Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports – Page 29

The Crowtalons

(Full disclosure – I play Blades in the Dark as Shadows over Marienburg)

My crew met in Marienburg about a month ago. They consist of:

Coil (Cutter) – an Estalian swordswoman who spent many years about the ships of Don Rodrigo Herndez as both a sailor and a soldier. She was forced to duel him when Rodrigo’s jealous wife found that Coil was friends with Silver. The duel left Rodrigo without a hand and the ship cast upon the rocks in a failed mutiny.

Echo (Spider) – a dispossessed Empire noble from the city of Altdorf, who learned the ways of plotting in the courts of the Emperor. He was a third son, and sent to the Bright College but his ambition got the better of him and he broke the summoning circle of one of his tormenting instructors and was forced to kill him. His family also failed in their attempts to bring ruin to the Todbringer clan – to their demise.

Silver (Lurk) – the son of a Tilean merchant baron, he was a wild card in the city of Luccini and had a very loose relationship with the tenets of property ownership. When a rival merchant had a jar of black pearl stolen from him the day before he could trade them for exotic goods from Araby, he was the obvious felon. Alas, the accusation was false and he we forced to take passage on a passing Estalian vessel, where he quickly became lovers with the Captain’s wife.

Boots (Leech) – Reiklander outlaw who lived by wit and blade, wrecking passing riverboats and taking their goods. He became lovers with Petra, the paramour of his chief’s son Arno and was forced to leave the clan behind. He found his way to Marienburg.

Jaeger (Hound) – a mercenary scout from Nordland, attached to the The Honorable Companions, a free company. For years they were employed by the burghers of the Empire and chief of Kislev to fight against the Chaos incursions. When the company was betrayed by Captain Vesserek to their doom, he swore an oath of vengeance and followed the culprit to Marienburg where the traitor lived a life of ease on his ill-gotten gain.

The group met through various measure means and eventually found a lair at the deserted town house of the Listerhofen family. Though derelict, it provides excellent concealment for the burgeoning criminal empire.

After a handful of days trying to source a score, one of Whistles’ contacts has an opportunity: the Hessen Venture had recently returned from the New World and it is said the Captain had an excellent set of maps from his explorations. A simple matter to slip aboard the vessel and purloin them from the captain’s footlocker.

Knowing that the ship was fresh in dock, the crew split up: Spider and Jaeger searched for the vessel itself while Coil, Silver and Boots sought disguise that would allow them to pass as dockworkers. The first pair was successful after a few hours, and subtle enough that their search did not arouse any suspicions. In acquiring disguises however, some challenges were met. Silver ended up with a blood set following a botched mugging and Coil awoke near evening with a splitting headache after attempting to seduce a dockworker and then consuming too much wine. Boots “saved the day” by raiding a laundry.

While the crew repaired to the lair, Jaeger kept watch and was able to spot a merchant successfully dicker for the contents of the ship. Trailing him to discover the merchant’s identity, he was spotted by the man’s bodyguards (4 on Prowl) – who gave chase to him after the merchant arrived home.

The chase was a short one, and unfortunate (2 on Prowl). The Hound found himself cornered in a blind alley and beaten mercilessly (1 on unskilled Skirmish). He did glean some useful information however: the name of the merchant was Van Kelder.

When the wounded Jaeger returned to the lair, the crew decided the deception plan would have to be changed to a straight-up infiltration.

Stealing a riverboat, they sculled the black canals of Marienburg towards the Southdocks. Unfortunately, none of them are Marienburg natives and they swiftly became lost in the darkness, not arriving at the Hessen Venture until an hour before dawn.

They climbed aboard, leaving the wounded Jaeger to cover their retreat. They manage to get aboard and concealed but realize the deck has guards that will need to be dealt with (4 on engagement roll). Boots handily knocks one out (6 on prowl) and while Silver and Coil deal with another (Devils Footsteps to attack from above (a mast boom)) but create noise (A Prowl 4 and Skirmish 4 respectively). (The awareness clock moves to 5/6.)

