This must’ve been asked countless times already but I’m not sure how to find the answer so bear with me please.
Due to scheduling issues my party will probably have a player joining the game only sporadically. I imagine this won’t be a problem due to the episodic format of play. How does the system handle it though? Anything to look out for?
There really isn’t anything to “handle” due to the structure of the game.
For instance for my first game I’ve excluded Devil’s Bargains cause it seemed like yet another rule that would slow the game down. In retrospect this was quite a stupid decision since every PC accumulated tons of stress (not to mention the players). I’m looking for similar balancing issues that could bog the game down. Is there nothing of that sort really?
I’ve had one irregular player, one player who was always there, always playing the same character, and two players who are always there but don’t always play the same characters, and there have been no issues with any of them.
Play the game as written and it works just fine.
So, it shouldn’t slow things down significantly, because you’re not going to have a good Devil’s Bargain every time. Don’t intentionally exclude them; they’re not designed to demand their own conversational step anyway. The conversation when you do a roll is not, “Alright everybody, think of a Devil’s Bargain” It’s usually like “Anybody got a Devil’s Bargain for me? Not really? Okay, I’ll roll my 1 die in Attune then, since I’m not gonna push myself”
Mike: That’s what I wanted to know, thanks. Your insight was really helpful. ^_^
Adam: Well we’re not native speakers and I had two players that have never played a tabletop RPG before at the table. So I thought we might make it as simple as possible. I mean… the game is quite evocative but if your English is not quite excellent you’ll have trouble even understanding the character sheet at first. But yeah, if I ran a first session again I’d totally include Devil’s Bargains now.
It’s perfectly fine to exclude Devil’s Bargains if you are “easing into” the rules!
But yeah, the relatively flat character power curve, the episodic nature of play, and the concept of downtime combine to pretty much eliminate problems with folks not showing up every time.
I’ve had a chance to think about this and I’ve got a follow up question. How do you solve downtime for people who don’t participate regularly? I mean… mechanically I would just give them their 2 actions but fictionally this doesn’t make sense and they should get more if they have had the time to pursue whatever they were pursuing. And after all, Blades is still a fiction-first game. On the other hand I don’t really want to encourage character switching just to get benefits.
I think something like 2 actions +1 for every downtime they were not present and dropping the restriction on repeated actions might be a reasonable compromise. How did you solve this? Mike Pureka
So far, I haven’t done anything special with this; Obviously, people with more than one character only get downtime actions for the character they played that session, and so far, I’ve been having people who miss a session just not take any downtime actions for that session. This is sortof self balancing because a session you’re not at is also a session where you don’t take any stress or harm, so it hasn’t really felt very punishing so far (a lot of the time, at least one downtime action is consumed by indulging vice or working on harm). You absolutely could give them an extra downtime action for each session missed, which probably isn’t a problem if they’re only missing a session or two here and there, but if you get someone who’s missing for several sessions in a row, I feel like showing up and having 5-6 downtime actions could be weird.
Another alternative would be to allow someone who misses a session to clear some amount of stress, but not get any downtime actions.
I think this is mostly a “whatever works for you and your players” decision that doesn’t necessarily have a “right” answer.
I really like your approach. Probably gonna use some of your ideas. Thanks again!
Extra downtime actions for missed sessions is fine (especially if you can handle them over email between games).
You can also use the “Lost” idea from Vice and say that the character has simply been gone on a bender the whole time. Scoundrels are like that. 🙂
Awesome advice John, thanks a lot! Especially handling downtime electronically. I’ll be sure to do so from now on.
I wouldn’t do all downtime over email. Just extended cases where a player might have 5 or 6 activities to resolve, so they don’t eat up too much time at the table.