Sorry if this has been asked before. I tried to look but couldn’t find anything easily. Nothing in the FAQ.
I am about to start GMing for blades.
My group has decided to be a crew of Breakers. They want to basically to do the thug thing and take over their own piece of doskvol. This will likely have a large amount of direct conflict.
Sooooo: I remember John saying in a blades episode that combat is a little wishy-washy in blades in the dark and that you can kind of come up with anything.
I was just curious if anyone had created a guide on this aspect of BitD at all. The important part to me is how to assign a clock or other measurable to a combat. What size clock = what size opposition.
The funny thing is, I think it is easy to do the really bizarre things in BitD (ie. this demon has an 10 clock, all hits have no or limited effect, etc.).
It seems a little harder to assign a similar scenario to a standard fight. For example, I think the first possible fight will be against the owners of a drug den (and guards). I would say 8 people – tier 1. I will start a clock for the enemy of “getting reinforcements” to put some pressure on (4 segment).
So breaking it down to a simplified system – should I say 8 segments requires 4x standard effect – this seems ok – 1 segment represents an enemy person.
I want to make sure it seems difficult and draws out a few devils bargains or resist rolls. Once I have a few fights finished I can judge to make it easier/harder.
How has everyone else achieved this?
We had a similar fight with the drug den.
I suggest not using a clock for the battle itself, and instead using clocks for part of the battle.
You can also use partial successes and failures on dice rolls to keep adding complications and otherwise ramping up the fight.
So, for our battle I said “There’s twelve thugs, who are armed with guns and swords. There’s an Iruvian master swordsman.”
I didn’t use any clocks for that, but they knew the master swordsman was a “named character”
Then the PCs sprung into action. They used ghost form to run through and drug the lamps so the guards in the room would pass out. They ended up with “limited effect” so the swordsman and four of the thugs passed out. 8 thugs left.
They then charged in and started the fight. On their turn, if they said “So, I stab a thug” and got a success, I’d say that they killed the guy. Other than that, I improvised based on their successes. So “success with reduced effect” might be that they stabbed the guy, but didn’t kill him. They’ll need to hit him again to finish it (another hit with reduced effect is fine) – a different complication might be “OK, you killed him, but your weapon is stuck in the bone”
The hound who was standing back shooting got a failure and I declared “the swordsman is waking up” (the failure doesn’t have to just be “you missed”) – the player decided to resist that, succeeded, so as the swordsmaster sat up, the hound hit him on the head with the butt of the pistol, and sent him back to sleep.
… and so on. With the PCs taking stress, damage, but also complications.
I use clocks for different things, mostly depending on what the players want to focus on. If the players were trying to do a big “show of force” I’d have created a clock for “Thugs run away” and let players do actions to intimidate the thugs. I didn’t bother in this battle, because they wanted to just knock the thugs unconscious or kill them.
Since I can count “there are eight thugs left” it seems unnecessary to use the clock rules and have “eight segments” – but yeah, the end result would have been pretty much the same.
We had a great fight on top of a moving chariot, with no clocks and just complications.
PCs in the carriage attack the person there, one grabs the gun, the other punches him in the face. A third (riding on the carriage with the driver) pulls a gun to tell the driver to stop.
So the one grabbing the gun rolled, with the successful outcome being that the victim won’t be able to attack.
The one attacking rolled, with success being that they would knock out the victim (and failure being that they’d get hurt by the victim fighting back)
The one pulling a gun on the driver had success being that they took control of the carriage.
So… the one grabbing the gun got a partial success. I declared that they grabbed the gun, but the gun went off in the struggle and scared the goats, who started running fast. (Not a big problem since the other PC was going to take control of the carriage, and could then stop the goats without a roll, right?)
The one attacking rolled and failed. So they’d take damage – but didn’t, because the first guy had already grabbed the gun. They didn’t knock out the victim, but they didn’t take any damage or stress either.
The one on the carriage previously had a controlled roll to pull a gun. Because the goats were bolting, I declared it’s now a risky roll. They failed, so the driver resisted by letting go of the reins and grabbing for their gun.
