Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports – Page 58

The Dead Setters bribe a dock boss with his own money in the Pier Pressure Caper.

The Dead Setters bribe a dock boss with his own money in the Pier Pressure Caper.

Recap: At war with Lord Strangford and his Leviathan Hunters, the Dead Setters entered into a ghost contract with the demon Ahazu to retrieve Strangford’s spirit for the entity. To this end, they looked for opportunities to both strike Strangford himself as well as high-profile crippling weaknesses inside his organization. They were also researching the effects of refined leviathan blood and its black market trade in an eventual bid for immortality, inspired by dealings with the Path of Echoes and run-ins with the Reconciled.

Although the gang knew that Lord Strangford’s new flagship, the Colossus, was supposed to be launched at some point in the near future, the list of things they didn’t know was far greater. Some espionage was in order, so the Setters called up Captain Minos and his rovers (their new cohort) to help carouse the information out of the dockside bars (non-downtime Gather Info roll, great effect).

Strangford operates a warehouse and office on the docks across from Whitecrown and near an infamous tattooist’s shop in Ink Alley. While there’s definitely a connection between the leviathan blood and the tattoo parlor, the intel the crew was interested in was primarily about the warehouse and the people who oversee it. There were two main people of interest – a Sparkwright, Helen Gauge, who’s a contractor/liason between Strangford and the Sparkwrights for the prototype advances built into the Colossus, and then Chief Helker, the seaside dockers’ boss for that stretch of territory. Of the two, Teatime (whisper), Deemo (leech), and Raven (hound) chose to approach Helker with the time-honored plan of “let’s bribe him for information”.

Considering the Chief was probably bribed by a LOT of people to keep a LOT of information, they chose to ensure he was tight on funds when they met him and so Raven robbed him blind via flashback. Teatime then bribed him with his own money. Things got tense but Teatime’s social graces (and an additional coin on top of the 2 Raven took from him) navigated any troubled waters, gaining them all sorts of interesting tidbits:

1. The dry dock/shipyard where the Colossus is being finished. They’re down to “polishing the guardrails”, as Helker put it, and the launch celebration for the vessel will be in a few days.

2. The location where the celebration will be hosted – a private launch in Brightstone, away from the unwashed masses at the docks proper. More symbolic than practical, as the Colossus will have of course already launched in order to reach its own launch party.

3. The names and roles of several of Strangford’s inner circle. He employs a Whisper, Miss Sprunk. His household head of security is Devon McLaren. Both Sprunk and McLaren have made appearances at the dockside warehouse, although Strangford’s own visits are infrequent (though he gives plenty of warning). He has a trusted personal financier, Jorg Banks, and finally also retains a barrister, Ms. Phoenix Pholgers.

Only 2 Heat (leaving them at 5/9 Heat, 2 Wanted) because the guys were sly this time (and half that was simply the “wartime tax”). For those same reasons, though, they gained no Rep since nobody knows what they were up to. They’re at 5/8 Crew XP as well.

This was basically a huge Gather Information roll done up as a score because of the risk in going into the Leviathan Hunters’ territory. However, the engagement roll was a 6 and they bypassed or resisted the consequences so it all went smoothly.

The entanglement roll was Demonic Notice, TBD next time.

#heestcomplete

I’ve put everything together into a playlist on youtube now.

I’ve put everything together into a playlist on youtube now. Once Eric puts up the VoDs from yesterday I’ll add that too. Cabin Crashers is our most recent campaign. I’d start with any one of those, cause those have Recaps for each episode once we start playing.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJOG6EIfIb8gzwohSi05d4imnM2Vr1B28

We are playing a hack of blades RIGHT NOW!

We are playing a hack of blades RIGHT NOW! Household Renovations of great and terrible power. Which has audience participation! Run by the designer, and it’s their birthday! Come play!

https://www.twitch.tv/ericvulgaris

Out of a jail cell, into Scurlock manor – Downtime is supposed to be safe right?

Out of a jail cell, into Scurlock manor – Downtime is supposed to be safe right? Not when you call on Edlund Scurlock, your sworn enemy, to post bail for you. Or when you try to heal a ghost that has gone feral. Or when you try to win over Bazso Baz and convince him to grant you access to an artifact of the Forgotten Gods.

