Hi I am playing the Wisperer and I just want to know what are rituals. What they do. How do I learn them.

2 thoughts on “Hi I am playing the Wisperer and I just want to know what are rituals. What they do. How do I learn them.”

1. From what I’ve seen rituals are one of the more abstract, open ended, and potentially complex systems in this game. You can essentially develop a ritual for whatever you want, and the actions that you have to take to complete the ritual depend on your desired outcome and a number of factors that dictate how powerful the ritual is.

   Ultimately, you need to work it out with your GM. Tell them what you want to do and they’ll let you know what that means. The book outlines three questions on page 222:

   The GM asks you: “What does the ritual do and how is it weird?”

   After answering, you ask the GM: “What must I do to perform the ritual, and what is its price?”

   The GM answers, then asks the final question: “What new belief or fear does knowledge of this ritual and its attendant occult forces instill in you?”

   The book gives more details around these questions, and learning and performing the ritual can get complicated, but this is a good outline for you to think about before you go talk to your GM.

   I hope that helps! I’ve been spending some time trying to wrap my head around this part of the game too, but from the GM’s side of things, and I can tell you that it’s not straight forward. But as with most things in Blades in the Dark you’re supposed to reconcile via conversation at the table.

2. My group found this tricky, and I’ve seen that enough of the process is open ended that a sufficiently overbearing player can get away with creating some pretty overpowered stuff. A lot of us felt overshadowed by our Whisper when that player seemed to realize they could essentially weasel whatever effects they wanted, whereas the other playbooks’ powers were rather better defined (and bounded). Call it a cautionary tale, if you will.

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