Yesterday I had a chance to make some pregens for one-shot scenario. It went pretty well although to be honest I had bit of a problem to come up with heritage and background but nothing too big. Players will probably come up with better when that time comes 🙂 Otherwise character generation went really fast! I did four characters in less than 30 min which is great!
I have some questions about gear. How many playbook items you can choose? Are there any limitation to how many general items can be have at the character generation or is it just about choosing the load?
You don’t pick any gear at character creation. Instead, you pick gear when you use it, up to the limit imposed by your load. You pick your load at the start of each score.
However you can describe custom gear at character creation if it’s important to you. Like, one of the items a cutter can whip out is a “fine heavy weapon.” Some people might want to define this up-front, e.g., “my fine heavy weapon is a silver-plated Severosi spirit blade.”
Okay. So even playbook items are sort of free to choose before a job?
Joni Virolainen Yeah, they are “sort of” free to choose before a job.
The way you actually play it, is that when you start the job you say “My character is loaded down with everything he’s going to need. Heavy load – everyone can see he’s packing a lot of serious gear” – but you don’t specify exactly what was packed.
Then, during the score, when something is happening, you specify some or all of the gear.
“From your vantage point in the clocktower, you see the patrolling guards. They’re about to round the corner and discover your buddy who’s still picking the lock”
“Oh, well, I sight down my rifle, and I take the shot. I’m going to shoot the guard and either kill them or, at least, distract them so they don’t spot my friend.”
…. and the player then colours in the “fine hunting rifle” item on the list, since we’ve now established that was one of the items they brought with them.
The players can do that – claim “I brought this with me” – at any time, up to the number of items that their load allows them to carry. Items in italics don’t count against that load.
The only time they can’t do that would be if you’ve already established in advance what they do or don’t have. For example:
“As you get to the door, security are checking for weapons. Are you carrying any weapons that they might find?”
“No”
(And even in situations like that, the players can still use a flashback scene to claim “No. I snuck in last night, and hid our weapons inside the grand piano. We aren’t carrying them through the security checkpoint, we’ll collect them once we’re inside.”)
Blades gives a LOT of freedom for players to improvise things on the spot, rather than having them plan ahead. This is what allows you to “skip the planning and jump straight to the action”, and just assume that the characters have prepared and planned for the job without forcing the players to prepare and plan.
If the players want something that’s NOT on their character sheet, THEN they will either need to have planned it in advance (and possibly use downtime actions to get it), or will need to spend stress to have a flashback scene where they explain why they have it.
OK, thanks! I thought that maybe playbook items might be a bit special so you only get one or two of those as a sort of signature items but that’s fine, too.
A bit related question. I suppose characters start with zero (personal) coin but their crew has a shared two coin. Is that right?
To your coin question, that is correct