Long story short, the partial success or failed rolls drove the battle forward. I’d often give a choice to the players about what the partial success or failed rolls could be. “OK, either the driver stabs you, OR the carriage is heading towards a street market. Lots of people will see your faces” – “The street market!”
next round: “I’m going to wrestle the driver. Oh failure”, “OK, you’re still wrestling with him, nobody is driving, the carriage is probably going to run down a whole bunch of pedestrians at the street market.”
next round: “I’m going to try to grab the reigns and steer so we don’t run over any pedestrians. Partial success” “OK, so either you run down some pedestrians but get the carriage under control OR you dodge the pedestrians but the carriage is still out of control and going too fast”
At the end of the “battle” there was very little damage, there were no clocks, and most of the “failures” didn’t really feel like failure – but they accumulated to drive the story. “People will see your face” wasn’t a big deal because who cares if people saw their faces, when their prisoners had already seen their faces. But it became a big deal later when the prisoner was accidentally killed by a powerful ghost and important people were now asking “Who’s involved with that?” – now there’s no question that they know about the PCs, because they’ve got good reason to ask about that specific carriage fight.
Thanks for the run-downs. I do prefer this method of combat. To be honest, while I want it to work in a similar way, it may not for the following reasons.
1) Basically my groups has only played D&D 5th ed. So people say “I attack” and DMs say “You do this much damage”. This is our first foray into a very narrative system. (Hopefully it goes well).
2) Sometimes the group struggles on the creative front in general. Again I am hoping the system will help that (and I am super excited to run it differently so hopefully they will vibe off of that).
Like you said, you kept track of individual kills but your clocks were for more creative and potentially dangerous situations. This is basically how I was thinking which helps.
My mention of the clock was more along the lines of this gang of thugs is 8 pieces, while that gang of brutal thugs might be 10 or 12.
I’m pretty happy it will work out – just trying to prep now before I’m neck-deep in stress 🙂 .
Simon Paech Usually if you want a gang to be more dangerous, don’t put all your attention on the length of their clock. Dangerous gangs need to do dangerous things. Have them come up with clever plans like those ingenious PCs do.
Perhaps even the gang comes to the fight one member short… their planted sniper assassin is in the second story window behind the fight. So the gang just kind of holds their own until their sniper headshots one of the PCs and drop-assassinates another. (Or an assassin can try, PCs got a million tricks to make that not happen.) But it’ll be exciting, anyway.
As far as getting D&D players used to a different play-style, ask questions and provide suggestions if you aren’t getting answers, then ask more questions.
Also v8 is coming out today, so that should answer questions too. 🙂
Yeah, combat is highly dependent on the situation and on how you want to handle certain things. For example what kind of consequences and level of harm threatens is’nt set in stone. In a gritty game where combat is supposed to be the exception, you may be threatened by lethal harm frequently and still get level 3 if you resist. In a more cinematic game you might just be threatened with level 2 harm, even if you are alone vs a group and botch the roll. And then negate it entirely via resistance.
A recent fight we had was our cutter and our leech vs a bunch of lampblacks with some kind of a tough leader. We had an ambush prepared so we could hit first. The cutter skirmished, and he has that ability where he himself counts as a small gang, so it was just risky, and the sneaky leech assisted him by cudgeling people who threatened to get in his back. Roll came up only a 5 though. I made a 6 segment clock for the enemies and ruled that 3 segments get filled; 1 for basic success, 1 because he used a heavy two handed weapon and a third because he counts as a gang. So he went in and dropped enemies left and right, until the boss stops him in his tracks by discharging a double barreled shotgun into his chest. That was 3-harm in my ruling, but he managed to reduce it to 1-harm by using armor and a resistance roll. He had also broken his weapon though, by way of a devil’s bargain. So a bit later the leech went on and threw a grenade. The way we set it up , a grenade in such close quarters is pretty desperate (they were tunnel-fighting) but has great effect. He added a devil’s bargain so hurt the cutter somewhat, no matter the die result. The roll did well, a 6 iirc, and so the lampblacks had been dealt with. Though, originally, we were planing on just beating them up without killing anybody, and the grenade ruined that, but alas, at least we were safe for the time being. (reason behind filling the clock up: 1 for basic success, 1 for using an area-effect weapon vs a group, 1 for great effect)
My group’s played a lot of Pathfinder and similar games, so some of our players have been struggling with the extremely narrative nature of Blades, and so has our GM a little. This thread has a lot of really useful advice, and I’ve sent it to my GM. Thank you guys, it’s been really helpful and great to read. 🙂
1) Basically my groups has only played D&D 5th ed. So people say “I attack” and DMs say “You do this much damage”. This is our first foray into a very narrative system. (Hopefully it goes well).
