This week’s session started with the crew finishing a project identifying how the Red Sashes were getting their drugs into Doskvol. Namely, smuggled in the personal luggage of visiting diplomats and nobles from Iruvia. They also found out the identity of the Iruvian diplomat who runs the scheme. The crew contemplated hitting one of these deliveries, getting to the diplomat and a number of other schemes to find profit while hitting the Sashes. However, in the end they decided to follow up a lead on a warehouse distributing Black Lotus and other drugs to various cults within the city that they discovered a couple of weeks prior, figuring it would probably be an easier score. And so they made their way to the small warehouse located in the Docks district, hidden down some back alleys. Their surveillance showed it staffed by only a handful of workers, and containing what they assumed to be a fair quantity of merchandise. They decided to split up, Hadius, the sneakiest of the crew, would climb into the warehouse through a ventilation hatch their surveillance had turned up, while Ves and Banks posed as cult members looking to buy drugs to distract the few workers manning the warehouse.
The drugs were sealed in wooden crates, and Hadius only managed to get the contents of a couple of crates back out of the hatch, and into a hired rickshaw, before the workers noticed the disturbance. Ves and Banks attempted to distract them through a flashback procured ghost, unfortunately, the ghost of a disobedient cat, and an intimidating demand for better customer service, countermanded by the ridiculous getup Banks chose for his disguise. When neither attempt really worked, Hadius was forced to make a quick exit, spraining an ankle and shattering one of the jars of drugs on the cobblestones as he tumbled out to the street. Upon realising that someone was trying to make off with their product, two of the workers took off in pursuit of Hadius, who fled, limping with rickshaw, down a nearby alleyway.
Capitalising on this distraction, Ves and Banks knocked the remaining worker unconscious, and began loading themselves up with all the drugs they could carry. Hadius, unable to outpace his pursuers, decided to dispense some trance powder to attempt to neutralise them, a ploy which worked perfectly, leaving two calm and suggestible warehouse workers, and Hadius free to return to the warehouse. Unfortunately, a Bluecoat patrol chose this moment to head down the alleys past the warehouse. But Hadius, ever the quick talker, managed to win them over, though they insisted on escorting him to the edge of the district, for his own safety. Back inside the warehouse, Ves and Banks had secured all the drugs they could carry, and headed back to their lair.
The score turned out rather profitable, injecting enough cash into the coffers of the Crimson Snow for them to advance to Tier 1 as well as a small quantity of a few more valuable drugs they decided to hold onto for now. Unfortunately, as they were celebrating their first directly profitable score in a number of weeks, the demon Setarra chose this moment to come call in the favor owed by Vestine, informing them that Lord Scurlock had need of their assistance with a personal matter. Not wanting to anger the demon, they quickly agreed, a decision they may later come to regret, upon finding out just what it was the demon had recruited them for…
GM’s Thoughts – Since the location of the warehouse the crew hit this session was the primary reward they nabbed through a previous score, I wasn’t too concerned with having it well guarded. Stavrul, the fellow who owns the warehouse, had already been established as a fairly minor player in the city, so I figured he would want to keep things small scale anyway. The score was really a terrific example of the PC’s rolling with the punches and turning disadvantage into success – Hadius’ foiled attempt at taking the drugs without being noticed, turned into a handy distraction for the others to steal what they could. All in all, it all went quite well, though I realised I have really no idea how warehouses are actually laid out :s I should make a point of looking at a few floor-plans. The entanglement rolled this week, Demonic Notice, presented a good opportunity to call in Vestine’s favor owed to Setarra, as well as an idea for a fairly treacherous score I had when first brainstorming for the game. I’m expecting this next score will stretch over more than one session, which should shake things up a bit from the “1 score per session” pacing we’ve been managing so far.
We finally got around to starting our short Ghost Lines campaign, a prequel series set 40 years before Blades in the…
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…
A short summary of our game held a week ago. We manage to do 1 intense run in roughly 3.5 hours, then a follow-up short run in around 1.5 hours. All in all I am slowly getting a good grasp of the whole system.
Originally shared by John Erwin
After 2 months, we finally had our second session of Blades in the Dark. We are still grasping the mechanics as a whole (we tend to forget loadout during planning), but narratively every one is now on the same page regarding its episodic nature, a different style from usual D&D sessions.
– – –
Back at the whalepunk streets of Doskvol. Our plan of taking control of a local newspaper printing press, for covert ops, turned into a bust to an illegal resurrection of a child. Hidden family agendas and varying spirit-ectoplasmic-soul beliefs were uncovered as The Seventh Tower (our Shadow crew) manages to close a deal with the printing press proprietor. An obsessed father was arrested, and a clockwork body is obtained.
We tried ending the session with a straight-up stab-and-grab operation for a quick profit job. Things turned sour when initial plans backfired one by one, and the crew had to create and weave thru chaos by inciting a riot larger than what was planned. We got the goods, but created more enemies in the process.
