Author: Mark Cleveland Massengale (SaveMeJebu5)

One of my players pointed out that the Level 1 Harm penalty (reduced effect) seems worse than the Level 2 Harm penalty (-1d). His thinking on it is: the one less die is just a chance of lower result, but reduced effect is always a lower result. Perhaps I misunderstand what I am messing with, but I am inclined to agree, and seriously considering swapping the penalties for Level 1 and 2 Harm. Thoughts?

EDIT: Another thing I am noticing too as I think about this more, is that the loss of a die hurts less and less as dice pools grow in size; unlike the reduced effect.

The crew had 6 Heat, then picked up 3 more. I filled up the 9-segment Heat track & cleared it, giving them +1 Wanted level (bringing them to 2). The walls are closing in on them.. or so it would seem!

I then rolled Entanglements, and realized they were back on the easiest-going list of Entanglements again. They really dodged a bullet by the reset coming after they gained 9 but before entanglements are rolled. Their roll would have been Arrest, but instead the entanglement they got from the 0-3 list was Cooperation (which didn’t apply to them, and so they avoided entanglements altogether).

Did I do this as intended (my reading says “yes”)? ie: Did they just get lucky and stave off their eventual consequences, or.. was I supposed to roll their entanglement from the 6+ list, THEN reset?

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Additional thoughts: I hoped that maybe the Wanted level affects the severity of the outcomes, so that if the same entanglement comes up at Wanted level 1 and 2, then it is harder to deal with at Wanted level 2. Seems the Wanted level on its own is meant to only affect law enforcement response though.

Follow up question: is it being too hard on them to think that all entanglements should carry higher pressure than usual at higher Wanted levels?

So my crew of Blades has taken reckless action during a score, resulting in a -2 status with the Unseen. They don’t even have a hideout yet! But yes, they made dubious choices, and now this tier IV faction is going out of its way to kill the crew. In the last session, the Unseen make it clear to the crew they are outmatched (they did get away, for now at least.. but it was really tense from their perspective).

So, one player decides to send a courier to ask to talk with the Unseen. The reply I narrated was a messenger saying “Where are you? Let’s meet.” and the player doesn’t say where they are, but agrees, specifying a place that is very public, and not in an area under their control.

I feel my metagame sense tingling here.. but.. am I not obligated to hit them hard with a surprise attack (as any self-respecting criminal group would probably do in this situation), or do I play it as an actual chance for diplomacy (since they aren’t actually at war)?

If I do hit them hard with a trap, how much character competence do I assume? Reason being, my thoughts so far are that perhaps I should suggest the things their characters might do to cover their butts and realize it is a possibly-deadly trap. My other idea is, simply tell them how the trap is sprung when the meeting occurs, and ask how they resist en media res. EDIT: third idea comes to mind. Tell them as players how the fiction might go to produce the result they and their characters want (improved relationship).

I ran a one shot for a group of cultist druggies (the PCs, not the players). They turned out to be quite a handful! But more than that I wanted to relate some observations I made.

It felt..odd.. to tell players to narrate the level of success they want, without telling them what levels of success they could ever hope for. When I told the players that they describe the outcome they create, and we will assign difficulty; it came back to bite me later when one player described shooting Baszo Bas to kill him. The player is like “I kill him in his face,” and I realized by all rights, Baszo, being the leader of a Tier 2 gang, would basically turn any 4-tick description (such as killing) into a 2- or 1-tick effect (he is the the leader after all, so him having an additional tier of difference makes sense). This created this awkward moment where he rolled a 6 for a “face killing”, and then the tier difference kicked in to reduce effect by 2, and disappointment/confusion resulted.  I explained it was armor, and magic wards, and it seemed okay, until..

An action later, when describing how the situation defaulted to that, since it had to be Desperate to cause any damage at all. I ended up feeling compelled to go easy on him because I felt sorry for him having no chance. I dropped the damage reduction before long (sort of like how the Escalation dice work in some games to let him do things)

Retrospect: I wonder if I shouldn’t have broken down the makeup of these rulings more clearly or not, from a game perspective. The fiction was there, but it felt like it would have bogged things down, and probably killed him. Or perhaps spent longer on mechanics at the start or throughout the game (I have been describing the rules a little at a time so far). Thoughts?

Also: Curious how long others are spending explaining the Blades rules during the first hour?