Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports – Page 5

Blades in the Dark – Session 11 – The Crimson Snow

This week was a big one for our beleaguered would be drug dealers. And for our Doskvol as well – A group of demons, summoned from their slumber, rose from the harbor and attacked the Docks, destroying most of the district. In the wake of this, the city has been placed under a high alert – Soldiers are now posted outside important buildings, spark-craft war machines rumble across the cobblestones, and special investigators are bringing citizens in for questioning regarding the demonic awakening… The demons remain at large, and reinforcements have begun arriving from elsewhere in the empire.

This disaster has shaken the city, leaving an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty among the citizens. The Crimson Snow however, opportunists to the core, utilized the demonic attack as an excuse to convene with the leaders of the other gangs in Crows Foot- namely the Lampblacks (friends of our crew), the Red Sashes (reeling from recent losses of their Dockside holdings) and the Crows, once more under the vampire Roric’s control.

A plan was hatched at this meeting, a bold criminal enterprise that promises vast wealth for all involved, should they succeed. Namely, a train heist – with valuable military equipment being brought in via electrorail, and the station being under reduced guard (many imperial troops being deployed elsewhere within the city) – the time to strike was now!

And so the plan was hatched – The Red Sashes would look after transportation of the haul, the Lampblacks would engineer a series of distractions to draw the attention of military personnel posted at the station, and the Crows would work with the Snow to secure their payload. Utilizing the Red Sash’s political contacts, they seized upon a ripe target – new experimental military hardware and fuel coming from Iruvia, under the guard of only a few dozen soldiers. Would this be the biggest score yet for the Snow, securing their position as a criminal operation of significance, or would it end with blood? Time would tell…

GM Notes – we had a lot of fun with this one – the 2IC of the Crows and the Sashes are personal rivals of two of our PC’s characters, so that was great to play out – the whole “gang summit” was a lot of fun – between a slightly unhinged Roric trying to hold it together, the PC’s openly mocking the Red Sashes, and the Lampblacks rather hoping to find an excuse for violence (it didn’t come – Roric still had enough influence to manage that for the meeting at least). Between the meeting, getting through last weeks downtime, and a bit of information gathering for the big heist – we didn’t actually get to start it this week. Its definitely feeling like the season finale of our game – so no holds barred next session – get rich or get dead! 😀 I’m also curious whether they will honor the ceasefire between the Crow’s Foot gangs during the score, or if they’ll seize the opportunity to wipe out the Sashes for good. And now for me to think up some big twists to throw at them during the score next week :p

Haven’t been able to play for a while and thought it would be useful to give my players a summary of our sessions so…

Haven’t been able to play for a while and thought it would be useful to give my players a summary of our sessions so far as I’ve been tracking them as a GM so that they could match their own notes up with mine. Spent part of the day typing up my summaries in actual paragraphs so thought I’d share them here for anyone interested.

A Murder of Crooks – The Story So Far…

Chapter 1: On The Waterfront

The Flock (A crew of Shadows) receives a job through their cut out Rigney, a bartender at The Last Mistake on the edge of Six Towers and Charterhall. The job is a simple tail and report mission: every two weeks Lord Strangford, a member of the City Council, sends a small group of his household guard to the docks where they collect a shipment and disappear into Duskwall. The mission is received from The Flock’s mysterious patron who has provided them with small funds and protection from other powers within the city.

The Flock head down to the docks to track the regular shipment. Holden (Akorosi/Tycherosi Illegitimate Child of a Noble Family. A Slide) and Myre (Skovlan Hunter) convince a small group of Strangford’s men to reveal the location on the docks where the shipment arrives each week. Meanwhile, Aiz (Iruvian Whisper with shadowy connections to the Spirit Wardens) slips past a clerk at the Red Hook, Co. and finds that no ship is recorded as using that berth during the days when Strangford’s guards receive their mysterious shipments. Having surveyed the area, the Flock sneak across the rooftops and watch as Strangford’s guards meet with members of the Fog Hounds who slide into docks on a low skiff. Myre takes out one of Strangford’s sharpshooters positioned on the roof and Aiz attunes to draw his spirit out of the corpse and use it to investigate Strangford’s carriage more closely. Inside, Aiz sees a young woman with white blonde hair and striking green eyes under a cloak who has been smuggled to Strangford’s carriage by the Fog Hounds.

