My group is having a bit of trouble with the flow of our game. We’ve had about 5 sessions, and the trouble seems to be with downtime taking too long. So, what I’m asking for is advice and/or suggestions for videos to watch to help with this. I just went to watch some videos and, with such a huge quantity to choose from… I’m just hoping someone might be able to guide me to some videos which might be especially helpful for improving the flow of our game. Thanks much!
My group is having a bit of trouble with the flow of our game.
My group is having a bit of trouble with the flow of our game.
Curious how many players there are. I can’t help you with videos, sorry.
We have a new player, which brings us up to a total of 5, though only 3-4 have played in any given session. Oh, and we’re playing a Cult.
Snap.
My group of 5 players chose Cult because I advised against it.
I don’t know if it’s cult specific but there is trouble getting all 5 involved (player play style plays a part in this too)
How long is too long?
One of my games, downtime usually takes a whole session, with plenty of role play and free play.
In the other game I run, we do most of downtime via email, including the rolls and a sprinkle of fiction, leaving each session to clean up any messy entanglements and complete a score.
I got exactly the same issue and the same question. There is a downtime during the second week of Rollplay. The downtime here lasts a whole session : youtube.com – RollPlay: Blades – Week 2, Part 1 (at each 1st episode of a week you have to pass the 30 minutes where they chat about superheros stuffs), then it’s generally every two weeks, https://youtu.be/MWTrhOVzZ9Q?list=PL-oTJHKXHicTtCC4rgmFSfZSSQsZmENAz&t=2680 ; here with another structure for downtime : https://youtu.be/iH6LesLNTvg?list=PL-oTJHKXHicTtCC4rgmFSfZSSQsZmENAz&t=1148 . The point is you don’t have to play all the scenes, you can play with time, sometimes play a scene in details, sometimes just ask for a roll and describes in a few words what happened.
Michael Williams
The “mechanical part” of downtime should not take too much time unless your group really wants it to. My players tend to pick their downtime actions and roll some dice without too much roleplay involved, concluded by a short description of the result. Im talking about <30min for 3-5 players.
The players could of course roleplay every downtime action, describing how they visit their favourite brothel and.. but we try to focus the actual roleplaying to the free play and score part.
Other groups might focus more on the roleplay aspects here and take a lot longer to resolve downtime but I (and my playgroup) think that there is more fun to be had in the free play and score phases.
Advice 1: Switch to a short mechanical phase for downtime and entanglements and only roleplay the downtime actions if something interesting happens (maybe ask the players if they want to roleplay the scene if you think it is relevant). Otherwise let the players give a very short description of their result and then move on to the next action.
If your free play tends to get out of hand, you should have a lot of tools to rush the players to the next score.
Describe events in the city that put some time pressure on the players. Maybe also create a clock for it and tick it every time the players take some free play actions to show them how much time they have to exploit an opportunity?
Example from my last session: the Lampblacks were moving large amounts of old lamp oil to a safe house close to an important Red Sashes establishment with the intent to burn it down. The players (allied to the Sashes) quickly realised that they had to act fast if they wanted to do something about it or risk being to late to the party. If they had ignored the opportunity, I would have created a clock “Lampblacks attack Red Sashes” and then make a fortune roll every time I think they have invested some relevant time in other free play activities.
You can also use clocks to prevent them from spending a whole session on gathering information / planning. If they want to find a weak point in a building, you could create a “find weak point in security” clock for it and tick it every time the players gather some information, eg. survey the building /surroundings, ask a ghost about the past of the building, retrieve some map, question a worker,… the better their approach /roleplay, the higher the effect level.
Advice2: Use clocks to keep the players focused on a common goal instead of chasing random / individual ideas and targets the whole evening.
Manuel’s advice is really good.
I’m finding that my group gets about 1 session of free play, leading up to a cliffhanger, then a session of score, sometimes ending on a cliff, followed by a resolve the score, downtime, and half a session of bsing, meta-play, and figuring out the next overall idea they want to explore.
3 players, cult, 2-2.5 hour sessions.
Something taking “too long” is relative to the group, naturally.
In Blades, the GM pretty much follows the players. So if downtime is taking too long in their opinion, they can cut it very short and blaze through the activities quickly. No one’s stopping them. If they’re digging in to lots of roleplay and scenes in downtime, that’s their choice.
It’s really their responsibility to pace it how they prefer.
Do your players think the downtime is taking too long? If not, I wouldn’t worry about it much. If so, the other comments are likely helpful. Here’s some other insight.
I GM one game and play in another, but both groups play differently, resulting in differences in downtime. The group I GM plays weekly for 2 hours and the players like a more narrative game, with downtime sometimes eating up a large chunk of the play. The game I’m playing in meets once a month for about 4 hours, but we spend a lot of time just catching up and cracking jokes. The play is less on the narrative and more on the cool (or not so cool) things we do with our dice rolls. That group sprints through the downtime mechanics at the end of/start of the sessions.
Both play styles fit for these two groups, and all the players are happy with the way our games progress.
I’m not the GM in this game.
I think it’s just a matter of a lack of experience. All of us are new to the game and we’re still learning the rules and I think that’s the main culprit. I’m suggesting to my group we try to end every session after we’ve agreed on what the next score will be and we’re ready to begin. That will give the GM some time to prepare. The rest will come in time and I’m sure later our GM won’t need so much time to prepare.
Also, we may just need to realign our expectations about how much time downtime takes.
Thanks, everyone, for your responses! I appreciate them!