Oh, it’s also time to reconnect with family, spill your guts to them, and give them all the wrong impressions about your time with college women.

Doskvol Spectral Society = Best Spectral Society!

Players: Adrienne Mueller and Karen Twelves (but Eric Fattig should check it out too!)

http://www.seannittner.com/actual-play-out-of-a-jail-cell-into-scurlock-manor-10252016/

Keel’s Reckoning – The Bloodletters return for a very special episode that delved into Arcy’s past.

Keel’s Reckoning – The Bloodletters return for a very special episode that delved into Arcy’s past. The ex-leviathan hunter put everything she had (and everything the gang had) on the line to get back a piece of her old life and then watched in horror as she destroyed it all. Oskarr, ever ready to protect his crew from themselves, put the pieces back together and together they pulled off their biggest score yet.

A gut wrenching and transformative game.

GM: John Harper

Players: Stras Acimovic and Sean Nittner

http://www.seannittner.com/actual-play-keels-reckoning-10242016/

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 37 (October 11 2016)

Kamali brings Jezelle back to the factory, and they find Shade in the workshop. Jezelle explains that she found Quellyn at the Devil’s Tooth, and followed her back to where she’s staying.

Jezelle leads Shade and Constance to the tenement building in question. She brings them up to the top floor, where she says she can’t go any further, as Quellyn has apparently warded the entire inside of her apartment. Constance knocks on the door several times and is about to knock it down when it’s answered by a very nervous Quellyn. She is deathly afraid of Shade, as she thinks he tried to kill her. At Constance’s urging, she reluctantly dispels the wards and lets them in. There’s some back and forth and it becomes apparent that Shade and Quellyn each think that the other tried to kill them in the alley that night.

Quellyn admits to poisoning Shade (and Jezelle, inadvertently) with Standstill in get him in a position where she could question him about the money he cheated her out of way back when. The timeline looks like this:

* Some years ago, Shade and Quellyn were working together with another crew, and each got screwed out of a deal, and each thought the other was responsible.

* More recently, Tocker was in possession of Jezelle’s body non-stop for over a month, which wrecked her physically and emotionally.

* During the last of the three days that Shade doesn’t remember, he ran across Jezelle and convinced her to accompany him while celebrating. They made their way across the city, bar-hopping until they ended up at the Devil’s Tooth, where they ran into Quellyn. She dosed them with Standstill so she could question Shade while he was incapacitated.

* Quellyn underestimated Shade’s tolerance for chemical enhancement, as he and Jezelle left the bar and made their way back toward Crow’s Foot, ending up in that alley.

* Quellyn was about to catch up with them when there was a huge flash of light. It temporarily blinded Quellyn, who thought it was Shade retaliating, and she ran off.

* Shade succumbed to everything he’d ingested and imbibed over the past three days, while Jezelle, in her weakened state, succumbed to the Standstill (it’s not normally fatal, but with a weak heart, she didn’t have a chance).

* Her death summoned the Deathseeker Ravens, which signaled the Spirit Wardens, who came to collect both bodies, as the Standstill had slowed Shade’s heart to the point where he appeared dead.

The question remains, if neither Shade nor Quellyn produced the flash of light, who did? They begin to suspect that a third party is messing with both of them. They start going through their respective lists of enemies, and they come across a name they’ve both crossed off: Sebjorn Henrickson, an old associate of theirs. Shade said he left Sebjorn in an exceedingly compromising position about two years ago, and had simply assumed that Sebjorn didn’t survive. Quellyn said he obviously did, because about a year and a half ago she killed Sebjorn herself. She is very certain of it, as she slashed his throat from ear to ear and watched him bleed out. They agree to work together to look into this.

The entire time this has gone on, Jezelle has been somewhat in a state of shock. She was bound and determined to confront her killer, but when she came face to face with Quellyn, her resolve crumbled, and she found herself unable to act. Quellyn realizes how Jezelle died, and actually feels responsible. She and speaks gently to Jezelle, apologizing for the role she played in her death. They’re in the middle of striking a bargain of their own when Shade and Constance make their exit.

