So having picked up a copy of Blades a few weeks ago, yesterday we ran through our first session. And it seemed to go really well! I decided to use the War in Crow’s Foot starting scenario and my players just dived right in! They’re playing a gang of Hawkers called the Crimson Snow and have already decided that they’re working towards eventually taking over the Red Sashes territory/role.
The gang currently consists of three members:
“Lord” Banks Bowmore, the crew’s Cutter, an ostracized member of the Bowmore family, implicated in a rather embarrassing incident involving a goat and some chickens and other things best left unsaid…
Hadius Silver, the crew’s Slide, a “merchant” from the Dagger Isles looking into expanding the family business
Vestine “Nightshade” Kingclaith, the crew’s Whisper, from a Skovlani military family, formerly a lecturer working at Charterhall University (perhaps until some rumors spread concerning their family after the war lead to them losing their position)
Their first score, which was selling some new product for Bazro Baz, went incredibly smoothly. Possibly too smoothly honestly, some clever planning and playing to their strengths meant that not much actually went wrong, and they succeeded in getting into a party hosted by a minor noble family and selling the merchandise to a wealthy young member of the Penderyn family, for them to sell it on to those among his friends who are into that sort of thing. Of course, the young mans family was less impressed on hearing about it, so they took a hit to their reputation among the City Council and the family itself. But I figure at this stage, they’re still relative nobodies in the city so I doubt there’ll be any actual consequences of that, yet.
But plans they have a plenty, and during downtime they set about starting some long-term projects – mapping the Red Sash drug supply lines, and analyzing the leftover drugs in order to replicate the product in the future. They’re also looking into getting a “Chemist” expert to help them make and analyse the drugs they intend to sell. They seem to have really grabbed onto the kind of “self-directed style” of Blades. And i’m fascinated to see how it all plays out honestly! 🙂
As the GM I did have a few questions for others GMing Blades:
1. How do folks go about coming up with devil’s bargains that players are willing to actually take? It might have been that they didn’t find their first score overly difficult, but they seemed very resistant to the idea of having to deal with some sort of consequence even if they rolled a 6. I think they’d be far more likely to simply push themselves if they wanted an extra dice.
2. How do you go about sorting out the difficulty of scores? Our first one was easy, and that felt like the right way for it to go – their approach was good and they rolled well. Would you deliberately try and ensure the next score is more taxing, throw in some curveballs? Or should I just go with what feels right score to score? And let the difficulty ramp up as they piss off more factions in Doskvol?