Actual Play Prep : Ex-Legionnaires in Tropical Duskwall

Actual Play Prep : Ex-Legionnaires in Tropical Duskwall

Actual Play Prep : Ex-Legionnaires in Tropical Duskwall

At long last, with different players, in a different city, I’m finally going to run a game of Blades in the Dark.

As per long-standing tradition, I give Players the opportunity to tell me “Three True Things” about the world – this is basically their opportunity to add or remove elements they like or don’t.

After much debate, they decided on these :

– There is a high society, nobles are exotic “other” people whose lives are mysteriously, decadently different from ours

– There are airships, though they are largely the purview of nobles and the military, and the skies are as dangerous as the seas

– The game takes place in a tropical city, more like a cross between Karnaca, Camorr and Ashamoil,* and the weather matters

From this I noted a few more details :

– There are terrible, horrible, not good, very bad things living in the wilds, the waters and the skies. Among them, the leviathan

– Mermaids came up often enough in player conversation that they should probably come up in play… more like Lovecraft’s Deep Ones and fairytale Nymphs and Sirens (see terrible, horrible, etc.)

– Lots of other things that were quite clear from the start, but player conversation emphasized one way or the other

So I was wondering what people thought :

– Should I set the game in an altered Duskwall, or set it somewhere else in the world (John Harper​​, is there a city that might fit?) and what would be the implications of it all?

– Any thoughts or recommendations for running a group of ex-legionnaires turned arms dealers? What problems might they encounter? What advantages might they have?

– What do you think of the fact their current goal is to become something between the A-Team and Leverage, which sets them up to cover the same patch as The Lost?

As an aside, they’re building an ex-military group who somehow fell out of favor and are hawking stolen military weapons while they figure out what they did wrong and why people are trying to kill them… but the impression I get is that they’re looking to be something like The Lost

*from Dishonored 2, The Lies of Locke Lamora and The Etched City respectively

10 thoughts on “Actual Play Prep : Ex-Legionnaires in Tropical Duskwall”

  1. I’m actually going for a more tropical setting as well. It sort of combines Duskwall setting and Peshawar Lancers where the cataclysm caused the British empire equivalent have to move to their colonies.

  5. The Dagger Isles are kind of tropical (but without that lovely sunlight). Airships might be found in Imperial City among the very very elite.

    Or you could just make it your own altered version of Duskwall. Magical weather from the cataclysm can let you hand wave a lot.

  6. That’s more or less what I figured.

    It’s a tough call, though.  I quite like the idea of setting the game in an imperial colony in the Dagger Isles, but it would mean building a city from scratch and missing out on all the detail you’ve already put into Duskwall.

  7. Personally I would use a totally new city, perhaps even in a new setting. I just watched a pretty cool document about the history of British East Indian Company. Perhaps that might give you some further ideas? At least the weather was a factor since during the monsoons plenty of Company men died due to getting sick…

  8. Hm… it sounds like you should be playing Chris Toews’s game, Joni Virolainen… I think I’m going to chat to my players about setting the game in the Dagger Isles.

    I can imagine an Imperial city on the coast, once a naval port encrusted in the rock between the jungle and the hungry sea… I just need to figure out which gangs might have branches out there and which gangs I need to replace entirely.

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