Last Thursday we got to wrap our first campaign together! We started around September, so we had approximately 12 sessions. The crew got to advance to Tier 1, earn 1 Wanted level and three of them got their first Trauma.
Some highlights:
– The whole crew is now Bound in Darkness after pledging allegiance to the Night Queen. The Lurk might even start her own cult dedicated to the Forgotten Goddess.
– The crew kicked the Wraiths out of Night Market.
– The lair now has a ghost door on the wall, drawn by a mad spirit.
– The Whisper bonded with Setarra after a tense friendship. Who manipulated who? No one knows.
– The crew struck a deal with Ixis, a wandering psychopomp for the safety of the Seal of Oblivion.
– They blew up the mansion of Magistrate Slane after discovering she was using skovlander refugees as test subjects for the Empire. They also discovered that some imperial soldiers are actually hollows in disguise.
– The Lurk and the Cutter were shown the beautiful Horror of the Unbroken Sun by Ilacille in her sunken temple. They now can open their minds to the thought-tendrils of the Forgotten Gods.
Since it was a first rpg experience for some of them I wanted to give them a sense of closure before jumping to other games, even if we’ll resume play after summer.
I had a rough start, having planned for a new three-players group and ending up with seven, but got the hold on it after some sessions (I have been getting caught in large groups recently, for some reason). Nothing like a big group of new roleplayers to sharpen up your GM skills. Some oddities:
– Due to difficult scheduling we had a rotating cast, with a player or two absend per game (which was a blessing sometimes). I had to come up with a couple of house rules, but nothing too weird.
– Last session we even ran two parallel scores and it was easier than I thought, with 4 players on one mission and 2 on the other. It went great.
I’m really happy with this game and this group, and would be great if I got them into roleplaying for real. After a post-ending talk I confirmed something I had suspected for a long time: Blades in the Dark is a great game to introduce newcomers to the hobby.
What were the house rules you came up with for the rotating cast?
Nothing fancy, just rules to make sure people were up to date with the game and to deal with resuming characters:
REPORT
1 experience point for the character of a player who writes and post the last session’s synopsis on the Facebook group.
RESUMING PLAY AFTER MISSING A SESSION
Characters that return after a missed session are assumed to have become lost in overindulgence with a die roll of 6 before resuming play.
DOWNTIME TEAMWORK
If you share a moment, one-on-one, with other character during downtime you may use teamwork during your action.
Yeah, I’d probably have done something similar. Good ideas.
I really like that downtime home rule. I know there’s supposed to be special things for indulging your vice with someone else but I like team work in downtime to encourage more role play and make it less mechanical for some tables.