Age of Blood v0.5 / Playtest 1, Session 1: “Better Ask Mom”
Our characters are:
– Kasseri, the Voice, a Nun on the Run.
– Lord Eddard Baldwin, the Captain, who now has a first name that should basically sign-post everything you would ever need to know about the character.
– Eberhard Monheim, the Cultist, who lowkey knows a little blood magic and stuff but is keeping it on the DL.
– John Comber, the Ascendant, whose last name was changed between sessions in order to protect the privacy rights of dead Romantic-era poets.
Fresh from checking the Old Fort and negotiating an understanding with it’s former squatters, John leads his new best friend Lord Baldwin (and that suspicious Gannic fellow, Eberhard) back down the hill to the rotted Chapel that represents the civic center of town. There they are introduced to Kasseri, who we decide had been busily ordering the chapel’s meager library this whole time. Kasseri showed up unannounced on the chapel’s steps one day a week or so back and while she hasn’t said much about her past she won’t stop talking about Coroz, which fortunately is an interest she and John share.
As discussion turns to next moves to secure the region, John realizes with a guilty start that he needs to consult with the local authorities. It’s time to call mom.
After a hand-waved time skip for John’s request for audience to reach it’s destination and come back, Inquisitor Malencia arrives off the road with a small entourage of acolytes. She is greeted by the most royal welcome Wygrove can offer: Lord Baldwin’s banner flying in front of his half-dozen strong militia cohort and 3 of the 4 erstwhile adventurers arrayed out front. Malencia, we establish, is the source of John’s authority but a distant figure who must oversee the sanctity of countless Vanderian souls scattered across a large frontier. She is also on the lookout for Kasseri, who fled a nearby convent under suspicious circumstances a few weeks ago (Given ample warning of the Inquisitor’s arrival, Kasseri called in sick that morning and stayed back at the chapel. This is an awesome relationship triangle that we will definitely explore but we weren’t in a rush to throw that at the wall just yet in session 1).
John eagerly and a bit nervously introduces Eddard and Malencia, stuttering out his hope that this noble knight commander (who he has by now realized was not actually sent by the Church) can be allowed to stay and keep being his cool friend driving back the darkness. The Lord drops to a knee and greets her, leading off with his admittedly-storied lineage and pledging his faith and devotion to the crown and Church. This is an Influence roll, which gets the 6. Makes my job easy!
Inquisitor Malencia, a taciturn woman shaped by her former life under a vow of silence with the Quiet Sisters, instructs Lord Baldwin to rise with a curt hand gesture. She motions up her scribe, who one signet ring later presents the Lord (via John) an official Letter of Cachet giving Baldwin broad remit to Secure Wygrove and the Lands Thereupon from Corruption and Deliver Them Unto King Valten III’s Rightful etc. signed, sealed, and so forth. Malencia knows not to look gift horses in the mouth, and this one is convincingly promising to secure a lawless border town nobody else can be bothered to spare resources for. Seems like a slam dunk. She stays just long enough to ascertain that the people of the town don’t look any worse off than the last time she visited, and hits the road again to leave our party safe in the comforting knowledge that they have a very official scrap of paper to back up their authority with.
Eager to maintain the momentum of the nascent crusade that he hopes will save the beleaguered hamlet, John seizes the opportunity to mention that travel on the roads is very difficult for people who aren’t heavily-armed Inquisitors. You know, what with all the bandits around. Just look north, at Wygrove’s closest neighbor! Crumble used to have another name, we think, back when it was a place where respectable people lived. Now it’s just a nexus of bandit, or even worse, tribal activity. John whispers this last bit to Lord Baldwin, eyes askance at Eberhard who is jotting notes in a journal and fixing the Lord’s maps with accurate assays of the local geography.
Lord Baldwin keeps his thoughts about all of that to himself but happily agrees to flex muscle in the region. More local Control would be good! (it replaces Rep as the mechanism for Tier level-up for Age of Blood).
Information-gathering leads us to believe that a prominent temple of the faith was overrun there, and it’s a current hub of activity for highwaymen restricting traffic on the King’s Roads. Candidates for approach include Assault, Stealth, and, uh, Social? Yes, Kasseri insists we should come as friends! Unfortunately for how amazing that might have been, she is outvoted by the hawks in the room who are eager to test the town’s Militant special ability (+1 die to assault plans). Although we discuss the possibility of using the town’s Underground Maps to stage a daring assault via the abandoned aqueduct system that once linked the rivers in the region, Lord Baldwin insists on a bold approach: straight through the front gate to fly the banner high and dare defiance of the new order. John backs him up and Eberhard pragmatically agrees. Everyone decides on their loadout, and while the town’s coffers are completely empty and thus unable to augment the baseline Provisions set for the party the journey is within a day’s comfortable march anyway. I won’t demand any action rolls for overland travel… perhaps we’ll get to explore that mechanic later.
