TL;DR – Trying to Make the Characters Last Longer (Maybe)
I’ve been sitting down in front of the open book and the assorted sheets for a time, with a single question burning away in my brain:
How do I make Blades last longer?
See, I run with a group of very long-term players. We’re running two campaigns that are expected to go into the multi-year stretch by the end of it. The shortest campaign we ever ran was one where I was GM, and that one was weekly sessions for a little over a year, and most of the table noted at the end that it felt – compared to past efforts – like a mini-series rather than a campaign. They enjoy the feeling of rising to the challenge, of taking on bigger and bigger threats…and an almost absolute hatred of having to start over at ‘level 1.’ 3 of our campaigns – including the two I mentioned above – didn’t even start there.
(In retrospect, this may be why they make the campaigns last so long.)
So a game like Blades – which I have described to them in detail, and they sound really jazzed about – with its ‘retire your Blade at max Trauma, start a new character’ setup might not go over really well with them, especially if they’re running around with a bunch of more skilled (but probably higher Trauma) characters.
Which got me thinking about the above question. To which I came up with two possible answers:
Answer A is to create rules for making ‘veteran’ Blade characters. Characters with more than the single Special Ability and seven Action dots…but probably also more Traumas to compensate. Think like how when a major crew loses a significant player/character, they don’t go to the nearest recruiting center for whatever scrub turned up today. No, they go looking for someone close to their level. (For those of you who know it, think Gaunt’s Ghosts.)
My initial thoughts on how to handle this were as follows: for every Trauma a character accepts as part of their build, they gain 7 Action dots, and 2 Special Abilities. The Action dots cannot take a character over Rating 3 (unless the Crew has the Mastery option), and you can take Veteran only once for every Trauma. I’m willing to hear alternatives on this.
Answer B is to make individual characters last longer. In-game, there’s 2, maybe 3 ways to finish a character: Level 4 Harm, suffer your last Trauma, or (alternately) accumulate enough Stash to hit the top-tier and retire the character.
The latter one is the Golden Ending, the first is easy enough to avoid if watch when you’re Desperate, but the middle one…that’s the one that, IMO, makes most Blades tap out. To wit, how do I change that in order to accommodate longer-lasting players?
See, in a book series, or video games, it’s all about (more or less) a single character and their life. To use two example, one from each – the Jhereg novels are all about Vlad and his adventures. So when Vlad finally retires, that’ll be the end of the stories, since following him was the whole point of the series. Similarly, in Dishonored, the viewpoint character is Corvo, following him through one specific adventure he has in his life. Vlad and Corvo may have their friends and enemies, but ultimately their properties are about them.
But Blades doesn’t work that way. Blades is about many MANY adventures, but more importantly, is about several characters, not just one.
Initially, I wanted a way to remove Traumas from players, despite the game’s insistence that Traumas are permanent. The best idea I had for this was a long-term project clock with 12+ segments, which had to be re-started if you acquired a new Trauma during the project’s duration, and could only be used a limited number of times…the idea is still out there, but I’m not staking myself on it.
I gave it more thought, and what I came up next with is a game hack that manipulates the Trauma system a bit.
First off, while you can accumulate multiple Traumas, you only ever accumulate 2 of the personality quirks that help you gain XP. (Some of the quirks are almost antithetical to each other – like Soft and Vicious – and while a player can play up 3-4 quirks, I’d rather have them play 1 up consistently than rotate between them.)
Second…okay, this is the part I was really struggling with, but basically what I had initially in mind was the idea that after every Trauma you gain, you roll dice equal to the number of Traumas you have. 1 = 1d; 2 = 2d, etc. Then you roll your Vice Attribute without modifiers, and compare the results. If you have a better result on your Trauma roll than on your Vice roll, then you retire the character. I realized the problem with this halfway through – that while it does at least initially favor the player – you can get a 3 & 5 on your Vice roll but an errant 6 on your first Trauma…and then out you go. Which was not the point. Plus, it left the question of advances that give you extra Trauma boxes (like Unbroken) up in the air. My initial thoughts here were for one of a few effects – the advance lets you roll your strongest Attribute (as opposed to Vice, which is your weakest), it lets you go on for one more Trauma after a failed roll, or you can re-roll a failed roll. (Probably just once per character, but I did entertain the notion of one per Retirement roll.)