Silver works the lock to the Captain’s cabin (Tinker two 6s in a row – limited effect due to the higher tier of the lock.) (During this time, Coil really wanted to help, and it raised a 15-minute debate on how to help someone Tinkering a lock open – as it turns out, it appears that lock picking is not a team sport.) and they break into the cabin. The captain is there, asleep with two ladies of the night in a tangle of limbs.

They find the footlocker and rather than risk the lock, Silver and Echo pick it up and haul it out (Prowl 5) – the small noise they make is enough to awaken one of the two women. Coil races to her and puts a blade to her throat with a quiet sign and threatens her (Command roll 4). The woman recoils (quietly) but a tough choice is offered – will the woman’s movement awaken the captain? I pull out the fate die – Coil kills her to be certain.

The captain lolls in bed, nuzzling the dead woman’s hair.

As Echo and Silver retreat, Coil notices a small crate, probably stored in the Captain’s quarters due to its value. She hefts it (using a probably stretched description of “Not to be trifled with”) and hauls it out. Ironically, I rule that she can’t do this silently (thus rendering the previous ending of the woman unnecessary) and the chase is on. Grunting, she makes it to the rail and hefts the crate over; the three below muff the catch (I chose a teamwork Finesse – but that was probably wrong) and it breaks open, revealing carefully packed Elvish porcelain. In a flurry of crossbow bolts, they row away.

Total Heat: 2 (Controlled) +1 (Not their turf) +2 (killing involved): 5

And more Blades from Wednesday Night Game! Please enjoy as we continue our job from the last episode!

Originally shared by Colin Matter

Hello! Please join the Wednesday Night Crew for our second session of Blades in the Dark! Blades in the Dark is a game by John Harper and published by Evil Hat. It’s a game of daring scoundrels pulling heists and jobs in an industrial fantasy setting of…

http://wednesdaynightgame.wordpress.com/2017/07/12/blades-in-the-dark-session-02-side-b/

So, here’s a funny story:

On the very first engagement roll my group had they rolled a crit. It was hilarious because it’s the one thing I hadn’t expected to happen – had to bullshit up another obstacle so that the engagement wasn’t just the end of it (also my first time GMing the game). After about a month we had to take a break due to scheduling changes, though.

We started up again just this past Tuesday – some of the old group couldn’t make it back, but we still had enough originals to where I felt it was fair to continue the old campaign instead of starting a new one (to let the new players have their own say in it). So we go over the basic rules, what happened in the 1 year between the seasons, then they go to make their first engagement roll of Season 2….

It was another crit.

And by the new guy no less – who made a grand total of 2 action rolls (including the engagement) in the whole of the session, and had BOTH be crits. It was surreal, and I fear that if that pattern continues I’ll never be able to challenge them ever again.

The Strangers Cometh: Episode 01 – A Rude Introduction

The Strangers Cometh: Episode 01 – A Rude Introduction

GM: Justin

Smiles The Cutter: Pierce Jones

Vex The Leech: Kitten

Xia The Slide: Alex

Tom the Hound: Rick

Gnarls the Spider: Andrew

The session starts with the Strangers being crowded into Baszo Baz’s office within the headquarters of the Lampblacks, having been forced in by their “recruiters” who were looking for those that’d be willing to join the fight against the Red Sashes. Instead of taking Baszo’s offer, the group immediately flashes back to a meeting with Mylera Klev. A careful negotiation is done, signing up the Strangers with the Red Sashes and making a fat stack of coin for striking a blow against the Lampblacks when they weren’t expecting it.

The action refocuses on the crew after a bit of information gathering, Smiles and Gnarls in Baz’s office under the pretense of negotiating, Xia and Vex having disguised themselves as another Lampblack and a worker, respectively, and Tom settled up in the rafters after sneaking in with his sights located on the man in charge.

