Just did a 1on1, both our first session, with a Whisperer of Tempests and his Cult:
In order to steal an ancient tome of spells valuable to his god, he broke into a Weeping Sisters Temple in Six Towers under cover of an arcane fog; used memorized maps of the temple he had earlier secured from his friends among the Circle of Flame; drugged an old librarian with a sleeping poison; and after escaping too slowly and being corralled towards the priests by local tramps seeking eel stew, he called down a distracting bolt of lightning which destroyed the church and injured dozens. Exit, stage right.
He didn’t get much coin, but he got the book.
Hot as heartsblood, he got interrogated by the Bluecoats, who beat the hell out of him but ultimately didn’t secure a confession. Battered and drained from earlier blood sacrifice, he tried to recover his harms. Unfortunately, the local Witch hates his guts because he just stole the same book she wanted for herself. He then tried to indulge his weird vices, but the light apocalyptic ravings he picked up for recreational reading didn’t do much to help. He’s hurt, stressed, still broke, and it turns out the best pages of the book were carefully removed. He is already scheming his recovery, and ascendance.
For my first session, I found the system lightweight and robust. I think I got most of the rules down on the first run, and I’m aware of the spots I flubbed. More players would be really fun, but the system was more than strong enough to allow the lone PC to believably address all of my obstacles in meaningful ways. The Score-Downtime-Freeplay framework kept everything running smoothly with an organic-feeling urge forward. The provided material gave me more imagination fuel than this PbtA veteran usually brings to the table, and it really made the game sing.
Bonus Points: My skeptical PC became an evangelist and a buyer, and mentioned running a game(!) for his roommate.
11/10, willing and looking forward to running it on the fly again. Bravo to Mr. Harper and all involved!
This is my current group size
Darwin is a town in size and not many gamers around.
We are starting Cthulhu Confidential soon and I am really interested to learn any adjustments you made to make Blade work as I really want play it. Maybe an official supplement would be good for small groups. I know more games are covering this in there production, for example Alas for the Awful Sea.
So any words of advice would be great.
My only concern is the amount of stress the PC spent. It was my first game so it is hard to tell, but I feel that the stress would have been spread out among multiple PCs. As such, he got hammered, but in a fun way, and he had a great time.
You could always give him an extra coin or two per score to allow him to indulge or recover further stress or injuries?
There’s also the Functioning Vice and Survivor abilities that might be worth him considering.