Category: Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports

RE: Tempest and Rituals:

RE: Tempest and Rituals:

RE: Tempest and Rituals:

These abilities both specify that the stress cost is equal to the magnitude of the effect; the mentions of what magnitude means are given as: helps to determine scale (for effect), and is the number of dice when making a fortunes roll.

Can someone walk me through the process for say.. manifesting lightning to electrocute someone? Not sure what rolls should be made if this were a combat situation (attune to make the lightning? would it instead be hunt to hit precisely from a distance? would the attune roll be for both?), or whether a fortunes roll would usually be more appropriate? (just roll dice equal to stress taken and the lightning happens regardless)

Our 3rd session went really well, I thought.

Our 3rd session went really well, I thought.

Our 3rd session went really well, I thought. I started out with something I was a little unsure about but seemed important to the story. They’re a weird cult and are friends with The Forgotten Gods. It’s a jumble anyways so I thought they’re kind of a fledgling cult on the side of the Forgotten Gods. I wanted the Forgotten Gods to be consolidating and unifying, thought they would have a meeting about getting organized and that the PCs were welcome. I was nervous because I didn’t have any idea where drama might be for the players. All I had was one npc vice purveyor who was in the cult of the dead sun with an undefined relationship to one PC and an idea that conflict in the Forgotten Gods was between someone saying “unite under me” people and others saying “no”. It might not have worked if I hadn’t taken a page from the game on YouTube with Oskar Scurlock and Arcy and the other PC. The bit early early on with a cop shouldering the other character, I did something similar with “the butcher”. Lots of questions later, PC connections and motivations determined, lots of player created NPCs and NPC groups and then a player decided this was the score. They were there to murder the butcher and sway the results of the meeting. They succeeded but didn’t have time to make it look accidental. We’ll see where things go from here. I’m thinking that the Forgotten Gods may break into two groups. It was great.

So this past Friday I took a second group into Duskwall for their first mission.

So this past Friday I took a second group into Duskwall for their first mission.

So this past Friday I took a second group into Duskwall for their first mission. This group consisted of 2 players who had some experience with Pathfinder and Dungeon World and 2 players who have 0 tabletop RPG experience. I was able to draw in these two new players by describing the setting, because they are huge fans of victorian steampunk and firefly and I focused on those elements of the setting. All in all the session was a rousing success, and all the players were gushing afterwards. That may have been partly because they had amazing luck throughout the session. Over the course of 3 hours there were 4 partial successes, a half dozen crits, only 1 fail and the rest complete successes. I’ve never seen rolls quite like it. Fortunately the fail was at a very dramatic moment and gave the end of the score some nice tension.

So now I have an unnamed cult that worship the leviathans set loose in Duskwall. Currently they are Boulder the Cutter, Shiv the Lurk, Tumbler and Leech and Wraith the Whisper. They took a job working for Bazso because they are pretending to be an ordinary gang that takes on odd jobs until they grow in power. Also they’re hoping that the Lampblacks will eventually support them in their goals of ridding the city of electroplasm since the Lampblacks were once a powerful non criminal guild before leviathan blood was readily available in the city. 

Baszo gave them a strange artifact that looked like a Palentir and told them to hide it in Mylera’s office at the red sash headquarters. They chose an infiltration plan and decided to sneak in through a backdoor in an alley. Flashback to Shiv’s locksmith friend Frake who installed the locks at the Red Sash compound and critically succeed a consort roll. Frake gives them a master key to the whole compound, but because of a devils bargain he requests the PCs steal a valuable sword called Crimson Moon from the Red Sash Armory. They enter through the kitchen and make quick work of two guards with help of the Lurk’s  silence potion and ability to phase through walls, and the cutter’s fine heavy spiked mace (who he calls Mr. Prickles). The Leech flashes back to when he created an alchemical agent that will completely dissolve the bodies so they don’t have to waste time hiding them. Another flashback to intimidating Petra the city clerk into giving them the blueprints for this building on record in city hall. They discover that there is a heavily fortified basement floor, and decide that’s likely where the office and the armory would be. Another flashback to the Leech’s Psychonaut friend who spends several days in an adjacent building mentally observing the building, trying to discover how many guards they could expect, and where they usually are. The psychonaut informs them that at least a dozen novices tend to sleep in the barracks on the second floor, while 5 guards patrol the ground floor, and a variable # of guards are in the basement. All of the basement guards have the minds of cold hard killers. 

