So, I have recently begun to play Blades with my usual friday gang. It hasn’t really taken off in the first session, especially because there are a lot of mechanics to wrap your head around. But I guess we are getting there.
In this first session we made characters and a crew, at least the basics, and did two scores. I am planning on using the quickstart situation with the crows, the lampblacks and the red sashes soon, but for now they were able to get a bit of a feel for the game without that.
The crew are shadows, mainly because of compromise. Some players where considering assassins, but some other players were concerned that this might result in an extremely dark game they were unprepared for.
In the first score they had a mission to recover a sigil ring from the estate of a Lord Phelps. It turned out there were very very few people in the mansion itself, but they had roped in via a high line and that very line had been discovered by a bluecoat patrol. And somewhere high up in the mansion the dear lord phelps was conducting some kind of occult ritual. I had clocks ticking for the bluecoat intervention and the progressing ritual, and I guess it was good fun. In the end they got the ring, clobbered the lord with a club and had to fight through a horde of dog corpses animated by spirits. Yet they didn’t really kill anybody and quite successfully ran away from the bluecoats as a group action.
In the second score I allowed for a bit more information gathering and planing, which, in hindsight, might have been a mistake.
They kidnapped a watchmaker and entrepreneur and it became quite bloody because they wanted to avoid witnesses. When they exchanged the man for a trove of silver on a bridge, they even had a sniper set up to kill the man, although, in the end, he survived badly crippled. So, basically successful, but bloody, high exposure etc.
They just very narrowly avoided a wanted level in that one.
I am looking forward to the next game tonight.
I guess there may be some bountyhunters or assassins hired by Mr. Pemberton the watchmaker looking for the scoundrels. Would it be ok to do a fortune roll on wheter they can find the crew’s hidden lair? I
Sounds like a great game!
Yes, you should totally make fortune rolls for anything you don’t really know the answer too as a GM – and make those rolls public! Talk out loud your though process. Let the players contribute (or even resist if its consequential).