Mark Griffin – Page 6 – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

Does the Lurk’s Reflexes ability make them impossible to surprise?

Does the Lurk’s Reflexes ability make them impossible to surprise? Or does the Lurk need to be aware of his attacker to ask the question ‘Who acts first?’

So how do you handle resistance when the way the character wants to resist is itself inherently risky? For example:

The PCs have infiltrated a fancy party using fake identities, but after some amount of hijinks the party are recognized by an old enemy who happens to be at the party. One of the PCs would like to resist being recognized, and he resists by saying he knew this enemy was likely to attend the party so they day before they jump him and injure him badly enough that he wouldn’t attend. Now this NPC isn’t somebody to fuck with, and on a good day a fight with him would still leave the PC injured. So do you tell your player this isn’t an option? Does this resistance roll require a flashback scene? Would you say it costs more stress, like 9 stress minus their roll? Would you let it go with the normal rules?

So I have a player who has a 3 action rating in tinker, and then a smattering of 1s and 2s.

So I have a player who has a 3 action rating in tinker, and then a smattering of 1s and 2s. This players flatly refuses to roll anything other than tinker. If all he wanted to do was make gadgets and chemicals that would be fine, but he tries to justify all actions with tinker. I have no problem letting him fight using tinker, I basically think of him as a gadget based wizard and all his tinker attacks are essentially techno spells. But he also wants to use tinker for his social interactions (I impress her with my gadget, I trick him with my gadget), perception (I created special goggles to look for this thing), stealth (I created sound dampeners), you name it. All resistance is done with Insight as well because he usually has some gadget he has created to avoid whatever bad thing. Any of these things in isolation would be fine, I appreciate creativity, but seen as a whole I see a player who just wants to roll 3 dice for every action. Of course I can, and do, say no (sorry, but if you want to lie to him, you’re going to have to roll sway at some point), but that just causes him to abandon the action and try a different tinker related move. Does anyone else see this sort of behavior? What do you guys do? Let it slide? Just say no? Something creative?

Even more fun, his PC got lost in vice and he’s going to make a slide to play for a few sessions. I can’t wait to see his sway fighting and sway climbing a wall.

So I’ll be continuing my score from yesterday at lunch in a couple hours.

So I’ll be continuing my score from yesterday at lunch in a couple hours. They currently trying to kill a vampire and retrieve an artifact. I haven’t decided exactly what the artifact does yet, though I have some ideas. Anybody wanna offer their own?

Some backstory.

– They were hired to retrieve the artifact by an occult trader named Sethsereth. He is clad from head to toe in silk scarves and speaks with a snakelike voice.

– The vampire’s real name is unknown, but he’s referred to as Needle because he always carries dozens of hypodermic needles with him wherever he goes.

– He has a workshop were he’s doing something with corpses, but the group doesn’t know what it is.

– He’s probably employed by the Forgotten Gods faction.

– Needle is skilled at using ghost doors to travel about the city unseen.

Make it weird.

So we played a session today at lunch with a small crew.

So we played a session today at lunch with a small crew. Just three PCs, Caveman (Leech), Cobalt (Lurk) and Gun (Cutter), and using a random score generator came up with an occult dealer looking to have a vampire be put down, but this vampire is holed up in a workshop doing experiments on corpses and is somehow related to the Forgotten Gods. Unfortunately I let the session get away from me, and the whole thing ended up being a lot of talk about plans! I didn’t even realize it was happening really, until I realized it was time to get back to work and we had barely accomplished anything. Truly I am ashamed.

There was talk about what kind of plan they wanted, and then they decided they wanted to rig up a corpse to explode. This turned into discussion of planning how they were going to get him to take the corpse, which turned into planning how to pressure a spirit warden to take the rigged corpse and store it in one of the depos awaiting destruction. And they never actually did any of it. It just goes to show that it requires CONSTANT VIGILANCE to keep PCs from going into planning mode, and spending a whole 40 minutes on it.

A few questions I had as well.

– How do you guys handle gathering info about a job? Do you require that be a downtime action? Do you just let them roll free actions before a score? Some other thing?

– When questioned about it, one player said he feels like if he plans beforehand then its free, but if he decided to flashback to rigging a body to explode mid-mission that it would probably cost him some stress. What would you tell this player? That’s just how the game works, you can’t pre-plan, planning for missions is stressful and you need to accept that?

– Do you guys have any interesting strategies to stop PCs from entering planning mode?

I’ve finally read through all the changes, and I’m super stoked for all the new changes.

I’ve finally read through all the changes, and I’m super stoked for all the new changes. As always, here are a few thoughts/questions I have.

Spider

– Great work Stras, if I actually got to play instead of GM, I’d now have a tough choice between the Spider and the Slide.

– Does foresight apply to healing long term clocks also? I don’t see why not, and rules as written is certainly does, just checking.

