Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports – Page 14

Ran two games of Blades at Total Confusion (Totalcon in Marlborough MA).

Ran two games of Blades at Total Confusion (Totalcon in Marlborough MA). Second time running it at a large con. I’d say it was very successful. Started things in media res with some premades and I definitely trimmed the downtime rules. With identical starting scenarios I ended up with wildly different (but positive) results and body counts. One person bought the PDF of the rules while we were playing, another went to the vendor booths while we took a short break to pick up the rules and I know at least one other person asked if they had the book at the vendor booth.

I highly recommend a large printed map as just a visual grounding for all the players. I kept my prep pretty minimal, but I did have some themes and ideas I wanted to touch on, that I could weave in as the story veered left and right. Downtime I kept to a single indulgence of vices with no risk of overindulgence and let players assign one skill dot of their choice.

So having picked up a copy of Blades a few weeks ago, yesterday we ran through our first session.

So having picked up a copy of Blades a few weeks ago, yesterday we ran through our first session. And it seemed to go really well! I decided to use the War in Crow’s Foot starting scenario and my players just dived right in! They’re playing a gang of Hawkers called the Crimson Snow and have already decided that they’re working towards eventually taking over the Red Sashes territory/role.

The gang currently consists of three members:

“Lord” Banks Bowmore, the crew’s Cutter, an ostracized member of the Bowmore family, implicated in a rather embarrassing incident involving a goat and some chickens and other things best left unsaid…

Hadius Silver, the crew’s Slide, a “merchant” from the Dagger Isles looking into expanding the family business

Vestine “Nightshade” Kingclaith, the crew’s Whisper, from a Skovlani military family, formerly a lecturer working at Charterhall University (perhaps until some rumors spread concerning their family after the war lead to them losing their position)

Their first score, which was selling some new product for Bazro Baz, went incredibly smoothly. Possibly too smoothly honestly, some clever planning and playing to their strengths meant that not much actually went wrong, and they succeeded in getting into a party hosted by a minor noble family and selling the merchandise to a wealthy young member of the Penderyn family, for them to sell it on to those among his friends who are into that sort of thing. Of course, the young mans family was less impressed on hearing about it, so they took a hit to their reputation among the City Council and the family itself. But I figure at this stage, they’re still relative nobodies in the city so I doubt there’ll be any actual consequences of that, yet.

But plans they have a plenty, and during downtime they set about starting some long-term projects – mapping the Red Sash drug supply lines, and analyzing the leftover drugs in order to replicate the product in the future. They’re also looking into getting a “Chemist” expert to help them make and analyse the drugs they intend to sell. They seem to have really grabbed onto the kind of “self-directed style” of Blades. And i’m fascinated to see how it all plays out honestly! 🙂

As the GM I did have a few questions for others GMing Blades:

1. How do folks go about coming up with devil’s bargains that players are willing to actually take? It might have been that they didn’t find their first score overly difficult, but they seemed very resistant to the idea of having to deal with some sort of consequence even if they rolled a 6. I think they’d be far more likely to simply push themselves if they wanted an extra dice.

2. How do you go about sorting out the difficulty of scores? Our first one was easy, and that felt like the right way for it to go – their approach was good and they rolled well. Would you deliberately try and ensure the next score is more taxing, throw in some curveballs? Or should I just go with what feels right score to score? And let the difficulty ramp up as they piss off more factions in Doskvol?

Tonight concluded the 14th and final session of BitD for the Voidcallers, with the Stories & Dice crew.

Tonight concluded the 14th and final session of BitD for the Voidcallers, with the Stories & Dice crew. Their service to Asgot, the Mistress in the Stars culminated with their hostile takeover of a rival cult’s attempts to reincarnate an ancient demon in the flooded railway lines far beneath the cathedral of the Church of the Ecstasy.

The Ink Rakes won’t soon stop writing about the hulking goat demon, comprised of drowned bodies, that erupted into the sanctum of the church during service.

Over the last three months the little cult that could has robbed a leviathan hunter ship. Firebombed an inspector’s office with munitions stolen from Skolv terrorists. Demolished a Rail Jack’s work camp with a ghost-powered storm. And lured trusting allies to secret rituals only to exercise their souls into shambling corpses to offer their goddess a temporary vessel.

For as crisp and quick as the system handles the fiction, the interaction with the mechanics felt a bit slow and deliberate for the first four or five sessions while the players got their feet under them. But there were some undeniably sharp sessions facilitated by the system as well. I’d love to run/play this again with a more straight up crimin’ crew.

Oh yeah, the Roll20 play space kind of got a little out of hands. Next time, a bigger emphasis on a smaller relationship map with more importance per NPC. The headcount got out of hand.

A huge thanks to my dedicated players: Craig Wolf, David Klein, Josh Riggins and Max Vanderheyden.

More from the Cult as they finish escaping from the Spirit Wardens Garrison!

Originally shared by Colin Matter

Hello! Please join the Wednesday Night Crew for side B 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…

http://wednesdaynightgame.wordpress.com/2018/02/21/blades-in-the-dark-session-07-side-b/

I ran my first session last night!

