Last night during my session my players ask me this :
“Cause of the really long time we spend in recovery, and the time that some day one of ours PC will spend in prison, does that mean than now we have to creat mutiple characters per player and selected the one to play each session ?”
and the follow up question :
“if i play mutiple character, does that mean after a score i could spend downtime and indulge vice for all my characters (even for the one who doesn’t participated to the score) ? “
Nothing in the rules to stop you if you and your players would like to do some kind of troupe play with multiple characters. You and your players need to decide how many extra characters and the answer to your second question.
When it comes to prison time, I’ll ask the table what they want. I give them the option to play as a prisoner (signifying strong interest in that), play as an existing cohort until the session is over, then bring that sentence to an end with a time lapse (signifying it sucks but the story of them being inside doesn’t sound fun to them), or they make another PC and play that until the incarcerated PC “gets out” (the blended option, time lapse when theyre ready)
Extended absences are similarly up to them.
YMMV. Whatever the table agrees is a fun policy should be what you do
Yeh… but the point here is “cause of the very long time we “loose” in recovery and potentialy in prison, the game seems to push the players to go on a mutiple character campaign.”
How does you player crew manage with wounded characters and jailed PC ?
Does your wounded characters goes on mission anyway ? And how they manage ?
And does your players find it “fun” or interesting to go on mission with some handicap like a twisted ankle for a shadow for exemple…
Yea, you already play multiple characters in this game (a gang & your gangs cohorts in addition to your usual role as a PC). It’s also quite fun to roleplay as one or more of the cohorts as a break. The thing I do if they take their character out like this is heal up the PC and move on next session, describing a time lapse.
FWIW Most of my players of wounded characters do go on missions, and favor certain actions. Or they spend the extra downtime/rep/coin to recover.
Having injuries and high levels of Stress is all part of the game, fighting through difficulties is what makes it fun.
If your players are not having fun with this then maybe they aren’t in the right game and something that only concentrates on the fully functional PC with access to magical healing etc might suit them better.
it’s more than they are used to “magical healing”‘ and now learn what a gritty game is… Overall they love the game as it is.
sub for later perusal. I’ve been thinking about troupe style play too
My group has all made secondary characters that they will switch between depending on the mission and how beat up they are. Occasionally poor luck and bad downtime rolls will put the scoundrels in bad places, so with my unorthodox, more fantasy inspired campaign I added the following rule.
Scoundrels who do not participate in a Score gain an additional Downtime action, however downtime abilities (Such as a little something on the side) do not activate and the scoundrel may only use downtime actions to heal wounds and indulge vice.
It keeps the downtime clock economy stable as you don’t have 8 people working on clocks, but still allowing recovery for those who don’t participate in a mission, while keeping Injury and stress as factors (as opposed to allowing characters to become “Lost in their vice” when not played which automatically heals them)
It’s fine to start a score with injuries. It can be very fun. When my players do it, I make sure to help them come across as extra badass for succeeding despite their injuries.
Nathan Pollard i like your home rule for “offscreen” characters with limited Downtime
Give me a dark fantasy setting, allow troupe style play.. and we could call the game Darkest Blade Dungeon…https://theiddm.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/darkest-dungeon-madness.jpg?w=640
theiddm.files.wordpress.com
Welp… Guess I’m going to be spending the next few weeks trying to adapt darkest dungeon mechanics to blades… Working out mid-dungeon stress relief will be interesting… Can’t believe I never thought of that before.
When we first started bringing in secondary characters, we were coming up with all kinds of little house rules on what you could and couldn’t do with them, and one by one these all dropped away as the situations they were supposed to address were never an issue. Really the only rule that’s left is “Don’t play with yourself at the table”, which is arguably good advice in general.
Mathieu Mazzoni Band of Blades and especially Blades Against the Dark should have you covered.
Our play by post group has been debating the “should extra characters be given downtime actions?” issue for a while. It can be problematic when players have different numbers of characters which could throw off game balance over time since they can advance faster or work on projects. Interesting debate because there are so many valid arguments each way.