A couple questions from a recently started game of BitD.
1. You do it but the danger manifests: In a situation where a character was using a Prowl action to get on top of an inn to spy on a NPC, I thought the danger was of falling and taking a lasting effect. If he had rolled a 4/5 on a risky situation there, he does it but the danger manifests, so…. what happens there? He falls yet doesn’t fall? Should the danger have been of him being noticed, because then it still wouldn’t have happened? In another situation, a character tried to seduce a member of the Red Sashes, and rolled a 5. So the obvious danger seemed like that he caught on to her, but she was also supposed to have accomplished her goal a little bit? I must be thinking about “danger” all wrong, because the way I’m going about it results in contradiction.
2. Tried to go through the planning motion, but it quickly fell apart. Bear with me:
“Okay, so you’re going after the Red Sashes treasury. What’s your plan to do so?”
“Well, we have to figure out where it is.”
“Okay, so how do you do that?”
“I want to find the leader of the Red Sashes and interrogate her.”
“Alright, well trying to do that will be a Desperate action, as she is almost always on guard and has numerous bodyguards with her, but you could do things to make that easier. Maybe you find a lackey who knows her schedule and routes?”
“Okay, then we want to find a grunt who can tell us when she’s vulnerable.”
“Okay, then you’re going to Stalk some grunts leaving the Red Sashes HQ. Here’s a Devil’s Bargain, you can steal the Blacklamp’s sketches of the outside of the HQ to find a good place to Stalk from, but they’ll know you did.”
“Well, why don’t we just ask Baz for them rather than take them?”
Long story short, we ended up doing a reconnaissance mission to find out Mylera’s schedule, to ambush Mylera, to find out the treasury location and get a possible key to it. Then maybe we can worry about getting to it and opening it. We had plans to establish plans to establish plans. I felt like we were supposed to just have one big plan. If I’m right, how would I make that happen? Where did I make the crucial mistake?
One player was also worried about what was in the treasury and if they’d be able to transport it (if they needed the crew’s help). Obviously there has to be enough of value in it for the operation to be worth it to Baz, but also little enough for the PC’s to be able to transport it. How do I determine/mitigate that?
Thanks for any advice.
For your first point, there is a trick to choosing the danger (you should always try before the roll). Since it is very likely that the character both finds success and danger, you should chose dangers that are orthogonal to the player’s action, that way you don’t get contradictions. In your first example, instead of the danger be the character falls, they could be heard instead, thus they’ll have to deal with the building be on alert. For your second example, if you wanted the danger be that the red sash know that he was being played, I think that could still work. He is willing to have his fun with the character but has a plan to deal with her afterwards.
For your second point, I think your stuck in a habit of saying no, when this is a game where you should always find ways to say yes. If the characters wanted to interrogate the Red Sash’s leader, then just open the scene with him tied to a chair. There should be plenty of consequences in doing that, and the character’s will need to spend lots of stress just to do flash backs to explain why they don’t have a bunch of angry swordsmen right on their tail. No real need to start things off on a desperate roll.
As far as dealing with carrying the loot, you can just decide what’s in the room. Maybe there are gems that hold lots of value in small packages. Maybe the players will just need to spend stress on flashbacks to have what they need to transport. Maybe they fail to bring enough loot to satisfy Baz, or maybe the Red Sash treasury is actually empty. In any case, you never want the players to feel like their being denied, you want them to go ‘oh snap, that’s rough’
David Rothfeder First off, thanks for taking the time to read and respond. I’ll definitely try to be more of a yes man.
Second, follow-up questions: Flashbacks are supposed to be optional right? But I should force them to do them in this circumstance? What if they make some sort of action roll to determine whether or not swordsmen followed them, but it fails? Is their interrogation room filled with a platoon of angry swordsmen?
Isn’t Baz being unsatisfied or the treasury being empty denying them the score? Isn’t it supposed to increase their reputation with the Blacklamps, and give them coin an hold? If I did this, how would I make it fair?
For your first follow up, yes flashbacks are an option for the players to use, but as the gm you get to remind players as to what their options are. The rules do say that the players choose their entry point and the action starts right there, so if they want their entry point to be having taken a guy prisoner start with him as a prisoner. It might even be a good way to shock them into realizing that this game is a bit different. The idea is that the scene should start right with the interesting action and whenever a player says ‘but wait, I didn’t get a chance to do x, y, or z’ you tell them that’s fine, you can have done that in a flashback. They really end up speeding up the pace of the game. This approach also makes sure that a bad roll doesn’t shut down their chosen entry point.
