June 2018 – Page 2 – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

Blades in the Dark – Session 10 – The Crimson Snow

So after missing a couple of weeks due to players being on a work trip – we dived back into the adventures of our, still largely drug-less, Hawker crew, The Crimson Snow. After another block of investigation and pondering whether now perhaps might be the time for them to try and establish a reliable source of product to sell, in the end, they settled on some cheap and quick profit by ambushing one of the carriages through the city bearing Red Sash drug shipments. Thanks to previous investigations and information discovered during a score – they were able to select an ideal location to waylay one of the Red Sashes regular shipments – a road through Coalridge that seemed only lightly trafficked. The gang managed to talk Laroze, their contact within the Bluecoats, into sneaking them a couple of disused uniforms – the plan being for Hadius and Banks to wear the uniforms and stop the carriage (under the pretense of asking for a bribe) while Vestine secreted themselves in a shadowy alley in the hopes of clambering onto the carriage once it was stopped.

A storm hit the city as the crew assumed their positions, limiting visibility – just perfect for a carriage hold up. When the carriage approached, Hadius flagged them down, backed up by Banks, as Ves began sneaking up from behind. The no-nonsense driver, seeing they were being accosted by Bluecoats, pulled a bag of coins from the carriage and inquired as to how much they wanted to let them past. The other Red Sash inside the carriage kept his attention on the Bluecoats, affording Ves a perfect opportunity to sneak onto the carriage. Unfortunately, they had a great deal of trouble with the rainslicked back of the carriage, and landed heavily on the roof after climbing up – alerting the gang member inside. Banks, spying Vestine fall on top of the carriage, marched past the driver and Hadius (who continued haggling over the bribe), opened the carriage door and beat the gang member unconscious with a blackjack. The driver immediately turned to see the source of the commotion in time for Vestine to slip down from the roof into the seat beside him – unfortunately for Ves, they actually did slip, leaving them poorly positioned to accost the driver, who drew a blade and stabbed the would be ambusher.

Seeing the driver attack his compatriot, Hadius drew a pistol and shot the driver, stealing his coinpurse and kicking him out of the carriage, before taking control of the carriage. Though not an experienced carriage driver, Hadius made up for it with an uncanny understanding of the intricacies of an Akorosian goats mind. They made it to Charterhall, having changed on route, only to be accosted by a pair of actual Bluecoats. Thinking on his feet, Hadius offered them the entire bag of coin the carriage’s former driver had carried to leave them to be on their way. As usual, his fast talking worked a treat, and left them free to enter Crow’s Foot. Rather than take the carriage back to their hidden lair – they decided to make a switch at the Lampblack’s guild house. They met with Pickett, Baz’s second, and discovered him to be quite unlike Baz – distrustful and taking an instant dislike to the crew – he took awhile to come around – the Snow in the end, offered possession of the new carriage and its battered remaining Red Sash occupant, in exchange for borrowing a carriage to shift the drugs to their lair.

The crew marveled, once back at HQ that the heist had gone rather swimmingly. And set about celebrating their new haul and the options it might give them for the future. Meanwhile, Lord Scurlock, in the basement of his manor, busied himself finishing the last step in a dark ritual, facilitated by the artifact recovered from the Lost District by the Snow. What grave consequences would their unquestioning assistance given to this sorcerer bear? Time would tell…

GM notes – Fun session this one – I’ve been keen to run a carriage heist in Doskvol from the first time I discovered Blades and it went great! Some great roleplaying, an unfortunate streak of failed rolls by Ves we painted as due to the inclement weather, and all in all, a fairly easy haul. Was a short one though, so atypically, we actually got through downtime at the end of this session, but this gave me a good opportunity to remind them of the clock they set in motion by assisting Scurlock in a prior score – their most ambitious to date, which had been quickly ticking along in the background. “Something Awakens…” was finally filled in and… I called it a night there. Looking forward to unveiling the fairly major event I had in mind for this one at the start of our next session as well as finding out how they will react (characters and players both!) 🙂

https://imgur.com/a/FvYOMT3

So the above is the first real big step for what I’m hoping to be a hefty hack of Blades in the Dark. It’s based off of characters and alien species from the Animorphs series. These are really early version I wanted to put out while I work on the main text explaining the extra rules of morphing and yeerk invasion junk. I guess all I’m doing right is gauging interest and concern over whether some of the special abilities and xp triggers need revision. XP triggers were a particular struggle.

This is my first hack for Blades so hopefully it’ll be adequate at the very least.

https://imgur.com/a/FvYOMT3

Just finished my second round of playtesting for Fangs, Plague, and Gunpowder! The major takeaways:

* I think I have it to a place where people can make their characters fit into the world with about a page worth of star-wars style scroll read by the GM and a 2-page reference. Those resources need to be folded into the main game document.

* Oops the character sheets got super messed up in the PDF export! Gotta… figure that out, I guess.

* A brief write-up of variant rules for 4 hr one-shots would be worth writing.

* I need to resist the temptation to add a mechanic to a game that’s already working well, but gosh I’d like to work in something like Tier to give the GM/Players a yardstick for making judgement calls.

Hoping to have an update to put some polish on all this in the next few days. After that it’s “just” getting the art and layout sorted!

https://itsdanphipps.itch.io/fangs-plague-and-gunpowder

So, this happened: my crew – the Nameless, are smugglers.

So, this happened: my crew – the Nameless, are smugglers. Their lair is/was an old rail car. They are in contention with the Fog Hounds, from whom they stole a couple of lucrative scores. They are currently Tier 0/Weak

During one score, the street was awash in blood (7 heat) and for Entanglements I rolled: Show of Force.

_A faction with whom you have a negative status makes a play against your

holdings. Give them 1 claim or go to war (drop to -3 status). If you have no

claims, lose 1 hold instead._

As they had no claims, they lost one hold. Okay, on to rule #2:

If your crew is Tier 0, with weak hold, and you lose hold for any reason, your Lair comes under threat by your enemies

Under threat by your enemies? Their location was not secure or concealed. I ruled (perhaps too harshly) that the Fog Hounds, as a reprisal, burned their lair, leaving the crew “lairless” and that to establish a new lair would require Tier +2 coin or a score.

I further ruled that with the crew “on the run” they were limited to a single downtime action (without spending rep/coin) until they could establish a new lair.

Anyhoo, just curious how others would have adjudicated this one.

When an Unseen is discovered, whoever learns their identity forgets that in a few moments.

What can PCs do about this, especially if they don’t know about that arcane ritual effect? Is it something they can resist?

I ask because my scoundrels have taken a job that requires them to bust some Unseen trying to infiltrate the Spirit Wardens. How can they do that if they, and everyone they tell, forgets in a few moments?

forgive me if this has been asked before but: what’s the best way to design a playbook?

forgive me if this has been asked before but: what’s the best way to design a playbook? i mean this in a fairly material sense; a lot of people have generated very pretty sets of playbooks, and i’m curious what the best software is to do that with and if there’s any advice folks have to offer about design. i’ve been thinking of writing a post-apocalypse science fantasy game for a while and i’d like to start putting things together!

I heard a new swear in Doskvol today: “Slit the Ink Sea!”

Thanks for the tips last time folks!

Thanks for the tips last time folks! This week’s question: The Bogeymen are heading into the sewers to take some Turf from the Dimmer Sisters. (A magnificently bold and stupid move). We’ve established that ‘grey-skinned mutant humanoids live down there already, but what horrible complications could arise as they try to take the Duskvol Sewers? (I’m using Ryan Dunleavy’s map).

You think this is the only place with weather?

You think this is the only place with weather? We’re a coastal city, of course we get hammered with great storms and the like. Do you never look up to see the great gusts of energy boiling away as sheaves of ghosts are hurled through the defenses of the lightning towers? If you listen, they wail as the energy tears them apart. It was a wind that blew them into the city, but not a wind on this side of the Mirror.

I didn’t realize there was weather on both sides of the Mirror until I was on the Fifth Star, one of the Strangford leviathan hunter ships, before I captained the Shiv. A blind old man we called Seeker knew more about the hunt than anyone alive, and he growled to me that weather is the same on both sides of the Mirror; if there is low pressure, then the high pressure will flow into it. That’s wind. Everything’s built on that. Like gravity, everything drawn to the low point. That’s why the climax of a hunt was so often a storm.

Now when I sense a shift in the weather on the backside of the Mirror, I wonder who is making a low point, and what they’re doing with that energy. Changed how I saw Whispers and their rituals, that’s certain. As the weather is fickle, I realized that what they do leads to consequences we’ll never understand.

From Captain Nyala’s personal correspondence to his son Jack

Uh, hi.

Uh, hi. First time poster. I’ve been playing Blades with a small group of friends for a while now, and it’s just been the best time ever. So after scrounging around for information and hacks (curse me for being late to the Kickstarter, longing stare at Iruvia supplement), I decided to try to adapt one of my projects to be a Blades hack. Writing and storytelling aren’t my strong suit, but I love world building and making characters, and I’ve always loved how Blades sets out the world and NPCs for use in games.

This thing is still very much being worked on (I’ve never done a straight-up hack before, only a homebrew Dungeon World race) but I hope it makes some sort of sense.

So, uh, yeah! Thank you for looking.