Hi all!
I recently ran my first two sessions of Blades and a few issues popped up that I figured I should ask about:
Firstly, the compel ability:
One of our players plays a Whisper with the compel ability. During our sessions their typical approach to overcome obstacles was to summon a ghost and compel it to do so-and-so, for instance “attack that gang” or “scout ahead and look for the treasure”.
This raised a concern that this player could effectively bypass the need for actions like Hunt, Skirmish etc. and cover a wide range of actions with just Attune by using a ghostly stand-in.
How should I (if at all) balance this out? Is the natural response “Sure, you can do it, but ghosts are extremely dangerous and conspicuous so you’ll be in a desperate position if things backfire”? Is their approach “stealing” the spotlight from other players by denying them the chance to overcome the challenge with their non-arcane abilities, or is this appropriate use of the Whisper’s power and their function in the group.
More generally, how did your group interpret the compel ability, can the Whisper summon an endless stream of ghosts at will? One ghost per scene? Does the GM need to first describe the area as containing a spirit before the Whisper can compel it, or should the Whisper always be able to attune to locate a ghost (does this call for two separate rolls for the locating and compelling or just one)?
Secondly, quiet operations:
I’m not sure how to use the mechanic of keeping an operation completely quiet.
From my reading it seems that after each score the crew can decide if they want to “take responsibility” for it – thus accruing Rep and Heat according to the rules, or not – and thus get no Rep and no Heat.
Should it be as simple as deciding, or should it at least involve an action roll for “How do you keep this operation quiet” – possibly as a downtime action?
It also seems to me that this means a crew can have a score be as chaotic and explosive as they want, and suffer no faction-level consequences as long as they forfeit a potentially small amount of Rep (when attacking a small faction for instance), is this by design or am I misinterpreting?
More specifically to our group – our crew recently attacked a location owned by The Lost, but disguised themselves as a squad of Billhooks. This score was meant as a “set up” score for our next session where the crew will attack a Billhook location while they are busy figuring out what happened, who gave the orders to attack The Lost etc.
The score was successful (albeit with lots of mayhem and corpses) and of course, in order for the next score to go as planned, no one can find out that the Billhooks were not, in fact, behind the attack. We discussed it and proposed a tentative solution in which the Rep and Heat for the first score would be delayed until the end of the second score, when the jig will be up and the crew will be free to boast about how they pitted the two factions against each other. At which point they will receive the cumulative Rep and Heat from the two scores. Is this a good solution? Would it make the crew suffer too much heat at once without having a chance to reduce it, or is it an appropriate cost for keeping the lid quiet on the operation until the time is right? How would your group handle/has handled a similar situation?
And lastly, a smaller question regarding faction clocks, do you pick a few factions each downtime and increment their clocks by one, or do you make a fortune roll based on their tier and increment accordingly?
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I’d love to hear your thoughts and stories!
Ghosts arent like helpful little Spirits right? They’re the echos of real people and monsters that make you piss your pants. I imagine it like pulling a random person off the street. And that person is also the worst kind of Hollywood deranged. Not a fighter, not a scout, not a treasure hunter, but the traumatized echo of someone’s life.
So, unless he’s rolling sixes all the time, the effectiveness of the ghost is in question. Also, getting a random ghost to do something is rarely the safest way to so something, it’s probably mostly desperate.
My Whisper summons ghosts all the time, but it’s not usually a flawless omni tool but mostly a like throwing a live viper at someone. And he’s maxed out his attune.
In regards to quiet scores, they’re are witnesses everywhere and people talk. I wouldn’t give them the heat and rep retroactively,as you suggest.
>their typical approach to overcome obstacles was to summon a ghost and compel it to do so-and-so, for instance “attack that gang” or “scout ahead and look for the treasure”.
Cool! They’re a Whisper; they should play it to the hilt. The appropriate question, though, is whether a Ghost is the right tool for the job. aka, is this fictionally appropriate? They’re a spirit bent on vengeance, right? So, the first issue is whether you’re (1) letting him use a Vengeance Spirit for stuff it’s not good at, whether maybe (2) you’re excessively repeating scenes it is good at (scaring the shit out of people), and (3) whether you’re overpowering the ghost.
As to (1) If he’s using the Ghost for stuff it’s not built for – quiet recon, say – then his roll had better be Limited Effect. Then the Lurk can show ’em how it’s done.
As to (2), if “scaring off some people” is coming up so much it’s overshadowing other PC’s, it’s time to introduce a much wider variety of conflicts. There are a lot of conflicts a scary ghost is not useful for.
As to (3), it’s not a combat monster: I’m pretty sure ghosts take Trauma (well, Gloom) like anyone else. If he’s using it to take his place in Skirmish, cool. If he’s using it as a one-man army, you’re overpowering it. Would 5 guys beat the shit out of 1? Okay, so 1 or 2 or 3 would flee. Once in a while, all 5 (let the dice decide). But the ones that are left: could they overpower 1 guy? Most often the answer is probably somewhere between “yes” and “maybe” – seems to me we still need the Cutter to come in and make sure this is a win.
For that matter, spiritbane charms are reasonably common – send 1 ghost against 5 thugs, among whom there’s a spiritbane or two, and I’m looking at Limited effect here again.
Additionally, Ghosts scare the shit out of your own mates, too (right under compel, “you are not supernaturally terrified. .. though your allies may be.”) Go off in private to do your compel, and sooner or later you’re going to roll shit and end up in deep trouble because you’re all alone.
