Category: Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports

This past Saturday was the fourth session of the playtest / beta that I’ve been running (third session and prior linked here: https://plus.google.com/109896206941346348750/posts/djWkRsypGvp) with a Cutter and a Whisper.

Feedback:

* We upgraded everyone to the v3 final character sheets. The Cutter missed Handle being gone, but we figured it was now smeared between Tinker and Finesse. The Whisper was happy to see Invoke go.

* One thing I tried this session was ignoring unities of time to make a challenge more interesting. The crew improved their turf by clearing some drug dealers off an abandoned boardwalk. Every challenge had been dealt with but the addicts who loitered in the area (progress clock “Our Loyal Customers” at 2/4). Since the last big triumph had been a rousing victory over some goons, it felt weird to dial the energy down and say “okay, now go roust these junkies.”

So, instead, we narrated that the crew retreated to their hideout, considering the mission “successful,” and planning to return the next day to set up shop. When they arrived the next morning, though, they found a crowd of addicts pawing through the drug dealers’ burnt-out shop, desperate for adulterated leviathan blood. Resolving the last 2/4 of the progress clock was the tragicomic denouement.

This was revelatory for me. Rather than insisting a “mission” is a discrete unit of time and space – you can’t leave the “mission zone” until all the challenges are three-starred! – I let the narrative unfold, inspired by the remaining challenges.

* Sidenote: in our Duskwall, the tell for leviathan blood addiction is bony protrusions (like the narwhal horn leviathans are known for). Junkies get sharply pronounced cheekbones and ridged knuckles, with actual bone spurs jutting from their hands in the terminal stages.

* I’m getting better at adjudicating effect size for combat challenges, but still need a better gauge for everything else. Is the Whisper’s attempt at parlay low potency or medium potency? This will come with time, I’m sure.

* And, per my comments last time, I finally found a way to challenge the Cutter in combat: have the victim run away. He had fun regardless, declaring that his “unusual weapon” was a bola (“got it from some bleedin’ savage on ‘un of me last hauls, and I just been ACHIN’ to try it!”).

As for the events themselves:

The Blackstone Outfit improved their hold by clearing some drug dealers off an abandoned boardwalk. The Cutter smashed goons with his leviathan hammer, while the Whisper called up an unintentionally potent ghost to spook the addicts. Though the dealer’s suppliers – a gang of Leviathan Hunters – showed up as reinforcements, the crew sent them packing, earning another enemy in the process.

Realizing that the Crows were going to demand answers or tribute from them soon, the Outfit asked the Lampblacks to arrange a sitdown. They met Lyssa in a private dining room above the Leaky Bucket, with Mylera Klev of the Red Sashes also in attendance. Though Lyssa was intimidating, the Outfit managed to bluster the Red Sashes into embarrassed silence and argued their value to the Crows. Lyssa agreed to take them under her countenance on two conditions. First, the Outfit was to rob the Bluecoats’ evidence locker. Second, the Outfit was to bring in, alive, the mastermind of the “Green Masks”, the nativists who had attacked the Iruvians at a recent council gala, so that Lyssa could appease the Inspectors.

The Outfit knew that they themselves were the “Green Masks,” having staged the attack to occupy the Inspectors. But they agreed to provide a living head honcho to interrogate nevertheless.

This past Saturday, I hosted and ran the third session of the game I’ve recapped previously (1st session: https://plus.google.com/109896206941346348750/posts/11JSxdSVw26; 2nd session: https://plus.google.com/u/0/109896206941346348750/posts/d2CCb1YQVh9). Our notes and reactions on this session below:

– We really need more numerous and more varied Entanglement results. Twice this past session, they rolled “Demonic Notice” for an Entanglement. The first time, I re-skinned it as a vampire, as they had a vampire contact who had reason to pester them. The third time, I substituted my own Entanglement. Considering they’d already rolled Demonic Notice last session, this feels too frequent. (Unless Demons are supposed to be this ubiquitous in the setting?)

– Having progress clocks as a universal metric opens up a lot of possibilities. Example: there was an NPC project clock for the Red Sashes to find the crew’s secret hideout that was 6/8 full. The crew staged a ghost-laden terror raid to break the Sashes’ morale. I created clocks for the Sashes’ security and other complications, but just borrowed the existing 6/8 NPC project clock as the “centerpiece” of the job. I explained that the crew’s efforts would erase wedges in this clock, rather than creating a new “Red Sashes’ Morale Broken” clock. If they got the NPC project clock to 0, the Red Sashes would give up.

– I need to get better at encouraging PCs to resist consequences. It’s easy for a player to understand rolling against stress to resist harm (“the ghost leers in your face; roll Resolve or take standard harm”). It’s harder to narrate how a player can roll against stress to resist other consequences, like a countdown clock being filled (“the rival crew gets a step closer to the MacGuffin, unless you roll … um …”). I found a few ways to work it in last session, but I’m still flexing it.

– A properly built Cutter just can’t be threatened in combat, can they? Brutal grants potency on all attacks; Not To Be Trifled With lets them ignore scale; and if they’re toting a fine heavy weapon armor’s not an issue.

– Will the final rules have more articulation on what a devil’s bargain constitutes? This session, I realized that my prior devil’s bargains had been a little soft: hinting at future trouble, rather than establishing immediate, concrete trouble.

– We all like the blend of distinct moves and creative narration. The PCs frequently get in trouble and rarely have lasting success, but since every danger or devil’s bargain enmeshes them further in the world, they don’t mind. I described the rules structure as rigidly defined channels leading to wide-open rooms, and they seemed to agree on that take.

As for the session itself:

As alluded to above, the Blackstone Outfit dissuaded the Red Sashes from hunting them by summoning the ghost of their murdered fencing master and siccing him on the school. The resulting terror, aided by the Cutter laying into the fleeing students, broke the gang’s morale.

To get the Inspectors off their tail, the Blackstone Outfit invented a larger, fictitious threat that would occupy their time: a nativist gang called the “Green Masks” who would terrorize a Duskwall Council gala hosting the Iruvian delegation. The plan was to smash the guards, graffito the gala ballroom, and steal the ceremonial neckpieces that every highborn Iruvian wears. Unfortunately, a mysterious rival crew showed up to steal the neckpieces as well! The “Green Masks” caused sufficient chaos to merit every Inspector being reassigned to track them down, taking the pressure off the Blackstone Outfit for the moment.

During downtime, the Whisper’s patron, Lord Skurlock the vampire, asked him to supply a source of fresh corpses. The Whisper conned his way into a hospital and spirited off some bodies before the Crematorium could get their hands on them. Meanwhile, the Cutter learned that the Red Sashes, unwilling to confront the Blackstone Outfit directly, had tattled to their mutual masters, the Crows …