Downtime – Session 4 for #theHulls
Payoff: 0 coin
Heat: +7
Player actions
Dust (the Slide) ended with 7 stress from the info gathering last session. So she indulges her Vice by going to her good friend Nyryx, in nightmarket, and listening to some of the bizarre and controversial secrets of Nyryx’s clients. Dust erases 6 stress.
Word is that it wasn’t the Red Sashes but the Hulls who garrotted a Red Lamp guard. Dust digs up truth that the dead guard actually enjoyed deflowering maidens, Iruvian and otherwise. This, along with bribes for a couple of prostitutes (found with Nyryx’s help) to spread rumours that embellish on those truths, Dust reduces heat on the Hulls by 2.
Talon (the Hound) spends time gathering info on Ashyln Daava, the occult collector and Talon’s last bounty hunt before the Hulls, and why her ghost might be back haunting the Wrecks (the Shipwreck graveyard within which the Hulls have hidden their lair). Talon meets his friend Fitz of Dunslough, who is collector himself. A good details result on the info roll means Fitz finds in his ledgers that, around when Ashyln had a bounty placed on her from stealing from the Hive, there was an item withdrawn from a black auction, the Sexton of Shadows. Fitz guesses if she nabbed it, and stowed it their when on the run, she might have come back to retrieve it. When asked how, Fitz describes how it is know the Sexton can be held by either a body or a spirit.
Talon also reacquires an asset, Vixen the ex-railjack Whisper. In the case of reacquiring the services of someone already known, we agreed the quality determined by the roll would be interpreted as how motivated and interested Vixen would be in continuing to work with the Hulls. The roll in this case shows she’s remained standard quality Whisper.
Rat (the Lurk) decides to starts a long-term project to shore up Dust’s false identity as Officer Strathmill, in part to help the Hulls hold on to the turf they took from the Seaside Dockers. So an 8-segment long-term project clock: Plant records to establish the identity and life of Customs Officer Strathmill. Rat marks a tick off the clock by breaking into the office of a money lender and planting a forged credit history for Officer Strathmill.
Rat also reduces heat on the Hulls concerning the brawling and break-in at the Red Lamp. Rat bribes some nurses at a hospital burn ward, establishing an alibi that Rat was bed-ridden for days after the Red Lamp inferno and certainly in no fit state to strangle a swarthy guard in broad daylight. Heat drops by another 2.
Entanglements
They rolled gang trouble, but they don’t have any gangs or other cohorts so that meant no entanglements.
NPC factions
The war between Lampblacks and Red Sashes. A Red Sashes drug den and manufactory burns down, rumour has it was demon fire. This brings down the ire of the Inspectors, normally allies to the Red Sashes but growing increasingly agitated as the war escalates. 3 ticks toward the Lampblacks destroying the Red Sashes, boosted thanks to the help of the Whisper Twins.
Word has got out that the Lampblacks pulled strings with Ironhook Prison and secured early releases for some of the Lampblacks’ heaviest, including the Bathos Brothers and Melindra Waneheart. This much needed boost to the Lampblack rep came just in time, because they took a heavy blow when their ‘Bitter Talent’ brewery was found tainted after civilians and gang members started losing body parts after drinking the popular performance-enhancing beer.
The Foghounds tick down their Find a patron clock: 6 to 5. The Foghounds have been working on building trust with some of the ship captains the smuggle from, and it’s finally paying dividends. Word has it they got an invite to a party in Whitecrown. No doubt they’ll be spruiking tax avoidance services to the nobles that own man of the Leviathan and merchant ships.
Downtime can be just as fun as heists! Thanks for sharing the play report.
If I were to have an entanglement involving gangs and the crew didn’t have any, I’d cause a problem for them with someone ELSE’s gang. =)
Great report, the prisoner release is a great idea. The gang entanglement is also a chance to throw them a problem suited to solving with a gang, as motivation to pursue that growth. Push-pull clock to get a gang before the entanglement has consequence.
Thanks for the feedback! I like the ideas for gang trouble. Incentivising getting a gang seems like an interesting idea generally.
However, the specific wording of Gang Trouble led me to say no entanglement.
Gang Trouble One of your gangs causes trouble due to their drawback. Lose face (forfeit rep equal to your tier+1), make an example of one of the gang members, or face reprisals from the wronged party. If you lack a gang with a drawback, there’s no entanglement.
The Hulls lack a gang with a drawback, because they haven’t any gangs!
Oliver Granger Oh, yeah, I don’t mean to suggest you strayed from the rules. For me one of the tricky bits of Blades in the Dark is how freeing and free form the rules are in many ways, and how startling it can be when they are more rigid in unexpected places or with unexpected force.
I take the entanglement table to be a source of inspiration rather than instruction, so I freestyle all over them. =) Of course, your mileage may vary.
Yeah that’s cool. It’s can definitely be a fine line.
Most of the rules can be seen as merely inspirational, like the rules for planning. Another way is seeing the rules as having a job, which in this case the entanglement roll does particularly well, of bringing the “unwelcome” as Vincent Baker puts it.
My preference is the latter. I’d rather the entanglement roll tell me when unwelcome entanglements appear. If the roll result gives me an out, then I’ll probably be swayed to take it. I guess I’m a softie like that.
In fact, I welcomed and the players cheered when there was no entanglements after that score.
That probably reflects that I have no problem with incorporating the unwelcome. I reckon I grasp it with both hands and bring its consequences to bear with enthusiastic glee, like smashing the Jenga tower when you know you’ve already doomed it to fall. Moreover, I think my players know that gleam in my eye. The score against the Councillor’s ghost went downhill fast because I was very willing to follow through on all the unwelcome consequences and entanglements brought by the rules and the fiction.
However, I’d rather the rules did the dirty work of initiating when the unwelcome comes. Moreover, I think honouring the result of the entanglements roll is part of giving the players what they earn. The dice can be fickle enough and harsh enough without creating additional problems for the players. But yeah, softie.
I expect the full rules will have a more nuanced entanglements table. And given the final rules can still be influenced, my preference is to play closely to them and see what happens. On the other hand, I’ve admired a lot of the other actual play I’ve seen that has inspired new ideas for rules precisely because people have done exactly the opposite and not coloured within the lines. There’s definitely room for both these approaches and they can be complementary if they come the right times.