Right on.

Right on. So, last night at around 6 PM, I GM’ed my first ever game (period, not just of Blades in the Dark), and while our group may have missed some rules and some other things, may have messed up a few of the dice mechanics and whatever, it was more of a “Hey, let’s see if we like this and then we’ll fix things as we go!” type of situation. We had an absolute blast playing.

It was me as the GM, and then a group of 5 players from all across the world that I have played a variety of video games with for years. I sat down with each of them prior to this session to work individually with them on their character sheets, and I was very open to pretty much any idea as to what they wanted their character to be. Everyone was very satisfied with what they created, and the party ended up consisting of two Whisper, one Hound, one Lurk and one Slide. They created their crew in ~45 minutes right at the beginning of the session (many jokes to be had when naming it, was fun) and then we were off and running. We played out of the scenario in the Quick Start and they decided (at least, for now) to side with the Lampblacks in the ongoing turf war with the Red Sashes. Their first real score was to steal from the Red Sashes treasury. So, they all went separate ways at first looking to find information on the whereabouts of the treasury, and only found some generalities at first in terms of location. After that, the Hound and the Slide decided to scope the area out to try and find out when the area had the least amount of guard / attention, but to no avail. So, they went with a deception plan (although, it ended up being more of a mix between deception and infiltration, which was no issue with me).

The Slide and the Lurk decided to deceive the door guards of the building that they had found to be the building containing the treasury / vault for the Red Sashes. The Hound and two Whisper decided to play distraction game on the outside, the Hound taking wounding pop-shots with his rifle towards guards from an advantageous position on a roof top (at the cost of being spotted from one Devil’s Bargain), and the Whisper’s worked together to create a sort of magical show of noise and explosions to draw attention away from the building.

The distraction outside started off okay, but man it ended up in a huge mess. People were getting shot left and right, the one whisper ended up getting spotted while trying to cause some Mayhem (as punishment for him rolling six straight 1’s….), and the Hound ended up falling off a roof at taking some stress when failing another prowl roll trying to relocate his position to cover the eventual escape from the building. The Lurk and Slide ended up using Slip and Deceive to get their way into the building, and then rolled a few 6’s on the inside to find the exact location of the vault within the building. Once they reached the fourth floor (where I decided to place the vault), the distraction on the outside was still going on and Mylera was, in a very concerned and confused fashion, conversing with two of her brute vault guards (not right in front of the door, but a little down the hall from the vault) about the situation arising outside. Yet again, the two guys inside rolled and the action ended up critting, so they ended up using Slip to go right past Mylera and enter the vault, where I decided it was only fair to have nobody in currently as they had just rolled like, approximately a million 6’s in a row.

They only had a couple of options to escape once inside: They could either go back out the way they came in and not cause a ruckus, or they could bust through a window on an opposing catwalk to the hallway outside of the vault, Prowl down into a main alleyway and attempt to get away through a (via flashback and 2 stress to our one Whisper) smoke bomb setup down in that specific alley. They went with that second option and, once down in the street, a massive amount of chaos ensued with Red Sashes running in, prepared to kill the invaders. But once in the smoke, yet again, the Lurk and Slide rolled a 6 with some help, and ended up using Slip to tuck into a building and dip out the other side, escaping the scene flawlessly. The other three that were creating distractions ended up regrouping, planning the best escape route ever, apparently (due to another 6…), and then rolled out together with a Prowl roll to climb through a building and escape together.

This isn’t obviously as detailed as the session truly was, but I think it gives a general idea. The session lasted four hours and everyone at the end was entirely on board for another session, which we’re planning to do in a few weeks. Also note that this was the first active experience with a pen-and-paper RPG for many of us (myself included), and the others that had some experience didn’t have much (just a few D&D sessions under their belt). All in all, we had an incredible time and everyone is super excited to see how the crew can continue to grow and expand through scores.

Also, from a first-time GM perspective… this game is very good for the first timer to run, in my opinion. Yeah, I know I didn’t get all of the rolls 100% right, but I fixed that as I went along, and I know that maybe the narrative and situations could have ended up being more punishing, but I wanted to see what I could do while putting them in a pretty insane situation, and everyone ended up having an incredible time, myself included. There were no complaints, there was no whining when something back happened. Just adjustment and rolling to fix the issue at hand. Will give another play report after we do another session!

Also, enjoy the photo of our one whisper rolling five 1’s and a 2 while rolling actions, effects and resistance to injury from a Red Sash grunt.