As the carriage pulls away, the Flock follows along the rooftop through the Docks and into the canals of the Silkshore District. Holden has planned for this moment and uses his vice purveyor, Byrl, to set up a barricade along the bridge connecting the district. This delays Strangford’s men long enough to catch up and catch the guards smuggle the White Haired Woman into a brothel in the Ease called The Black Cat. Holden dons an air of civility and follows Strangford’s men into the brothel. He notes that the second floor is closed off to visitors but sees no sign of his quarry. After a brief liaison with two sex workers, Holden has to jump through the window of the Black Cat into the canals to escape. Myre goes to the Hall of Records and looks through Strangford’s genealogy but does not find any mention of a White Haired Woman. Myre and Aiz determine that Strangford is engaged in sex trafficking, using the Fog Hounds to smuggle women into the city and sell them to brothels in the Silkshore.

During downtime, Holden and Aiz meet up with Quellyn, a witch who acts as a healer for the organization. While overindulging on psychotropic mushrooms, Holden is attacked by the spirit of the guard which Myre killed at the Docks. Aiz subdues the spirit and bottles it to sell to a spirit trafficker she knows near the Nightmarket, Mozie.

Chapter 2: Thin Gray Line

After his encounter with the ghost of Strangford’s man, Holden has been unable to reach Byrl, who has gone to ground somewhere in the city and not been seen by any of his usual clients. It is also revealed that Myre is sleeping with an economic assistant at the Skovlan Embassy, Carro. Although their relationship is still new and the feelings are genuine, Myre takes the opportunity to glean any new information she can from her lover’s work. This evening Myre learns that the Diplomatic Quarter of Duskwall has been in a tither attempting to figure out what to do about a plague ship that has been kept in quarantine outside of the Northhook Channel for the last few weeks. Supplies have to be shuttled back and forth with great care to the ship but otherwise no one is allowed to break the quarantine zone maintained by the city’s River Patrol.

Holden continues to seek out Byrl with little luck but while wandering the streets comes into contact with a small waif seeking alms. Her name is Greta. She is a daughter of the Weeping Lady, a quasi-religious organization that runs a workhouse and soup kitchen at the edge of the district. Members of the Weeping Lady have become more visible on the streets of Six Towers in recent days. Meanwhile at The Last Mistake, Myre has seen a column in one of the local Ink Rake rags, The Doskvol Courier, which coyly alludes to Strangford’s possible involvement in human trafficking. Although there are few concrete details they elliptically allude to information that the Flock only passed to their unknown patrons. When Holden arrives and reveals that he has been unable to find Byrl, Myre and Aiz become increasingly concerned that he has been grabbed by the city watch due to his involvement with detaining Strangford’s men on the Silkshore bridge. Neither of the women believe that Byrl will hold up to close interrogation and may expose the Flock’s roll in the Strangford game.

Aiz speaks with Rigney and learns about a bartender at The Long Arm in Crows Foot named Vaun, who is well plugged into the various comings and goings of the City Watch. He owes Rigney a package and should be able to point the Flock in the right direction. However after narrowly avoiding detection among The Long Arm’s Blue Coat clientele, Vaun reveals that he was meant to trade the package with Rigney for a Demonbane Charm. Unbeknownst to them, Rigney had intended to have the Flock settle his end of the deal by whatever means necessary. Following a brief argument Vaun decides to set his dealings aside telling Holden that he doesn’t know anything about Byrl anyways.

Leaving emptyhanded the crew splits, with Holden and Myre returning to the Last Mistake to confront Rigney while Aiz investigates the city’s recently deceased addicts for information. Aiz tries to eliminate one addict’s spirit who manages to slip out of her grasp, but not before closely attuning with Aiz’s mind. As a consequence her vices are twisted requiring her to indulge in stupor for a short period of time.