The plan starts off in a Desperate situation and the Baszo has a gun on the distraction and is demanding their compliance in siding with them. Not wanting to be caught in a lie, Smiles decides to distract him with a gift and an offering. Another flashback occurs with Smiles talking to Mylera, speaking about how willing she was to get the job done. If she’d be willing to sacrifice those who are weak to seal the deal. With her agreement (and 3 stress), a Red Sash that had fucked up one too many times was brought in by the Stranger’s heavy hitters known as Wicker and Hook. With a bottle of fine whiskey offered, Smiles and Gnarls were able to diffuse Bazso’s hostility and keep the “negotiations” going. Offered a chance to try and impress the Lampblack’s leader, he offered Smiles the chance to kill the Red Sash prisoner. With a brutally wide grin, Smiles moved to the poor man and pinned him down to the ground with knives. Pulling out a metal rod with a series of shark teeth bound to the metal, he began to carve the man up like a piece of cattle both to impress and intimidate those in the room. Gnarls used his leader’s brutality to worm out additional information from Baszo, learning about another warehouse where they had jumped a group of Bluecoats in order to try and gain access to better weaponry.

Downstairs, Vex and Xia snuck in disguises through the warehouse, looking for a perfect place to strike. A supply of dynamite and chemicals that were used in the creation of Spark were a perfect location for the fire bombs to set the coal residues and dust aflame and burn the HQ down to the ground. A series of amazingly good rolls allowed the two to set up quickly and easily without being spotted. Tom’s pet, an exotic and strange bird, kept an eye out for a boat that they had learned would be arriving with a shipment of drugs to process and then ship out to their dens. The small but brutal kid has learned this after finding a docker taking a piss and then put a gun against his ass and threatened his life. The docker spilled everything he knew and was rewarded with a slit throat and a deep sleep in the canals.

With their getaway vehicle in sight, the group quickly moved into action. Smiles sealed the “deal of cooperation” with Bazso and tugged hard on his arm, helping line up a perfect headshot for their assassin waiting in the riggings and girders of the ceiling. Gnarls, given a smoke bomb, dropped it and let the smoke fill the room as Tom took his shot. An Extreme effect, controlled Hunt roll was instead dropped to Great effect as a Five was rolled. Bazso Baz took a grazing shot to the head and went down, letting Gnarls escape with their thugs in tow. The mutilated corpse was left behind by the door as an obstruction as Vex and Xia made their way out to the boat. Tom snuck back out the window, using the distraction and confusion that Xia left when she pointed out where she heard the shots from to escape to safety.

Xia and Vex make their way out to the boat with panicked Lampblacks upon it, trying to convince them that help is needed inside. When she wasn’t able to convince the first guard to go in, she quietly and quickly pulled a knife and slit the man’s throat before dropping him into the water. The next one took a face full of drown powder and began to panic, pulling the others closer. It was a shame when the fire bomb hit them then, setting them all ablaze just as the rest of the Strangers came out. With a righteously thrown grenade, the fire bombs hidden in the Lampblack HQ went up in flames and the building burned mightily and wickedly. Tom waited nearby to watch what happened and try to finish off Bazso but neither he nor his second in command left the building even as it burned to the ground. Of course, it burned thanks to a nice bribe to the crew’s friends in the Brigadiers to make sure they were preoccupied elsewhere.

The Strangers made their escape, getting paid 10 coin for the sabotage job and an additional 2 coin for selling off the drugs that were on the boat to the Red Sashes’ hawkers. The boat was sent in for a squibbing, hopefully to be remade for the crew’s use another time. After gaining 4 reputation, the Strangers immediately accrued one Wanted level and one extra heat. Downtime activities went by quickly, since it was already 1am at the time. Few members had high stress and there was no harm to speak of thanks to armor and very good rolls for resistances. We rolled our Entanglement and ended up with Cooperation; it appears our newly cemented allies will need our help. Fortunately, we earned enough Crew XP to purchase War Dogs as the Strangers immediately go to war with the Lampblacks for their betrayal. What favor will need to be done next session? What is the beef between Xia and Baszo Baz? Will Gnarls ever stop accidently yelling at the worst moments? Find out next time on…

The Strangers Cometh.