My group was similar, and it DID take some time to get our heads around it.
What really helped was, firstly, reading that page from the rulebook about how the game is meant to work, reminding them that “complications” aren’t failure, they’re what keeps driving the story forward.
And then allowing a conflict to end simply and easily if the dice come up in their favour. Look at that carriage example, two rolls (one to knock out the victim, the other to take control of the carriage), and the third PC was just there as backup to make sure his buddy didn’t get hurt. Super simple – but the dice rolls threw things into chaos, the PCs ended up winning anyway (and without taking any damage), but they had a battle on top of a charging carriage while trying to dodge civilians. I didn’t decide on that exciting scenario, the players decided on the simpler plan and the complications escalated it into something exciting. Other times a “big battle” will be over with one or two successful dice rolls. (“I charge in screaming and waving my battle axe, so they’ll hopefully flee”)
Anyway, yeah… the trick is to let the “fail” or “partial success” rolls feel like success, while still allowing it to escalate, change, or complicate the situation. Try having outcomes that create an upcoming-but-solvable problem (such as “the swordmaster is waking up”, then the player says “I knock him out again”)
As for the D&D “I attack” I suggest you break down each turn into simple steps, and explicitly ask for each of them. What I suggest is:
“OK, it’s the players turn. Who wants to go first?” (so you still have players taking turns, but reinforce that it’s not a set initiative.)
Then, on each turn:
1. “First, what are you trying to achieve?”
“I stab him”
“OK, so you’re trying to kill him? Or just trying to take him out of the fight?”
“I guess just take him out of the fight”
“But do you care if you kill him?”
“Heck no, if he’s dead, then that’s fine”
2. “OK, so you’re trying to take him out of the fight, how do you do that?”
“I told you, I stab him”
“Sure, that should work.”
3. “What’s your position? So it’s a fight, which is always risky, but is it desperate? This is a pretty normal thug without exceptional combat ability, and you’ve got decent gear. So it’s risky. OK, so success means you killed him. Increased effect means he’s passed out but alive. Complications might include you being injured, losing your weapon, or ending up in a worse situation. Cool?”
“Yep, cool”
“Roll away. This would be a skirmish roll.”
“Can it be a wreck roll?”
“Nope, it’s totally skirmish. But next round we’ll find a cool way to use wreck in this battle.”
4. “So, failure. You didn’t achieve what you wanted, which means he’s still in the fight and one of those bad things happened. If you want another chance, we can escalate this to a desperate roll, and you can have another chance?”
“Yeah, let’s do that!”
“OK. So you pull your sword, and you’re battling the thug, when you slip on the rug. The thug advances, intending to stab you. Since you’re vulnerable, it’s going to be serious harm. What do you want to do?”
“I’m going to stab him!”
“We’ve already rolled skirmish against him, and it didn’t work. When we escalate the situation, you need to try something different. So a straightforward attack isn’t available”
“OK, I roll wreck!”
“So, you want to destroy something to help you. How would that help?”
“Uhhhhh… I dunno?”
“Like, picture this sort of battle if it was in a movie. What sort of things would get destroyed, and how might that help the PCs?”
“Well, a chandelier could fall on him”
“OK. How would your character make that happen?”
“I could throw a knife at the chandelier rope? Is he underneath it?”
“Well, of course he’s underneath it, if that’s a cool thing that could happen. Unless you fail the roll, then maybe he wasn’t directly under it.”
“OK, so I roll wreck?”
“Yep!”
“Success! With complication”
“OK. The thug advances, intent on the killing blow. Desperately you throw out your hand, sending a throwing knive flying through the chandelier rope. With a crash it crushes the thug. Your PC doesn’t get injured, but is trapped underneath the chandelier. You can try to climb out next turn. Which PC is next?”
That’s a… long example, because it’s about as complex as a single turn gets. But I found it was helpful to go through that process every action. It slowed things down, and it helped split out the parts of the action that are different to D&D or Pathfinder. Asking “What do you want to achieve?” and then “How do you do it” helps remind players that they can do more than “I stab” every round. Within the first battle I had players saying “I want to take them out” rather than “I want to kill”, but still doing it by “stabbing them”, but shortly after that it became “I want to take them out… by throwing a smoke grenade. So they’ll choke or flee.” and other effects like that. Remember to say “This is what you get. And increased effect would give…” to remind them about those rules. That inspires “So, I’ve got smoke grenades on my equipment. That gives increased effect?” and they know they can “take them out” more effectively with the smoke grenade than with a sword. As long as it makes sense in the story.
