Hi everyone, after running my second session of Blades in the Dark I have a couple queries and I could use some advice.
To set the stage, the players have opted for a Crew of Hawkers consisting of a Cutter, Leech, Spider, and Whisper. My first question stems from the fact that none of them have chosen a physicker or other healing type NPC as a friend or contact. Should I encourage them to create a consort capable of reducing harm sooner than later as a crew upgrade, or suggest that the Leech take the Physicker special ability as early as he can?
I don’t think it is incumbent on me to adapt to their strengths and weaknesses, because as far as I can tell the rules are intent on the GM not pulling their punches. I can also see that it might not be a huge deal if they don’t have immediate access to a healer, but I don’t want to run into a situation where progress stagnates because the PCs are spending half their downtime actions acquiring a temporary asset to lick their wounds. Any insight would be appretiated!
My second question involves drugs, rituals, and alchemy. The Whisper and the Leech are interested in developing their product together, with the Leech creating an alchemical enhanced by the ghost field by way of the Whisper. It would make sense that they are able to produce something of a pretty high quality, since they have taken The Good Stuff as their crew’s special ability, a workshop as a crew upgrade, the Leech has Alchemy, and the Whisper has Rituals.
It’s great that they’ve envisioned this cooperation and the drug they’ve come up with is really cool (an addictive hallucinogen that kind of inverts colours, creating the illusion of daylight, along with euphoria that dissipates into anxiety and aggression when the drug starts to wear off), but I’m afraid of making the operation too complicated. The material components include Leviathan Blood, which they can acquire through their crew’s smuggler contact, and a freshly deceased body, which they will basically pay heat for or take one from a recent score that included murder. The Whisper extracts the spirit and the Leech does some weird chemistry using the blood and the spirit to distill or extract (the details haven’t been decided yet) and then the Whisper takes the empty body to feed to his ghost friend for an entirely different purpose.
How should we handle this? I wanna say that, due to the complexity of the alchemical, a four or six segment clock should be required. The Leech can contribute with crafting and the Whisper can contribute with ritual (or should the Whisper be crafting as well, and then have to perform his ritual for ghost feeding as a separate action?).
More questions arise from this situation: How can I make the teamwork rules apply to downtime activities? Should I try and simplify this, or are the extra actions necessary due to the complexity of the drug? Should the cost of producing the drug be reduced due to The Good Stuff, Alchemy, and the workshop upgrade, or should those features strictly effect the quality?
Thanks in advance for any tips you can provide!
Re: The physicker. You have a Cutter, who has Sawtooth as a contact. You have a Whisper, who has Quellyn as a contact. Your Leech has Stazia as a contact.
Every playbook gets all_five of their contacts. They just have more nuanced relationships with a couple.
I’d say you’re covered on this concern.
One approach:
Have the Whisper complete a long term project to extract a spirit in such a way that it is compatible to go into the drug (perhaps they need to shred the spirit into smaller pieces…).
Then have the Leech craft the drug with that rare ingredient.
Use the magnitude chart to calculate the minimum Tier level of the drug and then use that to calculate the maximum amount of coin the Leech would need if they botch their crafting roll. Better rolls, abilities, workshop, just increase the chances that the Leech doesn’t have to spend the maximum amount of coin for the drugs.
+Arne Jamtgaard Thanks for the info, I definitely did not realize that! Likewise, do crews get access to all of the contacts listed?
Omari Brooks That’s fairly close to what I was thinking, but reversed. I would say that the Leech starts a long term project to create the extract or tincture from the Leviathan Blood, and then Whisper does his ritual to pull the ghost from the body and implant it into the fluid. So it’s more about having a liquid that is a suitable vessel.
I feel like it would make everything a lot simpler if I just created a long term project with a 6 segment clock for them to both contribute to. I’m guessing they would both need to spend their own downtime actions individually to work on the project, but is there any way to adapt the teamwork rules into this process? Like, if the Leech wants to lead the action (and risk taking stress) can the Whisper contribute his dice, and vice versa?
I’m mainly just here to say: these are some AWESOME ideas! I like the colour reversal concept, and maaaaay well be stealing it wholesale… 😉
I would definitely not give PCs free access to every contact on their sheet. If they’ve marked the Physicker as a friend and show up bleeding from a gunshot wound in downtime, yeah he’ll fix them up no-questions-asked. If they haven’t, he’s gonna be like “yo what the fuck stop bleeding on my floor” and it’s gonna take a Sway or cold hard cash to get that roll.
To turn a Contact into a Friend should take either a long-term project or a favor (i.e. a job.)
Nathan Dorey By all means, go for it! I think my group is going to be experiencing a slightly more psychedelic version of Duskwall than most.
Adam Bloom That’s a good call, I’ll be sure to make them put a little effort into getting help from any of the peripheral contacts.
One thing I considered is making the possessor ghost on the Whisper sheet (who said Whisper chose as his close friend) the ghost of a physicker, but in order to utilize their service the crew will have to find someone for them to possess.
But my question still stands, should I encourage the crew to gain a physicker as a consort or is harm less of a concern since the PCs can literally resist anything?
It really depends on whether you allow resistance to avoid ALL harm or just reduce the level.
My crew are in a similar situation (just minus the Whisper), and their Harm has been slowly building up. To be fair, they’ve had some bad Resistance and Indulge Vice rolls lately, too, so they’ve had no choice but to cop the damage.
(Incidentally – the Leech has only just now chosen their special recipe from Alchemist, and they chose the vitality potion from the book. That should help a LOT…)
I reckon that you can offset the fact that they’ll be using a lot of Recover downtime actions by making sure they make enough Coin on jobs. If they make enough, in my experience, they won’t mind spending it on a lot of extra actions.
Adam Bloom Right, I think that’s a discussion I’ll have at the table. I’m leaning towards a middle ground, like maybe level 1 and 2 harm can be completely resisted, but 3 goes down to 1, and 4 goes down to 2. I want to encourage them to go hard. At the same time, I love the conversational and collaborative leanings of this game so hashing that out with the players seems like the right thing to do.
Nathan Dorey Yeah, I suppose it’s bound to happen. I’d definitely prefer the PCs to rack up stress and take a trauma or two to give them another means of gaining XP. Plus, it seems like it’s easier to reduce stress than recover from harm.
If you don’t mind me asking, how difficult are you making it for the Leech to craft the vitality potion? How do you reflect the Rare drawback, is it just an acquire asset action?
I’m having a hard time reconciling the results from the Magnitude tables in the book. For example, if we look at Quicksilver (one of the drugs found under Sample Creations) as an example of a tier 4 drug, we can see that it allows you to see into the ghost field and take a bonus die to Attune, with the consequence of level 2 harm. Looking at the Magnitude chart, what factors contribute to the tier 4 rating? Is it strictly tier and quality in this case?
I kind of feel like ignoring the tables for this one. My players have the Hawkers special ability “The Good Stuff” which strait up tells me that their product is their tier + 2 (which equals 2 right now) so what does that mean in terms of magnitude? When their tier increases, how does that reflect in their product? Is it just more attractive to higher tier clients, or are the effects more potent? I suppose the question is whether quality is supposed to reflect the types of people who want the drug vs. the actual effects of the drug.
The Leech can craft tier 2 formulas by default since he has Alchemy and the crew has a workshop, but if he exceeds the product’s tier with a good enough right crafting roll does that result in a higher tier?