I think I’ve managed to strike a good balance. For every Trauma after your fourth that you accumulate, you roll dice equal to the number of Traumas over 4. 5 = 1d, 6 = 2d, etc. Then you roll your Vice Attribute. If the Trauma roll gets a better result than your Vice roll, then you retire the character. If you have the crew advance that gives you an extra Trauma box, this extends your track normally. (So a Crew with +1 Trauma doesn’t start rolling until their 6th Trauma.)
This allows for Trauma Crew Upgrades to remain as-is, still allow for the possibility of retirement due to just having seen too much, but allows Blades to hang in there just a LITTLE longer…
Huh.
This gave me a weird tangential inspiration to treat retired characters as special Turf.
.
7 seems like a lot of extra dots.
Honestly, I think if you play your PCs wanting them to last, the Trauma rules really aren’t that harsh. It’s rare to accrue a Trauma without making a lot of deliberate decisions that led you there. It’s a lot easier to get taken out by Level 4 Harm from bad fortune than to rack up 4 Traumas without seeing it coming.
I’m not actually certain you need to hack trauma to get what you want here. You say that your players like taking on bigger and bigger challenges and hate starting over at “level 1”. But even though the Trauma system might make Blades seem like it has characters tap out quickly, that’s really not the case. And even when they do, two factors seem like they would mitigate yours players discomfort with starting over. First, Blades characters tend to improve “out” rather than “up” – that is to say, a freshly made character and an experienced veteran are not going to be wildly different in their capabilities. Second, the fact that the crew itself improves means that new characters joining an experienced crew get a boost up. Also, having the crew as the focus of the game means that introducing a new PC won’t derail the campaign.
That said, I think you’ve created a solution without a problem. If you’re excited about the game, introduce it to your friends. If they look side-eyed at Trauma, remind them that it’s pretty tough to get four Trauma and it will almost certainly be a decision they make knowingly, not something that’ll be foisted on them from nowhere. And if you’re lucky and ay long enough to get to that fourth Trauma point, and the player really doesn’t want to retire their character, that’s the time to figure out a hack. Cross that bridge when you get there.
I ran a campaign for 80+ sessions without ever coming close to retiring a character.
Mind that Level 4 is not the end but only the beginning of a new … life? –> Ghost, Vampire, Hull. Imaging a crew of 2-3 ghosts and vampires as the end game of the campaign. Scrary and fun, I think.
I’d say keep track of trauma, and once a character gets 3, then you all would have played the game long enough to come up with a solution that works for you.
You should have a much better answer about end game play once you get closer to end game play!
Level 4 harm – as GM, don’t murder the PCs.
4 traumas – PCs should not do stuff that gives them stress when they have 3 Traumas and 8 Stress.
40 stash – you can cash out 2 Stash for 1 Coin.
Overindulgence of your Vice – don’t use Lost.
Also, in some series the Nation/Army Batallion/Hospital is the hub of the stories. I think this is very much the
. I think it’s cool if of The Sea Serpents’, (formerly The Dyson Street Gang), crew founders: three are dead, two are retired* in relative comfort level and one unfortunate is a raving loon locked up in the Crying Maidens Sanatorium and Recreational Home.
* I really like Rob Donoghue’s turf-idea, or maybe just have them as Crew Contacts?
Yeah, the game is designed in such a way that it’s virtually impossible for players to lose a character against their will. Every single mechanic having to do with character death/retirement/temporary absence requires the player to choose the option that will take them out of the game.
A couple things from my opinion, Stefan Struck is spot on. There are options for continuing with a character after they take level 4 harm or trauma out. If your players want to continue with that character they can.