Stumbling back into The Last Mistake, Aiz finds the bar under the control of Strangford’s men, Myre neutralized and held at gunpoint and Holden seated at a table across from Lord Strangford himself. Strangford’s guards had identified Byrl from the bridge and hunted him across the city for the past few days eventually capturing him and uncovering Holden’s role. Strangford threatens the Flock to stay out of his affairs and advises that they would do well to look into their mysterious patron who pulled them into this mess in the first place. His Strangford’s temper flares when Holden baits him with a remark about the White-Haired Woman. After beating Holden to prove a point, Strangford’s men leave through the alley. Rushing after them, Holden catches a glimpse of the girl with the White-Haired Woman riding beside Strangford in his carriage.

Chapter 3: For Want of a Nail

Flashback: Myre leads a battalion of Skovlan soldiers in a futile last stand against the Imperial siege of Lockport. As a hulking mechanical soldier bares down on her in the woods a loudspeaker booms over the battlefield informing both sides that the Skovlan Empress has been assassinated leading to a peace treaty and the end of Unity War two days ago. As the Imperial forces withdraw Myre stays behind dejected in the wilderness. Eventually she clears out her cabin taking only a few belongings, including the broken family clock, and makes her way towards a ship to Doskvol.

Holden tells Aiz and Myre about the White-Haired Woman and they debate how best to uncover Strangford’s motives. Myre and Aiz determine they need more information about Strangford’s potential enemies within the City Council, who the Flock have a close relationship with. Holden in disguise as a cousin of Counselor Rowan approaches Counselor Penderyn in her chambers. Although his line of questioning raises her suspicions he succeeds in learning that Lord Rowan is set in opposition to Strangford due to his controversial views on a bill before the City Council. Penderyn sends her staff secretary to escort Holden to Rowan’s office. En route Holden manages to briefly elude Penderyn’s secretary with a dose of trance powder and turn over Rowan’s offices. There he finds evidence of meetings between Rowan, Bowmore, and Clelland just prior to the Flock receiving a job to trail Strangford. He also steals Rowans calendar and leaves a note asking for a meeting at The Moon’s Daughter in three days. He leaves a fuckton of paper cranes in places too for some reason. By the skin of his teeth, Holden slips passed Strangford and Penderyn’s secretary on the steps of the Council building ditching his disguise and meeting up with Aiz and Myre.

Aiz realizes that the white haired woman’s appearance is distinctly Skovlan. Myre wonders if Strangford’s smuggling activities may be wider than previously realized and leads the Flock to a Skovlan refugee bar deep in Charhallow, Kellen’s. Although they get little information from the patron’s about any Skovlan people who have disappeared mysteriously, they do succeed in protecting Kellen’s from a gang of Anti-Skovlan vigilantes who fire bomb the bar while they are there before fleeing into the Sheets. Aiz summons a spirit who takes revenge on several of the vigilantes before being recaptured by her and Holden runs one of the prominent young punks through with his cane sword. Myre stays behind to help everyone escape the bar safely though she is unable to fully stop the fire from spreading. Only one of the vigilantes is left alive in the end and Aiz agrees to hand him over to the men from Kellen’s to deal with.

We wrapped up our ghostlines prequel campaign last night – here are the end-titles I put together.

Music by Jack de Quidt for Friends at the Table, used without permission. Buy his great music! https://notquitereal.bandcamp.com/

We had a good time! We ended up with a range of retirement outcomes from two linebulls in mansions through to one in a flophouse and one in a modest home.

We also did an “epilogue roll”, where each player stated a desired life-goal for their character and rolled 1d6 to see how close they came. They could then spend stash at a rate of 10 for a +1 to improve their outcome, basically sacrificing material wealth to pursue their goals. Because this was a prequel game, these epilogues will feed into the upcoming Blades in the Dark campaign set 40 years after. One character started a guild of criminal fixers, one started an alchemical tonic manufactory, the third became a famous celebrity and war-hero, and the fourth became a vampire with absolutely no money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu1fuhqUBVo

Another week, another session of Age of Blades :)

Another week, another session of Age of Blades 🙂

This week, the Silk Hats were recovering from their successful, but damaging, mission to plant an explosive artifact given them by The Dimmer Sisters onboard the Fog Hounds’ steamship. We treated the raid as a Plot Action (in the Fantasy Age organizational rules) against the Fog Hounds, and the roll was not only successful (doing some damage to the Fog Hounds’ stability, basically their organizational “hit points”) but also generated stunt points, which they chose to use to gain a +2 vs. the Hounds in their next organizational roll.

