Hey all, so I just ran my first BitD session on Monday, it went well and everyone had fun, but I still wanted to solicit some advice. It’s a larger group (5-6).
Heavily Abridged Session: We did a fun intro sequence, they got a job from Bazso to confirm that the Foghounds are double dipping with the Red Sashes and transporting their Lotus. Underground Maps and Passkeys means they took a stealthy approach and snuck up on the hounds when they were docked at their underground canal spot. A 5 on the engagement, so they encounter a ghost in the tunnels, take care of it and move on to cause general mayhem while skulking about and the not to be trifled with Cutter hauls off the entire crate of Lotus. The Leeches signature skills left telltale signs that meant that the Red Sashes came to question and wreck up his wife’s (friend, apothecary) shop, and otherwise downtime went fine.
This group is very hesitant about making rolls that aren’t optimal, which is fine, their crew wants to be known as professional Shadows, so it makes sense. They are very deliberately spreading out their stats, trying to have as little overlap as possible, all different playbooks as well. Again, this is fine, but it feels like this will mean that some PC’s are inevitably gonna feel less useful in certain scores. Is there anything I can do to help this situation? Were all communicating and being transparent, but I want to see if anyone has any advice for making scores try to involve everyone, or is it unavoidable that this will happen sometimes, especially with a larger group?
Particularly, the fighty scoundrels (Hound, Cutter) are often hesitant to “cause trouble” during the score, though I know theyll shine eventually if the crew gets into a tough spot or grabs turf or goes to war.
Any tips or advice for handling Larger groups in the system in general would also be appreciated.
(Crew: Shadows; Hound, Cutter, Leech, Whisper, Lurk, Slide)
Focus on the narrative locations / NPCs / gizmos that ‘hook’ the players. Threaten them. It doesn’t matter if they are all a bit ‘samey’ in their attributes. Encourage downtime actions that further their individual agendas and then tie the other members of the crew into these clocks. Make mini-scores out of them.
Look to the player character’s friends and enemies and embroil them into the fiction. Threaten them, question their allegiance, on a poor engagement roll have them falter.
Re-incorporate like crazy. With larger groups I’ve found this is the key to entangling all their agendas whilst keeping your tracking of NPCs, factions and events to a minimum.
Flashbacks are your friends. You can ret-con all sorts of shenanigans and ties that bind (into the present) with them. I will often use the GM’s equivalent if handed the initiative by the players on a miss. As a consequence I will narrate a short little vignette that highlights an off-screen (or past event) that forwards the agenda of one of the factions that I’m interested in.
Even offer flashbacks to them as devil’s bargains if the players are reluctant to ask for them off their own initiative.
Finally – encourage group actions – they allow all the players to contribute to the fiction whilst not feeling sidelined.
My pretty short thoughts:
* Encourage group actions.
* Encourage people to start trouble and make bad rolls (John does this all the time by saying “or you can just not roll and then the bad thing happens to you”).
* Make NPCs that matter to multiple PCs in different ways (Laurel is your girlfriend? She’s my rival! What the hell GM?)
* Elide over boring stuff. Make a scene into a roll if there is no meat in that scene, then focus down in when the party is at loggerheads and make every moment count.
Sean’s post is good and I’ll add one last one: Remember that this is as much on the player’s as it is on you. It’s your job to make the world come alive and provide opportunities for the PCs to be super cool scoundrels, but it’s on the players to play their PCs. If they want to say “my character’s good at this one thing and when it’s not time for that, I’ll take the backseat to avoid trouble”, that’s on them (and it’s a perfectly fine choice).
Thanks guys, great advice. Just to be clear though, the characters are all explicitly and purposefully as different as possible(so they always have someone with a decent stat for the situation), not samey. Most of the advice still applies though. Ive been advocated and calling for group actions as much as possible. So far only 2 or 3 of the PCs have really invested in the world (the cutter serves a demon, the leech is a skovlan ex military with a family), any thoughts on how to encourage the other players to create connections (I suspect they are hesitant because they dont want to give their characters vulnerabilites) beyond their friends and rivals?
Honestly? I’d just say be patient. It was the first session, so of course no one’s got their characters tangled too much in the world – the player’s don’t yet know enough about the world or their characters to make the connections. The system – vice, entanglements, faction status – will naturally tie the characters into the world over time. If after three or four sessions, things still aren’t interesting, then you should worry. But until then, just play the game, follow the rules and see what happens.
Other than that, how did XP go at the end of the session? If everyone was thinking “hmm, I guess I didn’t do any of that stuff”, then maybe at the beginning of next session, remind them to look over those triggers and say “If you’re ever at a loss for what your character would do in a situation, look at that list and do one of those things. The game will reward you for it.”
Alright cool, that’s exactly what I was thinking as well, and yeah I made sure to go over the exp and be clear that they get to define what’s important to their beliefs drives and heritage, etc.