2: I think an important part of the pitch, at least for me, is that the Crew is the main character. The Crew is what remains throughout the campaign. When most of the original founds of the Crew are dead or retired, they live on in legend and in the spirit of the rest of the crew. Maybe they can retire as wise contacts to add to your crew contact list. I can see a game where you start a crew from the ground up, and through the natural course of play, characters have their time in the spotlight, then move to the background to give the new blood a chance to shine.
I love this aspect of Blades because there will always be the foundation of The Crew to build on. I think Blades has the right stuff to give your group what you are looking for. It sounds like everyone is on board with the pitch you have given so far, so I would recommend trying to play the game as is, and if the players start to ask or worry about the longevity of their characters, you can discuss possible solutions as a group. Hope this helps. Good luck Scoundrel.
You could also add a “boss” type template to the ghost, vampire, hull option. Perhaps they become part of the ruling council for the crew (and multiple cohorts) and a new PC comes out of a cohort. The original PCs are still involved with continuing the crew, but others are more hands on. Or, just come up with the appropriate fiction to keep going beyond the 4th trauma. The character really wants to retire, but something BIG forces them to keep going…and perhaps reinvigorates them to stay in the game. If they accomplish a specific task (e.g. revenge) they are reinvigorated and can remove a certain amount of trauma.
Benjamin Davis That was the lower option. Initially I wanted to hand them one dot for every stress box on their track.
Rebecca W Yes, but generally speaking, as GM, the only time I’m going to nail someone with Level 4 Harm is if they’re at Desperate, and 1-3 not one but two dice rolls. Level 4 is sudden, immediate, vs Trauma’s slow grind – so I can understand how it might be easier to go out that way, but my players are generally savvy enough to know how not to get killed.
Eric Brunsell That might be something we could work on. A project clock (a long one) where the character sets themselves up for a major cathartic moment, which is accomplished during a job – if they succeed at the task on the job, they get some benefit…
Michael Yater More than one person voiced this idea, but yours was the most detailed. Maybe allowing retired characters some role in the ongoing matter of the Crew can help ease that out a bit.
Ben Morgan Do you remember how many scores that was? How advanced the characters got? And did any of them get close to psychic retirement?
Had to go back through my notes (the logs are up on ad1066.com), there’s about 30 or so. The scores are named, but not numbered. Characters got fairly advanced, they were at the point of buying veteran advances and such, but not to the point that their action ratings were getting ridiculous. At least half the PCs had 1 Trauma, but I don’t think anyone ever got more than that. A few of them had built up their Stashes to at least 20 (the Slide got further than that, of course).
Going for a second round of opinions on how to extend out a Blade’s shelf life, should it become necessary. A couple of people mentioned something I’ve been mulling over, and someone else suggested the idea of giving players multiple characters from the get-go to lessen the impact of when they lose a character, and giving the crew the option of picking what character they want for a given job.
The other idea I’ve been running around with is the idea of a cathartic moment, something that happens that relieves a metric ton of the stress you feel as a rogue. This is a rough sketch, but the basic idea goes as follows:
1 – You need some sort of goal. Perhaps Bazso Baz has been pissing you off one too many times. Perhaps the Dimmer Sisters got one over on you. Perhaps something else. Either way, you need a target.
2 – you start a long-term project clock – probably 12 ticks, though maybe 8? – which must be completed within the timespan of a single stress track. IE, you can’t gain a Trauma; if you do, the clock resets.
3 – once the project is complete, you undertake a job regarding whatever goal you want from your target. Preferably solo, but you could bring the crew in on it.
Job done, boom, catharsis.
To keep players from milking the system, though, each cathartic moment costs a Veteran Advance from your playbook. You’re essentially giving up the ability to gain more power outside your role in order to keep doing what you’re doing longer…thoughts?
It’s not a bad idea. I sort of like the idea of a big cathartic moment to remove a trauma, although it kind of goes against the central premise of the game – that the scoundrel life inevitably accrues trauma. So it’s sort of weird to lose trauma by doing the same stuff that got you trauma.
But again, I think you should cross that bridge when you get there.