Tonight I ran a session of Blades in the Dark for my Skype group.

Tonight I ran a session of Blades in the Dark for my Skype group. The group seemed to have some mixed feelings about the game, which I think can be attributed to me, but from the GM side, it was amazing to run.

So you know how this works. Baszo Baz calls them in, asks them if they are on his side or not, and so on. Baszo Baz says they can get in his good grace if they rob the Red Sashes treasure vault, and he tells them where it is. PCs say yes, lets do it.

There is an abandoned warehouse, and the vault is in a sewer complex that is blocked off below the warehouse. Entrance is through a sewer hatch in the front of the warehouse where sentries make patrol. The way to the vault is maze-like, and once they get there, there is a complex series of locks on the vault.

So the PCs begin by scouting the sentries around the “abandoned” warehouse. One of the PCs uses a discern roll to figure out their timing and rotations in order to best slip past them and set up his teammate. I determined it was risky and that the danger was he was discovered. So he rolls, and gets a 5. Danger manifests, but they clear two notches on the clock. The player who is set up then leads the group to slip by and go down into the sewer hatch. It was a desperate attempt because they are being pursued, and they succeed, but the sentries catch the sewer hatch falling into place just as they round the corner.

In the sewer, the Lurk decides to fake a trail for the sentries to follow. I decide this is risky action, and the character gets a partial success and is cornered at a dead end tunnel. The Cutter uses this opportunity to engage the sentries in some mayhem, which is risky. He gets a 6, and doesn’t press his luck, but his effect roll is enough to take out the sentries.

With the sentries taken care of, the Hound has a flash back of stalking an eccentric tinker who collects maps, in order to find a map of the sewers around the warehouse. I decide it’s controlled, because its a harmless tinker, but the Hound rolls a 5, and decides to take a risky maneuver for full effect. The danger is, some thugs beat him to death and leave him for dead in an ally (random violence). He succeeds but the danger manifests, but he uses his armor to absorb the stress. In the end, he has a map.

Map in hand, they navigate the maze-like sewers, but run afoul when they trigger a portcullis which blocks their way. The Cutter decides he wants to lead the group is using Mayhem to lift the gate with savage force. The danger is someone gets stuck under the gate. They all roll and they succeed, and move on. I offered the cutter a devil’s bargain: +1D if he loses an item of his choice. He chose the spiritbane charm, which was smart because I said n the beginning I wasn’t going to deal with ghosts and other spirits, so next time I will choose the item.

They get to the vault, and the vault is magically trapped with an alarm, as well as being locked. The Hound decides to pick the locks, and I say it’s risky because of the alarm. The danger is the alarm will go off and attract sentries. He rolls and gets a bad roll, a bunch of 2s. So I tell him, he can abandon or make a desperate maneuver. He does the desperate maneuver and I say the danger is the sentries arrive. He gets a 4, and the same scenario. He finally rolls a 6, but I didn’t say the danger (and truth be told he seemed really annoyed at the cascading failure) so I let it go. He made his effect roll and got 2 segments marked off (of 6). 

The Cutter wants to engage the four sentries (and looking back, maybe I’m over inflating the number, there doesn’t need to be so many guards, because now the kill total is 8 after this fight). He decides he wants to take on all four of them using mayhem. I say that’s fine, its a desperate maneuver, and the danger is being sworded to death. He rolls really well, takes 2 stress, marks off 2 segments (of 6). The Lurk decides to get into melee as well, and its desperate as well, but he rolls a 6 too and 2 more segments are marked off, 2 stress is taken.

The Hound gives it another try, and its risky, and the danger is that one of the sentries slips through and tries to stab him. He got a 4, and rolled an effect roll well enough to mark off the rest of the clock, and took 2 stress.

Finally, the Cutter takes on the last of the sentries, which has been upgraded to a risky maneuver since its a one on one fight with the Lurk involved, and he rolls a crit! The first one of the night! His effect roll is a 1, but the crit pushes it to 2 segments, and the sentries are defeated. With the vault open and guards defeated, they steal gems and coins and jewels and hightail it back to Baszo Baz.

Obervations:

1) I did not give the players a full quickstart PDF, just the reference sheets, playbooks, and maps. If they had the full PDF, I do not know if they would have read it or not, but they definetly experience frustration at not knowing all the rules or the scope of consequences for their actions. That falls completely on me; but they did have the reference sheets. They also didn’t know that marking off a trauma erases all stress, so they thought they would die if all the stress was marked.

2) It was an absolute joy to run as a GM! The flashbacks, planning and details, teamwork moves, and everything else combined with some creativity and improv allowed for a mostly smooth game. It never got bogged down in the details, and the longest it took me was to decide the danger for various actions.

3) I think there were times where some kills were not inappropriate, like maybe the Cutter should have used murder rather than mayhem when fighting all the sentries en masse, which is something to think about going forward.

4) For infiltration type scores, finesse and forceful were used the most. It was almost always appropriate. The only time they used something else was insight when they made the initial scouting action at the beginning.

5) I just woke up before running and I didn’t ask their names so I didn’t call the players by their character’s names or here. That was my bad.

6) I didn’t bother with the crew creation or downtime stuff because I haven’t fully learned it, and if we run another session, we will deal with it then.

All in all, I’m very pleased. I think they enjoyed it, but they were also a bit frustrated as well. They seem open to a 2nd session, so maybe it isn’t as dire as I imagine it.