The Strangers – Actual play and my current strategy for running Blades one-shot adventures.
I ran Blades three times at Origins and had a blast. Instead of using my old score sheets though, I took some advice John Harper gave in his After Office Hours about running a two session game in one slot. The first to do character creation and set them up for the score. The second to play it out.
To make this work I had to make a few changes to character creation (skipping some things, focusing in on others).
Here’s my AP report along with the method I used for running the game: http://www.seannittner.com/actual-play-the-strangers-6172016/
http://www.seannittner.com/actual-play-the-strangers-6172016
For one-shots I’ve done pre-gens, except for the special abilities – and I’ve also given PCs two choices for them, somehow it speeds things up vs only one choice!
Pre-gens used to be my jam, but I think as of games with playbooks, it’s hard for me to take that away from the players. Filling in those dots is just too much fun.
Found this super useful for setting up one shots. Thank you!
Huzzah, great to hear Aaron. Thanks!
I used a similar approach to the set up for my Runners campaign group, and I like the approach you took even more. Limiting choices is useful sometimes, I learned. I like that you leave lots to be said when you start getting player input, and the struggle points they want should rise to the top of the conversation, while the other pieces will almost tell themselves
Also, I feel the need for pregens that just have a couple choices left to make, because I made one to help with a new player introduction and it worked out nicely
This is great! I’ll definitely mine this for the book.
Thanks for posting this! It was a really fun one shot, and allowed me to experience blades from a PC perspective.
I’ll be taking this on at Ettin Con for sure Sean Nittner, thanks so much!
I like your idea of ‘containment fields’ for the opening montage. I still keen on exploiting all the juiciness in the quickstart’s initial sitch, and I think that AW ‘follow your characters around for a bit’ plus some constraint Is a wonderful idea. Thanks again for being such an inspirational GM. I would have loved to play in that session!
.
Thanks so much Nathan Roberts. I’d love to hear how it goes at Ettin Con!
Hey Sean Nittner, I google docc’ed your advice to refer to, thanks again for such a great outline.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YCuhdOWgKTwGRvUYEaUqlE1qhpHGod6LC7AAei4JeA0/edit?usp=sharing
Also, if folks haven’t listened to that after office hours (3) – I thoroughly recommend it. John Harper is full of subtle and insightful observations about us interacting with the game 🙂
Awesome. So glad it’s been helpful!
I better watch that video and make sure that stuff is in the book. 🙂