The Prestige in Play
We played our first session of a new Blades in the Dark games last night : following a crew of Shadows calling themselves The Phantom Assembly, essentially commissioned by the Circle of Flames to perform a series of jobs after the Wraith failed to get the job done.
In return for a safe place to call home in the Old Rail Yard, the crew helped Belle Brogan by breaking into Master Slane’s offices to recover documents proving that disappearing Coalridge workers were in fact being shipped off to parts unknown (supposedly a Strangford Workhouse) against their will.
The Phantom Assembly is made up of :
Rasal Sahm, a daring Iruvian Lurk
Vey, an Akorosi orphan Artificer
Targos, an ex-military Tycherosi Hound
Chey, an Akorosi servant-turned-Illusionist
It was for Chey that I originally created the Prestige Playbook, and Catherine created a neat background for her : The servant of an abusive occultist who subjected her to increasingly terrifying experiments until she eventually made a bargain with one of her master’s devils to get rid of him.
She’s terrified that he’ll come back, so her Vice is an Obligation to keep working for him despite his absence : she takes care of his house, continues his experiments, maintains his affairs, etc.
Catherine picked the Ghost Dreams as her starting ability and used it a couple of times during the Score. Once to distract some dogs so that the crew could sneak past the guards unnoticed, and once to distract the guards while they broke a window to make their getaway.
She rolled Sway in both cases, although in retrospect it should possibly have been Wreck, and both rolls were abject failures (to be honest, I kind of wish that I had simply hand-waved those rolls).
All in all, I quite like the general gist of the playbook, but it needs a little work to better fit into Blades in the Dark :
I might need to rethink exactly what the player rolls when using Ghost Dreams. My logic so far was essentially that you roll as if you were doing it yourself, the ability simply lets you do it without making your presence known.
I need to work on the Xp trigger. As it stands, it’s pointlessly ambiguous and resulted in a round of puzzled looks when we went through Xp.
In general, the game itself was a mixed bag :
* Rasal fell in love with leading group actions and used it to excellent effect several times. Aaron’s probably the most comfortable with the rules and the general concept (and was also the only one to suggest betraying Belle).
* Vey did a fair bit of lock-picking and was instrumental in a couple of flashbacks to create distractions, but generally spent the session getting her bearings. She decided to define her gadget later.
* Targos was spoiling for a fight but never quite got one, and made a glorious job of Commanding his way past a couple of security guards when he caught their attention while casing the factory area.
These guys hadn’t played Blades before, and struggled quite a bit with the concept of risk, Stress and Consequences : they were quite shy about taking on Stress, which led to them powering through consequences rather than resisting them, which meant I was a little careful about how hard I hit them.
They seemed to get it when we went through experience and vices etc. at the end, so I’m hoping next time they’ll feel more comfortable about diving into danger and playing to their character 😉
All in all, a bit of an awkward start but it looks promising.
#ArtistPlaybook
The final special ability slot can be taken up by something related to mimicry, which would also serve as the Forger starting ability. Maybe something under the lines of “You can make near perfect copies of a person, object or location. These copies are considered nearly the same as the actual subject in the ghost field.”
Maybe the XP trigger could be something under the lines of “when you influence a large group of people or use arcane finesse”. As that seems what many of the abilities are geared towards.
how is “and intuition” as an XP trigger not an automatic 2 XP/session as long as you do something?
Heiko Qd as I said, “pointlessly ambiguous”
Gorinich Serpant, I dig the potential vodou-doll qualities of the way you described that : using the ability to distract ghosts with a decoy, or pay a demon with a facsimile etc.
I have to admit I’m struggling a bit with XP triggers, I’d never have imagined it was that tricky 😀
Really neat to see this use of Illusionist and it’s playtest. I’ve had some issues with specifics in the past trying to get this playbook to work fully. Good luck with your future testing!
Ben Wright I just realised the title was misleading, the Prestige is actually an illusionist-like playbook for our Blades in the Dark crew.
I did base the main ability on your Create Illusions ability though, with loads of ideas and inspiration from the community.
