So I gave it a try a month ago, and I want to say Blades runs fine if you start playing from the beginning and do character creation in flashbacks. I do want to give some advice that I’d give someone else (and myself) if they wanted to do this again.
There are a few things you do want to pick before you start, and I’d say they’re probably things like having your players grab a particular playbook, picking a name, picking their friends and rivals, and probably picking their individual faction statuses. The rest seems to be fine to flashback to, but I’d put the character creation page on the table so they know what extra stuff they’re entitled to and can fill in as it’s convenient to them in play.
And before anyone brings it up, YES, I let them pick special abilities and action dot assignments before a roll. Everyone’s OP in session 1, anyway; I also do it so the player knows what kind of vibe the crew is going for before making a choice.
But yeah it’s a pretty good technique for faster startup time. 😛 Hope it’s good for you if you use it!
This is cool. I’ll mention it as an option in the book!
John Harper Cool! I actually didn’t think this was that revolutionary an idea considering it’s the logical extension of not creating a crew your first session. But it does seem to be a setting for the game that solves a few problems.
Character creation is usually a really mechanics-first. And like Blades discusses, going the mechanics-first way can sometimes create bizarre fiction. So if you start with the fictional cues, and peel out (like a car) from there you can kind of understand the “Fuck yeah, that’s cool”s and “No, that doesn’t make sense”s of THAT SPECIFIC CAMPAIGN before you make a decision.