Running Blades in the Dark in a con as a series of in shots.

Running Blades in the Dark in a con as a series of in shots.

I am writing this as I have been running blades at Go Play NW, I am 4 sessions in and plan on running another 3 and already something delightful has emerged.

I want to share my experience with the collective.

First how I have been running the blades one shots.

Blades as it stands does not easily lend its self to oneshots, the first session is often awkward and the tramas and crew progression are what give actions meaning and wait. In a generate and burn them down style game this robs the players of feelings of agency and impact, and me as the gm of the feeling of glee at destroying something fragile and beutiful.

I atfirst tried a hack that has been posted here but it didnt help. Then when debreifing with one of the players I established the system I have been using for the rest of the con.

I created a persistent crew and made it a cult. The reason I made it a cult is crews in blade eventualy turn into cults and why not give people a taste of that, and more importantly the cult has glory incarnate, which means the god has a physic form and can interact with the crew.

This is critical because the cult’s deity takes a charlie from charlies angels style role, easing the players in, giving them options for the score and rewarding them at the end.

This means the players dont have to struggle figguring out an objective, but it does feel artifical or railroaded in.

The other than is the characters are persistent. I tell the players that they are free to generate their own character, however there are existing characters in the crew they can play. The groups before them have left notes, leveled up the sheet and done things with them.

Also the next group will play with the characters once this session is done.

I tell them that for this session the character is wholely theirs, to feel free to tweak the character however they want, and make the character theirs.

This is critical as it gives a feeling of impact and history with the character they are playing.

As I said I have run 4 sessions and if interest remains will runn another 3. I could not be more delighted by the results. The players embraced the roles starting long term projects they wont see the fruits of, establishing relationships with npc’s and most importantly having a hell of a good time.

I cant recommend doing this enough.

So I post this to the collective in the hopes that.some other gm’s find it useful when staring at blades askimg themselves “how the hell do I run this a oneshots at a con?”