My tuesday night Hangouts game (the Dead Setters) successfully went a-heesting, liberating the U’Duashan Moon Pool Ruby from within an idol of a forgotten god, which was itself located inside Mylera Klev’s personal vault/gallery, which was all up inside the Red Sashes’ lair.
* The Spider posed as a new art dealer and ended up in a brief but bloody fight, tumbling off a balcony with Mylera onto the cobbles. In my head, I mixed up the mechanics I wanted to do. I wanted a resistance roll as a gateway to the Spider’s attack, because Mylera is no pushover, but I screwed up. It’s okay, though, because the Spider was so battered that he was captured and taken up to the Red Sashes’ dungeon…
*… Where the group’s Cutter was just finishing up with what was left of the Sashes’ torturer. We had a brief Pulp Fiction “Butch and Vic” moment. Party gathered, they ventured forth!
* We used our first Flashback to great effect. Our Hound player was absent last night, so the players flashed back to her avoiding guards and inscribing the bottom of Mylera’s vault floor with acid so when the guys cleaned out the ruby (their payment) and trashed Mylera’s art (what they’d been hired to do by the Lampblacks), they were already standing on their escape route. Through the floor and out the door (well, the canals).
* Downtime is brilliant. I really like throwing choices at players, and injecting some Devils’ Bargains into downtime keeps it engaging while really allowing people to get into the sandboxy nature of the game. They paid off their Bluecoat contact to free their broker, who had been taken in for questioning. They set up a long-term project to identify or create a spirit well in the city limits where they could bottle and sell spirits (devil’s bargain: hell yes, and you’ll have to take it from an ally). Finally, the best entanglement wasn’t on the chart: It’s a giant magic ruby. No normal fence can move that kind of thing without heat coming back on them. Someone will have to use their precious downtime actions to find a broker, or they can keep the ruby and figure out how to use it, or do the latter and then maybe the former?
Wanted to add: TONS of stress were taken willingly or not as the job went on, mostly from assistance but then that final flashback and some mediocre resistance rolls took their toll. Everyone had some stress and maybe half the characters were 1 away from Trauma. I consider that a GM challenge success. The Cutter and Spider left the job with level 1 Harm, and the Whisper and Leech left with some well-used armor.
That sounds like an ideal session of Blades. Well done!