The 4d Engagement Roll comes up a critical. Word of Lord Baldwin’s arrival must not have spread very far yet or the rumors were simply discounted as too ridiculous to be credible, as the lawless vultures dwelling in Crumble are completely unable to muster even a token of resistance on the road: just outside their target the party sees an abandoned pile of wooden stakes clearly meant to barricade the road. The sheer audacity and swiftness of the party’s approach simply catches their targets out.
The overgrown tenements of Crumble come into view through the encroaching tree-line. At the center of town is a great circular stone structure: the open-air temple to Coroz that once burned an eternal flame, now guttered out for a decade or more. All around in the woods on the outskirts of town can be heard hasty movements, fires being doused and tent camps struck. The cockroaches are choosing to scatter into the woods rather than face justice. Lord Baldwin marches his troops (and the other PCs!) straight up to the ancient chapel and loudly proclaims his intent to secure the roads and instill order. Who here has the will to resist the imposition of rightful Law?
Right as the evening sun begins to sink to the trees, finally some organized resistance makes itself known. A knight dressed in the ignoble colors of House Vert marches out of the treeline at the head of a band of masked footpads to confront the invaders. The brigand-knight rudely questions the lineage of “Lord Baldwin” and suggests that they offer up the church’s writ of authority for display, so that he may wipe his arse with it.
Before words can turn to weapons however, Kasseri squeezes her way out of formation and bubbles over to the newcomers with a suggestion that a peaceful solution may be possible yet! After all, we’re not really super threatening and couldn’t possibly maintain an offensive war against you given the forces we have available (the Demon’s Bargain here is that Kasseri inadvertently reveals information about Wygrove’s forces and the extent of Lord Baldwin’s martial command: You’re looking at the entirety of it.). While Kasseri’s words are perhaps poorly advised from a strategic sense, they do de-escalate tensions and open the door to something more reasonable than a mutual slaughter.
Her optimism strikes a chord with House Vert’s lawless champion, who was starting to suspect his bandit band’s shaky morale wasn’t going to be quite up to open warfare against this organized force. Trusting in his own skill at arms more than the flaky cowards he leads, the knight raises his flail to point at Lord Baldwin.
“She’s right, no one else’s blood needs to be spilled here. A duel then: your pretend lord against ME.”
Lord Baldwin is completely powerless to resist such a challenge (it’s possible that the GM knows this particular player’s weaknesses a little too well). Drawing sword and shield, Eddard Baldwin prepares to defend his honor and establish his right… via might. Baldwin is no slouch, boasting 1 action dot for both Skirmish and Sunder (the pair of actions most directly tied to melee combat in AoB), but he’ll be cut off from Assistance unless the party wants to risk accusations of cheating the laws of the duel. The Brigand meanwhile is a towering presence with a casual command of his chosen weapon, a cruel spiked flail.
Pushing himself up to a 2d Risky/Standard Skirmish roll to start the fight on cautious footing and find a weakness while keeping his skull safely intact, Baldwin gets a 1 and a 2. I cackle at the opportunity to finally do something to the players (6s are so boring, guys! Nobody ever listens to me though..) and narrate the frighteningly formidable brigand-knight’s fighting technique: the flail is a clear and present threat which will of course devastate a fool if you’re not paying attention, but the primary tool here is the knight’s mastery of offensive shield techniques which are being used to hedge out any attempt at counter-attack and bully Eddard all around the impromptu dueling circle. A cruel shield bash (level 2 harm) is resisted, as is the flail trip (worsening position!) that is the knight’s cunning follow-up. Baldwin is suddenly running hot on Stress, beads of sweat pooling in his helmet as he stays inches ahead of his adversary’s overpowering combat style.
Seeing their champion being pushed to the limit, John and Kasseri begin praying to Coroz. Perhaps the PCs didn’t intend to interfere with a duel, but the players are definitely clear: it’s way too soon for Lord Baldwin’s career to end on as abrupt a note as flail spike introduction to the inner cranium. They Channel the last rays of the setting sun, which flares bright with Coroz’s blessing, blinding the knight of House Vert at a crucial moment in the duel.
Baldwin seizes this opportunity to turn the tables and throws everything at a Risky/Great Sunder roll, which gets a 4. Trusting in his Marshal’s Armor to save him from a retaliatory flail strike, he takes his longsword in both hands and steps into the brute’s reach to deliver a critical strike and end the duel. The glass-jawed brigand crashes to a knee and raises a hand for clemency. Eddard Commands the thug to depart these lands and bother not the fair people of Wygrove again, terms the humiliated knight is hardly able to refuse. I mark House Vert Bandits on the ever-growing Faction sheet; their story is linked to the region’s precipitous decline and will be an interesting foil to explore and compare against the noble mission the PCs have set for themselves. He and his brigands slouch away to spread the word that the roads around Wygrove are no longer a soft target for their kind.
