Another wall of text incoming.

Another wall of text incoming. My crew of thieves has now finished their second score, which, again, took two 45 minute sessions. We’ve also added a 4th member to the crew, Zephyr the Whisper (who has never played any kind of TTRPG before). I imagine we’ll probably end up with one more player at some point, but not everyone will be available for every session, which was why I went with Blades for a lunch game in the first place. I’ll start with some notes and then move on to the recap.

– Still working on effect, but I did use it more during this score. The alchemist and his pet hull spider were deadly combatants and had clocks representing their health.

– By default I allowed resistance to decrease harm by two levels (as fictionally appropriate), and the PCs are still battered after this mission, but not as much as they could be. I think everyone enjoyed this more.

– Don’t split the party! Teamwork moves are powerful, and it hurts to not be able to use them.

– I was hesitant at first of a TTRPG noob playing a whisper instead of something simpler like a cutter, but the player did a great job. He had creative solutions to problems, and he owned with his Tempest ability.

– Seeing the Whisper’s Tempest ability in action was pretty great, although it does leave some of the players wishing they could do things like that.

– I used the entanglement roll for the first time, and nothing happened because the crew doesn’t have any gangs yet. I’m considering rolled a d8 instead of a d6, which would allow for at least a 25% chance of no entanglements after a job going forward. 

– I may be doing minor harm wrong, because I keep handing out things like “stunned” or “dazed” and my players want to know how they can clear their “stunned” condition during the score. If I want to stun a player, I should probably just decrease the position of his next roll by 1 instead of making that a minor harm. Minor harms should be for things that you can’t just shake off in a minute or two, unless there is a mechanic at some point to do that as an action.

– On the subject of harms, I keep forgetting to actually impose their penalties. The Leech’s back was tweaked, but I never gave him -1d on all the physical rolls he made. Similarly the cracked rib that the Hound suffered from the hull should have probably impaired his fighting ability. Just another thing to work on.

The crew present today was, Caveman (Leech), Bones (Hound), Cobalt (Lurk) and Zephyr (Whisper).

The Chimney Sweeps spent a few weeks engaging in their vices and trying to recover from numerous wounds received in their previous job, until they were summoned by a lackey of Bazso Baz. Bazso was unhappy because the Red Sashes have decided not to lay down and die after losing their war chest to thieves a few weeks ago. Instead the Red Sash alchemist and a group of sword fighters have been waylaying the certain Gondoliers who have been transporting drugs for the Lamp Blacks. The Gondoliers have placed a bounty on the head of the Red Sash alchemist, and Bazso would like the Chimney Sweeps to be the ones to collect it.

The crew decides to go with a Deception plan, borrowing a boat from the Gondoliers and appearing to be weak while actually springing a deadly trap on the alchemist. They also recruited a Whisper named Zephyr for his ability to control water, which would certainly come in handy in the canals. Zephyr and Cobalt paddled the boat while Bones perched on a rooftop with his rifle and Caveman rode along the canal in a Cab. Unfortunately the engagement roll came up (1,1,1), and it turned out that a spy in the Gondoliers informed the Red Sashes of the trap, allowing the alchemist to set a trap of his own. All at once a green acidic mist started to rise from the water into the boat, a pair of thugs ambushed Caveman and pushed his cab into the canal, and a spider shaped hull attacked Bones.

A round of resistances left Cobalt hanging from a bridge over the canal, Zephyr suffering minor acid burns, Caveman hanging by a grappling hook on the side of the canal, and Bones ineffectually fighting the hull with his pistols. The alchemist was nowhere to be seen, and things were looking grim for the Chimney Sweeps when Zephyr came to the rescue. His eyes turned blue and small bolts of lightning cracked around him as he tried to summon a cyclone to whisk the mist away. Zephyr’s Attune rolled landed (6,6,6) and I asked the player what his ideal scenario would be. We decided that the cyclone not only captured all the mist but also the alchemist who was hiding under the water. Zephyr pushed the mist away down the canal and the alchemist was flung from the water and landed, stunned, on the bridge near Cobalt.

At this point the fight was against two main targets, the hull and the alchemist, both deadly opponents. Caveman swam to the boat revealing a catapult that he had made earlier that he used to launch Bones’ dog at the alchemist which greatly helped Cobalt as he fought the deadly alchemist with a penchant for acid bombs. At one point Zephyr attempted to create a great hand made out of water to throw the gondola up to the bridge and land on the alchemist, but a failure resulted in the boat missing the bridge but dumping its occupants in front of the alchemist. The alchemist drank a potion turning himself into a cloud of acidic mist that enveloped Cobalt and Caveman, but Caveman happened to have a clockwork fan that he used to blow the cloud away. At this point Zephyr realized that acid is mostly water, and he attuned to the cloud, freezing it and killing the alchemist.

The fight with the hull spider was not going as well, as Bones’ pistols were doing little damage to the ghost controlled machine. In a eureka moment, Bones recalled that he had some ectoplasmic shot that might damage the ghost. He fired, and the new ammunition seemed much more effective, but the hull tackled him off of the roof onto the ground below. The spider was about to land a killing blow when Zephyr saved the day yet again by pulling the spirit out of hull and into a waiting spirit bottle. Unfortunately in its death throes the hull put one of its legs through Zephyr’s heart, appearing to kill him. However, in a flashback it turned out that Zephyr’s heart was actually located on the right side of his chest, and so he survived with only a punctured lung. With the alchemist dead, the Chimney Sweeps went to collect their reward.

Without quite as many injuries to recover from this time, the crew has expressed interest in starting some long term projects. Caveman took the Hull body with him, and would really like to learn how to bind a friendly ghost to it himself. In addition he would like to make friends with a tailor and add him to his list on contacts. This is mostly because he wants +1d on his vice (luxury) rolls from a contact.