Started my first game tonight. My players assembled a, currently unnamed, Shadows crew, all Tycherosi. Bug the Lurk, Ruby the Slide, and Gunner the Hound. They’ve set up their lair in the back of Gunner’s old shop in Charterhall. Their hunting grounds are a small portion of Nightmarket, paying off the local smuggler gang, The Nightcrawlers, for the access.
So their first score is acquiring the deed of the Penderyn Estate for the disowned black sheep son Kristov. They send Bug to scout the manor in Brightstone while Ruby and Gunner run interference with the Lord and Lady Penderyn. They manage to distract them for a little while before the Lord shoves Gunner into a wall to get them out of the way. Bug finds the safe behind the massive family portrait and splits just in time to avoid detection.
They return that evening and upon making the Engagement roll with a meager two dice, a CRIT! They are standing in front of the painting, the house quiet and sound asleep, we see them open the painting on a hinge, they see the safe and cut scene. Not too bad of a first session.
I’m new to BitD, never played it but I plan to GM some soon.
I’m new to BitD, never played it but I plan to GM some soon. I suspect Cult is a crew choice my group might make so I’d like to steep in some cultish inspiration. Can anyone point me towards some AP for a Cult crew?
Corporate Sector adventures continue in my game of Star Wars Scum & Villainy!
Corporate Sector adventures continue in my game of Star Wars Scum & Villainy!
The players took the initiative, with the team Scoundrel hitting up her weird contact Nuban for a job. Nuban is a collector and seller of Force-related artifacts, and she had something for the team to do: hit a traveling museum display and steal her a working holocron! The team hit the streets, with one group slicing into the museum’s files and nabbing the manifest, security team info and the route, the other team consorting with the team Speaker’s cousin for possible escape routes. After some gather info rolls they were all set with their plan: hit the artifacts en route to the museum, steal the holocron but also attempt to jack the rest of the display in the process!
It was a pretty daring plan and they got a 6 on their engagement roll. The Muscle had gotten a job with the security team and hijacked the rear truck with the help of the Stitch, while the Scoundrel and Mechanic snuck into the middle truck and took out the guards. The Scoundrel used her newly-acquired veteran advance Unstoppable to take out four armed guards at once while the rodian Mechanic napped the holocron. The Mechanic also happens to be Force-sensitive and this resulted in them being contacted by a spooky voice from within the holocron offering them great power! The front truck was taken with a clever trick from the Speaker and some quick intimidation work from the Pilot, but in the process they ran over a security guard and the Speaker wound up shooting another in the head when he tried to make a move on her.
They then had a chase through the streets of this space station with a security droid of similar make to their Muscle in hot pursuit, as well as a team of unknown pursuers. They dipped into the garbage maintenance tunnels and the Pilot lead a group Helm action to escape, and with their Commander ability they got a crit and left their pursuers in the dust!
Meanwhile, the Mechanic had slipped into the sewers and decided to just take the holocron right to the client. All the while it continued to whisper, promising to teach him the secrets of the Force if he kept it. He presented it to Nuban, who proceeded to commune with it in front of him. The player really struggled with their temptation to steal the holocron, but decided that the payday was too much to pass up. But they have decided that they are going to shift their Vice over to an Obsession with the holocron and learning more about the Force.
The main team escaped scott-free and loaded up the cargo into the ship. When the Mechanic rejoined them they took off, slipping out just before the lockdown went into effect. Among the stuff they found was a B1 battle droid who is apparently able to use the Force and lives in a secret space station, so the next mission is to take them home. The crew has already expressed an interest in future jobs to sell their spoils or use them for long-term projects/crafting.
Still loving the system and I look forward to running it every week! We’re having a blast!
We cut right back in where we left off. The crew (Nix, our Forgotten, and Bug, our Witch, crew of the Ghost, a Dark Orb) have been briefly left to their own devices in the corporate suite aboard the primary mining station in the upper atmosphere of the gas giant Naturalis III.
