Query for long-running Blades GMs. Do you ever alter the Friends and Contacts?
Does your ninth Slide still have the option to be a friend or rival with Harker, a jail-bird? Or do you change out the Friends from time to time?
Keeping it the same makes for a robust and tangled web of characters, but changing it up brings in new faces.
I love keeping them the same and seeing how different characters interact with the same NPCs. We’ve got some tangled relationships with Salia and Setarra and a lot of that comes from keeping that contact list constrained.
That said if a character isn’t applicable (let’s say they’ve left the world in some way), then changing it up as new characters are introduced totally makes sense.
I’m currently working on rearranging my sheets, and one of the things I’m working on is makng the Contacts lists editable. It makes sense, especially when you have a character coming in after one of those NPCs is no longer around.
I also like the idea of editable contacts. My thought was to add a blank line or two, keeping the primary list the same but providing the option for new/different contacts.
I leave it up to the players for the most part. if they want to get tangled up, thats fine. If they wanna bring in fresh blood, that’s good too
I’m by no means long-running (coming up one Week 9!) but if my players want to say bring in contacts npcs they’ve created, or want to say that Darmot the old Bluecoat (who lost his job) is now a Bounty Hunter, for example, I say more power to them.
I like the idea of letting the players suggest new contacts if they’re making a new character and one or more of the existing contacts are dead or otherwise out of the narrative.
That said, I think there’s also some really cool potential for taking a dead contact as your friendly contact, especially if that contact is dead as a result of the crew’s earlier actions. It gives the new character some avenues for a little internal conflict for the crew (which is an xp condition), and the dead contact could still help on rolls in unorthodox ways… “Back when Darmot was alive, he complained to me over drinks about the security at this office — so I know all about the broken lock on the second story window. I’ll take that bonus die on my prowl roll to reduce heat.”
It’s probably not quite rules as written, but I’d certainly allow it. The dead contact can remain interesting and continue to contribute to the fiction in a cool way.
And that’s not even taking into account the supernatural angle…