Category: Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports

Crew “The Third” session part 2 “Masquerade in the Silkshore”

Players

Umbzuzu – Severosi Whisper

Isabela – Tycherosi Lurk

Thornton – Dagger Isles Cutter

Just finished our second blades session, a couple of things to iron out after this session and improve on. It was a social score and I felt it a little harder to run than the last Stealth session.

So the party finished up last time after making off with Bazso’s war treasury and burning the place to the ground for Mylera. Mylera was impressed and had a number of jobs for them if they so chose, she divulged that she planned to coordinate multiple strikes on Lampblack territory and that if the crew hit one of his operations they could keep the turf for their own ends.

She disclosed the location of a brothel owned by a Madame La’Fort in the docks, with a lampblack drug lockup in the basement. After gathering information and from what our brothel connoisseur knew to be true, they came up with a plan to convince the Madame to turn against the lampblacks and have her run the brothel under the crews protection. Plus giving the crew full use of the premise as their turf. They found her to be attending a masquerade style party for the lampblacks and working girls, in imitation of the much classier noble events. The party was being held in slightly run down Silkshore manor property on a canal.

They rolled a good engagement, yet almost faltered at the door, managing to just about bluff their way in. After a while searching and an argument with a prostitute starting a clock “discovered at the masquerade” (this bit of the game I should have acted to speed up earlier), they discovered the madam to be looking after players at a card table in a large study, converted into gambling room. They paid the fee to enter the gaming room room, and then on a good fortune roll they recognized Madame La’Fort and one of the players at the table as Brick, a lieutenant of Baz . Umbzuzu joined the cards table, while Isabel and Thorn were near the bar area. Umbzuzu was able to get her to fetch something from the bar, where Thorn made a desperate sway roll attempting to chat her up and get her to come somewhere secluded for a while. He succeeded and the two of them made their way to some private rooms upstairs, where he dropped his guise and just about made her listen to him before she stormed out. He knew of the Lampblacks bad treatment of the girls and after listening to his plan, a good fortune roll meant she accepted his deal on the condition that they took care of Brick. The girls would make the takeover if he was out of the way. The crew had taken a fair bit of stress while getting the results they needed to avoid conflict and decided rather than take him out there, they would leave and do that as another score. So the whole score turned out to be a set up.

They will encounter a few issues next time, as Bricks suspicion was aroused, they weren’t discovered at the party but they were noticed, although luckily for them it was a masquerade. There’s still time for things to go wrong, as Mylera would have carried out her strikes during this score, yet they haven’t completed their goal.

My only thought is that the game slowed when they tried to avoid danger too much and I felt I needed to press it on them a bit more, but not wanting to detract from their successes either. I think I need to complicate their lives a bit more on 4/5 rolls. They were only a couple of ticks from their whole cover being blown, so there was still a lot of room for it to go wrong. Also one player wants to kill stuff and another wants to avoid killing due to consequences, how can this clash be resolved? Second session and a bit of ironing out to do my end but I can mostly see where I need to work on. I think they also need to try and jump into the action a bit more. Shall see next session 🙂