Previously on Blades in the Dark.
So I’ve been using a hack in my It’s Never Sunny in Doskvol game about recaps of last episodes. It’s a very sweet and simple mechanism I stole from Torchbearer.
I allow the player who does the recap at the top of the session to recover one point of stress. One player cannot recover the stress if they did the recap the previous week.
Always nice to reward players for paying attention in sessions and remembering the following week. Stress seems a pretty good reward.
It is also good to get players to recap as it shows if there are any misunderstandings.
We award xp/marks during recap rather than during the game. Seems to work well in getting everyone engaged. I can ask each player if they did anything desperate or displayed their beliefs
Nice idea! I’d almost consider pushing it up to 2 stress so that it could be seen as an “undo” for a push yourself, but only once every 3-4 sessions.
Always nice to mechanize incentives to let players recap while you get into the right mindset!
Ben Wright playing with the reward like a graduated stress removal (2 stress for an exceptional recap or reduce harm) is something I’ve thought about.
I like the 1 point of stress but if you test out other rewards let me know! The only reason why it’s 1 stress recovery is because it’s like a reverse flashback 🙂
If you fancied mixing it up, you could offer your players additional insight in to what happened based on how good their recap was. Maybe if it was fine but not great, you give them a little scene of what happened immediately after the crime was discovered, but if the recap is excellent, you give hints as to what the victim might do next.
“Lady LaRoche enters her room and immediately notices the curtain fluttering. Knowing that she had sealed them before she left, she runs to the painting on the wall and throws it aside to reveal her wall safe. Opening it up and seeing the contents replaced with your calling card, she lets out an angry yell.” And for a great recap, “Her butler calmly enters the room. ‘Madame?’ He asks, calmly. Slowly, Lady LaRoche slicks back her hair, regaining her composure. ‘Get me the head of the Red Sashes immediately. And tell her to bring her best people.”
It’s not quite as mechanical as stress reduction, but narratively it is perhaps more interesting and allows them to do things like prepare better for retalliation or predict how faction alliances might change. Just an idea.
Alternatively, negotiate with your players for what they think they deserve based on how well they did.
Jason Lee thats a great idea! I’m starting to really like the idea of presenting our rpg as more of a show and the concept of those scenes (vignettes sans player characters) are something I’m super interested in bringing into a regular part of the game!
Eric Vulgaris It’s going to be about 9 months until I’m back with my group to play so I’d love to hear how it works out for you. I hear people talking about off-screen scenes. It depends how much your players might meta-game (and if it would bother you of they did). I hope it goes really well for you.