So I’m 6 sessions into running Blades in the Dark with my group, and so far it’s been really great.
However, I find myself really struggling with Social and Deception plans. These seem to be the easiest to devolve into endless planning and going over every possible contingency.
I’d really love to hear other people’s stories and experiences with Deception and Social plans and how they worked out in your games.
Thanks!
Part of the trick is to get enough of a plan to know how to enter the situation. The plan to enter the situation is the index for how much flashbacks will cost. If it was likely to always be part of the plan, a flashback is cheap or free. If it is a significant deviation, more expensive.
Still, players can totally spin a plan 180 once it starts. I ran a reverse heist where the characters were hosting opening night at their new theater, and they needed it to go well. I had the inspectors show up to arrest one of their prominent guests and powerful allies, the Dimmer Sisters (who were never so publicly exposed otherwise.)
One of my players smashed out a flashback that with every party invitation came the tacit understanding that opening night was also a trap for the inspector; they baited her into shooting Scurlock, which is political suicide (and he wanted to fake his death anyway, he needed a vacation.) So they piled up a few flashbacks to get him on board, sneak the warrants for the Dimmer Sisters in to the Inspector’s attention from the archives through judicious bribery of clerks so she’d be provoked to crash the party, etc.
So, on the trip up the stairs, they went from “we’re screwed” to “ha! welcome to our trap.”
Once #theMalkavs were charged with stealing spirit bottles from a noblewoman’s house. This noblewoman had a reputation of organizing seances for her rich friends, so the crew’s Whisper posed as a medium while the rest passed off as her escorts. They were all dressed in shadow cloaks and masks, really putting up a show.
The Hound and Cutter took care of the spirit bottles, that were hidden in the kitchen, were caught by one of the noblemen but seduced him into staying inside with them, then took off with the bottles. The Lurk went upstairs to steal some valuables. The Whisper and her manager (the Slide) actually pulled off a seance, angering and capturing a murderous ghost to the noblemen horror and delight.
I can’t quickly put my hand on it, but last week I think it was we had a discussion about how to avoid a session getting chewed up by plans, provoking and inspiring the players to get stuck in. If I can find it I’ll link to it here, it had a lot of advice.
oh, heres one. This one more about confusion how to act on a plan (you just do it!), rather than a planning phase not working out:
The crew starts coming up with a deception/infiltration plan to recover a kidnapped individual. Each player suggests possible ways to move forward, me nudging them ever closer to action, but noone actually taking any. After about a half hour, I am breaking in often to ask for action. Still, they do not. Finally at the end of what seemed like an hour, they decide “We will impersonate someone to get inside.” They just Still don’t know who to impersonate though, so they just guess (and badly) instead of gathering info and possibly getting others involved.
So this quickly turns into “Well, we need to do this quickly, so we are going to need to work with people we don’t want to, or go in guns blazing” (which wasn’t really true at all, but they had started making this more complicated than it was from the get-go).
Their plan went from that deception plan to an assault plan real quickly, and their disguises (not that useful for this plan) just served as cover for them when they made their loud/high-exposure escape. They both took two segments of moderate harm in the ensuing gunfight – this ends up leaving behind two Silver Nails bodies in the alleys. And the bigger issue: they go entirely against the grain of the criminal underworld. That is, when they found out the Silver Nails/Red Sashes were using the hostage as leverage against the Sparkwrights, they returned her to the Sparkwrights for a healthy ransom – probably inciting war from either party. Fun fun!