Goldie, the Hounds’ navigator who escaped the boat recognized Hishan and Jailiya, so there is no doubt who hit them, and the Fog Hounds and Silk Hats are now officially at war. The crew gained a point of reputation (their first), but no Heat, since the underworld is aware of their actions, but not the authorities.

While Saiya and Moon Eye set about finding a buyer for the bottles of spirit essence they stole from the Hounds, Noggs pushed her luck at the Silver Stag and lost a chunk of her accumulated wealth (failed her Willpower roll to avoid overindulging in her vice, but recovered her Scoundrel’s Luck point anyway).

Saiya negotiated a sweet deal to sell the spirit essence to a shady representative of the Path of Echoes (spirit cult) as a bargaining ploy, but when Moon Eye and Jailiya approached the Dimmer Sisters to see what they would offer, the Sisters (through Roslyn, their servant) offered friendship and a future favor (but less cash). Despite knowing it would piss off Saiya (she’s all about the cash), they agreed, feeling that good relations with the creepy but powerful Sisters was worth some lost income. The crew now have a +1 relationship with the Dimmer Sisters, and can call in a valuable occult favor.

Multiple times, crew members felt that they were being followed while moving around town, but were never able to determine who was doing the watching.

Saiya, to relieve her stress over the lost money making opportunity, went to the Red Lantern to smoke some opium. She smoked too much (another failed Willpower roll to resist overindulging in her vice), and ended up comatose. She had (wisely) taken Jailiya along with her as a bodyguard since they knew someone was following them, but as Jailiya was dragging her almost unconscious form up onto the deck of the Red Lantern (the opium den is on a boat docked in Silkshore), they came face to face with two turban wearing Red Sashes who told Jailiya she could leave, but they were taking Saiya (Mylera Klev had recognized Saiya from Lord Penderyn’s party where they stole the necklace, and knew she was an associate of Hishan’s, so she wanted to question her).

Jailiya gently set Saiya down on the deck and pulled out her mace, ready to take on the two skilled opponents before she would let them take her friend. Unfortunately, despite Jailiya’s skills, the two sword students proved too much for her, driving her back to the boat’s railing with vicious slashes of their curved swords, and finally striking her down.

The Red Lantern attendants nursed Jailiya back to consciousness (they don’t like customers dying on their boat – too much involvement from the Spirit Wardens), and she made her way back to the Black Raven, the Silk Hats’ lair.

After a quick conference in which everyone agreed they had to go after Saiya immediately, Moon Eye used some of his Blood magic to track Saiya’s location (he had early on taken blood samples from all of the crew members for just such an eventuality), and determined that the Red Sashes had taken Saiya back to their headquarters.

Hishan went to the Lampblacks, and told Baszo Baz what had happened. He suggested that helping rescue Saiya might go a long way to improving his romantic chances with the attractive Slide, so Baszo agreed to send 6 of his guys with the crew for the rescue mission.

Saiya woke up tied to a chair in a windowless room in the Red Sashes’ basement. Mylera questioned her, but she held her own, and convinced the Red Sashes’ leader that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, so she was untied and they had a more civilized conversation over strong Iruvian coffee, although four Red Sash sword students still stood ready nearby.

Moon Eye, Jailiya, and Noggs, along with the Lampblacks, took their boat and approached the undergound canal that runs below the Red Sashes’ school. Noggs made quick work of the intricate lock on the metal grating that blocked the canal (really good roll), and the group approached the landing and made their way up into the basement of the Sword School without further obstacle.

