Playing the blades in the dark system, late game.
So a while back I post here alot, I ran two campaigns side by side, and ran blades all of one conference. I may have burnt myself out on the game, but the reason I stopped as, as a gm, once the crew hit tier three, all risk drained out of the game. So I was wondering how can I keep the late game/end game interesting and changing, or should I not bother and kill the games once they hit the point where they can kill lord scurlock, no matter what I throw at them?
So, one thing you can do is embrace the concept of “the 16 hit point dragon” from dungeon World.
Which is to say, even though Lord Scurlock is only tier three(?), that doesn’t mean the players necessarily have the power or ability to reach him, let alone hurt him.
I know it sounds like I’m picking on a very specific example, but I might suggest embracing this on a social/political angle as well. How does a gang make a dent in the Doskvol Militaru? How does a mere mortal survive consorting with a powerful demon? Start their effect at “none” and force them to push for every bit of effect they can muster.
On the 16 HP dragon tip, remember this bit from the rulebook:
“When the enemy has a big advantage, you’ll need to make a resistance roll before you can take your own action. For example, when you duel the master swordfighter, she disarms you before you can strike. You need to make a resistance roll to keep hold of your blade if you want to attack her. Or perhaps you face a powerful ghost and attempt to Attune with it to control its actions. But before
you can make your own roll, you must resist possession from the spirit.”
Even once the crew is Tier III, there should be plenty of things in Doskvol than can give them a bloody nose before they’ve had a chance to even act. If they have to resist before attempting anything, every character will quickly start racking up stress.
Which isn’t to say you should play in that mode 100% of the time, but it shouldn’t be too hard to make characters of any tier feel like they’re at risk.
It may surprise you to know your answer is in the first few pages. One of the basic tenets of the Conversation gives you all that you need to show the risks at any level. See page 6 – the three bullet points which say “The GM has final say.” That’s describing when it’s your time to say how dangerous and effective an action is, what consequences simply happen, as well as what requires a resist roll to do.
Note that Blades is very empowering for the players to say what might work, but not how effective or risky – and those things are your responsibility during the Conversation (where most of the gameplay actually occurs) – without doing all three, you will have trouble taking your actions. My advice: review and follow this page exactly as described so you can take your GM Actions- then observe how your problem goes away. (you might also review the text’s guidance on Follow Through, page 191, as well)
I agree that the game has in-built mechanisms for keeping the game challenging, but as a GM I too felt the game broke down once the characters got too powerful. The players did not necessarily agree with me, but I kept struggling more and more to come up with hard consequences as the game progressed. And downtime got messy when everybody had extra downtime actions and could finish long projectclocks pretty fast. I felt they sort of out-grinded the game and me as a GM. But the solution is pretty simple in my mind, I should have just been harder on everything from the beginning, tougher consequences, less xp, heavier injuries and so on. I think that is the best style for a long running game of BITD, while a one-shot or short campaign could benefit from a more relaxed “go easy on the players” attitude.
Thank you to thoose who responded. The issues with the advice is my issue wasnt I couldnt ‘beat’ my players, because lets face it at any point I could rocks fall everyone dies them.
It was that the mechanics broke down, once the crew had over a year (irl) of resources. Responding first to the comment on having the oponents score a hit first, my players had invested atleast one in each attribute, and had the bravos special ability which adds a restistance die. So for any given consequence they had atleast five resist die. Add things like iron will, bodyguard, etc to the mix. Then you have a crew who seek out consequences to_remove_stress at this point I needed to pile on harm to make them even care, or make the consequences spawn other new challenges.
I needed to be super careful when doing either of these things. The first if over done would feel arbitary and like the long form of ‘rocks fall everyone dies’. The second if over done would turn into a Benny Hill style comedy of errors which would frustrate everone because in trying to unlock a door for example they ended up having to stage a workers revolution, and they are not even out of down time yet.
On the other end of the scale, I could state that what they are attempting has zero effect.
This can resolve in two ways. The first is it is basically the gm saying ‘no’ instead of ‘yes, and’ which stylistically I dont like. I mean the point of roleplaying in BitD is to be supper badass criminals after all. Saying no substracts to the game, and ultimately doesnt fix the problem of the mechanics breaking down. Rather it is puting the mechanics of to one side and stopping the players from doing a thing.
The second outcome is the players with it as a challenge to overcome, and escalate things beyond sanity.
Ill provide an example of this, I wont use the murder of Scurlock because frankly that took multiple clocks and atleast 3 sessions and got complicated.