Lastly, the Ghost isn’t disposable. Once the Compel is over, you have a vengeance-hungry spirit that remembers what you did. Maybe it’s no big deal – you took a minute out of its day. Maybe it is – maybe you threw it 1-on-5 into a battle and watched it get absolutely traumatized on a whim. The ghost already has its obsessions, so it’s probably not going to come looking for you… but if it happens to run into you by accident, you’d better hope you don’t screw up your next Compel roll.
>desperate situation if things backfire
Don’t do that. Make it desperate if it’s desperate. The Whisper is as core to the game as the Cutter or anyone else, and his core power is Compel. Teaching them not to use their core power because things will go completely to shit if they ever miss a roll is terrible – it just punishes the player for playing the game as written and having fun doing it. It’s punishing the player for playing a class you haven’t learned to handle yet. “Oh, warrior, I didn’t realize you could take 3 guys on at once – so, I’m going to make life hell for you.” What, no. No, that just means you should’ve put the warrior up against 4 guys. Or chosen a challenge that was more interesting.
(I realize you’re asking here, and not asserting, I’m just pre-emptively saying that before 5 other people say “and throw in the Desperate on every Compel roll so the Whisper knows better than to… uh, play a Whisper”)
Seriously, though, I can’t say this strongly enough: your GM principles include being a fan of the PC’s. It’s not being a fan to punish wizards for wizarding. Don’t ruin the guy’s shtick; just use it appropriately to the fiction.
> Is their approach “stealing” the spotlight from other players by denying them the chance to overcome the challenge with their non-arcane abilities, or is this appropriate use of the Whisper’s power and their function in the group.
That depends on your answers to the above.
That said, the Whisper can be that powerful and it’s not a problem at all. Ramp up the obstacles in the fiction. If the Whisper’s ghost is a one man army, shit, make sure their target requires two armies to take out, and let the party split up (and then a backfire really will be desperate…). Having a band of Thugs is already a perfectly valid asset to the crew: is that any weaker than having a tag-along ghost? Okay, so now instead of having the Crew and Thugs, you effectively have The Crew and 2 Bands of Thugs. The game doesn’t break. It means you steamroll some piddly crew smaller than you are, take their turf, and set your sights on taking on crews that won’t fall on their asses when faced with a ghost.
>can the Whisper summon an endless stream of ghosts at will?
There have to be ghosts around, first. You force a nearby ghost to appear – you don’t force a previously-non-existent ghost to appear nearby. Don’t use this as an excuse to make all the ghosts disappear – Duskvol is deeply haunted – but play it honestly: this place carefully patrolled by Spirit Wardens likely has no ghosts conveniently underhand (maybe you had to bring one along with you. Maybe this means a Desperate roll involves a spirit warden detecting the ghost you dragged along…); this place where people regularly dump bodies likely does have plenty of ghosts around.
>Does the GM need to first describe the area as containing a spirit before the Whisper can compel it, or should the Whisper always be able to attune to locate a ghost (does this call for two separate rolls for the locating and compelling or just one)?
Spirit needs to be around first (as per above); it’s just one roll. The Whisper is still just attuning – but his attune, unlike other PC’s, includes the ability to compel ghosts to do stuff. (“compel: you can attune to the ghost field to force a nearby ghost to appear and obey…”).
In short: be true to the fiction. The Whisper is terrifyingly potent: so are all the other PC’s. This is an excuse to let them set their sights high, not to clobber them into obscurity.
In regard to your last question about Compel, this comes from the Compel ability description in the book, and suggests two rolls are necessary for Compelling a spirit when there are none close by:
“The GM will tell you if you sense any ghosts nearby. If you don’t, you can gather information (maybe Attune, Survey, or Study) to attempt to locate one. By default, a ghost wants to satisfy its need for life essence and to exact vengeance. When you compel it, you can give it a general or specific command, but the more general it is (like “Protect me”) the more the ghost will interpret it according to its own desires. Your control over the ghost lasts until the command is fulfilled, or until a day has passed, whichever comes first.”
In regard to your final question, this comes from the NPC & Faction Downtime section of the book:
“GM: Choose downtime maneuvers and advance clocks for the factions you’re interested in right now. Don’t worry about the rest. Later, when you turn your attention to a faction you’ve ignored for a while, go ahead and give them several downtime phases and project clock ticks to “catch up” to current events.
If you’re not sure how far to progress a faction’s clock, make a fortune roll using their Tier as the base trait, modified up or down depending on the opposition or circumstances. Tick 1 segment for a 1-3 result, 2 segments for a 4/5 result, 3 segments for a 6 result, or 5 segments for a critical result.”
As for quiet operations and Heat and Rep: There is an assumption that all factions will have their suspicions about your crew being behind an operation, even if they don’t know you exist yet, because then they know there’s some new crew on the streets that they need to identify/deal with. Wearing Billhook outfits doesn’t make you a Billhook. Being a bloodthirsty monster and having their tattoos and accents and dialects and weapons and fighting styles, etc. That makes you a Billhook. They might fool a faction for a little while, but if they don’t capitalize immediately someone is going to figure out that something wasn’t quite right and adjust.
For this reason, even if they fool a faction into going after another faction, they should still get their Heat and Rep. Whether it’s too early or too late, someone WILL figure it out, and word WILL get around. In short: Always assume the cover-up isn’t complete and flawless, even if it’s really damn well done.
If a Whisper was consistently employing ghosts (with all the caveats listed above) in the fashion you mention, they’d be leaving some sort of trail or ripple effect.
It seems to me the GM would set a clock (probably dependent on how many times the Whisper had used this trick in a row, or possibly based on time) titled, “Spirit Wardens Set Their Sights On The Whisper” with a followup Clock titled, “Spirit Wardens Catch Up With The Whisper”. Then things get ugly.