacks. The lurk led the group in slipping the bags past the search checkpoint without the box being discovered and took a couple stress covering for the others. In the end they planted the box in the vault, swiped a bit of coin without being seen to pay Mylera and were out scot free.

All in all, I know the group had a ton of fun. I explained to them that early on, with their notoriety being so low and the scales of the jobs relatively small, that smart plans may let them ease through with minimal stress, but things should get more difficult in the future which everyone seemed excited about. They were good about playing into what the NPCs were trying to achieve and focused on the party’s strengths (mask and cloak skills) so they didn’t take much stress or even have to roll very often. They marveled at how much we got done even though it took us four hours to do characters, crew and 1 score. One thing I would really like to see in the future though is option rules for advancing the fiction around the players through the other factions. Anyway, a ton of fun. Will play again next week.