At this point the Wraith the Whisper asks what a ghost key does. I tell her they open ghost doors and then I ask her to tell me what a ghost door is. She decides ghost doors can be used as shortcuts throughout the city by entering the ghost realm. This is always dangerous because ghosts don’t suffer humans lightly in their realm, but it’s extremely dangerous if you don’t already know the locations of both doors. She also decided that ghost doors form over the bodies of the dead, to allow their passage to the ghost realm. The more horrific the death, the longer the door exists. Luckily they just created a couple of doors right by the exit, and they had plans to create more in the basement soon.

The evade the guards on the first floor and enter the basement. Two guards obliviously play cards in one room, and the Whisper notices that two doors have ghostly wards on them. She attempts to attune to them and discovers they doors require passwords to open or they will unleash a psychic attack on anyone nearby. She suffers a minor psychic attack during the probe, but using her resolve she shields her mind and takes a little stress. They decide to open one of the doors without the password, and the Whisper will try to contain the blast with her mind. She does manage to contain the blast, but it makes enough noise to rouse the guards. Three critical rolls later one guard has his head caved in, the other has a broken spine and will never walk again, and they have obtained the password to the second door. The artifact is hidden, and the sword is retrieved along with about 2 coin worth of silver.

To escape the decide to set off an alarm bring all the guards to the basement and use a ghost door to slip out the back unnoticed. The Whisper leads a group action to attune to the ghost door they just created, and all the other members take a devils bargain for the extra die. The Leech sees his brother on the other side and discovers that his death was not, in fact, an accident like he originally believed. The Cutter sees the ghosts of everyone he killed tonight and they will haunt his dreams during the next downtime, he’ll take -1d to vice rolls because of the nightmares. The lurk will be possessed by a spirit that has been watching him for sometime, the next time he tries to walk through walls with ghost veil he may lose control of his actions for a brief time. With that they have 5 dice to roll in a desperate position (don’t mess around with ghost doors man), and they roll 5 ones. I was so happy to see the first failure of the night (after 2 hours) that I jumped up and shouted. They enter the ghost realm with the whisper describes in detail, but then the spirits of the dead Red Sashes kick them out and shut all the ghost doors in the building permanently. In addition a psychic attack hits everyone in the building, waking up all its inhabitants as an alarm goes off in the basement. Needless to say a very intense chase ensued as the gang only barely made it out alive, thanks to a timely flashback where the Leech created a small portable shield that could deflect bullets, but only for about 30 seconds. Fortunately that was enough, and the group made it out alive, mostly unharmed and significantly richer.

“This is better than EastEnders!” [**]

“This is better than EastEnders!” [**]

“This is better than EastEnders!” [**]

The eight-week playtest game of Blades in the Dark has now finished at MK -RPG. Some final thoughts on the game and how it went.

* It was enormous fun. Everyone had fun, including me the GM. All the players are invested in their characters and are champing at the bit for me to run a sequel block. That’s a good recommendation!

* Generating scores is wonderfully easy. At the start of the last session, the PCs decided to do something at the Duskwall university. A few rolls later, they were off to grab all the Leviathan blood supplies and electroplasmic crystals from an experimental lightning tower in the bay just outside the barrier.

* Flashbacks are good and powerful, though there’s always the temptation to slip back into trying to plan things. The players did say that when they spent some time doing some Gather Information and planning, the following heist seemed to go better than ones with less planning. That could just be my style as well, with the GM slipping back into the “planning is good” mindset.

* One question was how nested flashbacks could go. This was prompted by Dash, our Lurk, finally betraying the crew in the midst of their final job, and sequences of flashback-within-flashback-within-flashback of him trying (and failing!) to get some other PCs to join him selling out the Luddites to the Crows.

* The Stress track is long and can be a difficult resource for players to manage. The biggest niggle was when players ended up with nearly-full Stress after a job and were faced with the dilemma of using all their downtime actions to reduce it, or doing something more productive knowing they’d stress out at the start of the next job. Some of them would have liked the opportunity to acquire Stress in downtime, leaving the character traumatised but effective for the next job.