It didn’t work too well for the character but I think it works perfectly for the game (if that makes any sense).
o yeah, no worries! I saw the citation, thanks! My comment on the play test was definitely for your own playbook here. Though the use of that move is also intriguing to see!
In my mind, if stress was spent for those “distractions” using Ghost Dream, I would have just let it work or it changes the position/effect of someone else’s action (akin to a setup roll), though your opinion/result may vary. 🙂
Ben Wright this is something I was thinking about too : since she only ever did quick momentary things, she never spent any Stress.
She rolled a 1 on both illusions, and to be honest I wasn’t really sure how to handle the fact that the ability gave her potency in that situation.
I basically let it add potency to their fallback plan (a flashback involving a flashbang they hid in the street outside) but it felt kind of anticlimactic.
You mention that they add potency to “intimidate or charm” which makes sense. Though making a distraction sounds like something else to me. Its…. less direct.
For the XP trigger, what about “artistry or misdirection” or maybe “artistry or illusion”.
How about something a little more actionable for the xp trigger like “Artistry or Misdirection”. Misdirection is easily actionable by players and we’ll defined but still broadly encompassing enough to be handled a lot of different ways in play. Usually the playbooks have one broad concept like violence, mayhem, arcane knowledge, influence etc and then a more directly actionable one.
Chris McDonald great minds think alike.
I was going to suggest “Showmanship or Inspiration” but “Artistry and Misdirection” hits the nail better.
Love it! Thank you so much guys, that sits far better.
Chris McDonald, I’ve been parsing through the playbooks trying to identify these kinds of patterns, but I couldn’t quite grok the XP triggers. “One broad concept and one directly actionable one” works quite well I think!
Renaud van Strydonck Yeah its not precise because some play books are a little of both or all of one but those are kind of a thread running through them I think.
I gotta say I like the name of Creep better as it gives better sense why the such an artist is a scoundrel.
Gorinich Serpant same here. I’m not 100% sold on Creep yet, but it fits way better into the general theme than Prestige does…
I dunno creep as an adjective evokes feelings of creep as a verb and neither of them make me think of much of what the Prestige is about seemingly. If you want something a little more gritty and dirty what about “Swindler” or “Shyster”. Personally I still like the Prestige, it stands out a bit from the other playbooks but still fits into a world of magistrates.
Chris McDonald good point. How do you feel about Screever?
It feels like it fits in the same world as Cutter, Leech, Slide etc. and it’s a slang for pavement artist, which itself is a slang for con artist, so it has a nice circuitous logic to it.
Renaud van Strydonck I think it sounds cool, I’ll admit I would have had no idea what it was based off the name alone so if you want the name to be instantly descriptive it may be a bit obscure or it could just be one of my personal intellectual blind spots. It also may not be a factor in what you care about it a name but on a base level it’s cool.
Chris McDonald I’d love a name that’s instantly descriptive, but I’m still hunting for it.
The slang terms for a forger are quite haphazard, to be honest : Screever, Scratcher and Scratch Man all seem to come from the same sort of place, and then there’s everything from Dauber and Butterfly Man to Paper Hanger and Tittle Tapper…
I’m skim-reading Fakes and Forgeries and it looks like Faker might not be a terrible solution, but it sounds a bit… bland 😉
Renaud van Strydonck Yeah I saw a variation of “Fakir” on a quick magic slang Google and kind of thought it was cool kind of eh mixed feelings. It’s pretty much perfectly descriptive though.
Chris McDonald yep… there’s also Coiner as an option.
Renaud van Strydonck As a suggestion, most of the Playbook names are verbs, not nouns (Lurk instead of Lurker). So Screeve might be a bit punchier. I also thought of Matchstick as a possible name, as in “Matchstick Man”, which is a term for a con artist.
As a point in favor of Screeve, while it isn’t immediately known, it does sound like Scribble’s punk older brother or the child of Scribe, Scratch and Weave. Scrawl also happens to be a word that’s similar, maybe Scrawler has merit.
Thomas Berton Matchstick could work if some of the descriptive fiction was changed to “fiery” instead of “windy”.