Ill just use a different example:
Lets say that for reasons of betrayal and revenge the crew want to kill Lord Rowan. They have met him in his tower and know he is largely fortified up there to fight off the horde who have turned most of six towers into hollows (dont ask). Now the players decide rather than killing him personally, theyll just destroy his tower killing him with it. Now if my cutter stated he’d destroy it by popping not to be triffled with and punching the tower using his 4 pips in wreck and high quality gear, cracking it in half. As a gm I stated ‘lol, its zero effect because its still a tower and none of that lets you one punch man style destroy the tower, plus its deadly consequences as people are throwing stuff at you from the tower’. And no one complained about because its clearly not a sane course of action.
But then leech says that he will buy a flash back to store explosives in the catacolms. The pushes the risk to deadly because xp then rolls his four_die to place them(now increased effect). The spider uses his plans item to find the weakspots, she also pushes it to deadly for that sweet sweet xp and rolls her four study die.
With this setup they roll to dentenate this explosive. Then as a gm, at that point I dont really have a choice Im launching Rowan tower into space.
Although, funny story, no one checked he was actually in his tower at the time, so I roleplayed Lird Rowan finding out aboutthis ftom city hall.
Now yes, there are all these follow up consequences and things that end up haplening, like city council declaring them terrorists, but lets face it all that means is more work for me as the gm. The players via their extortion rackets get money because by any definition this is a show of force. Yes they pick up heat but they rotate out one of the characters sending them to jail to reduce wanted level, which at tier three, in combination will jail bird gets them even more resources. And generally roll forward
My point here is by tier 3 the players are probably 50 sessions in. They have the resources and system mastery to resist most consequences, if one approach is zero effect they can find ways around it that are not, or complete clocks to make it have effect(and at this point they are swiming in coin, from their claims alone). This pushes things to the point where the only real hazard to the crew is the players themselves.
The only real risk becomes will I look as awesome as I want while doing this?
Unfortunely that gets pretty boring for the players and the gm.
I love this game, but honestly I still cant see how to make it continue to ‘work’ and be exciting at the higher levels, and which is sad.
It honestly sounds like this campaign is, for both mechanical and narrative reasons, ready to end.
Yes, and we ended it. Which is what prompted my question, when the crew reach that level, do I just end the campaign or is there a way both narratively and mechanically to continue the campaign? It’s sounding like the answer is no, which is fine, I was just hoping someone had a way to make the campaign continue.
My feeling is you’re correct that when the crew and PCs have that many abilities, there’s very little ability to challenge them. That’s the nature of fixed difficulty systems. Blades can push further than PbtA, but it will still hit a cap.
If you and your players want to keep playing in that world I would have the players start new PCs and a new crew in the New World Order that the previous crew created. They could even be an offshoot of the previous crew running a sort of skunkworks project. The previous crew would become a faction and clash with other factions in the metagame.
You could even give your players some control over the faction formed by their previous crew. With the understanding, of course, that their new PCs will come into conflict with it.
While I agree that it sounds like you hit a point where ending the game might have been the best call I disagree that it necessarily caps out just because your players succeed most of the time. Blades is already a game where statistically you are more likely to succeed than fail even at low levels. Part of the narrative aspect of the game is to force situations that have interesting developments and character choices even when succeeding. They can be forced into situations with interesting moral questions or just play out more complex story arcs where the “challenge” comes from uncovering a secret or layered mystered. Many of the preconned Tier 4 and 5 organizations are well suited to this kind of design. The Hive can become a massive Chinatown conspiracy machine or just as easily turn your next encounter into John Wick. Success isn’t necessarily less interesting than failure so long as its still fun for you and your players.
Also its absolutely fucking hilarious when someone fails a roll with 5 dice.
I really believe BitD should be a ‘deadly’ game, and that one should not have the same characters playing 20+ sessions in a row in any case. Jailtime, going on regular Vice-benders and severe injuries and down-time clocks is one thing, but maybe the crew members also leave due to differences in opinions?
I think for long and shorter play – it’s important to have a volatile roster of crew-members to play and many cool non-enpowering Downtime clocks – just personal ones…. (like the orphan trying to find her parents, the cutter trying to woo his love interest, or the academic struggling to keep his credentials and lodgings at the University).
Once in a while the Crew should need to fend off attacks from other crews. A dead crew-member adds to the story of Doskvol, the underworld and the spesific crew.
Effort is needed from the Crew and it’s players, and cost should not be downplayed, but the player’s are responsible for good gameplay as well. Zero effect never exists, as push yourself and abilities may always improve position and effect.