Just an idea, I’d like to know if it could work.
Let’s say I have ten friends . Each of them is a different character , but they all decide to be part of the same crew .
Now , one evening maybe there are some friends , and we decided to play a score .
The next evening , with different friends , we make another score . This way you could keep tied to the same crew and the same game different players and allow a game in the long run , independently of the availability of all the friends for each night .
Would it work ?
Can’t see why it wouldn’t. You might want to slow down crew advances, and make sure that information is shared about acts which impact changes in relations between groups…
So the notion of a rotating cast seems reasonable. There’s circumstances where your blade isn’t fit to adventure anyways. I mean the rules already have suggested that you play an NPC from your crew when a character goes on a Vice binge (or wounded in the hospital). But it’s more complicated than just that.
Coming from a West-Marches, troupe-style RPG background and seeing what it took to run this game in a traditional RPG, I think Blades in the Dark tends towards harder than traditional in some regards. Especially with it’s “make up narrative rules as you play” which means consistency between parties is all the more complex. (Complex. Not impossible, though!) From the GM perspective you’ll have to keep A LOT of things in order. Get ready to prep. I suspect you’ll know Duskwall better than John Harper does. 😛 You’ll be doing a lot of legwork keeping the worldstate consistent between parties and NPC/faction relations.
You’d also have to figure out a consensus on how to handle events “off-camera”. Is the crew’s base of operations considered “safe?” IE: as a player finishing a score and kicking it in the base of operations, will I be alive next week? PvP will also probably come up so be prepared for that.
By the way– thanks for asking so many interesting questions!
we talked about this in the hangout last night. one thing that came up is that this game has a built-in excuse for any given PC not to show up any session: Vice.
also, you’ll want to do the experience tallying at the end of the session as opposed to beginning of the next.
Perhaps a friendly faction picks you up as a standin for a job. There’s a lot of drama that can be done from that angle. Even more if it were an unfriendly faction to your crew.
I like the idea of different game groups being part of the same crew… The actions of one can have consequences that affect the other group… Following with the example of the base of operations what happens if because of the action of Group A the base is attakec by some other faction while the Group B is playing?