Meanwhile, Hishan, in his alter ego as Lord Rusten (the same fake identity he had used as a distraction when the crew stole the Red Sashes war chest, and again at Lord Penderyn’s party), approached the main gate and demanded to see Mylera. Hishan was shown in to the room where Saiya and Mylera were talking, and joined the conversation.

Right about this time, the rest of the crew, guided by Moon Eye’s Blood magic tracking, found their way to the same part of the basement, and Noggs silently approached and cracked the door to see Saiya and Hishan surrounded by Red sashes and conversing with the somewhat ill looking Mylera (she is suffering from the effects of the curse tablet that Moon Eye placed under her bed at Baszo’s request during their first score).

After a hushed confab, the crew decided speed was of the essence and opted to kick in the door and grab their mates, while hopefully capturing Mylera Klev as a bargaining chip.

And that’s where we ran out of time, so we’ve left the crew on that cliffhanger and will start with the combat next week.

Had another session of my “Age of Blades” game last night.

Had another session of my “Age of Blades” game last night. I’m still happy with the AGE system, but, as others have commented on, the exploration and roleplaying stunts are pretty weak. Given that the stunt system is this game’s “killer app”, it needs some work. I haven’t had a chance to really dig into the new Modern AGE yet, but I think it has some more focused stunts for non-combat/magic stuff.

The crew finally settled on a name for themselves, so future posts will chronicle the exploits of the Silk Hats. They also leveled up to level 2, and picked up some stat bonuses, new focuses, and new Talent levels, but no new Health as I’m using a grittier variant of the rules. Last session, they had made a very good “growth roll” for the crew, and got stunt points that allowed them to go from Tier 0 to Tier 1.

In our last game, the Dimmer Sisters (weird, occult recluses) had called in a favor from the crew’s Whisper, Moon Eye, and asked them to plant a (fairly obviously) explosive artifact on board one of the Fog Hound’s boats. This was fine with the Silk Hats, since they were on the verge of war with the Fog Hounds anyway due to past run-ins, but this score was to prove a lot more challenging than their previous jobs. Also, Saiya’s (the crew’s Slide) player couldn’t make it, so she missed the score.

The crew sent Jailiya, their Skovlander Cutter, to a bar where the Grinders (a vicious gang of Skovlander refugees) were rumored to hang out to set up a diversion. Despite her almost total lack of social skills, she managed to convince the Grinders that she wanted revenge on the Fog Hounds, and was willing to give the Grinders intel on a valuable shipment going through the Hounds’ warehouse the next night. The Silk Hats wanted the Grinders to raid the warehouse as a diversion to draw the Fog Hounds off the boat so they could get in and plant the bomb. They had also cased the Hounds’ warehouse themselves earlier, and saw crates of something valuable being loaded on the boat, so they wanted to steal those while planting the bomb.

As usual, Hishan, the Hats’ Spider, was on lookout duty, and Moon Eye and Noggs Keel, the crew’s Lurk, approached the Fog Hound’s steamboat from the water side in a dinghy under cover of magical shadows. Eventually, the Grinders’ raid started, but it was going too well (and too quietly) to be a good diversion, so Jailiya, who had been watching the warehouse, fired off a pistol, which got the Hounds on the boat’s attention.

Goldie, the Hounds’ navigator, sent half his men off to the warehouse to investigate, and Noggs and Moon Eye clambered aboard. They quickly made their way into the cargo hold, but didn’t find the crates they were seeking. Coming back up on deck, a Fog Hound sailor spotted them, and they let loose with spell and crossbow, but didn’t manage to kill him before he raised the alarm.

A fairly tense cat and mouse chase began on the ship (BTW – the soundtrack to Usual Suspects was playing in the background, so I was totally envisioning the action on the ship from that movie as we played), as Moon Eye and Noggs searched for hidden compartments while the ship’s crew searched for them. Cornered in a small cabin, the infiltrators were forced to start a gunfight with their pursuers, and Moon Eye blew the head off one of the Hounds with his carbine (a roll with lots of stunt points). The other Hound got away, so the entire boat’s crew was on high alert at this point.