* We talked a bit about XP. Each role has a different way of gaining XP, depending on their nature. With six players, and six roles, these different “solve problems this way to gain XP” drives led to the players having to balance their desire for XP against keeping the game moving and the group cohesive for the sake of the other players. We thought that, especially in larger groups, doubling up on roles would reduce that, while the different playbook abilities would keep the characters mechanically distinct.

[**] For our colonial cousins, “EastEnders” is a long-running BBC soap opera, set in London’s East End. The quote arose during the shenanigans of the Lurk trying to gain support for his betrayal.

The Dead Setters had their first gameplay session last night after last week’s crew/character creation.

The Dead Setters had their first gameplay session last night after last week’s crew/character creation.

The Dead Setters had their first gameplay session last night after last week’s crew/character creation. Rook the Cutter, Mr. Teatime the Whisper, Deemo the Leech, Guilty the Spider, and Raven the Hound accepted Baszo’s job to steal a specific carved bone idol from Mylera’s art collection. The crew could keep the ruby hidden inside, Baszo said, he just wanted Mylera off-balance at her lair’s weakness and the violation of her personal stuff.

Given that the PC crew was -1 faction status with the Lampblacks as well as the Red Sashes, well, I think they’re expecting a screwjob but it might be a way to earn their way into the Lampblacks’ good graces before they repay the inevitable betrayal.

I felt most adrift during the nebulous setup portion of the session. We fell into this half-planning, half-acting miasma where the actions were framed too theoretically, too loosely to lock it down into “yeah this is a heist”, but felt too risky to just handwave away? I guess a potential answer is “If A (finding the name of Mylera’s “art dealer”) leads to B (kidnapping her and learning the location of the idol) leads to C (stealing the idol), then start with C and use flashbacks”, my question would then be how does one pick a starting situation for C?

We were almost into a Deception plan where Guilty, posing as an art dealer, was distracting Mylera while the rest of the crew snuck in when Deemo’s player helpfully pointed out the “Linked Plan” section. We immediately switched into an Infiltration plan, using the deception as a Setup action, and everything seemed to click.

Once we were in “heist time”, so to speak, things moved a lot more smoothly. The crew snuck into the Red Sash’s base/temple using ghost-infested catacombs. Although their “clean” way through was blocked by a recent cave-in not listed on Guilty’s blueprints, Teatime led them through the haunted tunnels and into the lair proper. A Desperate stick-up ambush/murder and one captive fed to the hungry ghosts beneath the laundry room later, and the Dead Setters were ably disguised as Red Sashes and heading up through the temple.

Rook’s player chose “Stras, a clever blade” as his rival, and earlier he said Stras was a Red Sash. Turns out the dude was hanging out in a common room with a few other Sashes and spotted Rook. Rook blew his Command roll to try to bravado his way through, ended up in a Desperate skirmish with Stras’ sash wrapped around his throat, but managed to put his meat hook (no, not his hands, a literal meat hook) through Stras’ hand and into his eye. One recurring eyepatch villain left for dead: check!

Raven had a knife to Rook’s throat and Teatime managed to Sway the other Sashes with what was essentially the Chewbacca gambit. “Oh, he’s our prisoner now, we’ll take him to get what’s coming to him” and so on. It worked, and the other Sashes gathered up Stras. No doubt they’ll discover their comrade was only horribly maimed at an inopportune time.

Plus, there’s probably a new vampire lurking in the catacombs now.

We stopped there, but I’m confident we’ll be able to finish up this heist and probably get to downtime next week. Roll20 didn’t work for all of us, so we fell back to Hangouts. Those of us that could used Dicestream and anyone who had trouble just used real dice. Screw it.

Reception was overwhelmingly positive, so good job John and Andrew and Adam and Stras and whoever else played the crap out of this game well before my group got to it. 🙂

Feedback of note:

– You get a lot done with a single roll.

– It’s a decent game to play over Hangouts or similar.

– It really does try to minimize planning agony. I think we probably bogged down there this time, and perhaps the wishy-washy shaky feeling I got was warning that we needed to move to the heist itself.

– There are a lot of different sliders for the GM to adjust difficulty without actually changing the rules the players use.

– I felt a little lost again gauging how “tough” to make NPCs. Maybe I should’ve called for a resistance roll before Rook could get close enough to Stras. Maybe? I figure that’s something that comes with practice.

– Assist actions are awesome and fast in play.