The rest of the expedition is clean-up, really: Kasseri uses her Spirit Ritual to relight the eternal flame of Coroz at the center of the abandoned temple while Eberhard takes the opportunity of the events in the town center to stealthily scout around the woods and observes some Harthkin outriders from the clan of Edric Stonehand watching the duel from afar. Both events start long-term clocks so that the players can have some things to think about going in to their first downtime.
Our last act of the session was to try out the rules for the Loot roll, which in it’s current version is pasted below. This was a pretty low-stakes job so didn’t amount to a ton of dice, and the luck wasn’t with the party on it. So they didn’t get a chance to choose any fun results this time unfortunately (I chose “+2 Control and -2 Coin” result for them because I felt it represented the fiction well. Crumble is a target of value for it’s strategic and symbolic importance only).
The swinginess of the Loot roll is something I’ll be searching for feedback on as we go further: it’s positioned right now as a way to spice up the payoff structure, put the “where are my Magic Items” question squarely in the hands of the players, and let the GM recuse themselves of the incessant decision-making about how much Coin/Heat a given score was worth (I didn’t mind it in Blades but I sort of wanted to explore the space here, especially given the dungeon-crawling touchstones). I set up the math so that a firmly moderate baseline of Coin, Control, and Threat is always generated (based on the Tier of the target of the expedition) so that a bad Loot result doesn’t rob the players of the fundamental Coin they need to play the game, and on the high end a lucky Loot roll can be a big boost of value and story opportunities. It’s something I’ll have to monitor as we go, especially given the opportunity the lower rolls give a GM to mess around with the players. What do you think?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Session Thoughts : Eberhard’s player (who is new to this BitD thing) did not earn a lot of XP at the end of the session, which is certainly at least somewhat on me as GM for failing to properly convey a.) the full details of the Action Roll system, which I think might have lead to hesitance to engage with the mechanics until later on in the expedition, and b.) the player-driven nature of how our group runs a table. I feel a little bad but I hope they’ll forgive me, expressions of continued interest were made and the veterans at the table assured them that it can take a little time to hit the stride of what Blades in the Dark asks of a player.
Communication distance with Balfar came up even sooner than I expected when John’s player decided we wanted to have a scene with the positive contact on his playbook (Inquisitor Malencia). As GM I eagerly hand-waved us forward in time to get there because I absolutely wanted to explore that scene but I can already foresee the possibility of some narrative dissonance arising from the question that is bound to get raised at some point or another: Just how far away is that place anyway? The answer, for now, is “as far away as the story wants it to be for dramatic purposes”. Balfar shouldn’t feel like it’s breathing over the player’s shoulders but it’s basically the closest point of light on the map to realistically base a number of middle-tier factions. This is an inherent tension between the design goals of a game that is Forged in the Dark and at least somewhat faction map-driven, but also wants to be a sandbox of medieval lawlessness and conveniently loot-filled Dungeonz ™. It’s something I think about often. An answer that ties the whole room together exists I’m certain, just needs more thoughtful care.
The Blades in the Dark game we began in July wrapped up last night.
The Blades in the Dark game we began in July wrapped up last night. I am a little melancholy about it. It feels nice to have had a good long run. It’s a rare case for me, both as a GM to be able to see a long game through to a reasonable stopping point & to have four players willing to commit to such an extended game without it unraveling for one reason or another along the way.
“The Brimstone Imps” took a bit of a turn in their final caper. Some in the crew were of a revolutionary bent & the crew had taken some jobs making ties with Skovlander resistance factions within the city of Doskvol. In their last score, however, they determined to steal the “spectre helm” from the radio room of the HIS Swiftsure, an Imperial turret ship which the Grinders gang had themselves stolen & were refitting for a Skov guerrilla mission across the sea at Lockport.
Some in the crew decided on this course for its daring, some for coin & some to prevent the Grinders from undertaking what may have been a suicidal venture, as likely to harm the cause of Doskvol Skovs as help it.
The crew’s Leech, Basran, was killed during the score, sacrificing himself to save his rival Stazia whom he was in love with despite his best interests.
Complications, events & dice conspired to require the crew needing to leave via “Basran’s Elevator.” Even without Basran, there were now five of them wanting exodus & the elevator’s basket could safely lift and transport but four souls. Any left behind were likely to be possessed or worse by encroaching deathlands ghosts.
With the search lights of the Imperial coast guard below closing fast, the crew elected the desperate route of risking all to leave none behind. The crew’s mastermind Cimres, donned the spectre helm & allowed Basran’s beneficent spirit to possess him, guiding him as pilot and scientist. The winds carried them towards Doskvol’s lightning barrier but they were now too low!
They had one final chance to lose ballast in the form of a crewmate, trusted contact or the rival Basran sacrificed his life for. If they did not, nothing but a “6” would suffice to prevent all of their deaths on the barrier. They again choose “all or none.” Surely some final effort or artifice on Basran’s part would carry them over the top?
Basran’s ghost made the slow portentous roll:
“1”…
“1”…
“6!!!” YES!!!