While Moon Eye and Noggs kept frantically searching for the crates, Hishan and Jailiya, not seeing any Hounds on deck, came aboard and climbed up to the bridge where they burst in on Goldie before he could pull a weapon. They marched him down to the cargo hold, planning to force him to reveal where the smuggled cargo was, but were surprised by one of the Fog Hounds who winged Hishan with his pistol before viciously double slashing Jailiya with a nasty fighting knife. Jailiya is a serious bad ass, though, and crushed the Hounds’ skull with one blow of her mace (another good roll, with 6! stunt points). During the scuffle, Goldie jumped overboard, and took off down the docks.

Meanwhile, below decks, Moon Eye figured out how to open the hidden door to the Hounds’ smuggling compartment, and he and Noggs, not the strongest pair, lugged the two crates of potentially magical loot (Moon Eye had attuned to the ghost echo and noticed a faint glow about them) up on deck. The Hats were reunited on deck, and loaded the crates onto their dinghy. It looked like they crew would get away, beaten up, but alive, when Hishan asked Moon Eye how planting the bomb (the actual main mission) had gone…

While the others piled into the small boat, Moon Eye rushed back down to the engine room, cracked the thin clay tablet covered in snakelike runes that Rosslyn, the Dimmer Sister’s maid had given him, tossed the fragments into the room, and scrambled back up on deck just in time to have two Fog Hounds shoot at him, and miss. Diving into the boat, the crew escaped under cover of more magical darkness. A moment later, a muffled “whoomp!!!!” sounded from the boat, and they saw flames showing through portholes.

We ended there, with the crew battered but alive, and sitting on two crates containing 12 bottles of refined spirit essence.

Next time we’ll make the roll to see how the raid impacted the Hounds (I’m treating the PC scores as “plot actions” on the crew level, using the organization rules from the FAGE companion book.

We had our third session of my Age of Blades game (campaign set in the Blades in the Dark setting but using a…

We had our third session of my Age of Blades game (campaign set in the Blades in the Dark setting but using a tweaked, “classless” version of Fantasy AGE as the system) last night, and it went really well.

The PCs are a crew of Shadows (thieves) with something of a weird bent. So far, they’ve stolen the Red Sash’s war chest for the Lampblacks, becoming somewhat embroiled in the escalating gang war between the two groups, and stolen an ancient Iruvian necklace in a daring heist during a society party at eccentric nobleman and amateur archaeologist Cecil Penderyn’s townhouse at the behest of their patroness, bohemian black sheep noblewoman Adelaide Phroiag.

Last night’s session was all “downtime”, with PCs following up leads and indulging in vices (I introduced a mechanic where characters have one “scoundrel’s luck” point that they can use for a re-roll among other things, and which they get back only by indulging in their vices and risking over-doing it).

Moon-Eye, their whisper (spooky/magicky guy), went off to be possessed by his ghost associate, while the rest of the crew went to watch Jailya, their Skov bruiser, get beaten to a pulp in a dockside fighting pit (Jailya’s player failed her Willpower roll to not overindulge, and just kept fighting until she was knocked out).

Baszo Baz, leader of the Lampblacks, approached the crew’s Slide Saiya (an old flame of his) and negotiated letting a couple of his wounded foot soldiers recuperate in Saiya’s inn/brothel, which is the group’s lair.

Hishan, their Spider, put some pressure on his contact at the Blue Coats archives, and got copy of the investigation report/notes about the necklace heist, and found that an anonymous tipster had alerted Inspector Kristov Mariden that the crew might have been involved.

The Dimmer Sisters sent a ghostly summons to Moon-Eye and called in a favor, asking the group to get a weird artifact (a thin clay tablet covered in serpentine runes) on board one of their rivals, the Fog Hounds’, boats, break it, and flee (quickly…) They cased the Fog Hounds and made a plan, and we’ll launch into the score next session.

I had been worried that I didn’t have enough material prepped for the session, but there was some great characterization and interaction with NPC’s/factions. I think folks are settling into their characters, and the setting is feeling more “organic” and real (despite the players making regular jokes about the demon-based economy of Duskwall…).