As far as the 2nd point, the treasure being empty won’t sound like a denial if you spin it right. On one hand, they failed the score, but on the other, it tells them something beyond the score, the red sashes are broke. That’s some valuable information, and even if Baz might be pissed that he didn’t get his cash, it would open way more opportunities. On the other hand, if the players can’t figure out how to transport the cash, that’s another issue. Players failing a score isn’t a denial, it’s an affirmation that they are in charge of their success and failure. If the players can’t think of a way to transport more than a few sacks of gold (1 coin) then that’s on them.
David Rothfeder It seems to me that you’re talking about flashbacks as something that doesn’t require a roll, but according to the quick start PDF they do… As far as I know, there isn’t any way to say “Yes, this thing did happen” without a roll being involved.
Huh, I missed that in the rules. When I’ve run I didn’t ask for a roll on flashbacks and I liked how it played out. I don’t see the point of having a price and a roll for flashbacks.
I think at this point I’d like to hear what John Harper has to say on the nature of flashbacks.
David Rothfeder Heck, if it worked for you, I don’t see why we can’t give it a shot. Maybe I’ll just hack it for the time being. BitD is still being made, seems like, so it can’t hurt. I’m also interested in hearing what he has to say.
Thanks again!
My thoughts exactly. I know in the hack I’m working on I’m definitely planning on making flashbacks an easy way to have characters prepared for action.
I understood that a flashback can require a roll if it is a method to solve a problem in the present.
You now have a problem with a ghost. Flashback: you contacted that ghost before and negotiated. Here a roll is no problem – just to find out how well you did and if it does solve your current problem.
On the other hand if you make a small flashback just to have an item at hand or alike I don’t see the need for a roll.
At least that is how I understood it and it played well like that.
I think flashbacks are a variable tool. Sometimes you say “Okay, you did that” and sometimes you say “Huh, let’s roll to see if that worked” and sometimes you drop in and play a bit. An insight into that is the variable stress cost of the flashback.
You could have an entire heist that was almost all flashbacks, and put a tidy bow on it with waltzing in and out with the treasure in 5 minutes at the end. The session could be about the flashbacks. You have all the flexibility of a TV show in how the episode goes. If the players are more interested in the setup than the heist, then let the setup be the focus; the advantage of the heist structure is it contains the action in a package instead of letting it sprawl on indefinitely.
So, still do flashbacks and have it all in the context of the heist; otherwise you’re doing freeplay. Which is fine, I suppose, but not where Blades in the Dark excels. That’s not the point of this particular game.
For me, the design principle that undergirds all this is focus the fiction and the mechanics on what is interesting to the players. If they want to get to the heist, let them do prep and flashbacks in a perfunctory way. If they want to luxuriate in the setup, let the heist be an afterthought after the fun of setting it up.
The structure exists to keep things moving. Still, it helps to stay tuned into the players, and put the focus where THEY want it rather than on how it is “supposed to go.”
My two cents!
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For one session, I had Baz put out a contract on the head of the Red Sash leader. My group was so impetuous they decided they would try to kidnap her! So, to get them into the spirit of things, I asked them the best result they could hope to get from gathering information. They still weren’t sure, I offered them information on when she’d be vulnerable. A night that was coming up. They seized on that, and built a plan around it.
They had a reputation for being daring, so I offered them a daring score. The chance to capture the leader, alive no less, of a rival gang! A great story for later. We used flashbacks for them to pay to have free reign of the tavern for the night, to set up their gang there as staff, and to position them.
I offered them an advantage in that one of them resembled the target’s head bodyguard, well enough to impersonate him if she was drunk.
I said yes, I offered advantages and story twists they didn’t think of, and I set them up for success. They ran with it, customized their plan to the advantages, and had a great time. Of the three sessions I have run so far, this was the most fun. (And we got character generation and two heists in a 3 hour session.)
My point is, I gave them advantages they had not thought to ask for. That made the story more fun. There’s time to tighten down and have some tougher heists later, but this was the first session–the buy in, setting the hook, convincing them this game was fun.
If you want to see the write-up of that session, with a link to a player’s reaction and the G+ discussion, that’s here.
https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/another-blades-in-the-dark-adventure-summary/
Andrew Shields I read everything you said, and it was very helpful. Particularly the bit about focusing on the fun of the players, and not how things are supposed to go. I put that in my “Advice to self” document. Thanks for the advice!
Blaze Azelski You are welcome! For what it’s worth, I’ve only played three times, and only one of those times went really well, but I’m full of opinions. =)
What Andrew says is 100% correct. You make rolls (or not) in flashbacks the same way you do during scenes in the present.
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