Shade meets with Kamali to get her involved. She heads to the Hall of Records to speak to Edmund Bain. After some searching, they are able to find a record of Sebjorn’s death, where it’s noted the date and time the body was found, and the cause of death (throat was cut with a straight razor). There’s a note that the attending physician was unable to establish an exact time of death, and so there an investigation was launched by the Spirit Wardens. It is noted that the investigation is still open.

Meanwhile, Shade goes to the Devil’s Tooth and meets with Henry and Frans. They tell him about the attack they carried out on the Grinders, and how it was a rousing victory. Shade gets the distinct impression that they got extremely lucky, and it is highly likely that their next attempt will not be as successful. Shade mentions Sebjorn, and they get very quiet. They say he was all kinds of bad news, making deals with demons and whatnot. They confirm he died about a year and a half ago, but they don’t know the details.

Notes:

This is very much Shade’s subplot here, but I was able to work the other characters in as well.

#dontmesswiththedolls

Long Term Play with Blades in the Dark

Long Term Play with Blades in the Dark

My group’s been playing weekly sessions since February and they’ve gone from a Tier 0 Thieves crew under v5 to Tier 3 Shadows using v7.1. Here’s some of the things I (or my players) have noticed about Blades’ campaign play:

1. Low dice pools lead to desperate actions: When you’re starting out you don’t have a lot of dice to throw around. A bad roll here or there can land you in a Desperate situation quickly, and for my group, that was often combat. A fight is usually what happens once stealth or parley fails – not always, but it’s what makes sense most of the time given the kind of PCs and NPCs we’re dealing with.

1. Desperate rolls feed into future choices: Those Desperate XP add up over time and you’re going to want to bolster those actions that you use the most in those desperate times. That meant Skirmish for most of my players, and beefing up at least one other Prowess dot to help their resistance rolls as well. That meant when they got XP or trained during downtime, they were usually a smidgen closer to a Prowess dot than not, so the advancement subtly reinforces the in-game fiction. This is NOT a problem IF you really like knife fights, but it has slowly lead us to the point where even the Spider is rocking Not to Be Trifled With, the Leech can carve her way through thugs with a bowie knife, and the friggin’ Hound is as tough as the Cutter. Since you tend to want to do what you’re good at, you end up making plans that have “let’s just kill everyone” as a thinly-veiled plan B.

My crew is really just Breakers at heart.

2. Tier, Rep gains, and punching up: I feel like my players’ crew, the Dead Setters, feels about right where their crew abilities and upgrades are concerned. They’re Shadows, with Slippery, Ghost Echoes, and Crow’s Veil (as Veteran). They have 2 Cohorts (thugs and now rovers), Thief Rigging, Underground maps/keys, Hidden, Quarters, Secure 1, Vault 1, and Workshop. There are TONS of choices left and TONS of abilities left to choose.

That said, they’re Tier 3 with Strong hold and they continue to effectively “punch up”. When you can punch up against Tier IVs, that’s a ton of Rep every score. I feel like it’s easier to advance Tier once you get that foothold and can affect larger factions, and it’s a little off for me. Sure, a Tier IV faction can make things hard on you, but it’s kind of like pissing off the Lampblacks at Tier 0. They can make life hard on you too, and besides, that’s all part of the game. I think the saving grace is the escalating Coin cost to advance Tier at this level, but I still feel maybe that’s still too fast somehow.

They ARE Tier III but they only have two Cohorts. To me at this level, that’s still on the small side. In my mind, some of these factions are going to have way more people at Tier III and IV. The Dead Setters still feel like the underdogs to me. This is good for me as GM but I don’t know if this is how my players feel, since I just realized that it might be a conceptual hangup and haven’t asked them. At what point should you feel like Stringer Bell instead of Omar Little?

