Author: Colin Matter

John Harper​ Stras Acimovic​ Sean Nittner​ or anyone with experience: any suggestions for running for a crew of cultists?

Last Friday I got my copies of Blades in the Dark. Today, I finished delivering them to my players with instructions to read The City Guide to Duskvol. We’ll see if they actually read that for me before we start our game this week.

Since I’m going to be running Blades as our weekly game starting this week, I wanted to check out the “People” tables to see what kind of characters I could get! I got some awesome and detailed characters when I engaged all of the tables from those fruitful pages.

However I found that the process of using all of the tables took too much time and too many dice rolls (and I did it a few times before I realized that I was getting too much detail). Since I don’t want to necessarily just roll on EVERY table for every NPC, but I like having a common starting place for the descriptions I have of NPCs (cuz that’s what inspires me), I wanted to set up some guidelines for myself so that I could get about the same kinds of information on many NPCs, quickly. So I decided to make a “template” that would give me a sketch of NPCs to use in my game. So, based on the tables found on pg 302 in the book, I made the following template:

A [2d6 Looks “description”], [2d6 Herritage ] [1d6 Looks “gender”] (optionally: with the [2d6 “… and Faction” from pg 307])

(S)He is [ 3 x 2d6 Traits ]

Prefers the application of [ 2 x 2d6 Methods ]

– Name (chosen from the name list)

This took a little tinkering, but I used this a few times and got NPCs in a timeframe that I liked and at a level of detail which I find fruitful! So, of course I want to share with you guys a sample of this template at work. The examples:

An Athletic, Dagger Islander Man.

He is Gracious, Daring, and Sophisticated.

Prefers the application of Study and Theft.

– Vellerys Slane

A Dark, Severosi Man with The Fog Hounds

He is Cold, Secretive, and Dishonest.

Prefers the application of Strategy and Violence.

– Helles “Thorn” Skora

A Young, Ambiguously gendered Akorosi with The Hive.

They are Defiant, Vicious, and Cavalier.

Prefers the application of Commerce (rolled 2xCommerce so they’re REALLY into it)

– Arvus Haig

I was able to complete these three NPCs in about 5 minutes, which is quick enough for me and gives me enough detail to start building a character on top of. I can also roll on the tables more to add further detail (which I might do to young master Haig).

So there you have it; my “quick” NPC generator template!

How have you guys been using the tables to help your games/prep?

Specifically John Harper​ but anyone who knows please chime in:

It’s there a master list of current kickstarter material? I’m having trouble locating what’s available currently.

Thanks in advance guys and gals!