The balloon and remaining crew landed hard but safely in the mire pits of the Dunslough district. The balloon, aflame, was lost but the crew returned safely to their hidden railcar lair in Coalridge.
I hope to see the Brimstone Imps again someday, but if fates prevent, such stories we are left with!
I’m continuing to run Scum and Villainy in the Star Wars universe for my group, and this time around I’ll be summing…
I’m continuing to run Scum and Villainy in the Star Wars universe for my group, and this time around I’ll be summing up two sessions in one post. The first session was pretty much half downtime, and then half free play where the players returned a wayward battle droid to their friends on a concealed, half-finished ringworld at the edge of the Corporate Sector. Along the way they discovered that this group of surviving battle droids, calling themselves the Clankers, had escaped from decommissioning with the help of a platoon of rogue clone troopers, and now live in peace aboard the unfinished ringworld with some of the clones’ children. They also had discovered secrets of the Force and learned to manipulate it. They asked the crew to help them with disposing of a Czerka scouting vessel that was closing in on the station, and in return they offered safe harbor and a cargo hold full of rare animals they crew could trade for cash.
Accepting, the crew overtook a small scouting ship and brought it back to the main Czerka vessel. They managed to capture it with few problems, since most of the personnel involved were scientists. Now with their ship, they hauled it back to the Clankers and gave it to them as a gift, while keeping the scientists for themselves with a plan to sell them to Incom-FreiTek, Czerka’s biggest rival.
Session 2 saw them heading to Old Hydia, a broken-down and overpopulated city-moon full of crime and squalor, to do downtime and figure out their next steps. The Stitch sold the product of their long-term project to their cousin for credits, and acquired a medical droid for the ship. The Mechanic finished up their design for a set of rocket boots and a jetpack and gave them to the Scoundrel, who was responsible for hacking into Incom’s system and finding their Chief Headhunter and making contact. The Speaker met with a nephew of hers and got him out of jail while the Muscle downloaded old battle droid routines to get better at fighting.
Armed with the Scoundrel’s intel on their prospective Incom contact, the crew left for Bathas, the arctic, barren planet where the Corporate Sector Authority makes their home. Heading far into the northern hemisphere away from the relatively warm equator, they arrived at the Northern Exposure Lodge, a fancy club/theater for mid-level corporate execs. They rolled a 6 on their engagement roll, and when the Scoundrel went in to make contact, things started off smoothly. With some lucky rolls and good use of a banked Acquire Asset from the Speaker (a horde of holonet bots that boosted up the Scoundrel’s online profile to make her look legit), things went pretty well. The rest of the party had to deal with a team from Kuat Drive Yards, a faction they are at -2 with right now, which included the Muscle rolling a 1 on a Desperate Sway roll and needed to be rescued by the Speaker. Their cover story is that the Muscle was mind-wiped a few weeks ago, and the KDY team bought it long enough to get off the crew’s backs so they could make the deal.
For the Czerka scientists they’re not getting credits, but instead are getting an upgrade to their engines and a proprietary cloaking device with a deal from Incom: after each job in which they use their cloak, they cans sell the data to Incom for 1 cred.
The crew then spent the rest of the night celebrating, and we’re in a good position to see where they want to go next week!
I use two big clocks on a score all the time, where crew races to fill one before the other.
I use two big clocks on a score all the time, where crew races to fill one before the other. Recently though, I tried splitting up the main score clock into a bunch of little clocks and it worked great. I based it on ideas from Rob Donoghue’s long con setup: http://walkingmind.evilhat.com/2017/07/27/the-long-con/
Here’s how it went down: The Assassin’s crew, the Butcher Birds, wanted to flip Baszo Baz. It worked great.
The Friend: Attention clock 4-segments
Baszo was bestie’s with Chance, the Slide, so that filled the first clock for free. That opened up the Interest clock.
The Hook: Interest clock 4-segments
The crew did a series of linked plans simultaneously to flipping Baszo: forging an alliance between the Lampblacks enemies, assassinating one of the street gang leaders and their gang, the second-in-command of the Lampblacks and their master of coin. That filled 3 of 4 on the interest clock. Baszo knows things are going to shit, Chance just needed to show him that things were going to get even worse… tonight. The crew are Bound in Darkness so they communicated intimate details from each linked plan, so Chance could drop enough to hook Baszo enough to shift the conversation from much-needed camaraderie to the bleakest of business.
All this info obviously roused Baszo’s suspicions. How much was Chance actually involved in fucking over the Lampblacks? 3 tock on the 8-segments on the Suspicion clock. Though they resisted that, bringing the consequence down to 1 tick.
Filling this clock, opened up the next clock.
The Option: Confidence clock 4-segments
Now the conversation shifted about how Chance can help Baszo. Baszo thought Chance was doing little more than daydreaming, that Chance couldn’t actually help Baszo get out of the deep shit he’s in.