– We’re all Fate guys, and we love love love Devil’s Bargain. It’s hard to *not* offer it sometimes, simply to make sure everything doesn’t degenerate into “GTA run from the cops game”.

I finally had the chance to play last night and we really had a blast.

I finally had the chance to play last night and we really had a blast.

I finally had the chance to play last night and we really had a blast. I’m sorry John, but I butchered your setting, but translating in french took an unexpected toll on me and I couldn’t came up with a brillant heist and poignant descriptions.

Our unamed cult, dedicated to the transcendant and cruel Resus was settled in a crematorium, posing as the hated spirit wardens underdog.

We had Charles Branson bored noble from skovland (I accidentally made it the beating heart of the empire), an excellent lurk, his fellow compatriot the whisper named ???. He was a desherited noble, banned by his family when they discovered his imaginary friend was very real.

The teamed up with Pete Hifoul a ruthless hound from modest extraction and mister Loudmouth, a leech from the dagger island.

They selected the most loyal and independent cultists to help them bring the transcendence to the unbelievers, and they happened to be the most ruthless wild and savage members of the sect.

When Baszo Baz asked them to steal from the red sashes, they hesitated a bit. The hound felt he was compelled to help those proletarian and they knew the red sashes were fervent adorateurs of Theus, the loving god. Since they would be hard to convert, they agreed to wage war on them and steal their treasury.

A quick survey of the documents given by their allies among the bluecoats informed them of the location of the tower where the vault was, and that there was a secret entrance in the sewer. They also learned of a spirit warded door at the entrance (complication).

Once there, the whisper lured a spirit out of the lock, that an electroplasm anointed hound wrestled down long enough for the whisper to hooked it in the tinkering tool the leech hold.

Everything went according to plan, but the free spirit attracted wandering hulls from further down the sewer (starting a “the hull arrive” clock) and the impossible horror of the spirit face burned the eyes of the hound.

Using his spirit tools on the spirit lock, the leech opened the door, get passed the red silk veil hanging from the ceiling and they were transported to another world.

The wall were dry and withe, adorned with more silk, brightly lit by torches and the air smelled of cinnamon and coriander (is it too cliche? It’s never too cliche!..).

They faced a stair, voices coming from upper floor. Baz had told them that the loot was at the bottom floor so they went down. They faced a long naked corridor, glimpsing at the end if it a large room sustained by regularly spaced pillards and patrolled by mens in arm. They hesitated on what to do next so long that someone came from the stairs, they froze and snapped back in action only when three swordsmens drew their rapier “yelling intruders!” right in front of them, attracting the gards from the pillard’s room.

The whispers called forth the tempest to create z true londonian fog, effectively blinding everyone. The lurk dived on one side of the corridor, striking blindly where he supposed would be his enemy, guided by the sound of their blades wiping empty air. He savagely turned the three of them into corpses. At the same time, the hound giving up on all caution emptied his pistols right in front of him, killing the other group. When all went still, the whisper dissipated his mist and spayed the bodies with electrplasm. They could hear, slow, lumping and grunting sound upstairs: the hull had started to pour in.

They sped through the vast room only to stumble on a reinforced door. The leech tried to crack the lock, but it busted open, spitting out bullies, wrecking the tool. They were led by a massive swordsman sporting out a possessed nasty rapier.

The hound drew his pistol once again, fired on the lot exploding two heads and a knee, but couldn’t avoid the lunge of the thug and took a nasty wound on the ribs.

The lurk caught his attention with a crafty feint and got disarmed for his trouble but that gave enough time to the leech to stab him dead, getting hit only by the butt end of the knife weighting the sashe of the dude.

They entered the vault and snatched the riches, various demonic trinkets and spices. The leech found alchemical products he rigged to detonate shortly thereafter and they scurried back to the stairs while calling the Adepts to cut them a way out though the hulls, taking as devil bargain to broadcast their call through the bound, letting everyone know the cult had been there.

The three parties (adept, hulls, group) met a the top of the stairs.

The whisper was knocked down with the bloody leg of one of his follower, snapping his shoulder. The lurk guided the wounded hound through the melee, carrying their gold. The leech failed to crush the zombies under the chandelier, his blade stuck in corpse. Finally, the whisper did it, killing most of the remaining adepts in the process and everybody flee, leaving the tower to spit fire and stone on the neighbouring brothel, the sky full of smoke and crows.

