Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports – Page 46

This is personal Larose!

This is personal Larose!

The Duskvol Spectral Society licking their wounds and then giving a licking!

Players: Eric Fattig and Adrienne Mueller

http://www.seannittner.com/actual-play-this-is-personal-larose-2212017/

A unique session in our campaign – pretty much all downtime and entanglements after a long-running score the…

A unique session in our campaign – pretty much all downtime and entanglements after a long-running score the previous session.

Really hitting roleplaying vices and long-term projects hard.

(also, getting Fiends meant that they bumped back up the tier that they lost by going to war the previous session, but that was kind of cool too, and totally fitting their reputation and actions!)

So my partial group created and ran their cult’s gang of rooks, the affectionately named B-Team, and did a score.

So my partial group created and ran their cult’s gang of rooks, the affectionately named B-Team, and did a score. A slide named Silver Fox, a spider named Babs, and a lurk named Night. They were given the task by the cult’s expert adept, Blankenship, to secure an industrial grade workshop somewhere in the city to start producing their Leviathan Blood substitute. Nothing but sixes during the gather info stage let them find an abandoned refinery with nothing inside but some squatting alchemy students from the Jayan School of Alchemy performing dangerous and illegal experiments on ghosts. Then a string of failures during the actual score nearly had them get beaten but a tierless group of students. Fortunately a well timed crit salvaged the mission.

Highlights

– Silver Fox and Night escaping from bluecoats on goatback, with Night holding on to both reigns as Silver Fox rode backwards and fired his pistols at the bluecoats.

– Night has a tattoo on his neck that he thinks says “Death” in Hadrathi, but actually just says Yogurt

– Babs’ vice is shoes. Before anyone had gotten violent one of the students scuffed her shoe while trying to shut a door on her. Without hesitation she pulled out her palm pistol and shot that student point blank in the face. After this everything went wrong.

I have to share a few moments from yesterday’s Connoisseurs game…

So, Sapphire (the sardonic, hard-drinking Lurk) and Jack (the Spider who’s look is a mix of Eric Draven and Joker…with a mind close to both!) are hired by Bazso to steal the Red Sashes’ war treasury (I like that suggestion, even for Assassins), being as they performed their task of murdering the Iruvian consulate contact perfectly (yep, like that one, too!).

So, before the hiest, Sapphire wakes to a Red Sash plunging a dagger towards her. She blocks the blade, taking a slight cut to her forearm, then proceeds to stab the assassin in the lung, disabling her enough for questioning. Unfortunately, the dice decided the Red Sash died of shock before Sapphire could have words. Shortly after, Jack arrives and decides to behead the Red Sash and bundle her head in the sash…

Cut to the job, all the way to the Red Sash vault, where they get in with nary a hitch (the engagement and action rolls went so well!), steal the treasury and prominently display the head! Part of me was thinking, “What the…?” and another was “Oh! Oh, that is SO ballsy!”

The next score…

They’re taking turf by way of killing a certain Red Sash “officer” who runs that piece of the Red Sash pie. A Desperate engagement roll removes the crew’s scale advantage, since there are now two Red Sashes and two Cabbies, in a cab. One flashback (Jack does what’s needed to get a costly grenade) later and Sapphire’s Commanding their new thugs to charge the cab. One gets hurt and is incapacitated while the other shears two legs off of one of the two goats. The cab’s limping along, improving Jack’s position so he can mount the cab just long enough to dodge a bullet and toss in the grenade…

The target dives out as the grenade detonates and is graphically wounded. Sapphire, who has quite a personal beef with the man, walks up, looks him in his one good, hate-filled eye and shoots him in the head. She then turns to the shocked onlookers and calmly explains that the Connoisseurs are now in charge. Jack tips his hat, smiling and the thugs follow as their bosses escape.

So, they’re freaking violent! lol They’re at a Wanted level and because of their shenanigans (coupled with some fortune rolls highly in their favor) the Red Sashes are now Tier 1 weak. The war goes on…

My convention game went exceedingly well.

My convention game went exceedingly well. Character creation + Crew creation, from scratch, with a bunch of players who had only played games like Pathfinder and Castles & Crusades, took over 45 minutes. But we managed to get through the entire scenario I had planned. The Crew had decided to make Smugglers, and the founding members of the crew were fraternal twins from the Dagger Isles. They decided they moved people who needed to get in and out of Doskvol.

I was running a scenario based on “The Warriors,” wherein Lyssa had lay the blame for Roric’s death at the player’s feet, as they were known to have a open dispute with Roric over not paying dues to the Crows. Therefore, the Crows, the Lampblacks, and the Red Sashes were out to get the Vanishers (the crew’s moniker).

