Looking Glass Crew – Part 1

Looking Glass Crew – Part 1

So we took a break from our regular Monday night game and I ran Blades. Character creation took a good portion of the session (about 1 of our 3 hours). I’d forgotten to print the page with the nations on, so heritage stuff clusters on Tycheros (which I could remember) and Duskwall itself.

After a bit of general discussion and once everyone was done, we went round the table describing the thieves and I took notes of interesting stuff to intermingle into the score.

Our thieves are:

Tick Iock – A leech artificer with a drug problem, who spent a while studying in Tycheros. Occasionally mutters about “we had to take the lizard out of his skull”.

Chinashop (as in like a Bull in a) – An ex-military Cutter, betrayed by the system after a 5 year tour (you should have seen the Tycheros campaign)

Mist – A sharpshooter street kid with a great sympathy of other urchins.

Corvid – a boney lurk who grew up at St Wotzits orphanage, you know, down the way. Lives with the roof ravens.

Thorn – an Iruvian academic of comparative religions, and whisper, who owns the shop in which our crew are based.

I noted the orphans/urchins and ex-military for future use.

We start with the default situation, which turns into an IC chat about how bad things might get in the district. Then some skinny runner arrives from Bazso and we start the game as planned. After some haggling, (60/40? Maybe a favour?) they accepted Bazso’s job, to break into the Red Sash’s secret vault under an ex-serviceman’s club.

They go for a stealth option for the plan and entry through the sewers. Having the blueprints from their building plans crew upgrade, they figure they can demolish a sewer wall to break into the strong room. No problem.

Mist surveys the place looking for something to use as a distraction, finds the pie shop opposite keeps a very flammable barrel of grease out back. Should be ideal for the Leech’s plan… but man don’t eat the pies from that shop on Strov street, they turn your innards (harm resisted, but some stress).

Cut forward to the action, gathered round the wall they need to breech. With perfect timing as the distraction timer ticks down just as the sewer wall is breeched. There’s burning grease all over the street and the pie shop is on fire. Unfortunately that barrel exploding dislodges a sewer support, collapsing the tunnel they came in by… Still, they made it to the vault, which seems to have been remodelled since their plans. It’s now a chemical production line for the red sashes, staffed by urchins who don’t seem to be paying them much heed.

Their attendant is, and gets out his baton, but fortunately Chinashop does a good line in scowls and sends him running…for his friends upstairs.

The Leech gets distracted by the production line and tests the drugs and, oh, yeah that’s the stuff. S’okay. Can handle, what was I?

Thorn tries to find the vault and accidentally activates the poison dart trap, which bounces harmlessly off the Lurk. Mist does find the door to the vault though, with the help of her rat. It’s some horribly arcane clockwork thing behind a false wall…

As Chinashop tries to bar the door to upstairs (breaking some poor ex-serviceman guys arm in the process), everybody else tries to decipher the lock. Turns out it’s all distraction, to the real lock hidden to the left. So they’ve got the loot, just have to get out with their original exit plan blocked…

So, everybody had fun and we’ll be continuing next week. Things that I noted:

Nice clear fail forward system stuff. Stress and resistance worked well. We haven’t used clocks yet, given it was the first session.

Items needed some explaining, the way the playbook and standard items are split on the sheet caused some uncertainty. Unclear if armour / heavy is three or two ticks. i.e is it armour then heavy armour or a combined thing…

I found myself skipping forwards and back in the rules quite a bit, even with the GM and Player refs, but I think this was just being the only one who’d read the rules.

Devils bargain is wonderful. I was often using it to add complications affecting other characters, and afterwards I wondered if that was intended or just what I fell into?

One thing I noticed. Phrasing on the action roll summary, is always you, i.e. you suffer harm etc, which seems to imply players choose which, but then underneath it says the GM sets consequences according to the situation. Required more hunting around to clarify.