So Chance laid out that he wasn’t just a street urchin, but a part of the notorious Butcher Birds, assassins connected to some strange and brutal accidents happened to well-connected Nobles in Brightstone. That filled 2-segments.
Chance knew of Baszo’s commitment to the Empty Vessel cult, so he pushed on, revealing that his crew have the favour of Fortuna, a Forgotten God, who grants them the silence of Bellweather (Crow’s Veil). With a little wrangling, that filled the Confidence clock.
That opened up the final score clock as well as the options trust clock (which could reduce the consequences of the suspicion clock.
The Decision: Ambition clock 4-segments
I shortened this clock to only 4-segments. That meant the crew were racing to fill 9-segments faster than 8-segments of suspicion. It worked out to be a good size. For a longer-term con, yeah this could have easily been 6 or 8 segments, like Rob’s article suggested.
This is basically about Baszo making a decision right now. To walk away from the Lampblacks right now.
Chance plied his ambitions to seek revenge against the Red Sashes, the opportunities that the Butcher Birds have to fill the power vacuum, and the possibility of being a secret hand that can swoop down on the Crows and become ward boss after all. Throwing in a little occult membership, and Baszo was ruthless as ever.
So Baszo flipped.
Trust clock 4-segments
Chance never ticked any of these. He ran out of stress and things got extremely tight. But we’re keeping this open, as the opportunity to settle the suspicions Baszo has and bring him totally on board with the Butcher Birds.
So after a week sacrificed to a 7DRL project by one of our players, we were back in action this week with an interesting roleplay-heavy score. First we had a fairly unproductive downtime of patching wounds and indulging vices, but the crew picked up a new expert, a moral and pacifistic, though loyal, Physicker named Bones, a strange fellow by all accounts but a valued new addition to the crew. The Crimson Snow then leaned on Bazro Baz for some information on weakpoints belonging to the Red Sashes they could hit. More than happy for someone else to take a swipe at their foes (who recently hijacked a cargo shipment intended for them) Baz told them about a warehouse in the docks where a lot of contraband is moved to and from by the Red Sashes. The crew’s investigations lead to them realizing the warehouse was rather well guarded, and so rather than attempt to sneak in or seize it by force, they posed as a group investigating a cargo shipment gone missing.
After Hadius took the lead in talking their way inside, the no-nonsense foreman wasn’t particularly quick to believe them, but a few convincing lies and a flashback procured forged manifest later, Banks was interrogating the two men carrying the supposed “missing” shipment in the foreman’s office. They took a big gamble and offered one of the men protection in exchange for a future testimony delivered to the inspectors revealing details about the Red Sashes criminal operations. At this point they decided to take both the “guilty men” for further questioning, on suspicion of a “deeper conspiracy”. The warehouse foreman insisted on sending a couple of men to help guard the prisoners on the way to the HQ. Another judicious flashback lead to an ambush in an alleyway, that left the guards dead, but one of the prisoners caught in the crossfire. Given that the injured man was not the one who agreed to testify, they promptly turned him over to Baz for interrogation, in order to curry some more favor with the Lampblacks. Finally the crew slipped a note under the door of an Inspector, along with some judiciously lifted and incriminating documents from the warehouse office, kickstarting a new clock “The Inspectors investigate the Red Sashes”.
They didn’t actually make any money on the score (lamenting the lost opportunity to steal some drugs or other contraband from the warehouse), so things are getting a bit tight for the crew financially at the moment, but they’re pleased with the bigger picture game they’re playing. And that the Red Sashes, their would-be mortal enemies now actually know they exist! :p And hopefully next week’s downtime session will result in some finished long term projects that open up some interesting new drug related opportunities for these currently drugless Hawkers! 🙂
GM’s thoughts – our Whisper didn’t get up to much this session, largely playing supporting character to the other more talkative members of the crew. Though he did secure another captive ghost – though didn’t actually end up using it on this mission. Its a seed for later opportunities I figure. We may even end up with a score involving selling these ghosts captured by our would be Ghostbuster later on. Might be an opportunity to work in another interesting faction, possibly the Dimmer Sisters? I’m liking the options presented by their “rescued” witness – i figure he may later join a cohort gang for them, perhaps even as a ‘leader’, providing he doesn’t get murdered by the Red Sashes in the meantime. A fun session where things went fairly smoothly, though at the expense of the risk-taking that might’ve led to more direct profit for the crew. Excited to answer some of the questions posed by long term information gathering projects the crew is running next week. I’m also appreciating the way entanglements often create financial costs for the crew – which means nudging them toward actually making some money at some point 🙂 A goal my players would otherwise find easy to ignore for quite a while!
My qualms from the first session were almost totally erased here in session two.
My qualms from the first session were almost totally erased here in session two. As I suspected, things felt especially gamey because we were pretty rushed for time after character creation.
