Hi. I’m late to the game, and I’ve searched, but can’t find an answer:
Stock Blades in the Dark seems to have a very unclear relationship between fictional time, and the score-downtime cycle. If a character goes on a vice bender for a “few weeks”, and the player is going to play an alternate character, roughly how many scores is that?
Please don’t answer just either “it depends” or “follow the fiction”. Obviously those, but I don’t have any benchmark to compare to.
I’m afraid if you are looking for answers beyond those you are out of luck. The choice to have a character leave for a while should they overindulge is ENTIRELY a narrative choice and is meant to be as such. The game doesn’t really track time unless you want it to.
By default I’d suggest that they are lost for a period of “1 score/downtime cycle” which is about as close to what you are looking for as can be provided.
Also: this choice should mostly be up the the player. What do THEY think?
Thanks. I was hoping something like consensus had formed, but I guess I’ll just pick some reasonable values and go with that.
I would really urge you to not pick an arbitrary value and instead let the player choose when their character returns. It should be a narrative-first moment, not a random dice roll.
It’s the other way around. Players should know roughly how long their characters will be out before they choose to be lost.
If it’s their choice when they return, they do. At least that’s how I feel
Downtime just means the time between scores. It’s less about objective time than about story beats.
This bender might be a lost weekend, or it could be a two month binge. The important thing is that it takes the character away from the action, but what that means to your players is up for grabs. For instance, it’s entirely plausible that the crew doesn’t move forward with a new score until everyone’s ready to work.
One of the cool things about Blades is that it puts players in control of plot. You just need to roll with what they decide to do and make sure those decisions come with consequences. If the crew has plans that can’t wait, then they’ll be looking for some talent at the last minute to fill in. If not, they might just turn the city upside down looking for their missing teammate. Or they might even be content letting business tick over without running a new score for a little while.
So maybe no one needs an alternate character after all, but maybe a rival faction or two advances their plans without the crew getting in their way. Or maybe we do bring in a new crew member, hopefully different enough that the crew is impacted in interesting ways. The point is, there is no “have to”. I’d say go with whatever the players want to do.