– I like all the abilities but I really wish they had one more ability that could be used during a Score. At the moment it’s really just Ghost Contract and Mastermind, which feels a little limited. Ideally I think they should have some power related to flashbacks. Like +1d or potency on rolls that happen during flashbacks.

Thieves

– I’m sad to see the Shadows ability be replaced by Patron, which appears on multiple sheets. Couldn’t you have a list of advances available to all crews and put Patron on that? Unless you really don’t want cults and smugglers to have patrons. It’s not even that Shadows was outstanding, I just don’t like the, albeit minor, loss of diversity.

Ghost

– I really like this class, and now am even more excited for the Hull and Vampire playbooks. Drain and gloom are my favorite new rules. I almost wish it was harder to get Possess, making it more unlikely that a ghost player will survive, and insuring those that do are suitably insane.

– The manifest ability makes it seem like a recently dead NPC (who probably hasn’t leveled as a ghost yet) could not be summoned via Compel, is that intentional?

Breakers

– Pretty sure if my crew could start over, they’d be breakers instead of thieves. Maybe I’ll float that idea past them.

– I wish they had at least one more fictional move instead of a mechanical move. For example thieves have Ghost Echoes and to a lesser extent Synchronize, Cults have Bound in Darkness and Glory Incarnate, Hawkers have The Good Stuff and Smugglers have Like Part of the Family and Ghost Passage. Maybe something based around lower tier factions being scared shitless of you and able to be bullied? Or maybe a better idea than that.

Cult

– I don’t know if I’ve said this before, but Bound in Darkness and Glory Incarnate are super cool. They are the measuring stick I think all other abilities should be compared to. Of course I realize not every ability needs to be that cool, but each crew should have 1 or 2.

– What does blessed do to weapons and armor, or to documents, gear, etc? Is it basically like +1 quality? Something cooler? Up to the GM or the players?

Hawkers

– This crew sheet is pretty good. It doesn’t have any abilities that quite live up to Glory Incarnate, but still solid. What I love is the Arcane Market crew upgrade. Somehow I wish it was a special ability instead of an upgrade to make it more prominent and give it some more oomph.

Smugglers

– Like Part of the Family is another amazing ability. All rules should endeavor to make BiTD more like Firefly or Star Wars.

– I want more from Ghost Passage. Because smugglers are all about movement, I really expected to be granted passage somewhere ghostly (though I guess that would step of the toes of the Thieves Ghost Echo, secret ghost passages seems pretty smugglery to me also ). I guess this does allow you to smuggle ghosts, but I’m left wanting more.

All in all, I’m super happy. I didn’t mention enough things that I loved, but there were many many more great things I didn’t mention.

Love the new rules, playbooks and crews, and I really appreciate all the new text being red. Thanks John!

A couple thoughts:

Is the intent of the Breaker ability Dangerous (as well as the Cult Chosen and Hawker Silver Tongues) that you can get 3 dots in an attribute even before you have mastery unlocked? Also, did you mean to change Everyone Steals on the Thieves crew sheet to have the same text?

I don’t love the Conviction ability on the Cult crew sheet. I wish it was something like ‘heal up to 4 of your stress’ instead of ‘heal half your stress’. In the best case you have 8 stress and heal 4, which still leaves me pretty stressed out. It’s pretty easy, even early on, to have 2 dice to roll (3 if you get help from a friend), and in the case when I have a lot of stress I’m going to reach for a big roll where the average roll is 4.5 and the mode is 6. In the case where I have less stress (ie 4), I’m unlikely to want to spend an action just to lose 2 stress. If, however, I have something like 3-6 stress, and I know an action would clear up to 4, I might do that instead of rolling. Another solution might be to make the ability clear stress AND give the bonus die. My feeling is that downtime actions are so powerful and so limited that I don’t know that I’d ever want to use Conviction as currently written.

What do you guys do with the drugs, essences, oils, poisons and potions on the leech sheet?

What do you guys do with the drugs, essences, oils, poisons and potions on the leech sheet? Can the leech make these things? Only after he takes the alchemist upgrade? Is it a downtime action to make that stuff? If he uses a downtime action to craft it, how many doses does he make (1-3 makes 1 dose, 4-5 makes 2, 6 makes 3?)? Can he fill his bandolier with those things for free? If he makes several doses, how long are they good for? Is the leech player the source for what those chemicals do?

There may be other questions I haven’t thought to ask as well. Tell me everything you’ve got. My leech character just took alchemist and is going to be all over that very soon I think.

A lurk PC of mine wants to acquire what amounts to a magic weapon.

A lurk PC of mine wants to acquire what amounts to a magic weapon. He wants a dagger that will momentarily paralyze anyone he wounds, and he wants it to be a permanent addition to his equipment list. Not wanting to just say no, I told him I’d think about it. I have a few thoughts, but what would you guys do in this situation?

Author: Mark Griffin