It was my friend’s very first session GMing and I am a proud GM as he did excellent. It has been a lot of fun actually playing the game and I’ve been doing my best to showcase to the players that it is a game about meta and storytelling, to get more involved with the storytelling process. I told Justin that until he join the Google Group here, I’ll forward any questions he may have. Over all though, it was very smooth and very fun. Flashbacks are as amazing as I wanted them to be and I hope my fellow players come to realize how much of a “superpower” they are.

Updated my session report for my blog – just in time, too, because next session is tomorrow night.

Updated my session report for my blog – just in time, too, because next session is tomorrow night. 🙂 Special attention to RoosterEma.

http://roleoverplaydead.com/blades-inquisition-deep-tunnels/

A friend of mine passed his BITD campaign over to me after Season One so that he can actually play in the game he…

A friend of mine passed his BITD campaign over to me after Season One so that he can actually play in the game he helped in Kickstart. For good or ill, he really made it easy on our group in terms of the odds stacked against our gang. We started the sample scenario with two PCs, a Leech and a Whisper, and as we added more players to the Stygian Suns, a Bravos crew, we picked the Crows as the gang to side with, and clumsily manipulated the Lampblacks against the Red Sashes until their numbers were whittled down to nothing and the Lampblack leader was dead.

When I finally got my hardback copy, I realized that he’d completely breezed past scale, magnitude, potency, effect, and risk during our war, and that there was no way we should have been punching up out of our league as often as we did without serious repercussion.

The first session was far more difficult than any other session this group of PCs had experienced before. The players received a better understanding of the setting and the faction gameboard, and realized that they had eliminated the “heroes of the working class” in favor of Lyssa’s ascension and strengthening the hold the Crows had in Crow’s Nest, and made unwise decisions antagonizing, and killing two of, the Red Sashes. Yet the crew, having changed their playbook to Shadows, hadn’t quite gotten the scope they were working in. At Lyssa’s invitation,they were allowed to eavesdrop on a conversation between Mylera and Lyssa from a salon with a two-way mirror, wherein the latter was told to convey a message that the Red Sashes wanted to talk to the Suns about how the Lampblacks’ turf was going to be divvied up in the wake of their demise, and that if they didn’t give a reply in two hours, it was going to be war between the Sashes and the Suns.

Instead of replying, they decided to try to discredit Mylera by planting stolen art in an Iruvian mosque that she frequented on holy days. As part of a two-score plan, they chose an art collector acquaintance of hers who was also a ex-gangster to steal from, the two Lurks barely getting out alive from a confrontation with his formidable Whisper-for-hire, and that Whisper’s pet, a bar-geist, with nothing more than a concussion. Their Slyde kept the art collector busy with a very… Slavic seduction, complete with knives, leather, and public sex. Still, as they made their escape, the Suns realized that they’d missed the deadline for the meeting with the Sashes, and now they were at war.

When I read aloud the consequences for a crew being at war, the realization dawning on their faces was priceless. The Suns had an ally in the Crows (+3), and their Leech had rallied a gang made up of their former Elite Thugs Skovlander cohorts (The Bludbruderschaft) to come to their aid defending the turf they held, but it wasn’t going to be enough to hold off not only the Red Sashes, but the noble families whose younger scions they’d killed, with all the political influence their embassy held.

