John Harper​ I have been listening to the Friends at the Table actual play of Blades in the Dark in their Marielda…

John Harper​ I have been listening to the Friends at the Table actual play of Blades in the Dark in their Marielda…

John Harper​ I have been listening to the Friends at the Table actual play of Blades in the Dark in their Marielda setting and really enjoying it. I just had a couple of questions coming from it.

1) In the episode “Marielda 5: War and Azaleas”, starting at the 8 minute mark, Austin asks the players to outline more formally their 3 Beliefs (the motivations or major thought patterns) and 3 Instincts (things it can almost always be assumed that the characters have or do). These are helpful both for roleplay choices and also for things like determining effect level and also how reasonable flashbacks might be. I really loved how well it worked in their game and will probably be using it in my play of it. Is there any plan to have something similar in the final book?

2) Is there any chance of one of your playthroughs being put out in podcast form? I’m travelling and don’t always get good enough wifi for YouTube streaming, and I love having actual plays to listen to on long bus journeys. I enjoyed the first episode of your BitD AP and would love to listen to the rest on the move.

Thanks.

16 thoughts on “John Harper​ I have been listening to the Friends at the Table actual play of Blades in the Dark in their Marielda…”

  1. 1) Nope. Writing down beliefs and instincts is a good mechanic, sometimes (especially in Burning Wheel) but it’s intentionally not a part of this game. In Blades, your character is revealed bit by bit over time, in a fluid way — focusing on the present moment, not a pre-written persona. You don’t write it down and then play toward what you wrote. That’s my intent, anyway. A mini-hack like Austin’s is fine, and you should do it if you want to.

    2) Probably not. I have many other higher-priority tasks on my plate. 🙂

  2. Thanks for replying (and so quickly too).

    No problem about the podcast. Was just wondering aloud. If anyone else reading this is recording their playthroughs or finds a podcast that does, I’d love to know about it.

    As for the other part, I can definitely understand the desire to keep character development going throughout the game, and keeping that more open is definitely one way of doing that. For me (and my group), I like having some prompts, so I’ll probably offer it to my group but maybe every few downtimes I’ll check in that things haven’t changed and allow them to update or change any that no longer fit.

    Hope you’re still enjoying working on the system. This community is awesome; everyone is very creative and generally people are very friendly and helpful. Just logging in here every day and seeing how much people are getting from the system is getting me really hyped to get back to my group and get started. Kudos on the awesome job you’ve done so far.

  4. Jason Lee, I’ve converted all the youtube videos of the Bloodletters and Rollplay Blades into audiobooks so I can listen to them while travelling and doing chores. I’d be happy to share, assuming that’s okay to do, since they’re not really mine to give away.

  5. Oliver Granger That would be awesome if John and co don’t object. I have no idea how you’ve converted them, but if that will let me listen to them as audio files, and you could tell me how you’ve done it or share the files, I’d be very grateful.

  7. Yeah I converted the video to audio files, so much smaller file size. But it does take a little while to convert a whole series of videos.

    I upload them into my audiobook app on my phone, which is better than my music app since it always bookmarks where I’m up to.

    Sharing won’t be difficult, I already have them uploaded to the cloud.

  14. Russell Saur Thanks for pointing that out. I must admit I didn’t even realise that youtubing was a business, let alone that Rollplay had revenue stream. I can see that redistributing might not be the right thing to do.

    I can’t find any explicit policy, but I did find JP discussing it here:

    reddit.com – Available as podcast? • /r/itmejp

    In light of that, I think the right thing to do is delete the links to the Rollplay Blades audiobooks I posted.

  16. Oliver Granger Having read the Reddit post, it seems fairly clear. Good for you for taking it down. If John is still ok with the Bloodletters one though, thanks for keeping that up.

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