The crew got wind of a group of slaves Roric had wanted moved from the six towers District. The crew thought since this was the real cause of their strife with Roric, the slaves might now something about Roric’s death. Some Whisper had lined the tower with Spirit Crows as sentinels, but the crew managed to bypass them due to the Leech. They broke into the tower when the Lurk slipped in through and upper window and silently made their way downstairs, but the old and rusty door drew the attention of a wandering Crow, who chased the Lurk while the crew slipped inside.

The Leech and the Spider (lovers) were on the heels of the Crow trying to assist their crew-mate. Unbeknownst to them, the Lurk had managed to get a lead on the aging Crow and hide in a weapons locker. Additional guards followed the athletically voluptuous Leech (who took a great deal of Sway, shoulda been a Slide) up into the tower. The Spider convinced the lot they could have their way with her while the Leech stirred their libidos.

Meanwhile, the Cutter and the Hound followed the trail of the slaves downstairs to a solid door of iron with a bar of steel welded in place to keep the doors shut. They spent time trying to find another way in before busting out the demolition tools and pounding down the door with main force, drawing out the remaining guards. The door crashed down, releasing a terrible stench as the Crows arrived to confront them.

The Spider assaulted the guards who had gotten a bit too forceful with the Leach, inciting his ire. He killed two of them, while the Leach pulled a pistol secreted in the folds of her dress and killed her primary assailant, who dropped her. She slid backwards down the stairs, knocking down the rest of the guards, who fell victim to the forgotten Lurk’s knives.

The Crows who confronted the Cutter and Hound were more preoccupied with trying to reseal the door, a matter they took advantage of, killing or incapacitating them. Once all the Crows in the tower were dealt with, the crew reunited to find out what had befallen the slaves; with the stench, no one felt they were still alive.

Someone brought out a lantern, which revealed a vampiric Roric feeding on the corpses of the slaves and a few Crows. The Cutter used Ghostfighter in a desperate action and rendered Roric stupified, while the rest of the crew set the tower aflame, and then all ran out.

One of the Crows had summoned the local Bluecoats in an act of desperation, and another had summoned Lyssa. The game concluded with a mad escape from the clutches of the Bluecoats, only to find the leader of the Crows and her cronies waiting on their barge, now with “proof” the PCs had “killed” their former leader: Roric’s severed head.

Everyone had a blast. The player of the Leach was effusive, saying, “I never could have done anything like this so easily and satisfyingly in Pathfinder.”

Paragraph Blades Review:

“1) Focus on Flashbacks. One of the key tenants of Blades is that you jump right into the action. Even on a complicated heist, your group only works out the most basic details: “We go in the back while you attack the front.” Then the heist begins. If players ever bump into an obstacle that they didn’t expect, they can have a short flashback detailing how they planned ahead for this. “Oh no, the door is locked? Well good thing we knew to pack climbing gear 5 hours earlier.” This keeps the game fast and loose.

2) Gangs and Turf. In addition to character sheets, your gang also has a sheet. The players can perform jobs, pay bribes, or intimidate other gangs to spread their influence. As your gang levels up you can tackle bigger and bigger jobs. Maybe one day you’ll run this godforsaken place!

The flashbacks and the focus on expanding the gang prevents players from spending the entire session making a plan that will fall apart. It cribs a lot of great ideas from board games by keeping players engaged mechanically and in the fiction. I absolutely adore it, and since Dungeon World, this has become my new darling.”

http://schirduans.com/david/2014/04/rpg-micro-review-mega-list.html#PlayedBlades_in_the_Dark

Ran my first session last night, and Blades seems to have been quite the success.

Ran my first session last night, and Blades seems to have been quite the success. I come from a very traditional RPing background — Rolemaster, AD&D, GURPS, Hackmaster etc… Plenty of games with heft. Blades is extremely different from what I’m used to, in a lot of ways.

One of the things I wondered about is what it would be like to GM without rolling dice. Turns out, I didn’t miss it at all. I rolled a d6 at one point to choose between one NPC and another, and I rolled Entanglements near the end of the session. I don’t think I touched the dice otherwise, and it didn’t feel like I should have been.

My players all seem to have given the game the thumbs up, with attitudes ranging from being solidly pleased to seriously impressed.

After some introductory free play to get a feel for the setting and the crew’s sales territory, the actual Score started with an Engagement roll of 1. That resulted in the Whisper all alone in a bar with a dozen angry Skovs, all on their feet ready to cut him to pieces based on one Skov confusing him with someone else entirely.

The group quickly came to realise extent to which failure and complications lead to interesting and escalating situations.

I’m also happy with how a very simple Score can provide plenty of entertainment. The “I like combat, all this talking is boring me” player enjoyed watching other players have their spotlight time doing non-combat things, and was very satisfied with the “combat system”, even though his first Action also resulted in a 1 – 3 result.

I still have no interest whatsoever in games that push further into giving players active narrative control or which run extremely rules-lite, but I’m very happy with how John has integrated some of the concepts that have emerged from that end of the spectrum into what we have with Blades.

