The Soul Merchants: A Blades One-Shot
Most citizens of Duskwall are terrified of ghosts. Lost, mad, destructive spirits, whose only desire is to return to the warm embrace of a warm body. They’ve lost their own, but are eager to adopt yours.
But there are also the addicts. Those who long to lose control. To drown, not in a bottle, or on the tip of a syringe, but under the complete and utter control of ghostly possession.
The addicts come to you. You’re their source; you’re their dealer. You’re the ones who set it up; you’re the ones who guarantee their safety while they’re under. Well, relative safety, anyway. And maybe more “encourage” than “guarantee.”
It’s a small market, but a profitable one – and it’s all yours. And if anybody tries to muscle in and take it from you, well, you’re just going to need to go show them how this business works.
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This is my new one-shot for conventions. Finished writing up all the material, and looking forward to testplaying it.
I’d be happy for comments and reactions – let me know what you think 🙂
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tA5tivR0OP2RSFzPbj4IlyBXDCYs8oNBXPc5I56jhRs/edit?usp=sharing
I love the premise Ziv Wities! It’s a cool crew and mix up of characters as well. My one question is why curb things like downtime and XP. I can see wanting to speed things up, but there is a real visceral pleasure in marking XP, even if you never get a chance to spend it. Similarly with downtime, if they start a long term project, it probably won’t finish, but it’s cool closing vignette to see the working away at it.
I don’t think either of those is necessary for a one shot game, but I think they are both powerful tools worth keeping. Dispensing with the crew sheet though… that is some smart thinking for a short game!
Sean Nittner Thanks for the kind words 🙂
Mostly, I’m aiming this pretty heavily towards the format of a convention game, where I’m assuming players don’t know the system and I’m introducing it to them.
So I’m trying to simplify whatever can be simplified. I’d really rather avoid needing to explain a new mechanic and then go, “but effectively, you can’t possibly use that in this game.” I know that for Downtime, I’m going to need to give them a whole list of possible actions, all new to them, and I’d rather not have two items I’d need to explain with “you could do these last two, but in this context they’re just flavor.” It’s time-consuming for me, and it can be confusing to players to have “misleading” or unnecessary options.
If I were running a one-shot for people who were already familiar with the system, to any degree, I’d keep the XP and LPTs in 🙂
Two side-ish points:
One is that this one-shot is focused pretty strongly on a very particular immediate situation. It’s kind of self-contained. I feel like it’s less important here to teach all the rules, or use the XP/LPT systems which speak to advancement, just because that isn’t really where this particular scenario is focused.
I’ve run other one-shots, where the focus was more on “here’s how we might kick off a campaign” than “here’s one cool situation.” There, I’d leave at least XP in. When you pick your own action dots, you’re hungrier to know where you get more 😛
The other side-point is that I haven’t testplayed this yet! I could definitely wind up revising my “one-shot adaptation” if it doesn’t work the way I’m hoping.
Oh, and I can’t take any of the credit for passing on a Crew sheet!
I think Andrew Shields was the first to suggest this, suggesting running Gangs for one-shots instead of Crews.
And Roe Portal wrote me a fantastic list with ten points of advice for Blades one-shots, which we should really translate into English, ::cough cough::, unless he already has.
(In retrospect “No crew sheets” is not on this list, but I’m pretty sure he told me this anyway. 😛 )
Sean Nittner I’ve just got up to the point in the AMA where you talked about running one-shots at conventions.
I’d love to hear more about your experiences with that — particularly on this issue. How do you walk the players through Downtime? Do you explain all their various options? Do people go for Training or LPTs? (Could you give examples? That would be really cool. 🙂 )
I don’t think I’ve ever run the Score -> Downtime -> Score cycle, so for us, Downtime is generally about the players getting their own montages of things they are interested in, and maybe giving us small cliffhangers for the future of their crew.
Things I suggest are:
Indulge vice – They’ve always got stress and this is a good way to see what their scoundrels are all about.
Gather Info – Back when this was a downtime action, we usually had an open question or two from the score, so if folks wanted to find out more about that weird guy who wrapped himself in chains, I’d suggest they gather info to find out.
LTP – We all know it won’t be finished, and even if it does finish, it won’t do the player any good, but players love inventing crap or setting up new smuggling routes, or just seeing their character be kind of mastermind-y. LTPs are great ways to show them starting down that road.
As far as explaining goes, I make sure the rules reference sheet is on the table so people can look over their option, but when downtime comes around, I usually frame it as questions to the characters “So, Salia has a nasty gash from that fight with the Sashes, do you want your friend Quellen to take a look at that? She owes you from the time you let her bunk with you during the fire raids.”
They can say no of course, but I find players really like to take actions that not only benefit their character but also turn some gears in the fiction.
Sean Nittner Nice! I really like that approach.
It solves the “explain stuff” problem very elegantly — if nobody wants to do stuff that isn’t long-term, then you just never bring it up.
(In this one-shot, I’m kind of banking on entanglements + the various weird vices being enough to hook players attention. I wrote most of ’em to be pretty eye-grabbing. But just leaving it up to the players, and letting the GM interpret that into “formal” downtime actions, sounds easy and fun.)