Has anyone spent an extended span of time (a session or more) purely in what’s described in the book as “Free Play”. I’m trying to conceive of how well Blades would work in a scenario where “scores” are few and far between. I’ve had extensive experience doing the Score -> Downtime loop but not much with how long and how well Blades stands up during “Free Play”.
Has anyone spent an extended span of time (a session or more) purely in what’s described in the book as “Free Play”.
Has anyone spent an extended span of time (a session or more) purely in what’s described in the book as “Free Play”.
My group spends hours in the freeplay that exists between spending Downtime tokens. Everybody is really digging on getting to engage with NPCs and learn about them. It works well, the only thing to watch for is anything that drives up Stress.
Listening
Absolutely we have. Our gang’s web of associations has gotten so wide and complex at this point that after downtime, there’s almost always a full session (4+ hours) where the chief takes the temperature of all the gang’s associates to figure out the best choice for a next job, and everyone else chases after personal pursuits that wouldn’t really work as job-sized “club business”- dealing with personal friends, acting on something that happened during downtime, etc. Sometimes, we even spend a full session on downtime, too- occasionally someone’s Vice roll or Long Term Project spins out into a complex enough scene to merit zooming in.
It stands up great. For me, I just think about which risks should be present when they don’t do things as dedicated downtime actions, and set position/effect accordingly. I basically let players take downtime actions without consuming an action if they go into free play territory, where i frame the usual benefits behind action rolls. These carry similar risks to actions in scores. While harm is less likely, there is still loss of this opportunity, or complications which mean the situation must change to continue, as examples
Essentially, I’ve been thinking how well it would translate to my Shadowrun campaign and while Blades seems on the surface to serve that kind of play quite well, I find those missions that can be solved in a neat Downtime-Score-Downtime bow are few and far between.
Spending two weeks guarding someone doesn’t fit, neither can an investigation, or a mission with multiple targets. Even if you were to shrink “events” during those missions into Scores, there’s no Downtime opportunity because the show must immediately go on after each Score is done.
Dylan Durrant For a cyberpunk PBTA game like Blades, check out The Sprawl, which has its own job system which is more setting-specific and might appeal to you.
Dylan Durrant​ it should interest you then to know a large bit of that came from playing using Blades in the Sixth World setting. I.e. Runners in the Shadows that I’ve been working on.
What you described is one way to look at the options. Free play does what you want. But all I can say now is come play a session with me (I can show you better than I can tell you)