Okay, so first proper session of Blades at lunchtime today. Like most people, we all spent some time trying to find our feet, deciding which action to roll, choosing bonuses, offering bargains, deciding when to roll for effect/resistance and determining segments.
I could waste time recounting the whole thing, but a few tiny things stood out and I was not sure how to react to them.
1. Players spent a lot of time trying to circumvent each other’s decisions by acting on their own impulses. Baz’ patience wore thin with some starting to speak and the others constantly cutting them short to advance their own idea. The running theme of the whole session was people trying to do their own thing, which seems like Taking Point, but isn’t, quite. I know this is a teething thing, but I need to develop more skills to steer them to some degree of unified action.
2. Flashbacks are cool, but give my players access to it and they try to fold a quintuple flash-ception tetrahedron of actions within actions, filling stress and overcomplicating situations.
3. How does a gang of Adepts actually help with the tinkering to create a dragonfly whisper-drone bug? I got the Whisper to roll Tinker to create it in a controlled position, but without being able to charge the gang stress I assumed I shouldn’t give him a bonus die?
Apart from that, we got better at it the longer we played, and accidentally spent 30mins more than we should. They now have all the details they need to get to the Red Sash vault, but they need to get their Slide out of there safely beforehand…and he’s being escorted by armed guards to meet Mylera to audition for a job as Drug Chemist…
Regarding gangs, I had a similar problem of trying to figure out what to roll. Our situation was we had Rooks to cover a lack of Mask skills in our crew, so I wasn’t sure what to have the PC roll during their flashback. I think we ended up having them do a Command on the Rooks then used the crew sheet’s effects: gangs.
Josh Mauldin I wonder if having one diamond in Gangs means we should’ve added 1 die to the Effect roll of the Tinker Action? I wonder if that sort of diamond trade is acceptable to Lord John Harper ?
Sounds wonderful Matt 🙂
Its gets easier with time. I try not to get too deep into layering flashbacks, but hey, sometimes they can be more adventurous than the ‘current’ heist.
Sounds like you guys are loving it. Maybe revolve GMs and you can play for a session?
How do i use those crew diamonds? Am a bit blank on which page that was written
Josephe Vandel I don’t think they are explained?
I just assumed they were effect dice? And useful for determining scale?
Yeah, but they’re never explicitly referenced in examples of effect rolls, so I wondered what the grand scheme was.
hmmmmm.
Gangs are on my plate right now for Update 3 of the quick start. Thanks for the feedback and questions. Very helpful stuff to consider while I work.
John Harper Could you shortly explain what I should/can do with the diamonds on the crew sheet? Some players already asked me as they concider to expand the lair first or those diamonds, and I only feed them some blurry answers yet 😛