This time, we spent almost half of our session in Free Play. We had a chance to ease into roleplay, interact as PCs, introduce a few hooks, and Gather Information before we jumped into the Score. This makes two sessions in a row when the party split up for the whole Score, but it wasn’t too complicated to manage in play.
I find I’m especially enjoying the Downtime phase and faction-level play. The Factions of Doskvol and Campaign Tracker pages from the digital Player’s Kit are near-perfect tools for staying organized, and the way character/crew playbooks and faction relationships build stories from scratch is deeply cool. On the one hand, it’s delightful that I don’t have to do any GM prep before the game. On the other hand, flying by the seat of my pants with a brand-new-to-me game gets hectic! Looking forward to building up some additional system mastery.
Originally shared by Eli Kurtz
#TableSelfie from session 2 of our Blades in the Dark #Campaign! Our crew of Hawkers decide they sell poisons (specifically not drugs) and they were joined by a new scoundrel, and Skovlander Hound from the frontier of his homeland.
The Hawkers heard a rumor that prostitutes and pleasure houses in Crow’s Foot were being possessed by rogue spirits. Our Slide is connected to that world thanks to his Vice for Pleasure, so he convinced the rest of the crew to investigate with them. They infiltrated the lair of a Path of Echoes cell in a Nightmarket mausoleum. They ended up finding a plot to bring Roric, the recently deceased leader of The Crows, back into the world as a ghost!
Thanks to PK Sullivan, newcomer Marshall Jacobson, Eric Simon, and Graham Ziolkowski for another great game!
Age of Blood v0.5 / Playtest 1, Session 0: Character/Town Creation
Age of Blood v0.5 / Playtest 1, Session 0: Character/Town Creation
Interspersed with a lot of discussion of playtest intent and thematic goals, we finished initial creation and introduced (most of) the PCs and the town. As will the rest of these, this took place via voice chat on Discord with handouts and dice rolls on roll20. The party consists of:
– Lord Baldwin, the Captain, dispossessed noble and last of the Baldwin line who fled east with the remnants of his honor guard when he was betrayed at the height of his house’s civil war. He seeks redemption for his hand in the deaths of his kin and a safe haven from the vicious mythical greatsword, Veritas, which has been foretold to be his end.
– Eberhard Monheim, the Cultist, practitioner of a completely pragmatic and reasonable tradition of pagan blood magic who left his tribe to seek his fortune among the Vanderians (the ‘civilized’ feudal kingdom of the setting, most characters will be of Vanderian descent unless otherwise noted). Eberhard pays tribute to his Gannic ancestor spirits and hails from the Nightwood, a forbidding forest that slumbers in the shadow of the Dragonspine Mountains.
– John Keats, the Ascendant, a simple farmer who died when his farm was burned down (by who, or what?). His miraculous resurrection by the god Coroz was terribly inconvenient for the clergy, which eventually sent him on a holy mission to the impious town of Wygrove to be rid of him. He has been sermonizing in the collapsed chapel in a debatably-successful bid to revitalize faith in the Church there ever since, while vainly waiting for all the help he was promised.
– Kasseri, the Voice, an orphan and former nun of the Quiet Sisterhood who began to uncontrollably Speak with the divine power of Coroz. The sisters would have cut her tongue for defiance of their precepts but she escaped and fled east (it’s the fashionable direction to flee in-setting. Nobody looks for you in the East. Proven fact.). Kasseri unfortunately had to cancel for the town creation session at the last minute but will be properly introduced next week.
All players except for Eberhard are veterans of a Blades in the Dark season we concluded last month.
I and the three players who were present agreed to run generation on the town of Wygrove as an in-character exercise, which I framed as Lord Baldwin learning more about his destination as he continued through the Eastern March. In the regional capital of Balfar, last point of civilization before the final week-long trek to Wygrove, Baldwin observed mercenaries employed by the Margrave shaking down merchant caravans for stiff taxes and holding the city in an uneasy state of martial law. Seeking audience with the Margrave proved fruitless, for Baldwin’s family name meant nothing to the arrogant militia sergeants he met. Baldwin was unwilling to linger in lands he knew little about with the threat of pursuers on his trail, and so chose not to press his luck and interfere. His initial impressions of the Eastern Marches and the rumors he overheard of Wygrove gave him a distinct impression of Savagery (town’s initial Reputation).
As his overland journey wound down to the ‘crossroads of the East’ and the lonely hill on which Wygrove squats, Baldwin stopped in a crumbling roadside tavern to consult his charts and take the lay of the land. He had decided to rebuild House Baldwin starting here in this forsaken country far from the eyes of court intrigue, but where to station his exhausted handful of men? Though it’s battlements are rotting and the walls broken, the Old Fort at the crest of the hill seemed an ideal location (HQ).
It was at this moment that John Keats stepped into the tavern, drawn by the rumor of a lordly knight and his entourage approaching town. John had been expecting help (perhaps a band of noble crusaders?) to arrive for weeks, and threw himself at the Captain, thanking Coroz for the arrival of his town’s salvation. Nonplussed, Baldwin nonetheless invited the raggy parishioner to join them for the suspicious stew that the tavern had on offer.
