Ok, ran my first game of Blades yesterday and we all had a blast. The newly-formed “Royal Arcane Imports” smuggler gang ran a quick snatch & grab score for the Dimmer Sisters (against The Revelation, an up-and-coming cult of a forgotten god), and we named the whole thing “The Curious Case of the Burning Goat Cart in the Night” 😀
Most of the time went into PC & Crew generation, but we were all impressed by how much detail and game world color that phase already generated. Then I sat down by myself for 20 minutes or so and came up with a short intro score, which we then ran with.
The engagement roll came up a 2, so we started up at Desperate: as per plan, the Lurk had stowed aboard the cultist (covered) goat cart, and was getting ready to snatch the target (small, heavy stone box) and vanish when cart got to specific spot. However, his own wards interacted unfavorably with the thing in the box, resulting in something ghostlike but not human starting to manifest next to him in the cart, throwing off sparks and light. This alerts the four heavily-armed cultists, who stop the card and look inside. Cue action.
Well, the Lurk player came up with a great flashback: he had brought a bottle of lamp oil with him, and had been busy soaking the interior of the cart while waiting. Then he gathers dice and gets some teamwork help from Hound pacing the cart, and gets a critical success on his Prowl (!). So what happens is that he grabs the box, shoots at the cart (setting off a firestorm) and leaps out running (Hound provides extra confusion). The critical success means he gets a nice head start before cultists manage to react properly.
With burning cart, pulled by panicking goats, careening wildly down the street and causing general mayhem.
He manages to drop box off at nearby (target) bridge, under which our Whisper is waiting ready with a camouflaged gondola and a heavy net. She grabs the box and goes dark. Lurk continues running and gets out of sight of cultists for a sec.
Here I asked if the Lurk would give me one more Prowl check (at Controlled) to see if he makes a clean getaway. He surprised me by saying that the character will instead quick-use his disguise kit and swap identities while out of sight for a sec. No, he didn’t have any suitable skill for that, but he Pushed it for 1d. I ruled that it’s risky, with limited effect. And rolls a 6 (!). So he walks back out from behind the corner, looking sufficiently different that the cultists run right past him, shouting incoherently. Then he goes to a nearby Nightmarket stall to have a quiet cup of coffee. 😉
I loved it. They got away clean due to a few really lucky rolls, but the players also realized that they had gotten lucky and it gave a great start to the campaign. The downtime phase also gave me nice pointers on follow-up (including some complications, one due to overindulgence of drug habit :).
The campaign will probably feature a lot of occult stuff, since that’s what the players chose as their favored smuggler cargo type (and chose reputation: “weird”). They are also interested in deathlands stuff, we’ll see…
Very impressed with this game.
I have a few questions about the game (or setting, more exactly), but I’ll do a separate post on those.
Sounds awesome.