3. Extra Double Turbo Badass: You can spend XP for days. We haven’t hit any limits except those from not having the Mastery crew upgrade. 🙂 When you’ve played the same PCs as long as my players have, you feel suitably badass most of the time, but I think the tension is still there because you’re really only one bad roll away from a trainwreck. Rook the Cutter is fucking scary. He has no problem with just fighting cops – or anyone, and he generally wins. Brutal, Not to be Trifled With, fine heavy weapon, and rage essence just in case all that’s not enough. Teatime the Whisper is almost as scary, because when he rolls Attune it’s generally going to work. They are all Leverage-level competent now, and it’s flavoring the kind of scores they’re planning. It’s interesting to see this evolution though, and competence alone doesn’t worry me as much as their attribute scores. That brings me to…

4. Resistance is Futile: Rook the Cutter and Raven the Hound each have at least 1 dot in all their Prowess actions. They are effectively nigh-invulnerable to physical harm, which means they opt to dish out said harm since they’re ironically at their safest when they’re fighting people. Now part of this is my fault for sure – early on we set our “damage sliders” so I’d let them roll resistance and then choose if they wanted to spend Armor. Additionally, I’ve let resistance rolls severely reduce any incoming harm. Avoiding harm is clearly important to these two players and they’re having fun. It’s not a capital-P Problem, but it is challenging to keep threats cerebral rather than physical. Creatively fatiguing and all that.

Furthermore, I don’t want to come off like dealing harm to PCs is how I gauge my worth as a GM (I consider how full their stress tracks are first lol). I wonder, however, what resources do we have as Blades GMs once our players have really beefed up their resistances? I suppose you’ve gotta start doubling up on resistable things, and letting players make hard choices about what they want to allow to happen and what they want to prevent? I feel like that’s next level Blades GMing, where I want to get to in order to keep the challenge fresh and have the players’ choices matter even when they’re shutting down the bad guys’ actions.

#heestcomplete

Also circling in Jason Eley, Adam Minnie since they expressed interest in my previous recap post. John Harper so he can read/ignore/troll my feedback. 🙂 Sean Nittner – your DSS game has been running a while too, right? Andrew Shields (I hope this is the right Andrew) have you run a lengthy campaign or do you typically deal with shorter runs? I wish I could guess at which Michael Yater g+ is trying to include, but I know he’s been running his Twitch game for a bit as well.

The Dead Setters: The Road So Far

The Dead Setters: The Road So Far

February to October 2016

Started with v5, now on v7.1

Wars: 3

Tier: 3

Weekly games missed: 2.

I fell off the update wagon, so I’m getting back to it with this recap post of my group’s shenanigans. We’ve been playing weekly since February! That is some kind of record for us. I’ll have some feedback about longterm play with Blades, but that’ll be another post. This one’s long enough!

U’Duashan Moon Pool Ruby Caper

The Dead Setters robbed 4 Coin of Mylera Klev’s lesser objects d’art (and threw her off a balcony), plus retrieved the Moon Pool Ruby contained within the idol of a Forgotten God. The ruby is said to bring good fortune if the proper sacrifices of willing blood from a possessed person are made. They fenced it for extra cash, however.

Spirit Well Twinkie Caper, aka I Have a Victrola For a Mouth and I Must Scream

The crew, working for the Dimmer Sisters, takes a spirit well claim from the Eels.

And You Will Know Us By the Campaign Trail of Dead Caper

The Dead Setters entered into a Ghost Contract with Ava Dimmer to take over security and transport for the spirit well in Coalridge. The first problem to be dealt with was the small matter of the Spirit Wardens being called in to investigate and potentially exorcise the location.

I’m Getting Too Old For This Shit Caper

The Dead Setters battered the skeleton crew of Bluecoats guarding the Coalridge spirit well with sewage, constant malice, and pinpoint birdshit. They reclaimed the location after killing the two loose cannon Spirit Wardens inside the manor house.

Too Much Planning Caper

The Dead Setters took a bunch of downtime and leveled up!

Opulence I Has It Caper

The Dead Setters overplan and then steal a faberge giraffe hull off a train, put a ghost inside it to drive the thing, and burn a Lampblacks base all while impersonating Bluecoats.

Oh God Not Another Sewer Level Caper

You helped Father Yorren retrieve an urn that his supplier, Lucia Eastlake, failed to deliver on account of her being captured, tortured, and left for dead by the Eels.

There Is Only War Caper

The Dead Setters laid an ambush, then countered an ambush by the Eels in the catacombs.

To Survive a War You Gotta Become War Caper

The Eels were scattered and broken against the submaritime ingenuity of the Dead Setters, ending their war.

Strangford Files Caper

They infiltrated a masquerade ball in Brightstone. With Richter still in Ironhook Prison (and with Inspector Jennah sending corrupt guards to beat him down every week or so), the social heist fell to Teatime, Deemo, and Raven, with a special guest appearance by Roethe Kinclaith.