From cautious discussion with John, Baldwin ascertained that some secretive group had been dwelling within the fort for several weeks. Though the squatters had been careful not to disturb the sleepy hamlet below, John was absolutely certain that unwholesome cult activities were being performed… hooded members entered and left the fort at odd hours, and strange lights flickered within the fort at night. Seeing an opportunity to boost his esteem among what passed for ‘authority’ here, Baldwin agreed to rid the keep of this threat.
Eberhard meanwhile had been cautiously observing the new arrivals from afar, and sensing the rich scent of Coin approached the table offering his services as a local guide. Although clearly of Gannic origin and thus instantly distrusted by John, the sallow stranger quickly earned Baldwin’s respect through assurances that he knew the lay of the land far better than the charts of dubious cartographic worth the Lord had obtained in Balfar. Eberhard also demonstrated his abilities as a scribe who could both read AND write (2 dots in Study coming in handy!), and was subsequently hired on the spot.
The next morning the band struck out for the Old Fort early, accompanied by Sergeant Garth, the mostly-useless town constable. Pressing into the partially-collapsed Fort, they observed that it was a claustrophobic and unimaginatively-built military structure from the Conquest period of Vanderia’s past: stone foundations built up with wood and left to decay for around the past decade. Faced with a band of soldiers led a knight commander, and one irate parishioner, the inhabitants promptly surrendered and revealed themselves to be a trio of young adepts dedicated to the Entalian Circle, an ancient and disgraced order of Magi. They stated they were using the Keep as a watchpost to observe dangerous cult activity by Harthkin clans in the region, a claim which seemed passably acceptable to 2 out of 3 of the PCs. Lord Baldwin elected to let them go despite John’s protests, while Eberhard took great interest in a circular runic warding glyph drawn in salt that the adepts had hastily erased at the group’s arrival. The party elected to compensate the Entalian Circle for the trouble of taking the fort (-1 Coin, no faction standing loss), and negotiated for some maps and charts of the underground warrens in the local region that the Circle had commissioned (improving to +1 faction standing with the Circle!). A gentlemanly exchange all around, really.
Back out in town, the team quickly looked to establish a mercantile base to begin revitalizing Wygrove’s economic fortunes: out of the woodwork emerged a starting cohort, a tenacious but wild pair of Blacksmith Brothers, eager to once again ply their craft. These smiths were cast out of the Balfar Mineral Rights Commission for their debauched and drunken behavior, but maybe they can be reformed…? Or at least inebriated back into a useful state from time to time. Meanwhile Orista the Antiquarian (town contact) arrived on caravan and set up shop, hopeful that this influx of bold adventurers might help reopen the roads and start a flow of valuable relics from the numerous dangerous ruins of the region. Or maybe she can just pawn some oddities off before moving on to the next town. Capitalism, ho!
All of this logistical mobilization combined with the rugged nature of Wygrove leads to a rather Militant outlook in the town’s dealings (Special Ability: +1d to Assault plan Engagement rolls). Clearly our erstwhile band of adventurers does not plan on going too gentle into that good night! John Keats hopes to bring the light of Coroz to burn out the banditry and wild beasts overflowing in the region. Lord Baldwin seeks to clear these lands and instill order in a resurgence of his family name. And Eberhard thinks he can make a coin or two from the rising fortunes of the region.
I can’t wait to see how well all of that works out for them!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thoughts : Coroz was independently picked as a patron deity by a whopping 2 out of 2 of our “divine” characters, which is interesting perhaps (the central religion of the setting consists of a three-god pantheon or ‘trinity’, though unlike the RL christian trinity they are reckoned separately and not considered different aspects of a monotheism). Coroz is a genderless god of flame, sun, and warmth, and doesn’t have much of an overt ‘agenda’ in terms of branding so it makes sense that it might be the most inviting of the pantheon in a way. Unfortunately the two characters didn’t have a chance to interact as Kasseri was gone for the town creation RP, but one thing that will be fun is to introduce agents of the various Church factions and see how that interaction plays out. The Church has “a whole lotta Tier” counting all it’s various sub-factions, possibly a plurality within the setting when taken altogether, but is intended to be very fractious, riven with dissent and internal conflict.
I was still grappling with an issue related to roll20 chat field corruption (there’s a lot of tinkering with custom sheets going on in the background of this one), so we unfortunately couldn’t get any dice rolling results this first time around. Fortunately no particularly risky actions were called for as everyone was just feeling the setting and each other’s PCs out. I am prettty sure I have it sorted out for next time (the trick is to erase chat history using an option from outside of the game client).
The below map is super rough. Green blobs are woods, there’s a blue shape west of the town (the lake of Brittleloch), and the black squiggles are mountains. I need to clean this one up for next time but it’s intentionally got a lot of blank space for now.
