*Wall of text incoming. TLDR: Help me understand how to handle score planning.*
Hey all,
I’m a relatively new Blades GM, and have been absolutely loving the system, the scenes that it creates, and the flexibility that it all provides. Coming from a background of meticulously planned games and always yearning for a more flexible, improv-forward game, Blades is exactly what I have been looking for.
My group is still getting the feel for the game (we’re running our 5th session tonight), but I feel like the player’s have finally started to understand the amount of flexibility in the game, and their shared responsibility in creating opportunities that push their crew forward (rather than me just creating scores for them to go through) in the world. I tend to come to the table with a few skeletons of scores (that is, location outlines with some obstacles or dangers they’d encounter), but rely on the players (and their characters) decisions to ultimately create the score. I find it difficult to create meaningful, exciting scores in this improv-focused system.
Here’s an example from our last session: The players are in search of securing some more turf for their crew. They decided they wanted to steal some turf from their rival, the Fog Hounds. Having a target, I offered to cut to the chase, calling for an engagement roll if they would provide the plan and detail, or for them to gather information to help in their goals. The characters decided to Gather Information.
Through Gathering Information, the players wanted to know how to find their rival’s turf, and found that the Fog Hounds have a third party handle their turf in the Night Market – a property manager of sorts. They wanted more dirt, so through further Information Gathering, they found out that this third party has a nasty secret that he’d rather not get out: he is a pedophile with a preference for the children of drug-addled families (yeah, pretty dark).
The player’s chose a Deception score with the detail being that this individual wouldn’t get the service they requested, but would get the Crew’s plant and then get caught in the act. They rolled a critical, so they got through the doorman at a brothel known for its discretion as well as its selection of the “rare and exotic”, and we picked up the action with them sitting at the bar with enough time to get in position for their target to arrive.
As a GM, I couldn’t help but feel like they were trying to plan too much, but I didn’t know how else to allow the players to have control over their score, nor did I want to have an under-cooked score. On the one hand, they had created a very specific target and their weakness, but the rest of the score was a big question mark. The players walked away from the table smiling and celebrating their exploits, but I had a strange feeling telling me things could have gone better, that I had asked the wrong questions or missed opportunities. When do you guys say “enough is enough, let’s roll for engagement”? How do you create/decide/discern the obstacles that the players will have to overcome? How do you create your score?
I’m about the same number of sessions in as you. I found a similar experience at first. I think as the world gets fleshed out for the PCs it becomes more obvious what the scores are and what they should do to make it happen.
I’m assuming there will be more consequences chasing the gang over time that they will also need to deal with ‘putting out fires’ as a score.
I’d suggest trying to add more story hooks, via interesting items/documents/people within a score or free play. When the players are interested they will naturally want to find out more and this will flesh out details for them to use in their score planning.
One thing that I don’t utilize nearly enough when I’ve GMed BitD is the different complications associated with each territory. The rule book suggests complications and thematic stuff for each area, and that can be really useful.
Take a look at the contacts for each character and for the crew. How would that situation have been complicated if one of their friends was in the brothel, or one of their rivals?
It’s up to the crew when they want to go in on a score, and failing gather information rolls doesn’t just mean they fail to get answers to their questions. It could generate heat, or advance associated clocks. That could push them to spend less time planning and more time scoring, as it were.
But sometimes your players just roll well and get what they want. There’s not much you can do about that, just know that good luck doesn’t last forever.
I do feel like Gather Information kind of translates into “Hey, GM, help me flesh out a score here.”
I don’t think that’s a bad thing, especially since it gives in-story significance to the information gathering — that’s something that can have complications or Devil’s Bargains in interesting domains and in interesting ways.
In other words, it doesn’t need to slow down the story, or be “GM, invent something for me please”; it can be a worthy scene of its own. Particularly if you, and your crew, are willing to be creative about the scene, and not just throw everything on “Well, I ask my contacts if anybody knows something” over and over. It sounds very much like that’s how you played it, so it makes sense that your players had a blast!
Your guide here is the *score types*. When your players are ready to pick a type (e.g. Deception) and have a detail, then you’re ready to roll. But it makes sense that your players might not want to choose the most obvious option, but root around and look for more interesting details, for a score that’s more interesting to them in terms of gameplay and narrative.
The one thing to watch out for is for the players to leave all the creativity and heavy lifting to you, the GM. They should be coming up with awesome Info-Gathering ideas, reasons why doing something cool will turn up something new and cool, adding to the world and helping flesh the setting out. If you wind up responsible for coming up with all the ideas, that can be exhausting and less fun for you — so keep your players in the creative loop. 🙂