The Price is Wrong Caper

The Dead Setters find that Belden of the Crows had infiltrated their base. His attempt to extort 8 Coin from them was less successful than he’d like, and now the Setters aim to strike at the Crows’ headquarters before Lyssa realizes Belden’s a defiled corpse and his soul sits in a bottle, ready to be used for future taunting.

Feast For Crows Caper

They tortured, interrogated, and vivisected Belden (not necessarily in any order) and learned the former Crows leader, Roric, was still in Duskwall somewhere as a spirit. Teatime tracked him down and the Dead Setters allied with now-vampire Roric’s new gang, the Buzzards. Teatime and Raven sent Roric and his Buzzards into the underground tunnels to stage a distraction/assault on the Crows’ watchtower HQ. The duo then snuck in across the rooftops and climbed to the tower roof to assassinate Lyssa.

Fuck Tha Police Caper

Rook does combat drugs and murders a squad of Bluecoats to cover the Setters’ escape from the Crows’ nest. The gang takes a gambling den as a claim while the iron is hot.

Strangford Mausoleum Caper

Teatime, Richter, and Deemo lured the Crows remnants into Lord Strangford’s mausoleum with rumors of valuables, with Richter posing as Strangford’s groundskeeper as their “in”. The demon Ahazu is released from Strangford’s crypts and escapes into Duskwall after wiping out the Crows, ending their war with the Dead Setters. The Burned King is summoned by clued-in nobles to destroy it but breaks free and also escapes.

Let’s Go To Prison Caper

The Dead Setters framed Jennah the Inspector for releasing Ahazu (plus a bunch of ghost chicanery).

Bustin’ Makes Me Feel Good Caper

A strike force from the Reconciled, led by their hired man on the ground Flint (who was “comin’ for Teatime”), assaulted the wrong spirit well and were driven off by OH SO MANY SIXES, culminating in a timely crit by Deemo who commanded the Reconciled to capture their own hirelings.

You’re Cutting Out Caper

The Dead Setters survived a downtime phase plagued with spotty connectivity and a slow mobile hotspot.

The Winchester Brothers Caper

The Dead Setters, at least partially masquerading as sculptor Orlan Uno’s house staff, banished the demon The Burned King from Duskwall.

It’s Quantum Entanglement, Not Teleportation Caper

The Dead Setters broke ten-er, nine Lampblacks out of jail to make good with Bazso Baz (and for the cash). They escape using a ghost-field stargate, which promptly explodes.

The Ghost of Toko Jobler Caper

The gang starts a fight between Roethe Kinclaith and his dandies and a bunch of Iruvian brats in order to lay claim to a Red Sash bridge-side gambling den. They spike Roethe’s drink with rage essence, whereupon he quickly earns the new moniker Red Roethe. They also learn that the life essence of those ingesting refined leviathan blood is how the Reconciled retain their “humanity” after death, and may actually link into the secret of the Emperor’s immortality.

The Deadliest Catch Caper

The crew goes pirate, hijacking one of Lord Strangford’s leviathan hunting vessels for the raw blood it carries. They barely escape one of the colossal beasts and part on shaky but non-lethal terms with Captain Minos and his crew.

The Kitchen Nightmares Caper

Unable to break free of reality show-named capers, the Dead Setters lay claim to one of Strangford’s restaurants used for distributing refined leviathan blood and other luxury goods. They actually bribe the Bluecoats instead of simply murdering them. The Dead Setters are now at war with Lord Strangford’s leviathan hunters. When rumors of their exploits spread, Ahazu the demon approaches the Dead Setters and they enter into a ghost contract: The Setters will get Strangford’s spirit so Ahazu may have its vengeance for centuries of imprisonment, and in return they may keep what they kill. The demon will not doublecross or otherwise muck with the Dead Setters, despite its predilection for possession.

#heestcomplete

Now or Never – The Society comes to the aid of the Lampblacks to defeat the Red Sashes and encounter Forgotten Gods,…

Now or Never – The Society comes to the aid of the Lampblacks to defeat the Red Sashes and encounter Forgotten Gods, avenge their sister’s death, and nearly lose their beloved Nyryx!

