Author: Neil Smith

“This is better than EastEnders!” [**]

The eight-week playtest game of Blades in the Dark has now finished at MK -RPG. Some final thoughts on the game and how it went.

* It was enormous fun. Everyone had fun, including me the GM. All the players are invested in their characters and are champing at the bit for me to run a sequel block. That’s a good recommendation!

* Generating scores is wonderfully easy. At the start of the last session, the PCs decided to do something at the Duskwall university. A few rolls later, they were off to grab all the Leviathan blood supplies and electroplasmic crystals from an experimental lightning tower in the bay just outside the barrier.

* Flashbacks are good and powerful, though there’s always the temptation to slip back into trying to plan things. The players did say that when they spent some time doing some Gather Information and planning, the following heist seemed to go better than ones with less planning. That could just be my style as well, with the GM slipping back into the “planning is good” mindset.

* One question was how nested flashbacks could go. This was prompted by Dash, our Lurk, finally betraying the crew in the midst of their final job, and sequences of flashback-within-flashback-within-flashback of him trying (and failing!) to get some other PCs to join him selling out the Luddites to the Crows.

* The Stress track is long and can be a difficult resource for players to manage. The biggest niggle was when players ended up with nearly-full Stress after a job and were faced with the dilemma of using all their downtime actions to reduce it, or doing something more productive knowing they’d stress out at the start of the next job. Some of them would have liked the opportunity to acquire Stress in downtime, leaving the character traumatised but effective for the next job.

* We talked a bit about XP. Each role has a different way of gaining XP, depending on their nature. With six players, and six roles, these different “solve problems this way to gain XP” drives led to the players having to balance their desire for XP against keeping the game moving and the group cohesive for the sake of the other players. We thought that, especially in larger groups, doubling up on roles would reduce that, while the different playbook abilities would keep the characters mechanically distinct.

[**] For our colonial cousins, “EastEnders” is a long-running BBC soap opera, set in London’s East End. The quote arose during the shenanigans of the Lurk trying to gain support for his betrayal.

Rules I don’t use

I thought it might be useful to mention a couple of things that haven’t made it to the table.

Hunting grounds: the crew have some, but they’ve never come up in play. Between sessions, I generally create a couple of Score and a couple of Claims the crew could go for. But none of them is based in their hunting grounds. It’s not clear from the rules how they should be used.

Downtime faction clocks: between session, I just run over the list of factions that the players are concerned with and think what they would do, and what would happen, to make the game interesting. I’m not sure how faction downtime progress clocks would be helpful.

(I’ve used clocks during scores a few times, which has generally gone well. The main problem is when the events in the fiction change the situation so the clock is no longer relevant. Very often, I just wave hands and say when an ongoing attempt has either succeeded or failed.)

Any ideas for scaling on Magnitude of magical effects?

Last night, our Whisper (in an act of desperation) summoned a huge rainstorm in the middle of a Leviathan-hunter-captain’s ballroom to destroy some paintings displayed there.

I kind of plucked ‘4’ out of the air and narrated this torrential horizontal rainstorm in the room, with some people cut by the glass blown out of the large windows. Several paintings were destroyed.

Does that sound reasonable?

The Whisper took harm in the process: some as a Devil’s Bargain, feedback from the wards that they knew to be there; some as secondary drowning as he couldn’t quite get the summoning of water quite right.

(This gave the Slide an opportunity to get the rest, but the pair of them were captured. The other two PCs on that part of the job had already buggered off for their own reasons. But they did the job, so the crew now have a powerful demon serving them for a week and a day, which might be useful when it comes to rescuing the two captured ones.)

Session 5 of the Luddites playtest game. The AP report is below.

Playtest comments

* The new Assist action works well. We like that.

* The score generation tables are excellent, the claim ones slightly less so. Scores are easy to come up with, especially when combined with the Concept Cards I use for locations and characters. That’s all really bringing Duskwall to life.

* The rumours/background events rolls are also fun.

* I was told (rightly) that my selection of Actions to roll is uneven. The only place they’re described is in the chargen summary page. There’s a lot of white space on Player handout 1. Could you fit the half-column of Action descriptions on the player handout?

* High-stress characters in downtime are in a quandary. Indulging their vice may only clear a few stress points, leaving them prone to stressing out early in the next score. What they’d like to do is get the “out of action from trauma” out of the way in downtime, perhaps losing downtime actions as a cost. The few players with trauma zero characters really felt this, as playing to trauma is a good way to gain XP.

* What’s the timing between the crew rolling for benefits from claims and changes in Heat (both gaining Heat from scores and taking downtime actions to reduce Heat)? The benefits for some claims (e.g. the crew’s new gambling den) is affected by current Heat.

* I’m not a fan of the current Show of Force entanglement. As written, it seems to have a much higher cost to the Crew than the other entanglements, especially the drop in tier and loss of downtime actions for going to war.

AP summary report

After last session, the gang had their eyes on taking over the dog-baiting Claim from the Red Sashes. This would be enough to give the gang Tier 2, and also drop the Red Sashes down to Tier 1, ending the gang war for the while. Echo’s investigations last session had revealed that Ruby, the Skovlan patriarch running the dog-baiting ring, was keen to get out from Red Sashes control as well. She also found out she was a follower of the Forgotten Gods. The Lord and The Man (Cutter/leader and Slide respectively) met Ruby to discuss terms. Ruby said he’d happily pay for the Luddites “protection,” but would need something to stop the Red Sashes exacting revenge. The Luddites could either repel the Red Sashes directly, or get a holy statue for Ruby to give him the spiritual protection to hold them off himself. The Luddites went for the holy statue, which was seized booty in the vaults of a local Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh.

