Hey, guys, I am a first time GM who is a little overwhelmed trying to start a campaign! My players have decided to play as a cult and honestly I don’t know how to craft a campaign for it, I’m thinking of them starting out facing down Bazso Baz as in the quickstart campaign with him asking them to do some culty stuff for him (human sacrifice and the like) so that he can have more weird power. I’m in the early planning stages of this and im a little overwhelmed. any tips or tricks?
Hey, guys, I am a first time GM who is a little overwhelmed trying to start a campaign!
Hey, guys, I am a first time GM who is a little overwhelmed trying to start a campaign!
Can you talk a little about their Forgotten God and who’s further up the crime ladder in their turf?
Hey george! A cult is centered around their deity. Who are they a cult of, and what does their forgotten god want?
The first homework you should do is figure out which factions are going to be big in your scenario. In the crew creation the GM gets to answer some faction questions, and setting up some interesting scenarios there might be a strong start for you (I’d ask who the whispers are in the other groups, and what supernatural resources they control since that will probably come up frequently).
The starting scenario is about a war of gangs, and someone bringing leverage onto them. It’s more of a thief/bravos/assassins kind of thing – so what does your cult do and why are they being tapped is a good question to answer.
There are some group specific jobs listed for each gang, and you may want to roll on those charts to generate some inspirations and appropriately flavored jobs – just bring in whatever factions you think are important.
One thing I really enjoy when dealing with something like a Cult setup is to have something inevitable they have seen in the future, something that’s a real whiz-bang attention-getter. For example, in the first season of Heroes, one of the characters paints a giant picture of a nuke going off in New York, and everything in that season is under the shadow of that mushroom cloud prophecy.
Maybe the game starts and they have a gift of prophecy to know that their god will take an avatar in three months (or six, or whatever; make up a festival and aim for it in play.) If they are there to meet the avatar, then power will be theirs; if not, they are unfaithful. All they know is the avatar will ascend under this symbol (like ancient heraldry, or a destroyed temple capstone; a symbol that gives them some information to chase.)
Or start them off as a splinter from a powerful cult that was crushed by the Spirit Wardens, who are still trying to finish the job, and they are the only ones that know that one of the spirit wardens is an avatar of a rival god and if they don’t unmask and/or slay the creature, the city will be obliterated as revenge.
Or there could be a Spider-style leviathan who has a number of cults working independently, and as they pull off their part of the overall plot, its shapes become clearer and they realize they may have been duped by a false god.
Or the previous cult that spawned them lost six artifacts that give it legitimacy and authority, and when they regain them they’ll prove themselves the heirs.
One of the very cool things about Blades is how much you can rely on your players for what comes next, and for directions to go in. I’d say re-read the advice for GMs parts of the book, focusing on the collaborative elements. Maybe jot down a couple reminders on questions to ask them when things are moving.
When I did my first session a couple weeks ago, I had us pause after character creation and I took down 5-8 notes about how their score could unfold… the first obstacle (a warded entry into Ironhook Prison), then some off-the-cuff ideas on major obstacles after that (guards at the cell block entrance, getting the door unlocked, getting cornered by a rival gang while taking tunnels under Crow’s Foot). That was enough to get things going, and the back and forth I had with the players filled in almost all the rest.
Something to keep in mind – it can be very easy to see/hear about other games and set a super high bar for yourself. Don’t do that! Especially for you as a first-time GM, you’re going to have a learning curve. Just roll with it, try to make good decisions in the moment, and don’t stress yourself out. You’ll get better in leaps and bounds as you continue – and feel much more relaxed about it.
That’s some hot advice Andrew ^_~
Several of my friends in one of the (very good) groups that I play in have criticized blades for having a world that is too fully fleshed out, has too much detail. It’s harder to make your own. It’s important to remember that you don’t have to get it right as it is in the book, make it your own. Player interest and creativity trumps anything in the book most of the time. Everything should be taken as a suggestion but not as cannon.
To build on what hari is saying, in my session 1, several times I was asked something like, “How does X work?”
Several times, when I didn’t have an answer at my fingertips, I’d turn it around and say, “Well, what do you think would be cool?”