This may have been touched on before, but I haven’t found anything by searching.
How do you guys handle crews that are running high on stress and don’t have many resources left to handle that stress? Trauma is the obvious answer, but it seems like it may have been inevitable in this case. I like my players to have options, even if they’re all crappy options.
The Lilies have been run ragged lately, as they’ve gotten pulled into war with the Wraiths while also attracting the notice of Setarra, who is leveraging their situation (and the Whisper’s connection to Scurlock) to compel the crew to steal various artifacts for her. This has led to some high-stress scores, and with only one down-time action while they’re at war, the crew has wound up going into the last couple scores with 5 or 6 stress each. Two of them finally trauma’d out last session, but the Whisper is still sitting on 7 stress or so. If she rolls well this downtime, they might be okay.
In hindsight though, I’m wondering if there should have been an opportunity for them to take another round of downtime actions instead of taking a score? Or would that have just been implied by burning Rep for more downtime actions? If they’re low on both Rep and Coin, it seems like managing stress while at war can be an impossible feat.
It’s really a situation of their own making, so I don’t exactly feel bad about how it’s gone. But I want to make sure I’m offering appropriate suggestions for them to manage some of that stress if they want to.
I seem to recall a rule about losing yourself in the vice, when you basically retire the character for a short time and he comes back without damage or stress.
My group took some harm and a load of stress in the Information Gathering last session.
The narrative had them performing the heist the next day, so I gave them each one segment of downtime between the info gathering and the heist.
It made narrative sense for me that the Leech spent the night resting up to heal a lvl 1 harm from getting kicked, and the Lurk spent the night tinkering to open up the briefcase they had stolen full of documents.
Yeah, but I’m not sure how closely I should control Downtime to maintain game balance.
Neither chose to indulge in their vice, and one ended up taking Trauma during the heist – so I don’t feel like giving them that downtime was too OP – I think it was the only thing than prevented a TPK honestly.
Yeah, burn rep and coin if they want to heal up. If they don’t have that, then that’s why the game’s about the crew, not specifically those particular scoundrels. 🙂
You could also try giving them opportunities to indulge vice during their missions, but obviously at a cost of increasing risk and putting themselves or others in danger. It’s never spelled out in the book anywhere really that this is an option but I’ve seen John Harper​ offer up the opportunity to players a few times in game and struggling with your vice is an xp trigger. Maybe a drug addicted cutter is supposed to to storm the 2nd story of the building to help out the lurk who got in too deep but there’s an end table on the first floor with some fresh spark just waiting to be taken. He can indulge his vice and get rid of a little stress he’ll just be feeling woozy from the drugs (standard consequence) and take time if he eventually tries to catch up to the lurk.
It gives them alternate methods of managing stress on the job in exchange for more complication and consequence opportunities for you as the gm. On the whole it also gives characters more room to show how they deal with their vice in a practical narrative way and show if it controls them or they control it.
I mean, being at war with little to no money and rep should be stressful, so I think it’s working as designed.
Though assuming this situation is not fun for the players, I think the simplest path is to use their connections and offer them a differently costly way to end the war, like the Wraiths propose a cease fire if the Lilies give up a chunk of their turf or the like. Then they can get some breathing room to plot and scheme and maybe deal with the demon and plot revenge. Or whatever else they like.
I have no problem with handing them some extra downtime, but I’d remind them that faction clocks will be ticking as well.
That sounds rough, but it also sounds really interesting. It seems like the kind of situation where the crew might be willing to decide “we’re getting desperate, let’s just take some awful conditions to end this war, get back on our feet, and then stab those guys in the back when they’re not looking, like proper scoundrels.”
So yeah, spending coin or rep; getting lost in vice; maybe they could try to negotiate to get paid up front, then use that coin to buy downtime actions; or even take an easy score (like a hunting grounds score, for the free downtime action); or going light on the next score, not spending many resources, and potentially failing, then using the downtime to rest up a bit. Might strain some of the relationships with their clients if they fail, but hey, it’s narratively interesting.
Yep. Don’t pull punches here. The game is about consequences. The scoundrel’s life is not fair or forgiving.
In a game I’m running the crew spent a downtime and drained a ton of rep and coin (including a little stash) to heal, de-stress and do LTPs that saved them future trouble. They were sweating the sparse resources but felt properly empowered by their choices as they marched towards their next play. The fiction of the extensive expenditures coupled beautifully with entanglements and other various fiction. ‘Twas awesome.
They can pay rep for extra downtime and that mechanically symbolizes not doing a score for a while.
Yeah, I agree with all the above. If you’ve got rep or coin to spend, do that. If you can afford your character to get lost indulging their vice, they can do that.
