Question about Blades in the Dark for +John Harper or anyone who wants to tackle it, with some GM-info spoiler stuff:

Question about Blades in the Dark for +John Harper or anyone who wants to tackle it, with some GM-info spoiler stuff:

Question about Blades in the Dark for +John Harper or anyone who wants to tackle it, with some GM-info spoiler stuff:

The Unseen are protected by a ritual that makes anyone who learns their identity forget it after a few moments. Mechanically, how would you deal with that? If a PC finds out, do they get a resistance roll? (More generally: can you make a resistance roll for something that isn’t coming as a consequence but is just a fictional element?) If so, and they succeed, does that mean they’re just immune to the ritual, or what? I’ve also tried to figure out a way to use a clock, but couldn’t figure out how to make that make sense.

I like the idea–just having a little trouble figuring out how to fit it to the mechanics and make it fun and cool. The PCs should eventually be able to penetrate it if they want, but it doesn’t seem like it should just be down to a single resistance roll.

3 thoughts on “Question about Blades in the Dark for +John Harper or anyone who wants to tackle it, with some GM-info spoiler stuff:”

  1. It all depends on how the players try to tackle it. But I’d say that most simple single-step approaches would have no effect. This is a serious old school ritual. I wouldn’t let one resistance roll defeat the keystone to the power of the most powerful criminal faction in Doskvol. At least not without some other serious prep work.

    To me, one obvious approach is a clock or two to research what the ritual might be and how to counter, either through studying or stealing or bargaining with devils or all of the above. The ritual questions should lead to a score or two to get any necessary counter-ritual components or to discover missing steps. Then actually performing the counter-ritual should have some serious costs, like marking a trauma.Then go find the fiends and hope it all works and they fail to notice you won’t forget them.

    Another approach could be taking a leaf from Memento. Maybe the PCs have forgotten who the Unseen are before and have left clues for themselves about the identities of the Unseen. So there could be a clock to identify these clues, and maybe another to decipher them. And then maybe a score or two, leading them further down the rabbit hole, as they investigate their own footsteps. Maybe they get into some recursive loop, which breaks their minds, they mark a trauma, and now they never forget.

  3. I would let a PC make a resistance roll to realize they just forgot something, and if the player tries to figure out what happened maybe follow up with an attune or study roll to understand what made them forget. To pierce the ritual, however, would require a multi-part LTP and probably at least one score.

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