Players: Adrienne Mueller, Karen Twelves, and Eric Fattig

http://www.seannittner.com/actual-play-now-or-never-10182016/

That Time My Players Fought a Demon or Blades in the Dark: You’re Doing It Wrong

That Time My Players Fought a Demon or Blades in the Dark: You’re Doing It Wrong

I’ve fallen off the actual play wagon for my Dead Setters group, but this happened a while back when they were still Tier II and Teatime the Whisper and Richter the Spider accidentally freed a trapped demon from Lord Strangford’s family mausoleum. Taking a page from SNL’s skit about getting rid of bats, a cabal of Brightstone nobles thought a good way to stop this demon from possessing them one by one would be to summon another demon to fight the first one. Teatime helped them during downtime in a bizarre abomination of a wedding ceremony, and that’s how we ended up with an entity known as the Burned King gallivanting around Duskwall, collecting people’s arms.

For some reason (perhaps too many games playing heroic personas), my players decided to follow in the Winchester brothers’ footsteps and banish this Burned King guy.

I had been rolling some clocks for the demon during this lead-in and they knew it got six dice. I was trying to keep to the mechanics in every way I understood while allowing for my players’ obvious interest in pursuing this to color my responses. To their credit, they researched weaknesses and the entity’s history. The Burned King was once a warlord from before the Cataclysm. It was summoned by a perverted wedding ceremony, and Teatime actually critted and found details of the historical King’s nuptials. They modified that into a sort of exorcism chant. They got their electroplasmic ammo and their demonbane charms and their heavy armor. They studied the Burned King’s victims and figured out that it was taking the arms of artists and other makers – sculptors, writers, poets, clerks. They staked out a likely target, a local sculptor, and infiltrated his manor house posing as staff who then let the heavily-geared-up crew members in from outside.

Their engagement roll was great! In fact, most all of their rolls were great. The Burned King stepped out of the sculptor’s fireplace directly into an ambush. It’s riddled with electroplasmic ammo and assaulted by its own wedding vows-turned-exorcism. It is overconfident, however, and presses on. It simply can’t overcome the dump truck’s worth of sixes my players seem to be able to pull out of their butts when death is on the line (and death was on the line with nearly every resistance roll and consequence). They banish it, the final blow coming when the Spider palm-strikes his demonbane charm directly into the King’s forehead, embedding the artifact into the entity’s ectoplasmic embers. The sculptor’s house burns around them, but they manage an escape during the halfhearted attempt by the Brigade to extinguish the unholy blaze.

It was a hell of a good time. I thought the Burned King was kind of a pushover, however, and that’s despite using nearly everything I could think of without simply shutting down my players:

1. Single boss fights in Blades are actually really great. Unlike other systems where the GM shares the turn economy with the players, having player-facing rolls with consequences for imperfect success means your boss monster essentially gets to act every time a PC interacts with it. And being a demon, the PCs had to resist dire consequences (usually being burned or ripped open) before they could even roll. The danger was there. Level 3 and 4 harm each time the Burned King did anything. How much harder can you push, as a GM, right? “Before you do anything save vs. death. Everyone save vs. death.”

2. PCs really, really do have an insane ability to absorb terrible things. Armor. Special ability armor. Foresight. Resistance rolls. Being that it was a stand-up fight, most resistance rolls were Prowess-based, and my players are beasts when it comes to Prowess. Most roll 3 dice, some have all 4. The toughest PCs would routinely take the hits for anyone the King targeted specifically with the Protect action (that part felt a bit like Hollowpoint). Five players also means there’s a lot of stress to spend.

3. The Burned King could tell when things actually weren’t going its way and tried to escape. That’s when things went supernatural and it was more about the Whisper trying to ritually lock down the entity. Resolve rolls, desperate Attune, etc. Meanwhile the beatings continued.

4. I had two 8-count clocks, one after the other. The first one was like its fire aura – while that clock was active the King could simply burn everyone in the room (fat chance with those resistance rolls, though). The second clock represented its hold on this material realm – once it was filled by appropriate attacks (of which there were many), it was banished from this plane and sent back to Oakland or wherever.

There’s just no substitute for sixes. That’s #goodroleplaying.

#heestcomplete