I’m extremely interested to see where the Crew takes things.

BOMBING ROCKS THE SHORES OF WHITECROWN

In a startling event last week, an explosion went off in the heart of the city, outside the Imperial Citadel. The bombing was, Bluecoat sources believe, an attempt on the Lord-Governor’s life. As of now the Bluecoats have a suspect, but no arrests have been made. The bombing has resulted in a closing of the Barrow Bridge, preventing any from leaving or entering Whitecrown until further notice.

The Queen’s Hand is back and in full swing. After a bombing-gone-wrong on the part of the Grinders, the crew was hired for an important mission. The bomber, a Hollow by the name of Jer, was presumed dead by Grinder and Bluecoat alike. Until an encoded message came in to Grinder HQ, suggesting Jer had taken up refuge in the basement of the North Hook Lighthouse. Hutton, the leader of the Grinders, hired the crew to go retrieve him and bring him back to the headquarters.

So the crew set off onboard their new boat, The Gentle Devil, and sailed across the North Hook channel. Bringing up their (forged) access papers, they were granted permission to dock. Moving on over to the lighthouse, they very quickly realized they would be outmatched in a fight against the guards in front. As such two of them, Phaya the Leech and Ulysses the Slide, bluffed their way in. The other two, Cyrene the Whisper and Zachnefain the Hound, chose to sneak in through the back. The bluffers got in fine, and swiftly made their way to the basement. However, a wandering patrol noticed the burglars, and opened fire.

Inside the basement, Ulysses and Phaya searched through the darkness, attempting to find the lost Hollow. Zachnefain managed to evade the guards coming after him, and slipped in to join the two of them.

Cyrene had much less luck. She was caught between several guards and the basement door. Thinking fast, she pulled out one of her spirit bottles, and threw it to the ground, releasing the spirit within. Putting her on more equal footing, the fight broke out.

In the basement, finding a lack of light sources, Phaya pulled out one of her bottles of Fire Oil, illuminating the area. What they saw was horrifying. Clinging to the rafters were nearly a dozen Hollows, watching them all with unblinking eyes. They dropped down, having been noticed, and confronted the party. “You, Grinders?” the supposed leader of them asked. After receiving confirmation, the leader engaged Phaya in hand-to-hand combat. The others quickly swarmed the other two party members.

Back upstairs, things were not going well for Cyrene. With the North Hook Lighthouse being so close to the Master-Warden’s Estate, the guards here were prepared for ghost combat. Cyrene had been shot, and the spirit she summoned was losing the battle. Mustering the energy she had left, she pulled herself together long enough to conjure a bolt of lightning from her hands, electrocuting one of the guards, giving the spirit the upper hand.

Returning to the basement, Phaya had quickly reversed the situation. Pulling back from the combat, she revealed she came prepared, with a series of bombs strapped to her person, ready to blow. The Hollows may be dim, but they were not suicidal. With Phaya having escalated the situation, they were willing to talk. After a conversation made difficult by the Hollow’s limited vocabulary, the groups found the truth of the situation. The Hollows, members of The Horde, were here seeking revenge for their fallen friend, who they believed had been manipulated into becoming an unwitting suicide bomber for the Grinder’s cause. They had faked the letter calling for rescue, in order to bait members of the Grinders to their deaths. The crew established that they were not Grinders, but merely in their employ. Both groups realizing they had no reason to fight further, sheathed their weapons.

When the basement crew returned upstairs, they found Cyrene bleeding out, four dead guards, and a broken spirit bottle. They quickly got Cyrene back onboard The Gentle Devil while Phaya stabilized Cyrene’s wounds.

Returning to Hutton, they explained the situation. Hutton understood, and commended them for trying. He explained that Jer had not been an intended casualty of the bombing, it must have been a mistake. He was sent there as a bomber, not as a suicide bomber. Hutton would work to smooth things over with the Horde, explaining the situation and possibly working on future cooperation. The crew was paid their due, and was told that future work may be in order between them and the Grinders.

Fish Market Day

Fish Market Day

The Bloodletters are back with a vengeance! Find out how we do a “show of force”, what the “Blood Letter” actually means, and what happens when Arcy finally gives in to Setarra’s corruption!

GM: John Harper

Players: Adam Koebel, Stras Acimovic, and me!

http://www.seannittner.com/actual-play-fish-market-day-2132017/

Thought Tendrils of a Forgotten God

Thought Tendrils of a Forgotten God

Arquo and Elke fend of the psychic energy of the Empty Vessel, animate corpses to impersonate their living selves, crash their little boat into smithereens, and open a ghost door that lets a flying wyrm out! Good times for the Doskvol Spectral Society

Players: Karen Twelves and Adrienne Mueller

http://www.seannittner.com/actual-play-thought-tendrils-of-a-forgotten-god-2142017/