2) Sometimes the group struggles on the creative front in general. Again I am hoping the system will help that (and I am super excited to run it differently so hopefully they will vibe off of that).
I found the system helped HUGELY!
The complications mean that “bad things happen” but it’s not the GM being a jerk. Like, in D&D if I say “And it’s an ambush behind the door!” that’s me deciding that’s what happens. In blades I can say “OK, lockpick roll failed. But I want the players to feel like they’re awesome, so I’ll describe them professionally picking the lock and going through… but it’s an ambush!” – the dice told us “something bad happens now” but not what the bad thing is, so it’s constantly giving little prompts to be creative, but in small and manageable ways.
Also, encourage the players to be creative. Ask them outright. I’d often say “So, that’s a minor complication. So you can take minor harm, or some other small complication can happen if anyone has a suggestion?”
Maybe nobody does, and then they take the harm. But often someone will “Hey, maybe the guard at the gate is someone she knows, and doesn’t want to kill?” – awesome. That “someone she knows” might turn out to be helpful, or might identify them. Even just “roll something other than kill the guard” is a complication, and helps make the plot more interesting. Even though it’s easily solved when the leech says “So, I’ll use a sleep dart instead”, that’s still made something happen. And it’s cool when the complication is easily solved, because that helps avoid “complication” feeling like “failure”
Tony Demetriou I wish I could +1 this more than once, because it is SO GOOD, and SOOO immensely helpful and detailed. Thank you! Quite sincerely and emphatically!
Really great advice. Thanks Tony.
The funny thing is I can do all the prep in the world but it will only all fall into place when we start rolling dice.
Saying that I am super pumped to play. 2 weeks (after people are back from holidays).
Simon Paech I’d actually suggest doing less prep. As little as possible.
Ask the players “What do you want to achieve next?” and if they don’t know, tell them to look at their character sheets.
Crew sheet: “Your crew can try to capture more turf. Or maybe you want to build your reputation?”
Character sheet: “Did you want to do anything towards a new ability or skill? What about your equipment, are you trying to get new items of equipment or anything? Need healing but don’t have a doctor to treat you? Oh, your harm is from a curse not an injury, OK, do you need to find someone who can lift that curse?”
Factions sheet: “So, the gondoliers like you, but the cabbies don’t. Did you guys want to do anything with that? Want to strengthen your ties with the gondoliers? See if they have jobs for you? Want to pick a fight with some cabbies to build your reputation?”
And, as you play, you’ll also accumulate other things that are “going on” – for example “Hey guys, remember last session that you were on the run from the bluecloaks? You may or may not want to do something about that.”
Oh, and it might not even be their choice. After a score, you roll entanglements, then improvise something based on what you rolled. So maybe an ally is calling in a favour, or their henchmen are revolting.
Between all those options, it’s almost certain that someone will want to do something. And that’s your plot!
Then let them do it. And see if it goes smoothly or not. It might go smoothly and be over in 5 minutes, and the group gets through six different scores in that evening’s play. Or it might go off the rails and take three sessions to play out. But you find out when you roll the dice!
Preparing too much gets in the way of this, because if you’ve got a big plot you don’t want it to be over with two dice rolls. And because “what you know” often gets in the way of players improvising. “I’ll swing on the chandelier”, “No, this tavern doesn’t have a chandelier, because I’ve already planned out the layout and…”
When I run, I honestly don’t care what they pick, as long as they pick something – if they’re on the run from the law, but decide to go shopping, that’s fine with me – it means I’ve got easy inspiration for complications that can happen while they’re out shopping, if they fail some dice rolls. (Last time my crew went shopping the Hound pulled a gun on a tailor and demanded to be fitted for a noble’s outfit. Then got arrested. I didn’t expect “I go buy new clothes” to get so exciting.)
So, a lack of planning sounds great, except… what do you do when you don’t have a plan, and can’t think of anything?
Well, two things. Option 1, there’s a scores generator, where you can roll randomly. The PCs go to the gondoliers and say “Do you have a job for me?” and you can’t think of anything?