In their downtime, they finally elected to try to take the Sashes’ attention off of the Suns, by…framing the Gondoliers (III) for the disruption of the imminent truce between the Lampblacks (II) and the Sashes (III). They are counting on the mysterious reputation of the Gondoliers as a secret society as sufficiently alienating to be a believable antagonist, but now I feel they’ve absolutely picked the wrong target to mess with, especially as their Whisper (my PC) is in absentia after the Lampblack devastation. They managed to complete a 12-clock to initiate the frame in their downtime, but as their information about the Gondoliers’ capabilities was incomplete, they have no control over what happens from their “success”.

So the Stygian Suns came out of the first session with a Wanted level, 8 Coin, and a war with a Tier III gang of noble ne’er-do-wells.

From the e-mails I received, they thought it was a great first session full of learning opportunities about the system as well as action and suspense. I believe they’re going to be smarter about planning their scores, as the Stygian Suns started their Bravos careers as academics in the throes of post-adolescence anarchy and violence.

And the faction clocks are all counting down… Can’t wait until the next session.

Such a fun session

Originally shared by Robert Bohl

Last night, I played John Harper’s Blades in the Dark with my brother, with Judd Karlman GMing. We’re a group of smugglers known as the Wobbegong Crew* who used to be in the military during the Unity War. I’m gonna talk about my perspective of the events of the evening below; there’s a lovely twist, so read on!

For this session, we got offered a job to steal a boat from another smuggling crew, with whom we had no beef. This job came to us from a group of fancy-pantses called The Hive, who are like powerful old money criminal types. Even though we had no beef, we went for it, because it was just a theft job.

We started out with my ex-spy-cum-Slide, Willoughby, making a Gather Information roll. I met up with my drug dealer Bryl, who knew the Fog Hounds (our victims). Dressing up like a rich lady slumming it and cashing out her stash to ply the Fog Hounds, she discovered over the course of the night that they were anxiously looking for a reporter, trying to pass some information on to her. But they didn’t let slip what it was.

Come the end of the night, Willoughby decided she wanted to see what the boat they were going to steal looked like inside. She’d been flirting with one of the Hounds, Goldie, who really wanted to fuck her. She proposed this to him, and I rolled badly. He decides to go along with it, and has his crew follow us back to sabotage me and figure out what I’m up to.

My brother played Charming, an ex-Marine-cum-Cutter, had been leaving a bar and wound up seeing the crew trailing us. He follows, sees me slip inside the boat, then sees that they’re on to me and about to take me.

We go from Gathering Information to being in the middle of the job.

The minute we’re inside the boat, Goldie slams Willoughby against the bulkhead and pulls a knife on her, asking who she is. As he does that, Willoughby hears Charming start singing the sea shanty he uses when he’s on his crazy violent blood drugs that turn him into a relentless murder machine.

Willoughby tosses some knockout powder in a fake sachet in Goldie’s face, hauls him to the brig, and comes out on top, to Charming having murdered every single member of the gang (but Goldie), and also being severely wounded (gut shot, among other things).

We pilot the boat to somewhere quiet after dumping the bodies at sea (at Goldie’s request), and I get to talking to Goldie. I apologize, say I’d much rather have fucked him then stolen the ship when no one was around, but alas, his people were too smart, they cottoned onto me, and now everyone he loves is dead and gone and that’s that. I get him to tell me what’s going on, why his people were so worried and wanted to talk to the reporter, and that’s when we get our twist.

Turns out the Hive hired the Fog Hounds to smuggle Skovlander (my people’s) children for sale into Doskvol. I’m told they’re being sold for whatever one buys children for; there are all kinds of uses for orphan children in Doskvol. So the Hive hired us to get rid of people who found out too much.

I talk Goldie into realizing that we’re pissed too, and didn’t know what we were set up for, and we’re not going to let this stand. I have the ability to see if anyone’s lying (can’t not tell if they’re lying), so I wait until I’m sure he won’t come back at us, and let him leave. We deliver the boat, and agree to improve our relationship with the Hive so we can eventually stop this kiddy smuggling.

What a satisfying twist!

Now, a note on violence.

