Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports – Page 27

Tonight at 6PM PST – The Wobbegong Crew tangles with the Red Sashes.

Tonight at 6PM PST – The Wobbegong Crew tangles with the Red Sashes. We’ve got Mylera Klev’s little brother as a hostage. Let’s see how that goes. Come join us on https://www.twitch.tv/actualplay

GM: Judd Karlman

Making useful contacts and rolling for downtime activities in Blades of the Inquisition by RoosterEma – in my…

Making useful contacts and rolling for downtime activities in Blades of the Inquisition by RoosterEma – in my campaign, that involves drug dealers, pilgrims, chef-surgeons and a little bit of heresy. The full session report.

http://roleoverplaydead.com/blades-of-the-inquisition-pilgrims-and-poultices/

A fine night of navigating the dangerous streets and canals of Doskvol with Sean Nittner, Pete Cornell and Jason…

A fine night of navigating the dangerous streets and canals of Doskvol with Sean Nittner, Pete Cornell and Jason Bowell.

In which the Wobbegong Crew pay to avoid prison, learn that the Red Sashes snitched, witness the beginning of a serious rift in the Billhooks and take Red Sash turf for their own.

https://githyankidiaspora.wordpress.com/2017/07/31/gang-wars-now-and-gang-wars-to-come/

So, a big score.

So, a big score. Lots of rep, a fair bit of heat.Entanglement roll: Arrest. They bribed the bluecoats, so that’s fine.

Then, the cutter decides to clear heat as a downtime action. With the hound, they track down the inspector who was behind the arrest warrant: “We grab him, pull him into an alley and beat the crap out of him.” It was pretty successful! For clearing heat right now, that is. I sure hope Inspector Kinlaith isn’t the sort to hold a grudge!

Finished my 3 part arc with my meatspace table. They had a good enough time we’ll be playing again in September.

I am really proud of the Rat Temple. And they found Limptwitch’s Stash, under the Rowan House–one of the Six Towers still controlled by the original aristocratic line…

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2017/07/29/blades-in-the-dark-the-grotto/

My main group are playing The Prestige, a crew of assassins who’ve ended up on The Hive’s bad side.

My main group are playing The Prestige, a crew of assassins who’ve ended up on The Hive’s bad side. What’s ensued since the first exchanges have been a series of violent killings, including a massacre seemingly perpetrated by members of the Imperial Military in broad daylight (Brogan, the commander of the suspect squad, has just been broken out of prison by a mysterious group of smugglers looking for a bargaining chip), the burning-down of the Archaeological wing of Charterhall Uni, and culminating in the brutal stabbing of mercenary captain Karth Orris, his corpse left cooling on the cobbles of an obscure square deep in the tangle of the docks.

Now, The Hive are getting desperate, and they no longer have Karth’s mercenaries on tap due to enmity between Djera Maha and the mercenaries’ new commander Alma Critch. So, Djera and her remaining inner circle are sequestering themselves aboard a fortified train perpetually criss-crossing the city (think the Iron Council, but hyper-capitalist), and have decided to hire assassins to take out the assassins.

I’ve been introducing new factions as needed in my game, so I decided to have a little fun with this one. What with all the public killings and disguise-based misdirection The Prestige have been using, I decided to create a crew of assassins to be their match. Of course, I had to get creepy with it – enter The Waxmen, a nasty Tier II death cult devoted to The Thousand Faces, who perform their ritual killings almost exclusively in public, and wear horrible wax death masks with rearranged features. The image below is what they look like right now in terms of clocks.

TL;DR, introducing new or subsidiary factions as needed is super fun, you should try it sometime. Small ones work best, especially ones who are part of existing factions. Kath Orris’ mercenary company (I’ve called them The Frozen Dawn) have recently split off from the Hive to form their own Tier III, weak hold faction, for instance. It’s pretty sweet.

Also, feel free to use the Waxmen yourself. I might properly write them up at some point following the canon examples in the book.

Two sessions in and I have a lot less worries about opportunities. Here’s a recap.

Situation

PCs are a Cult crew who are trying to secure their home turf in Silkshore. The Fog Hounds and The Vultures are at war. The Lampblacks are trying to make a profit off it, and The Gondoliers are trying to avoid ruin.

Questions

Who will control the waterways?

Will Bazso Baz figure out a way to turn a profit?

Will The Gondoliers cooperate with the criminal/occult underworld?

