My play reports are less useful now.
https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/08/18/blades-in-the-dark-skirting-danger/
My players were feeling the change fatigue burning pretty hard, so I said we’d go back to an earlier version and play it (and it was still difficult communicating which version, and getting everyone on the same page.) I’ve committed to staying with the same version through the end of the year, and then we’ll see if they want to keep playing or not.
We had a new person, which was really great, since one stalwart wasn’t able to work out his internet connection and our other new person had a last minute conflict. We had two people, one of which had never played before. Character generation and version control took a while.
Then when we played they scouted a heist and didn’t like the smell of it, so we did some downtime, then scouted a different heist and quickly managed it.
Player morale felt low. It was a hard session for me. Sometimes you just have those nights, I guess.
https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/08/18/blades-in-the-dark-skirting-danger
It was good. I think we’re hitting “mid season” doldrums as enough setting has accumulated but there are a lot of changes that the accumulation creates resistance for.
I’m still having fun. Remember the good days when we could just steal things? Now we run a coffee shop / bookstore and count our enemies to be sure they’re not out of sight.
Sorry I missed it! Summer storms always seem to knock out the internet here.
Jack Shear I’m fortunate that the storm didn’t knock out my internet. The thunder was pretty impressive. I told my players it was good that I would die doing something I loved! (If lighting hit my machine, you know.)
Bryan Mullins Don’t sell yourselves short! You have the coffee shop lair, and also a pawn shop, and an oar in the stream of leviathan blood trade! Plus you’re working on taking over a legitimate theater operation and a sizable brothel network. =)
Bryan Mullins I’ve been thinking about what you’re saying here. Really, choosing to attempt to move up in tier is a choice, and not a requirement. It is totally legit to stay small and focus on heists rather than managing lots of business in down time.
Likewise, with the gang structure, players could theoretically leave the management headaches to the crew and play as a gang of another crew.
That’s where it’s helpful for all the scoundrels in a crew to talk it over and decide what they want to achieve (or agree to be loyal to a crazy bastard with a vision.) Ideally the PCs can handle some division of labor. Now that you’ve got a crew of 4 scoundrels, maybe next time it’s worth addressing the issue of who wants to focus where.
Andrew Shields
It’s not really supposed to be an indictment of your game. It’s more that it’s a combination of now feeling like I’m very conversant with the rules, and partly because I think Aldo is a sort of hedonistic, novelty-seeking mouthpiece that will never make it very in the wonderful land of org-structures because he’s got his heart out in front of his head. It makes him a great short-con man, and a wildly unpredictable opponent…that’s all to the good. It just means that until he gets the hang of it…he’s going to be bad at it.
Sometimes I’m just bad at the format. I want to plan, instead of just starting the thing, and trying to think my way out with flashbacks…it goes against my gamer training…
Example:
Start heist; Andrew – everything is good…except that ghost dog! Bryan – I bet the adepts told me about it? And…right about now…their distraction should be starting up…
Which makes that heist format come back to the fore…
Nice background image 😉
James Dudli Thank you for sharing it! =)
I still like the information gathering (in controlled dosage) before the heist. That’s where you guys ask questions that give me ideas for what could be there. And then I can of course add stuff in as we go that you can address with flashbacks.
That session didn’t have many moving parts in the heist because I agreed to knock off early, then ended up running to the allotted closing time anyway. That’s the wrong time to add complexity.
Am I right in thinking that fine equipment shouldn’t give us more dice, but adds to effect after the roll?
You are right, Jack Shear. Did I get that wrong somewhere? I wasn’t doing it that way to begin with, but I’ve been trying to hew closer to RAW for that sort of thing.
Speaking to morale too:
I wasn’t bummed, but a while back the sudden reveal to me that I didn’t know what version we were on…really kicked some of my personal enthusiasm out from me, and I feel like I’ve been trying to play catch up since.
Not sure where I got the idea that equipment added dice, but I’m re-reading the rules again as a refresher.
Jack Shear I was having equipment add dice, because that was more fun (in my opinion) and helped shore up the pitiful dice pools. I appealed to the community to help me understand how the quality thing was supposed to work, and I underwent thread therapy for a while, and now I’m trying to do it RAW. So, I confused you with my wayward ways.
Bryan Mullins Your personal enthusiasm is far more valuable to the game than codified accuracy and version control. =) That will ALWAYS be true.
Discussion of how quality helps.
https://plus.google.com/113881370051836623777/posts/hMQsfzDSyqX
Cool, now I just have to figure out what potency is/does! I may learn this game yet!
(Actually there were other threads too.)
Quality, potency, and scale work the same mechanically. The question is the source of the advantage or disadvantage.
With quality it is tools. With potency it is a special ability or inherent quality. With scale it is about numbers or physical size.
The more I read the more respect I have for the system as written. Very interesting choices were made in this.
It is indeed a great game! You might even consider reading the most recent version of it, which has undergone significant development.
You may even be able to find someone who will run it without any house rules!
Andrew Shields I worry if read two versions of the draft I will confuse them in play. Though, once the game is done, I think I would like to try it with zero house rules to see how everything works as written.
It’s a good game, I’m just having interruptions of other systems clogging me up. I like to have some system mastery, in order to keep from asking a million distracting questions…and so I can try to cook up game play things to try and pull while I’m working my boring job or whatever.