(my players, don’t read!) (or do read it, the GM/PC relationship isn’t antagonistic; whatever)
Does anyone have any alternative first session kickoffs other than the meeting with Baszo Baz?
Background: I love the Baz meeting as an intro.
– It starts things in media res
– It very quickly introduces three factions (Baz’s Lampblacks, the rival Red Sashes, and the Crows ruling over them all) without dumping tons of exposition
– It forces a decision: are you siding with Baz or against him? No room to waffle on this one
– It offers a lot of options but not unlimited options, preventing choice paralysis
– It hints at the flashback mechanic, letting the players dip their toes in rules that might be new to them
If it’s so great, why aren’t I using it? Because this will be my second campaign with this same group of players, plus a few newbies. The setting will still be Doskvol, but one year after the last crew (the Blackstone Outfit) murdered Baz, pissed off the Iruvians, nearly burned down Crow’s Foot, and vanished into the ink black sea.
So I’d like a kickoff that hits most of the same bullets as the Baz kickoff – something that thrusts the players right into the action and lets them try out the mechanics. Does anyone have any favorites?
Were there memorable events (it sounds like there were a lot) that would create a new status quo and a new way to disrupt it? The War in Crows Foot kick off works because it introduces the characters to the setting during a period of uncertainty and change, where they can really make a difference.
It sounds like from your game that they left Crows Foot in shambles. What happened after they left? Did the Hive or the Unseen take over the place? Are the Grinders and the Billhooks battling for it? Did the main action move to the Docks or Silkshore or somewhere else? I’d look at the fallout of your PCs actions, followed some “what if?” questions to their logical extreme until you arrive back at the scenario of a unstable status quo and three factions all trying to vie for different outcomes. Then drop that on the players when they return and see where they go.
For my blades game I had the crew’s contact simply meet them is a social situation and offer them a score they both could profit from.
Fictionally using the crew’s contact this way sets expectations for what their contact can and won’t do for them. or begins this process.
Also it allows for a ;more low intensity introduction for newer player’s . And lastly it allows you as the game master to start asking questions of your players to get them to say what the setting is like. For me this accomplishes the goal of having my player’s tell the story with their actions and perspectives instead of me having to narrate everything for them.
For me blades is about empowering the player’s to take ownership of the setting and the only arbitration I do as the GM is to ask the question to myself “does that fit the fiction.” If yes I go with it. If no then I suggest a slight modification that may give them what they want or just say it doesn’t fit and why, giving the player’s an opportunity to modify it themselves or convince me the idea would fit.
As a GM I want to say yes to everything but the fiction comes comes first as they say. I hope this helps.
In your case, I definitely would write my own starting situation. As has been mentioned, who’s the new big bad in Crow’s Foot? Is this new crew even starting there? If it’s another district, who are the major players there and how have they been affected by the previous gang? Then just try to follow the format laid out for you by the Crow’s Foot initial situation, tweaking as needs be.
Because Blades encourages player engagement and because my players in my BitD: Ghost Echoes game are all experienced story gamers, I devised a starting scenario to introduce the premise of the crew and the crew to their rather unusual contact.
You can introduce some of the factions you plan on playing with but really the first mission is equally fine just as an opportunity to explore these new characters we are introducing.
Have things on the back burner but don’t feel pressure to devise the whole thing yourself. brainstorm with the players what mission might bring all of them together and run that. Don’t even roll engagement, just jump in as though they rolled a success or a crit.
I’ve been juggling with a “Usual Suspects” idea but haven’t made much headway with it. A scary guy shows up and says “You’ve stolen from my boss and the only reason you’re still alive is because you didn’t know who you were robbing. You work for him now.”
Otherwise, I know other people have said this but what you really ought to do is ask your experienced players if THEY have ideas, because I bet someone does.
Oh and there was a great suggestion someone made in a previous thread about starting a game with your new crew taking over the old crew’s HQ after they’ve “disappeared”. The original question in that one was about how to portray getting “war” status with Scurlock.
You can pick any three factions and pit them in a three-way tbh. However, I like competing rivals for two of them, and a third that is being targeted or is targeting one or both of them. Then do a similar thing to the Baszo meeting but with another NPC and for another score (the guidance on p205 and the preceding section are probably where you should be reading/rereading – your answer feels like its there)
Since you asked for an actual example, it’s story time: I needed something Breaking Bad-like for my table full of Hawkers who kept referencing the series. So I proposed the starting situation with a custom score: one where Lyssa wants to interrupt Baszo’s acquisition of the Foreign Markets for herself, and would pay them a sum to take it for her by interrupting his acquisition of it. This was to happen at a private party in a building Baszo organized to impress the Iruvian contact who was being paid to move their drugs out of the city.
The crew cleared the security on site with a card game and drunkenness before Baszo arrived. This gave them the rare opportunity to entice him to drinking with their Spider. This led to a steamy scene in a carriage involving fast shots of whiskey and heavy flirting, then his eyes lulling back in his head from 12 ticks of spiked whiskey. They ended up bringing him to their lair in a moored boat, and after a big knot on the heat (Baszo had woke up by then, and started donkey kicking like a madman of course) they knocked him back out and binding oiled him. The session ended with an hour long discussion of What now!? lul. Do they tell Lyssa he is dead? Do they just kill him? What about the drug contacts they intercepted; should they let Lyssa actually have that or keep it for themselves?
I really enjoyed my first session of a Hawkers game. We were in the middle of opening our first Brothel, and we RPed out the Grand Opening, and all the complications therein 😀
I used a one-off heist to kickoff, giving the players a feel for how easy it is to plan a job (you don’t, at least not by what constitutes planning with my players), and a chance to see how the mechanics work.
I did still use Baszo for round two.