Meanwhile, Lomond, a soldier who served with Flint (the Hound) in Iruvia, was dealing with some fallout from an assassination he’d done. He needed transport from the temporary safe house he was in to a particular cargo train leaving Gaddoc rail station.

Two simultaneous jobs! One claim seizure, one score. I did the two jobs in parallel, cutting from one to the other typically after each decision point; this gave the players time to think about what they were doing next. Interestingly, the people without Prowl had to sneak into the church during a service, while the people without Sway had to talk their way into Goddoc station freight terminal.

Both jobs went off quite smoothly. A couple of highlights:

The Lord, left to watch the escape route in the church, giving in to temptation and joining the service. When The Man and Echo emerged from the crypt with the aurora-shaped stone sculpture, they saw The Lord, half-naked, tied in front of the altar, being whipped into ecstasy [Over-indulging Vice outside of downtime. It was fun, so I allowed it]. When the Luddites’ cohort of killers went to capture him, their savage nature meant the Church are now out for revenge for the deaths [Gang trouble entanglement].

At Goddoc station, Shadowrunner (the Whisper) got rid of the interfering Eel members by just shoving money at them, while Duck was taken in for questioning by the Bluecoats. Duck (the Leech) broke under interrogation [Interrogation entanglement, resisted, took stress to flip over to trauma]. He knows he told the Bluecoats something, but has no idea what.

The extra entanglement from Lord’s overindulgence was an offer from a powerful demon: an artist, patronised by a leviathan hunter captain, was painting pictures of power. The demon wants the artist killed and the pictures destroyed, but can’t do it directly because of the captain’s effective wards. If they do it, the demon will serve them for a week and a day. The “killing” part of the deal led to debate in the crew, what with Shadowrunner’s aversion to killing (“Soft” trauma). The players are looking forward to how that internal conflict makes life interesting.

Next session, they’re off to infiltrate a high-class masked ball with lots of the great and the good in attendance. Should be fun!

Prowl or Hunt?

Another rules question!

Duck, the PC Leech, is hanging off some scaffolding outside the window of an old watch tower. The Red Sashes people inside don’t know he’s there. Mylera Klev walks in front of the window. Duck shoots her in the back.

Should this be a Prowl or a Hunt roll?

If Duck was stabbing her with a sword, it would be Prowl (attack from ambush). If Duck had a rifle on a rooftop on the other side of the alley, it would be Hunt. This is kind of in between.

I allowed the player to choose, but would appreciate people’s collective wisdom.

Another quick rules question, about excessive Heat. If a gang is on 8 Heat and needs to take another 8, what do they end up on?

They take 1 Heat, taking them up to 9, which resets and gives the gang 1 Wanted level. Do the remaining 7 Heat then pile on to the Heat track? I think it should, but it’s not clear.

—–

As for AP, I think I’m going to need another framing conflict for The Luddites (my PCs’ gang). After assassinating Baszo Baz, they spent some time annoying the Red Sashes and ended up killling a few of the Red Sashes and capturing Mylera Klev. They handed her over to Lyssa of the Crows. Lyssa publicly executed Mylera, so the Red Sashes are about to disintegrate under all the pressure they’re under. All the Luddites need to to is take over a dog-baiting operation and they’ll make Tier 2 with the Red Sashes dropping to Tier 1.

That’ll be the new status quo in Crow’s Foot. Who knows what will happen next?

(With 6 PCs and a few NPC extras, I thought that the Luddites should really be starting at Tier 1. So they did.)

We’ve played three sessions now at MK RPG, and here’s a few bits of feedback.

* The skill names get a bit of getting used to. The one-verb format is neat, but I have to keep the chargen summary in front of me when I’m running the game, to make sure that I use the correct skill for each task.

* I think downtime may need tuning for the number of players. I have six players in my game, which is probably more than usual. So far, the gang hasn’t really had to worry about Heat, as there are plenty of downtime actions to reduce Heat. At the same time, Coin might be spread a bit thin around the PCs. Also, the downtime phase takes a while, just going round the table twice and attending to everyone’s actions.

* Healing is brutal! One PC took two medium wounds dealing with the vampire Scurlock last session, and that’s 16 progress clock ticks to remove. I can’t see them going away in the five sessions we have remaining. Given the lack of Coin to share out, that PC may not be able to buy many additional downtime turns for the additional healing.

* The players are interested in the spirits and alchemy sides of the game, but there’s very little in the quickstart that covers them. Something to address in the full rules.

People are really enjoying the game! The first two scores (assassinating Baszo Baz and stealing turf off the Red Sashes) went very smoothly. The third (kicking Scurlock out of the boxing gym he ran) very much didn’t. As soon as they finished that, the Red Sashes acted on the previously-rolled “War” entanglement and kidnapped a couple of the PCs’ contacts. The gang now have to deal with that without having downtime to recover from the last score and with limited opportunity to call for flashbacks.

This could be brutal, and quite fun to play!