Ran two games of Blades at Total Confusion (Totalcon in Marlborough MA). Second time running it at a large con. I’d say it was very successful. Started things in media res with some premades and I definitely trimmed the downtime rules. With identical starting scenarios I ended up with wildly different (but positive) results and body counts. One person bought the PDF of the rules while we were playing, another went to the vendor booths while we took a short break to pick up the rules and I know at least one other person asked if they had the book at the vendor booth.
I highly recommend a large printed map as just a visual grounding for all the players. I kept my prep pretty minimal, but I did have some themes and ideas I wanted to touch on, that I could weave in as the story veered left and right. Downtime I kept to a single indulgence of vices with no risk of overindulgence and let players assign one skill dot of their choice.
Nice! Glad it went well. I like your downtime hack for a convention game.
I was in one of those games, and I had an absolute blast. Thanks very much for running, Matt.
Also represent. Hot job, GM.
Rebecca W and Ben Morgan I was so glad to have you guys show up. Happy to squeeze in another session for you guys on Roll20 as we talked about if you’re still interested. Thanks for the kind words!
John Harper Thanks! Because it was in media res, I also didn’t spend much time introducing mechanics until they were needed and downplayed the importance of positioning and effect, just keeping track of that stuff mentally myself and letting the fiction describe it (until people expressed some interest in the rules beyond just a con setting). One interesting hack I came up with mid-game: I ran into a situation where there was a small score the group wanted to do because they wanted a part of that score to be something they could deliver as part of the larger overall score to close out the scenario. It was a short score and they didn’t have a reasonable fictional timeline where they could do downtime before a proposed meeting, so I just let them do a soft reset after that score where they could reset their load and any score-based abilities but didn’t get the benefits of downtime. Long story short, I let the fiction guide me and just did what made sense at the time and it all worked out. The players were very satisfied with the results.
I am definitely interested in adapting your streamlined downtime mechanics for future con games and one-shots.
I was in one of the games and it was awesome! Favorite game of the con, for sure. I thought the second score toward the end of the slot worked very smoothly.