The administrators are giving them some space to discuss business, and to take in a little automated presentation – a membrane display that drips up out of the tabletop to hang in the air, rotating, peeling apart to reveal its innards and show how advanced and profitable the Syndicate’s operation is here (membrane is a piece of technology I need to write up in the rules – it’s a kind of silvery-black oily nanotech substance, programmed to take on certain shapes, and the preferred 3D display method over glitchy holograms. It’s also used for high-tech interfaces, with the buttons and switches extruding from surfaces as needed. Fancy stuff).
We reiterate the crew’s goal here: somehow draw out Lamplight, one of the secretive admins of the Naturalis Syndicate, and convince her to take a deal with the Tethisii Mining Council. Testing the waters, and still learning the system, Brendon decides to do a flashback – turns out Nix visited the station a month back, posing as a regular gas miner (chemically-burned pressure suit, breathing apparatus, toolbelt, carefully messy oil stains), and managed to corner a high ranking miner to press some info out of him.
Seems Lamplight has a barely-withheld addiction to collecting rare antiquities, especially those of alien origin. Another flashback, but this one’s a lot cheaper, since it uses some fiction we’ve already established about the crew’s craft – Ghost has a lot of old junk aboard from previous crews. In amongst the debris, their just happens to be an old alien painting, actually a gilt-framed hunk of stone pried of some ancient ruin.
For the past month, they’ve been advertising the painting on the local networks, fishing for replies. There’s an interested buyer, and they’re gambling on it being Lamplight.
Back to the present. The admins come back in (temporarily shelled into their collective android body) to finalise the investment procedure. During the discussion, Nix and Bug (somewhat clumsily) drop hints about paintings. The admins are nonplussed, and the meeting continues as normal after that stumbling block, but a few days later the crew get a message aboard Ghost: Lamplight wants to meet.
Problem is, she’s careful enough that she immediately rebuffs any attempt to meet aboard-craft. Instead she arranges for them to meet on one of the tertiary mining rigs over Naturalis III, painting in tow.
They meet in one of the cargo hangars. Lamplight arrives flanked by heavily-armed guards. She’s a statuesque woman with a ring of snake eyes encircling her head, and she looks mighty suspicious. However, the deal actually goes swimmingly – as soon as Lamplight sets her many eyes on the painting, the deal’s done (Roxanne rolled a crit on her Sway here as she negotiated, and we ran with it). Turns out Lamplight’s love of alien art trumps any conviction regarding who has a stake in the Syndicate. She agrees to the deal with the Tethisii in exchange for the painting.
We close out the score with some payoff (4 Profit), allotting Chaos to the Urci Naturalis system (this was contained – no gunshots or anything, but the admins’ suspicions were raised a little, so 2 Chaos, +1 for a high-profile target), Maintenance (the crew spend 1 Profit to keep Ghost running), and then on to downtime.
There are ghosts in Ghosts machine, something to do with the old crew – the crew need an expert. Thinking this might be a religious matter, they’re headed to visit the Apophatic Order on Fitzwilliam II, in Fitzwilliam’s Ashes, a ruined system orbiting a black hole known as Night’s Mouth. They do a slow burn to avoid spending too much Profit. The trip takes a few decades for them, a few more for everywhere else due to time dilation.
Downtime activities for the first few weeks/months of the trip: both Nix and Bug externalise some of their Damage (Nix talks it out with Ghost’s old and violent AI, who speaks a disembodied voice that echoes through the bulkheads, while Bug trains in an old gym deep in the core, boxing with a virtual membrane opponent); Bug starts a long-term project, designing a special hypnotic function for their artificial snake familiar; Nix trains up their Savvy.
We end the session there, ready to jump into free play next and see if the crew can get into contact with the notoriously tricky Apophatic Order.
Stray thoughts: There were some hiccoughs for Brendon here and there, but nothing I haven’t seen with other people getting to grips with Blades’ flashbacks and the like. It’s early days yet.
Something interesting: we had a brief discussion afterwards about how different A Nocturne feels when compared to Blades. Roxanne mentioned how wide-open it feels compared to the tight pressure-cooker of Duskwall. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on how that feeling develops as we go forward and situations start to snowball. I like it, but I definitely want to nail it down and examine it more.
This session also marked the start of a change-over to the still-in-development v0.8 rules. Overall, it seems to be going well, particularly the slightly looser interstellar travel rules, which sell the time-scales involved much better than the old mass of numbers I dumped into the previous version.
So I played a short game with my friend Sean this weekend.
So I played a short game with my friend Sean this weekend. He plays a Lurk in a gang of Shadows nicknamed Gambit. Pretty clear what he wants to do, eh? Because he was a lone player I got him a free Thug Cohort on top of the regular upgrades (Dreg), which were Thief Rigging and Underground Passageways.
I used the default setting with War in Crow’s foot, with Baszo looking for the war chest of the red sashes. After Gathering Info with his bartender friend, he learned that the treasure was being hidden in a tailor’s import warehouse.
We made some observation montages. He also learned that he could infiltrate the place through at least one of two means: there are regular container shipments that enter through the main garage door once a week, this could be a good way to be smuggled in. Because of the crew trait he also learned that they like to keep their warehouse clear of moisture so they have a place where any liquid leaks out to the canals. This is the approach that Sean chose, so we cut to Gambit and Dreg emerging from the sewers into the ground floor of the warehouse.
They were in a controlled position. Cargo was stacked in such a way as to provide a rather labyrinthine network of hiding spots for the pair to navigate through. Gambit began scanning the place to see what was where. The obstacle was not in actually spotting things but avoiding being spotted while looking around. I gave him his first devil’s bargain: while prowling around, he would rip some fabric that was laying around, which would raise suspiscion in the warehouse guards no matter what, even if he succeeded in not getting caught. He refused and rolled a 6 with his two dice.
Circling around back to a sweaty Dreg, Gambit got the lay of the land: first floor is cargo area, with some platforms that could raise and lower cargo through silken rope pulleys, as well as a U shaped catwalk that could be accessed by stairs on the left and a ladder on the right. To the left were two conversing guards and to the right was a lone smoking thug. At the end of the U shape was a manager’s office with open windows that cast moving shadows… someone was inside. The low lighting condition and ambiant haze made it harder to see from one end to another… but sound carried really well in the enclosed metallic space.
He chose to climb the ladder. Dreg’s signal was when the cigarette fell from the guard, that’s when he would create a distraction and make some cargo fall on the floor to force the other two guards to investigate.
Sean chose to add and use his Silence Vial in order to have his approach be merely one of luck: does the guy look my way as I creep forward? I stated clearly that on a 1-3 he would end up in a risky position against the smoking guard, on a 4-5 he would turn at the last moment, making tis a controlled position, and on a six Gambit would be able to move past and unseen, or “get the drop on him”.
Two dice and what do you know I roll a 4 as the highest. Sean decides to resist the consequence, costing him 3 stress (unlucky roll since he had three Prowess action ratings).
He ends up behind the guard and wants to cut the cigarette butt at the tipbso that the glowing ember part falls down, sigballing to Dreg, without being noticed by the smoking guard himself. I offer the devil’s bargain that this starts a fire as the glowing cigarette tip hits some fabric. He pushed himself instead and lands a 6! The guard is none the wiser. Gambit continues towards the main office.
He checks through the door, sees a barrek chested man verifying documents as he pours himself some whiskey. Gambit unlocks the door while hearing the two remaining guards go downstairs to investigate the commotion. He gets inside at the right moment, laying low. I made this a prowl check to fit with reading an npc’s movements AND opening and closing a door while moving without making a sound. Desperate position but standard effect. He pulls another 6 and everything is peachy. He circles aroubd the guy and reveals that he had brought tranquilizer syringes. I explain that this is a retroactive acquire asset. We vignette flashback his meeting with a shady guy who sells his luxury 3 pack of cigarillos that hide the syringes, costing Sean his second starting coin. As we emerge from the flashback I propose a choice of devil’s bargains: the whiskey glass is dropped, fully alerting the two leftover guys, or he gets repeatedly hit in the ribs by the tough manager’s elbows as he struggles to not get stung by the tranquilizer. Sean chose the second. We mark lvl 2 harm and he rolls, getting another 6! Its just a matter of finding the chest and getting it out . It is hidden behind a counter but too heavy for a single man to carry. We flashback to when a cart was hidden among some cargo on the other end of the catwalks. This cost him one stress because its in enemy territory. He is thus able to wheel out the chest alone, headed towards the platform system. As he emerges, he hears the guards actively noticing Dreg… who was quite unlucky with his sneaking about (being tier 0). Gambit wants to jump on the platform, grabbing one of the ropes, and heroically charge one of the guards as the guard moves about below. The position is risky but the effect is great: the aerial charge could really inflict a solid knockout blow. Finally Sean doesnt roll a 6 and the guard notices Gambit breaking his fall but not quite suceeding at having enough swing momentum to reach him. The guard charges with his short sword. Sean marks another item and pulls out his single shot pistol. The situation is controlled and the effect is great. He pulls it off on a 5 but manages to get flesh wound-grazed (lvl 1 harm) which he chose not to resist.
He hears Dreg chuckling as he rounds the corner, wiping the blood from his blade. The guards are eliminated and the chest is theirs!
The duo exit the premises by the canals. We cut to a meeting outside a tavern where the duo hid 12 out of 12 coins beneath sacks of grain. Baszo takes 4 satchels of silver pieces and hands it to them, ordering his lackeys to carry the rest.
#glowinthedarkrpg Last night I ran a one-shot of Adam Schwaninger’s Glow in the Dark at an open RPG event here in…
#glowinthedarkrpg Last night I ran a one-shot of Adam Schwaninger’s Glow in the Dark at an open RPG event here in pre-apocalyptic Portland OR. It was a hit!
We ended up with a very small crowd, so I only had two PCs. After an accelerated character creation (where, since we were short-staffed, I let them make pretty souped-up characters) we had Sheila, a shotgun-toting, leather-clad Reaper, and Blue Ring, a Mutant who was some sort of horrible hybrid of a human and a blue-ringed octopus.
We introduced the wasteland town of Bigwater, a section of the Boneyards on the coast of the rad-ocean, partially submerged. It turned out that, although humans lived there, the main population were Blue Ring’s fellow horrible cephalopod-people, who held themselves as quite superior to the simians. Unfortunately for Bigwater, they had just suffered a terrible raid by the Ape Empire, who sacked the town of their technological supplies and burned the rest.
Sheila and Blue Ring set out into the wastes to track the apes, and found a shack in the middle of nowhere. Just as they arrived, a flying saucer bearing the symbol of the Conclave (basically the Brotherhood of Steel; I figured with their advanced tech they just had flying saucers) dropped off a heavily-armored Knight to scan the area. Luckily, Blue Ring made short work of him using her feral-mutant special abilities to vanish into thin air, then ambush the Knight with her tentacles and venomous beak.
They ventured into the shack and found an abandoned elevator shaft leading down into the utter darkness. After jury-rigging the elevator, they defeated a few ape guards, took a keycard off an ape scientist, and unlocked the main chamber of the complex, where a bunch of ape technicians were trying to repair… a nuclear warhead!?
They intimidated the ape techs into fleeing, then Sheila made short work of the remaining ape guards (even an ape sergeant, who was wearing a Roman-style helmet with a human skull mounted on top. We also established the apes wore Roman-style robes in colors appropriate to their job function.) Just then, one remaining ape scientist held up a beeping device, pledging that the weapon would never fall into the primitives’ hands, but Blue Ring threw a knife at him and they hacked the device into turning off the warhead.
The duo lugged the warhead out of the complex and strapped it to a stolen ape-dune-buggy. In the epilogue, we saw Blue Ring deliver the bomb to her cephalopod brethren, and Sheila lead the mighty human-cephalopod army that nuked the Ape Empire and conquered the wastes.
We’re in Holt, maybe it’s Rin. I don’t know. I just now I don’t need any Hegemony Trouble. Can you spare a click to help a little old Stardancer make it safe to port?
So another week another score for the Crimson Snow.
So another week another score for the Crimson Snow. And wow, any feeling I had that last week was too easy on the players, this week corrected! After a creepy meetup at a cultists den, Vestine, our Whisper, found out from a fairly apathetic Setarra (to whom they now owe an undisclosed favor – my first successful devil’s bargain pitch!), that a fellow named Stavrul is responsible for furnishing a number of cults in the city with Black Lotus. So they made their way to his house in Coalridge and after a brief exchange with an irate and unwelcoming Stavrul, they decided to break into his place, largely to spite him. For some reason, the crew decided to pry holes in the roof and head in that way after Stavrul had left, and despite some loud clattering of tiles to the paved streets below, they got in. It was about at this point that they noticed a strange clanking sound coming from inside the, supposedly empty, house. So Ves decided to compel a ghost to investigate the house. Unfortunately, the ghost that answered the summons insisted that the house belonged to him and that the spark-craft hull within was not dangerous. In the interest of heading off problems later, the gang then decided to capture the ghost, and did so, though not before Ves was injured by it.
Dropping in through the roof, they cased the joint discovering the only room potentially of interest lay behind a door rigged with an electroplasmic trap, a detail discovered by the gang’s Slide, Hadius. Unfortunately, he discovered it quite by accident while attempting to get a look through the keyhole. A shocking experience indeed! :p Feeling fairly beaten up at this point, they decided to head into this room, again by the roof, for some reason. This time they had more trouble getting through the roof, succeeding in causing the vast majority of the remaining rooftiles to cascade, loudly to the street below. Inside the room, they found a small sputtering and clanking mechanical hull, about the size of a cat. Also within the room were some papers and books detailing Stavruls business dealings, including a warehouse held in his name.
It was about this time, that a loud banging was heard on the front door – a small contingent of Bluecoats, alerted to something strange happening within were on the scene. In an act either of audaucious boldness, or reckless stupidity, the crew decided to walk out the front door, pitching themselves as paranormal investigators/exterminators hired to deal with a ghost problem. Even with the aid of flashback generated business cards to that effect, the Bluecoats were having none of it, and only a menace cloaked offer of a bribe from “Lord” Banks and 2 Coin were enough to convince them not to take the whole gang into custody.
Upon returning to their Lair in Crow’s Foot, the Crows came a calling, in force, in response to the fellow they sent last week returning empty handed. The crew, feeling quite dejected after a not-immediately profitable score (they elected to keep the hull around rather than sell it), and really not in the mood to be shaken down, answered the door, blunderbusses in hand. The following violent, messy scuffle, ended with the bloodied Crows limping back to their lair, a new enemy made, and a retribution scheduled for sometime in the future.
This week, things kind of spiraled out of control for the PC’s, and though they certainly gained some interesting assets/information, and reputation (of a sort at least), they were left feeling like they’d done a lot of work, for little payoff. But it worked and the weird ideas they brought to the table made a terribly entertaining, if not profitable session!
Questions I was left with this week –
Was I right not to pay them? The bottled ghost, shoddy hull and warehouse location are all potential sources of wealth the score offered, but I figured that wealth would really involve a bit more work to actually bear fruit. I think I did the right thing – my understanding of scores is that, though they usually have an immediate payoff, its okay if a score generates opportunities rather than cold hard cash. I’m curious how others would have handled it though.
The faction sheet saw some action this week, with a lot of -1’s appearing as various factions had reasons to think worse of the Crimson Snow, and their relationship with the Crows dropping to -2. Seems a lot easier for players to make enemies rather than friends in Blades. Is that others experience as well? Also, is -2 (from 0) a big enough drop to their relationship with the Crows? We’d already established that the Crows are currently verging on civil war over the murder of Roric, so I thought it would probably take a fair bit to get them to actually unite enough to go to war with the PC’s gang? On the other hand, they did attack a group of their people… I thought the -2 and a new The Crows Retaliate clock (now half full) was consequence enough. But again, curious how others would’ve handled it?
Here you go guys and gals! The last part of Wednesday Night Game’s 7th Session of Blades in the Dark! Please enjoy!
Here you go guys and gals! The last part of Wednesday Night Game’s 7th Session of Blades in the Dark! Please enjoy!
Originally shared by Colin Matter
Hello! Please join the Wednesday Night Crew for side C of the Seventh session of Blades in the Dark! Blades in the Dark is a game of daring scoundrels pulling heists and jobs in the haunted streets of Doskvol. Alex (playing Cobra, a Leech), Elspeth…
I had an absolute blast at Totalcon this past weekend.
I had an absolute blast at Totalcon this past weekend. I ran Blades in the Dark twice. I used the standard intro setup from the book, the Lampblacks and the Red Sashes are about to go to war in Crow’s Foot, and each side wants your new up-and-coming gang to help out against the other. Some highlights:
The first session had three players: a Whisper, a Lurk, and a Hound. They agreed to steal a case of whiskey from the Sashes for Baszo Baz, but they also agreed to steal a painting from the Lampblacks for Mylera. The twist was that they asked Mylera for the whiskey as payment. Once she sussed out that their mysterious buyer was Baszo, she agreed, but poisoned all the bottles. The Whisper used Attune to case both gang’s HQs, and discovered VERY similar wards in each place. When he questioned his BFF Setarra about it, she told him that the grudge was personal, as Baszo held Mylera responsible for the death of his wife Celia, who also just happened to be Mylera’s sister (and the architect of the wards). After getting a critical on their engagement roll for the painting job, their cohort of Rooks managed to distract most of the Lampblacks away from their HQ by setting one of their nearby holdings on fire. The crew managed to get the basement door open, and the Whisper used what he learned from Setarra to poke the alarm wards in the right spot to shut them down (with some help from a silence potion). They crept inside, and got to work on the vault. Once the door swung open, they saw the Harry Potter style portrait of the Weeping Lady occasionally peek at them from behind her hands. They quickly covered up the painting and escaped into the night. They managed to get away with ZERO heat, because they kept it quiet, they didn’t kill anyone, and they didn’t take any bargains that would have upped the heat.
For the second session we had four players: A Whisper, a Lurk, a Slide, and a Hound. The Slide took Baszo Baz as a friend, so it colored the scenario quite a bit. They also agreed to steal the whiskey for Baszo, and later met with Mylera and agreed to steal the painting, though by that time it was pretty much decided that they were going to side with the Lampblacks. The Lurk visited his friend in the hall of records to look up the original blueprints for the house that the Sashes were using as they HQ (originally Tesslyn manor), and identified all the load-bearing walls. Baszo had asked the crew to plant a sealed envelope in place of the whiskey, saying it was his formal declaration of war. The Whisper attuned to it, and found a hex that would give the arcane equivalent of a poke in the eye to whoever opened it. He visited his friend Setarra to see if it could be turned up to 11. Setarra agreed to modify the runes in exchange for one of the Whisper’s childhood memories (the player described a scene from when the character was about 8, when his Leviathan Hunter father came home one night and announced that he’d gotten a promotion at work and wouldn’t have to go to sea anymore). The crew also met with Lyssa, and informed her what they were up to. She offered them a tidy sum of Coin to ensure that the war between the Sashes and the Lampblacks is brought to a swift conclusion (and didn’t much care which side won). The crew worked their way into the Sashes’ basement, but initially ran into some trouble finding good spots to place the explosives they brought with them. The Whisper made short work of locating the whiskey, and he carted it out while the rest of the crew moved some crates around to clear the spots on the walls. They hightailed it out of there, and the low bass rumble of the charges going off was the signal to the Hound standing guard on the rooftop across the street, his pistols and rifle arrayed in front of him for easy access. As the Sashes began fleeing from the now dangerously wobbling house, he began to take aim and started picking them off as the structure slowly collapsed in on itself with a series of loud groans and creaks. The next morning Mylera returned to the house to find it a smoking ruin. Her major domo Aldo retrieved the letter from the back doorstep, and when he opened it, was instantly disintegrated right before Mylera’s eyes. In contrast to the previous group, they ended up with a LOT of heat. I inadvertently agreed to run a Part 2 next year when I gave them a quick synopsis of the progression of the war over the next few days.
In both cases, there were players at the table who had never played before, and at the end asked if the book was available in the dealer’s room (it was, thanks to the fine folks at Modern Myths). Hope to hear tales of their own exploits here sometime soon. 🙂