You can download it here: http://www.evilhat.com/home/blades-in-the-dark-downloads/
So what’s this job from the gondoliers? Well, the target is a… (rolls) smuggler, we need you to (rolls) plant something on them. There’s a twist, because (rolls) rogue spirits haunt the location. This job is connected to (rolls) a PCs friend.
That’s probably enough to improvise something. Have a look at the PCs sheets, and see who their friends are. Mercy, a cold killer? OK. So the gondoliers want you to plant this stolen item on the smuggler, so they can call the bluecloaks down and catch the smuggler red handed. The PCs friend Mercy has been in high demand, because she’s such a good, silent killer. She’s told you that she’s using a new poison that she gets from this smuggler. She knows where you’ll find the smuggler (turns out they come and go via the haunted marshland) but might not be happy with you getting her supplier arrested. What happens next will depend on the PCs. They might refuse the job (and lose status with the Gondoliers), they might set up the smuggler. They might convince Mercy that it’s for the best, bribe her to not care, offer to become her new supplier, or maybe they end up making an enemy out of Mercy?
Too much planning gets in the way of “discovering” what happens.
Still need to come up with some details in the moment, ant the scores generator wasn’t enough? ASK THE PLAYERS!
Seriously, even if you don’t need the help, ask them anyway. It’s fun to be part of the world building. It’ll also help them get practice being creative.
“I ask Mercy where we can find the smuggler”
“Mercy warns you that you probably don’t want to know, because it’s haunted by rogue spirits. But she tells you anyway. OK guys, any ideas on where the smuggler should be found?”
“Oh, how about in a cemetary?”
“Yeah? That’s pretty cool. But why? Does he use the catacombs to travel?”
“No no! He’s actually a ghoul and eats corpses. He smuggles stuff by travelling through the ghost veil.”
“Ooooh, spooky!”
Totally changes the plot that you thought you were running, but that’s fine. And it gives the players more involvement in the creativity, even if their PC isn’t directly involved.
I’ll have to read through it later in more detail but looks good.
When I say “do prep” at the moment I am actually learning the world, rather than the mechanics. I am working out what factions are around, which ones the crew will likely face. What the factions are try to do, etc.
Thinking up some creative world-building ideas like (these are all death themed ideas):
1) I am going to have a deathseeker crow continually follow a party member. Why? Yet to be determined.
2) There will be a group of young street urchins nicknamed “The Jackdaws” that follow the deathseeker crows asap and scavenge stuff from the bodies.
3) Funeral processions are a big thing. It would be high class to have a funeral procession to Bellweather Crematorium that ended at the Crematorium when the bells rang.
This is the type of prep work I am doing to make the world interesting and potentially might come up with some leads.
Sounds cool! That sounds like the perfect level of prep 🙂
For worldbuilding, I found a lot of that happens during character creation. A player decides they’re from Akaros because they want to play a foreigner and then you end up deciding that Akaros is culturally Italian, because that’s the accent they want to do. And they’re a smuggler because Akaros is secretly helping the refugees, and then another player decides to be a refugee, but the refugees are repaying the Akaros help by smuggling weapons into Doskval, and now you’ve got a war brewing in the background that wasn’t planned, but ties in directly to two of your PCs.
We had other worldbuilding happen on the spot. Because the setting is sparse, there are a lot of gaps that the GM and players can fill in. One of our PCs mentioned not going near the flooded sewer tunnels, because of the giant beavers, and… in our game, giant albino beavers are a danger in the sewer tunnels. “They’ve always been there, we just never mentioned them before.”
For number 2 and 3, maybe make new factions, one for the jawdaws, and another for the general funeral industry overall. That way the players can build and lose rep with those groups.
For number 1, sounds awesome, but keep it in reserve! That way, when something supernatural happens, such as failing a roll while doing a magic ritual, rolling an entanglement like “demonic notice” or whatnot, you’ve got that up your sleeve as “the thing that happens” – AND it’ll feel like it happened as a result of player’s actions, rather than coming from the GM.
GMing is a game of trickery. You control the world and decide what happens next – but the more you can create the illusion that “what is happening” is a result of the player’s choices, rather than the GM choices, the more they feel involved in the game. So sure, you already decided that the crow will follow the player – but wait for a good moment, so it feels like it was something that “just happened” because of the choice that the player made. As a bonus, whatever triggered the crow following will help give you inspiration for why the crow is following, and help you improvise further things.