I ran my first session last night! My players created a Cutter, Leech, and a Slide organized into a Hawker Crew. The Cutter encouraged connections with the Red Sashes, who gave them a task: infiltrate an art auction and steal a famous portrait, the “Brona Misa.” It was a quick Score (only about an hour) but they didn’t get away without plenty of stress and a few entanglements.

The session was really fun but we found the game to be surprisingly procedural and gamey, especially considering the regular “fiction first” reminders in the book. We were able to get snippets of roleplay, but the lion’s share of gameplay was very technical. Is this something that will become more balanced as we become more familiar with the rules? We all like gamey games but we wanted a strong narrative experience as well.

Ok, ran my first game of Blades yesterday and we all had a blast.

Ok, ran my first game of Blades yesterday and we all had a blast. The newly-formed “Royal Arcane Imports” smuggler gang ran a quick snatch & grab score for the Dimmer Sisters (against The Revelation, an up-and-coming cult of a forgotten god), and we named the whole thing “The Curious Case of the Burning Goat Cart in the Night” 😀

Most of the time went into PC & Crew generation, but we were all impressed by how much detail and game world color that phase already generated. Then I sat down by myself for 20 minutes or so and came up with a short intro score, which we then ran with.

The engagement roll came up a 2, so we started up at Desperate: as per plan, the Lurk had stowed aboard the cultist (covered) goat cart, and was getting ready to snatch the target (small, heavy stone box) and vanish when cart got to specific spot. However, his own wards interacted unfavorably with the thing in the box, resulting in something ghostlike but not human starting to manifest next to him in the cart, throwing off sparks and light. This alerts the four heavily-armed cultists, who stop the card and look inside. Cue action.

Well, the Lurk player came up with a great flashback: he had brought a bottle of lamp oil with him, and had been busy soaking the interior of the cart while waiting. Then he gathers dice and gets some teamwork help from Hound pacing the cart, and gets a critical success on his Prowl (!). So what happens is that he grabs the box, shoots at the cart (setting off a firestorm) and leaps out running (Hound provides extra confusion). The critical success means he gets a nice head start before cultists manage to react properly.

With burning cart, pulled by panicking goats, careening wildly down the street and causing general mayhem.

He manages to drop box off at nearby (target) bridge, under which our Whisper is waiting ready with a camouflaged gondola and a heavy net. She grabs the box and goes dark. Lurk continues running and gets out of sight of cultists for a sec.

Here I asked if the Lurk would give me one more Prowl check (at Controlled) to see if he makes a clean getaway. He surprised me by saying that the character will instead quick-use his disguise kit and swap identities while out of sight for a sec. No, he didn’t have any suitable skill for that, but he Pushed it for 1d. I ruled that it’s risky, with limited effect. And rolls a 6 (!). So he walks back out from behind the corner, looking sufficiently different that the cultists run right past him, shouting incoherently. Then he goes to a nearby Nightmarket stall to have a quiet cup of coffee. 😉

I loved it. They got away clean due to a few really lucky rolls, but the players also realized that they had gotten lucky and it gave a great start to the campaign. The downtime phase also gave me nice pointers on follow-up (including some complications, one due to overindulgence of drug habit :).

The campaign will probably feature a lot of occult stuff, since that’s what the players chose as their favored smuggler cargo type (and chose reputation: “weird”). They are also interested in deathlands stuff, we’ll see…

Very impressed with this game.

I have a few questions about the game (or setting, more exactly), but I’ll do a separate post on those.

A NOCTURNE v7.2 – play-test session #1

A NOCTURNE v7.2 – play-test session #1

I’d intended to externally record this play-test campaign in some fashion, like a kind of secondary prosthetic repository of notes, maybe a slapdash podcast or somesuch. As it is, text’ll probably do. Fuck it.

This session was mostly character + craft creation, and getting the group up to speed (we only had two of the group present due to last minute re-jigs – Roxanne’s played Blades before and more or less knew the score, while Brendon had only really played D&D – new blood!), with the first taste of an opening score.

We open on the crew of the Ghost, a patchwork stealth craft (using the Dark Orb playbook) as they set foot on the ludicrously rich mining world of Tethis to meet with a few members of the the Most Serene Mining Council, the promise of a well-paid job in the thick, poisonous air. They enter one of the Tethisii’s artificial palaces through the fungal gardens, the slug-like mining magnates greeting them perfunctorily.

Nix (The Forgotten) is an uplifted arctic fox from a desolate, frontier ice world, forced to hunt and live by their wits, a frightening third eye nestled in the fur of their forehead (Brendon’s surprising and creepy take on the Forgotten’s The Subtle Knife ability – somehow, Nix can kill with a look).

Bug (The Witch) is also uplifted, a hyena-like creature from a desert world that used to be a paradise before being strip-mined for its valuable resources – Bug’s rebellious ways prompted the colonial authorities to implant an AI safeguard in his mind, which has grown strange and mutated over the years (Roxanne honing in on the Witch’s weirdest ability, Vessel, just like I knew she would).