In the first session, I found us in a situation where we were ushering some people off a boat, and the most-expedient and only-reasonable way to achieve what we needed was to murder some people. So Willoughby did. Without thinking about it. Then she took a few weeks off, getting drunk and high and dealing with it.

This time I figured something out. Willoughby’s attitude is violence should be avoided, until it can’t be. Then you do it as quickly and cleanly as you can. People go from being people to being something that needs to be done.

It’s chilling and feels very right to me. I’m very excited to develop this character.

Speaking of which, she can already tell who’s lying and who isn’t, and this session, she gained the ability that when she Sways people, they will forget about it in time. She’s becoming a scary motherfucker. I love her.

Stand-out moment for me: Willoughby has lost both her husbands and all of her children to the Unity War. At some point in the interrogation, Goldie started to blubber and lose it that everyone was gone. Willoughby got hard, quick. “Listen, buddy, you’re not the only one to lose everyone and everything that matters to you. There’s a lot of that going around. So now, take what time you need, accept that this is the world you live in now, and let’s move forward.”

Thanks, Jay and Judd, and also John, for the game.

* Named after a shark that camouflages itself in seabeds

https://githyankidiaspora.wordpress.com/2017/07/10/the-fog-hound-job/

Judd Karlman GMed an excellent session for us on Twitch via Roll20 (or Roll20 via Twitch?).

Judd Karlman GMed an excellent session for us on Twitch via Roll20 (or Roll20 via Twitch?). I want to write more about this later, but check out the video. (Note: It’s not really a video until the end; it’s a static shot of our faces and audio of us.)

I will say one thing: I’ve always been down on online play, but this session both taught me why I feel that way, and showed me how I can enjoy it. If I have an established roleplaying rapport with people, the problems I have online fade away. I introduced both of these guys to RPGs back in the mid-80s, and have played uncountable sessions with both of them. So it worked.

And made for a great birthday present.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/157961882

Behold the Fog Hound Slaughter with the first 2 people I ever gamed with when I was 12, Jason Bowell and Robert Bohl.

Behold the Fog Hound Slaughter with the first 2 people I ever gamed with when I was 12, Jason Bowell and Robert Bohl. 30 years later and we’re still doing it.

Sean Nittner and Pete Cornell were missed.

https://githyankidiaspora.wordpress.com/2017/07/10/the-fog-hound-job/

In my most recent game of Blades, The Runaways were approached by Setarra and asked to retrieve one of the many Red…

In my most recent game of Blades, The Runaways were approached by Setarra and asked to retrieve one of the many Red Sashes who had been bound to her ancient enemy, the Fire Demon Kyronax (they would have crowns of fire visible in the ghost field). It just so happened that I also rolled a random rumor and so the crew learned about the Drug Lure which was maybe turning users into demons? The crew decided to gather info on both leads (not sure they had a plan for Lure, but they found a thread and decided to tug on it a little bit), and they ALMOST! entered the Bloodletter’s Tattoo parlor at the docks. I was so excited to do my best (terrible) Cantor Haig impression.

Ultimately they decided to have a score where they kidnapped a Red Sash, which they did by going to a drug den and throwing money around until someone important showed up. Eventually a Red Sash in fancy dress with the telltale demon signs showed up, and he was accompanied by a crow with stone feathers on his shoulder. They eventually managed to drug the Sash and coax him outside, and put a diadem on him that Setarra gave them to cancel out his demon powers. Unfortunately the crow, who we learned could speak and was named Horus, escaped.

They brought the now unconscious man to a pier in the Docks district they had never seen before, and that held no people or ships. Stepping onto it they were transported into the ghost field and walked for what felt like miles atop rotting wood. Eventually they reached the end and were met by Setarra who was either impressed at their bravery or amused by their foolishness. The man and and others Sashes kept mentioning his sister all night, because this was the brother of Mylera Klev. Better hope that Horus didn’t get a good look at them, or the Runaways can prepare for war.