They got payed (and swayed Bzzo into giving them one bonus gold and all the religious trinkets), counted 7 heat but they couldn’t care less.

They licked their wound, recruited a doctor and the lurk got them an audience with Lord Scurlock their benefactor (but a friend of a friend of the cousin of the sister of his father in law got the world that he was into town).

So far, except that everyone had bad habits from EotE or DnD, no one complained about anything!

Had a really interesting session last night.

Had a really interesting session last night.

Had a really interesting session last night. The pacing was different from all the others, with a lot of meandering and people taking care of different odds and ends, and a quick (but profitable) score at the very end.

However, the most interesting part was their struggle against the most challenging threat they’ve faced yet… AND ELDERLY ACCOUNTANT!

A while ago, they infiltrated the leadership of the local chapter of the Canal Dockers Union and subverted it to their Cult’s purposes. Now, union brass is pissed and looking to bring the rogue chapter under control and has sent a no-nonsense accountant in to sort out the books. This is a problem since the Cult is bringing in a considerable amount of cash from some fraudulent accounting going on at the union offices.

So now the PCs are scrambling to take care of this guy, but they don’t want to just kill him (like they’ve done with previous threats) because they’re (rightly) worried that they’d just cause more suspicion back with the union leadership. Instead they’ve got a plan involving a possessing spirit, blackmail and threats, only it’s been complicated by the fact that their acolytes (who are Independent, Wild and Savage) went and abducted the guy on their own after a failed roll to gather information on the guy by questioning the acolytes who were working in the union chapterhouse…

It’s a huge beautiful mess and I’m loving it.

Ran a FTF game of Blades yesterday at Conception a UK con with two of my on-line game characters and three new to…

Ran a FTF game of Blades yesterday at Conception a UK con with two of my on-line game characters and three new to…

Ran a FTF game of Blades yesterday at Conception a UK con with two of my on-line game characters and three new to Blades players. The crew managed to do three scores in four hours including character generation and teh final one managed to take down Ulf Ironborn. The crew arranged for the spy who was the contact for one of the Hounds to lure him to a house for information where the Leech had previously arranged him to have  Sweeny Todd moment involving a chair, a trapdoor and an acid bath. A bad roll by the Tinkering Leech caused the chair to partly miss the acid bath but the Cutter’s blade did the job aided by two other characters. The noise alerted Ulf’s second in command who rushed in to the room above only to be shot right after the Hound had put a bullet into the head of his spy Friend to clean up the loose ends. A second shot dealt with the 2-i-c and the way was open to claim not only the purse from Mylera Klev for dealing with the spy but also to take down the Ironborn’s crew as well as acquire the street fence from them. The crew are definitely on the way up.

Finally sat with friends & burned up the scoundrels of The Way of Vooris Cult.

Finally sat with friends & burned up the scoundrels of The Way of Vooris Cult.

Finally sat with friends & burned up the scoundrels of The Way of Vooris Cult. Here’s a pinterest board with inspiration plus scans of the character & crew sheets.

Roll call:

Tick Tock the Leech, a calm, wiry mechanic from Tycheros

Cross the Whisper, a dark, fierce minor noble also from Tycheros

Skinner the Hound, a brooding, cold sniper from Iruvia

They worship Vooris, an alluring yet cruel old God who wants ghosts to be free to roam and not incinerated in electropasm.

Their lair is hidden beneath an aqueduct, with cavernous underground arches and space to expand into, once the rubble & detritus of generations of neglect, flooding, subsidence & rebuilding have been dealt with.

The funniest moment of the evening was the players of Tick Tock & Cross pronouncing Tycheros differently, with Cross saying “Tie-ker-rose” and Tick Tock “Titch-er-oss”, leading them to decide the nobility (Cross) and commoners (Tick Tock) actually pronounce it differently. Which led on to many attempts at what they are called as a people “Tiekeronians”, “Tycherosites”, “Tykes” and on, and on…

Oh, as they don’t have the quarters upgrade they decided they rent a room above a noodle bar (not far from the aqueduct), which was where he two Tykerites met.

Also, the leader of their cult (also a Titcheroonian) recently died and as yet none of the PCs have taken over the leadership so it’s a loose triumvirate.

Looking forward to the next session 🙂

http://pin.it/VZTLHRd