The Mining Council have a simple proposition: they’ve been trying for years to strike a lucrative deal with the Naturalis Syndicate, the shadowy aristocrats who run the gas mines on nearby Naturalis III. The wrench in the gears is one of the Naturalis administrators, codenamed Lamplight, a mysterious woman unwilling to give up control of the Syndicate’s resources. The task: get Lamplight on side, or at least get her out of the way (likely the latter).

The crew’s plan: pose as new money investors hoping to get a small piece of the Naturalis Syndicate, trying to draw out Lamplight in the process. We establish that the Malgren Consortium, established at craft creation as rivals of the crew, may be interfering, but the engagement roll doesn’t go too badly – a 5, so a risky position starting out.

The crew, following some exchanged communiques, arrive at the Naturalis Syndicate headquarters, a bristling mining platform in the gas giant’s upper atmosphere, and are greeted by Sub-Administrator Lanthom (a sharply-dress man with a body like a low-poly imitation of a person), flanked by android guards. The androids scan Bug and something suspicious turns up – the android barks something at Lanthom, and he eyes the two. He asks them, bluntly, if they’re armed. Bug quickly allays his fears with some spiel about propriety and some are-you-serious’s, but I start a clock called Admin’s Suspicion and add a tick (a 5 on a Sway roll).

They’re taken to a corporate suite with a striking view of the gas giant’s cloud formations. Lanthom seems to wait for someone, silent. Then one of the androids shivers – a number of the administrators, paranoid about their physical safety and protective of their identities, have all ported temporarily into this android shell for this preliminary meeting. Their distorted voices combine.

The first big question: proof of funds. The players suddenly panic and I remind them about flashbacks. Brendon immediately latches on: turns out the Tethisii Mining Council have given them a fake line of credit – real enough to deceive on a first pass, and disguised enough to seem like it’s from another source. With this, the roll to convince the Syndicate of their story is Controlled. Still, Roxanne rolls a 4 and decides to take it on the chin – I add another tick to the Suspicion clock. The Administrators are mostly convinced, but they definitely have their guard up.

Then, it’s down to initial business, but that’s where we left it as it was getting late. I don’t like to split scores across sessions, but sometimes it’s gotta happen.

Stray thoughts: it’s a testament to the durable core of Blades that Roxanne was able to jump back into the mindset so quickly after several months away from the rules, and Brendon seems to be picking it up really quickly. That said, it’s really too early to tell if my hack is working as intended or not. Looking forward to stretching my system to breaking point over the next few weeks.

Hi everyone!

Hi everyone! Long time Lurk, first time posting. My incredible group has been playing Blades since late June of 2017. I started as a player, but wanted to try my hand at GMing this great game, and developed a re-skin of Blades I call “Tears in the Rain”.

Tears in the Rain takes place in New Los Angeles, the first Martian colony, now a sprawling metropolis of hovercars, holograms, artificial intelligence, and so much more. Most of the elements of the game are simply re-named, (Ulf Ironborn becomes Dmitri Romanov, etc.) but there are some unique elements as well.

So far we’ve had four sessions, including session zero, and my excitement about the game cannot be contained! Here are my after-action reports on the game so far. As someone that enjoys (and sometimes needs) to read other GM’s approaches to game elements, story, etc. I thought I’d share my own.

I hope you scoundrels can parse something from this! Merry heisting to all, and to all a good heist!

The hawker crew that I run are starting to come into the truth of the drug that they sell.

The hawker crew that I run are starting to come into the truth of the drug that they sell. One of them has been contacted by the demon Setarra, (in a dream which was almost entirely a reference to the Talking Heads ‘Once in a Lifetime’) to replace Lord Scurlock and hatch the three demon eggs deep beneath the city. Another has been taken to a laboratory run by a crew that they deal to (secretly run by Scurlock) who are investigating the effects of their product upon ghosts.

Just ran a cold open of Blades for three players last night, using the stripped down rules from World of Blades and…

Just ran a cold open of Blades for three players last night, using the stripped down rules from World of Blades and Sean Nittner’s Gaddoc Station score.

Fuck, what a great game! Running it just clicked for me. I let go of trying to figure out what happened next and just stuck to posing questions, throwing out prompts, roleplaying NPCs, and facilitating the fictional space. It felt like kind of a Zen mindset. By the end of the session, plenty of shot clocks were ticking on the table, but nothing went pear-shaped. The crew was careful and pretty sensible, so they worked their positioning hard and used the Aid rules liberally, which meant they burned a lot of stress for extra dice. If something had gone pear-shaped, they’d have been in real trouble, but their approach turned out to be a winning strategy last night. What really stuck for them was not having to plan everything out beforehand. That insight was like a klieg light going on, me included. I’ve run a few Blades games before, but hadn’t quite shed my old GM habits.

We’re now looking at upgrading to a game with the full rules set. Kudos to the author of World of Blades, +Duamn Figueroa, whose name doesn’t appear on the manuscript. They did a great job paring things down for a quick-start.