I’m using the organization rules from the FAGE Companion to handle the crew level game. The raid on the Red Sash’s HQ was a plot action (doing very minimal damage to the Sashes due to the difference in tier), and they rolled a great success with stunt points on their first Growth roll, moving up from Tier 0 to tier 1. They are getting something of a rep, and flexing their criminal “muscles”.

All in all, I’m really happy with the campaign so far, and happy with the decision to use FAGE which I chose for its simplicty, even though one of my more casual players is still having a hard time grasping the system…

Ok – I’m going to go ahead and share my actual play reports from my “Age of Blades” game, for those who may be…

Ok – I’m going to go ahead and share my actual play reports from my “Age of Blades” game, for those who may be interested. These are written for folks who are not super familiar with the Blades setting, so there will be some extraneous explanations for folks here.

So, as heretical as it may seem to some of you, I started my game using the setting from Blades in the Dark, with the rules from Fantasy Age for the system last night. I opted for this combo for two reasons. First, I could never get my head around the actual BitD system, despite playing a lot of PbtA games. It seems weirdly abstract in strange places to me. Second, half my group are fairly casual gamers who never completely grok the systems we play, so I wanted something super easy and straight forward, but with enough widgets/special abilities on the character side to keep them happy. I wrote up a simple classless version of FAGE that incorporated some elements of Blades, which so far has worked out pretty well.

I’m using the starting situation from the Blades book. The main gang that controls the district they operate in (The Crows) is in chaos due to a power struggle, and two smaller gangs (The Lampblacks and the Red Sashes) have started an open war. The PCs got hired by one of the smaller gangs (The Lampblacks) to break into the headquarters of the other one and steal their war chest. As a side job, the gang boss hired the whisper (weird, magicky character) to hide a creepy, evil ancient artifact in the enemy gang leader’s room. They were very suspicious of the artifact and spent a good amount of time trying to research it. The Whisper went to the Dimmer Sisters for advice, so now he owes them a favor.

One player is playing a Spider, the leader of the PC gang, and he wanted to double cross the gang that hired them (Lampblacks) and reveal the plot to the enemy gang (Red Sashes – who are of the same ethnic group that he is), but was overruled. It was also complicated because the leader of the Lampblacks is obsessed with one of the PCs and she has spurned him for a while, but she used that fact to manipulate him into upping their payment.

They cased the red Sashes headquarters, and the Spider went inside with an excuse to scope it out, so they determined where the most likely place the war chest would be (in the leader’s bedroom). My wife is playing the Lurk, their second story burglar, so she and the Whisper climbed up into the bedroom while the Slide (the “face” of the group) kept watch, and the Spider prepared to make a diversion if needed. The Whisper hid the artifact under the Red Sash leader’s bed, while the Lurk tried to remove a painting to get at the safe behind it, setting off a poison gas trap. They avoided the gas, but signaled the Spider to make the diversion since they thought the noise may have alerted the enemy leader. The Lurk got the safe open and stole the money plus some documents, and she and the Whisper escaped while the Spider distracted the enemy leader, although she is now suspicious of him and is having him followed.

They are hoping that the Red Sashes won’t realize it was them who broke in (they are a very weak gang still), but I think they’ll find out pretty soon. Now that they’ve taken sides in the gang war, they will get sucked into it more, while pursuing some of their own agendas.

Fantasy Age has organizational rules in the Companion book, so I’m using those to handle the gang on gang level play. Should be fun.

Just a few questions about Band of Blades and how it is intended to be played, mostly surrounding ‘NPC’ rookies.

Do all rookies in a squad have their own character sheets (irrespective of whether they are NPCs or Pc controlled). Can uncontrolled rookies still pursue and help on actions autonomously or do they require a ‘player character’ to lead a group action or spur them to action through a command etc?

I know its probably going to be seen as heresy around here :), but for the last month or so I’ve been running a…

I know its probably going to be seen as heresy around here :), but for the last month or so I’ve been running a campaign using the Blades setting, but the Fantasy Age rules as the engine. I’ve written up some actual play stuff about the campaign (and a little about how I adapted the rules for use with Blades), and was wondering if there was any interest in this community in hearing about it?

Category: Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports