Ok – I’m going to go ahead and share my actual play reports from my “Age of Blades” game, for those who may be interested. These are written for folks who are not super familiar with the Blades setting, so there will be some extraneous explanations for folks here.
So, as heretical as it may seem to some of you, I started my game using the setting from Blades in the Dark, with the rules from Fantasy Age for the system last night. I opted for this combo for two reasons. First, I could never get my head around the actual BitD system, despite playing a lot of PbtA games. It seems weirdly abstract in strange places to me. Second, half my group are fairly casual gamers who never completely grok the systems we play, so I wanted something super easy and straight forward, but with enough widgets/special abilities on the character side to keep them happy. I wrote up a simple classless version of FAGE that incorporated some elements of Blades, which so far has worked out pretty well.
I’m using the starting situation from the Blades book. The main gang that controls the district they operate in (The Crows) is in chaos due to a power struggle, and two smaller gangs (The Lampblacks and the Red Sashes) have started an open war. The PCs got hired by one of the smaller gangs (The Lampblacks) to break into the headquarters of the other one and steal their war chest. As a side job, the gang boss hired the whisper (weird, magicky character) to hide a creepy, evil ancient artifact in the enemy gang leader’s room. They were very suspicious of the artifact and spent a good amount of time trying to research it. The Whisper went to the Dimmer Sisters for advice, so now he owes them a favor.
One player is playing a Spider, the leader of the PC gang, and he wanted to double cross the gang that hired them (Lampblacks) and reveal the plot to the enemy gang (Red Sashes – who are of the same ethnic group that he is), but was overruled. It was also complicated because the leader of the Lampblacks is obsessed with one of the PCs and she has spurned him for a while, but she used that fact to manipulate him into upping their payment.
They cased the red Sashes headquarters, and the Spider went inside with an excuse to scope it out, so they determined where the most likely place the war chest would be (in the leader’s bedroom). My wife is playing the Lurk, their second story burglar, so she and the Whisper climbed up into the bedroom while the Slide (the “face” of the group) kept watch, and the Spider prepared to make a diversion if needed. The Whisper hid the artifact under the Red Sash leader’s bed, while the Lurk tried to remove a painting to get at the safe behind it, setting off a poison gas trap. They avoided the gas, but signaled the Spider to make the diversion since they thought the noise may have alerted the enemy leader. The Lurk got the safe open and stole the money plus some documents, and she and the Whisper escaped while the Spider distracted the enemy leader, although she is now suspicious of him and is having him followed.
They are hoping that the Red Sashes won’t realize it was them who broke in (they are a very weak gang still), but I think they’ll find out pretty soon. Now that they’ve taken sides in the gang war, they will get sucked into it more, while pursuing some of their own agendas.
Fantasy Age has organizational rules in the Companion book, so I’m using those to handle the gang on gang level play. Should be fun.