Author: Tim Denee

We wrapped up our ghostlines prequel campaign last night – here are the end-titles I put together.

Music by Jack de Quidt for Friends at the Table, used without permission. Buy his great music! https://notquitereal.bandcamp.com/

We had a good time! We ended up with a range of retirement outcomes from two linebulls in mansions through to one in a flophouse and one in a modest home.

We also did an “epilogue roll”, where each player stated a desired life-goal for their character and rolled 1d6 to see how close they came. They could then spend stash at a rate of 10 for a +1 to improve their outcome, basically sacrificing material wealth to pursue their goals. Because this was a prequel game, these epilogues will feed into the upcoming Blades in the Dark campaign set 40 years after. One character started a guild of criminal fixers, one started an alchemical tonic manufactory, the third became a famous celebrity and war-hero, and the fourth became a vampire with absolutely no money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu1fuhqUBVo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu1fuhqUBVo

Session 4 of our prequel Ghost Lines campaign. You know, this system is working very nicely for this length of campaign; we’re four sessions in, we plan to do just a couple more, and three of the bulls just became Journeymen and they have a range of retirement stash from 20 to 70 – it feels like a good spread.

Highlights included…

– The team accompanied a Spirit Warden on a trip to a strange castle belonging to a pallid scientist in the deathlands, where they dropped off food/water/fuel in exchange for plans to a new kind of leviathan blood refinery. We did a fun Paint the Scene (per Jason Cordova) to illustrate the weird and disturbing side-effects of this process.

– One of the linebulls stole a prototype hull (this is a prequel), a small robot monkey.

– Phin lost control while he was the anchor and ripped his own badge name off during a fight, which let the ghost of an old friend find him shortly after (via his real name). Overcome with the guilt he had joined the linebulls to escape, Phin let his old friend possess him – so he’s now playing the ghost possessing his old character. Fun times.

– In the continuing B-plot of the lamplighter union, Haig sold the electrobulb patent papers he had stolen to the Unseen for their offer of more money, effectively dooming the lamplighter union’s future prosperity.

– Slain became the face of a patriotic linebull recruitment drive, a sort of Obey Giant thing (he looks like Andre the Giant).

So the end-game will be the Unity War and seeing which side the linebulls fall in behind, since they have a range of loyalties from pro-Skov to pro-Imperium. And then maybe one will become a vampire??

The third of our Ghost Lines prequel recap-newspapers. The linebulls cut the wires on the train so that they could smuggle a man across the border into Skovlan – the exiled Lord Aldric and his daughter Alayne.

Highlights:

– Last session the team made a choice that led to their mentor falling off the train and dying. This time he came back as a ghost and lured one of the bulls into a deep forest inside the train where they had a tense conversation. The railjack opened the valve on his lightning oil canister and got away in a shower of electroplasm, but I’m sure that’s not the last we’ll see of the dead mentor.

– A demon showed up in the form of a titanic white owl to harass the train.

– The team briefly got on the wrong side of a spirit warden, and so they saw their first example of someone compelling/commanding a ghost.

– Booker visited a skov fishing village protected by runic standing stones, where an old woman helped him complete his ghost-tea recipe.

I’ve been reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which has been really helpful in adding more surrealism and the subtly-disturbing end of supernatural encounters (rather than just gonzo ghost-busting all the time).

Session 2 of our Ghost Lines prequel game – I think we’re starting to get the hang of it! It’s an interesting system to run; there’s good bones here and it works well when you bolt on mechanics from other systems (I’ve been using clocks from BitD and some of the Gauntlet’s Dungeon World procedures).

This session a series of bad rolls meant that the deathstorm came back as the train ran out of lightning oil. They managed to get the train going again thanks to the Owl’s spare lightning oil canister, but they lost all the freight carriages and their mentor Gulliver.

A fun, tense session (with help from a good old clock).

We also had a few weeks of downtime in Doskvol, getting a flavour of the city. One bull is doing some muscle work for the lamplighter union, who want him to make an inventor “disappear” on his next train journey (the inventor claims to have invented a stable lightbulb) . They also sold a ghost on the black market to Fat Rat & Grimm, Investors. Finally, the third bull caught up with his new friend Ragnar Ironborn – Ragnar can help him get the ghost-thistle tea recipe he’s looking for, in exchange for a little favour; helping smuggle a friend out of exile into Skovlan, a man by the name of Aldric…

We finally got around to starting our short Ghost Lines campaign, a prequel series set 40 years before Blades in the Dark, just before the Unity War. Once we’ve wrapped this up we’ll jump ahead and start a BitD campaign.

We’ve been playing Dungeon World before this, so the PBTA-style of Ghost Lines was an easy transition. I also used the Die of Fate a lot.

Fun session! Cleared a few ghosts, narrowly out-paced a deathstorm, made friends with Ragnar Ironborn, and smuggled some whiskey for a young lamplighter union representative called Baszo.

So far all is well, but lightning oil is in high demand and the Doskvol elites want the refineries moved out of their city. Trouble’s brewing…