I started the session off by letting them know of some opportunities:

1.) Their forgotten god Axia was angry with them. The sacrifices had been pitiful lately and Axia required high quality sacrifices. [Privately I know of 3 candidates… Bazso Baz, The leader of the Vultures, or a Gondolier]

2.) Bazso wanted to run a sting operation on The Vultures.

3.) The Gondoliers were asking around for some help with a spirit well in Charhollow

Play

The PCs decided to hear Bazso out and drove a hard bargain to get better pay. As they were doing legwork setting up for their score, the Whisper sent out the cult’s adepts to see if they can find a worthy sacrifice. The PCs work on setting up their score and head back to the HQ to finalize their plan. I roll a fortune roll to see how the adepts have done… [tier 0 cult with elite adepts = 1d] Oh look… a 6!?

The Twist

I think over who these adepts could of possibly nabbed and it hits me. They’ve kidnapped a Gondolier. No one would think of raising a hand against them so of course that’s why its worked this one time. The cult then discusses whether or not to go through with the sacrifice. Most are for it and the hold outs just want to make sure to pin the responsibility on someone else. The cults decided to pin the murder on The Fog Hounds…

The Score

The Cutter and the Whisper go hunting for a patsy. They fail the roll and stumble in through the skylight of a Fog Hound having dinner with his family. There’s a scuffle but he’s secure. The Leech takes the gondolier boat which was sitting outside of HQ and tries to make a convincing scene to convince the gondoliers the Fog Hounds did it. Then the Slide heads to the Gondoliers and tells a hell of a lie. Rolls sway and gets a 6… Well that’s taken care of so that just leaves the Sacrifice.

The Sacrifice

“Ritual combat against the anointed one” The Cutter and the Gondolier do hand to hand combat. Of course the Gondolier cheats and tries to use magic and summon a ghost. The Whisper is there to shut that down. There’s some screaming, a bottle of lightning is opened, and someone’s throat was ripped out (gondolier’s) It was a hell of a session.

Debrief

I feel pretty good that the players will take things into their own hands. I think having a situation map showing the scenario helped. It was a first very culty score. I guess my only question would be… Can anyone figure where I should of used an engagement roll? It probably would of been the negotiation with the Gondoliers but that didn’t feel like a score as much as a single action roll. Could of set up a clock but didn’t have the wherewithal to present a NPC poking at PC lies and I wanted to get to the sacrificial fight.

Attempted to do a test run of BitD with a group of friends.

Attempted to do a test run of BitD with a group of friends. As this book was relatively new to all of us, we tried running a heist for Baszo Baz to start things off. Here are some bullet points from that game:

* An informant got beaten, then drugged, then beaten again, then drugged again. Only some information was obtained.

* A trained swordsman from the Red Sashes got hit with a frozen fish

* The crew repeatedly failed to convince a dockworker to let them into a certain warehouse, who then ran off to call the Bluecoats (thanks to a spike in unlucky rolls).

* The Hound had almost pinpoint accuracy with their rifle.

* The Cutter chose a non-cutting weapon, beating enemies into submission with brass knuckles instead.

* A vengeful ghost was accidentally summoned, appeared to merge with flames resulting from a tinkerer’s “distraction.”

* The crew let a gondolier deal with the ghost and ran off, having decided the item they recovered from their target was not worth the trouble.

By the end, it seemed this crew was ill-suited for running quiet operations and will probably never be hired by Baszo Baz again, but everyone had a fun time nonetheless. So I guess I did things right? The question is if I should continue from this point or hit the reset button and try again with the crew as “Bravos” instead of mere thieves?

Incarceration, divination, and smuggling in Doskvol with Jason Bowell, Pete Cornell and Sean Nittner.

https://githyankidiaspora.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/downtime-wheat-and-the-benthic-zone-job/

So, my Monday night group trades off GMing week to week.

So, my Monday night group trades off GMing week to week. Mostly 5E DnD, but I just started running Blades in the Dark about a month ago. One of the other GMs is running a DnD game that probably would have worked better as Blades: it’s a campaign about demihuman resistance fighters acting against a human supremacist gov’t. Last night, after wrapping up some loose ends from our last session, he broached the idea of making a Blades style crew sheet for the party and their resistance network. Sounds like we’re porting over long term project clocks, faction rules, and are going to use Blades style crew advancements to manage party XP.