If not, things are stressful because they’re supposed to be. They’re at war and have few resources. They either have to soldier on and try to win the war, but with the risk of losing, or they have to cut their losses and parlay, maybe losing hold or turf or something else valuable, or they have to make a deal with a third party to help them end the war (violently or not), but with a higher cost later or maybe a deal to do.
Life as a scoundrel is always rough. Your players just get to choose in what way. As long as they’re having fun with it, you’re good. If not, maybe they don’t want the world to be as rough as the base version. Then you have options like bonus downtime or perhaps less costly consequences.
I don’t agree with giving them the opportunity to indulge their vice during scores; A quick hit on the pipe or whatever isn’t indulging your vice. You need to take time and relax and soak it in. There just isn’t time for this during a score.
Agreeing with everyone else that this situation is working as intended, and if they are feeling too beat up they should be spending coin and rep.
Maybe a quick hit gets you 0d6 to represent the more flyby nature of it. Saying that, you can still take your time with it in the middle of a score, but you’re going to put your team at a significant disadvantage until you return since they’re expecting you to be somewhere doing something and you’re not.
Thanks everyone for the great advice and reassurance that all is working as intended! Coming from more traditional roleplaying games where the GM has to carefully balance encounters for “fairness” and whatnot, my biggest struggle with Blades has been kicking some of those habits to let the narrative flow. PCs are definitely more resilient in this game than they look at first glance! They can take quite a lot of punishment.
In regard to indulging vices during the score, I think I agree that it generally shouldn’t be possible. I usually reserve vices for devil’s bargains during the score (Sure, take an extra die to sway the guard to let you through… but you can see the telltale track marks on his arm, and you can’t resist shooting up with him while the rest of the crew goes on. You can catch up with them when you’re done.).
Maybe if it was a particularly long score? Like a long con over the course of several days or something? Though in just about every scenario I can imagine, that’d be better handled as a long term project during downtime…
The problem with indulging a vice during a score is that it double- or triple-dips. First, it reduces stress without costing a downtime action (worth 1 coin). Second, it potentially gains the character 1-2 xp by hitting an xp trigger (worth 1 coin as a training downtime action). Third, it’s mechanically free, whereas there’s already an option for a player to flashback to downtime, and pay to indulge and reduce stress–by doing it during a score, the player is getting somewhere around 2 coin worth of benefit on the cheap.
(Arguably, players can earn xp for reducing stress if they overindulge, but it still costs a downtime action, and is balanced out by heat or entanglement rolls.)
If I were going to offer one of my players this option, I’d say “okay, but you’re out of the rest of the score,” because indulging in a vice isn’t a single beer, it’s a night of drinking that leaves you wrecked. That, or they take Level 3 Harm: Uselessly Drunk, and the crew has to drag their drunk ass through the rest of the score, which I think is my favorite option. Maaaaybe count it as an overindulgence, and inflict an extra entanglement roll.
It’s not the worst thing ever, but it feels way too easy/free to me, and I envision a crew that all carry drugs and alcohol on their scores when they need a pick-me-up. 1 load for guaranteed stress reduction sounds OP (the Spider gets fine whiskey, even), and I prefer my game to feel a little grittier.
Spot on Steven Dodds — I probably should have clarified that when I say I use them for devil’s bargains, I don’t mean I let them reduce stress. It’s really “I’ll give you a die and an XP trigger if you put yourself or the crew at a narrative disadvantage.”
I totally agree that actually “indulging” a vice requires a much larger block of time than should be available in a normal score.
(OMG Chris McDonald, I replied to the wrong notification! My mistake! So sorry. I’ll delete my incorrect comment.)
I think when John is giving players a chance to “indulge” their vice during a score to see if it gets in the way, he is giving the players a chance to score that “struggle with issues from your vice or trauma” XP point, not actually giving them an opportunity to relieve stress.
Of course, I haven’t watched most of this, so I could be wrong.
Without watching it, how would you know? 😉
John Harper No worries
I’m reading between the lines. 😉
In darkest dungeon the party are put through the meat grinder with no remorse, likewise the crew in bitd. The players should not feel like taking stress and trama as losing any more than losing a character in the meat grinder of darkest dungeon is. Rather if they are fearless and embrace the hardship, take a trauma or two they can over come those hardships and have some truely epic moments. And thoose moments will be truely epic if you resist the urge to baby them in the hard times.
In the hack I’m working on there is a class who mostly deals with manipulation and vice, and he has a special power that allows him to engage in his vice once per score. The catch is that the gm inflicts consequences on the character as if the vice roll were an action roll with a position decided by the GM.
Hello everyone, I’ve seen roleplay blades and I remember the mention of a rule that allows to reduce trauma by doing a special mission? Maybe I was tripping although I dont have a vice?
You can reduce trauma via long term projects if you want. LTP’s more or less let you “do whatever you want” and “break the rules’