Category: Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports

I did a basic map for our crew’s hideout.

I did a basic map for our crew’s hideout.

I did a basic map for our crew’s hideout. It’s in the NE area of Crow’s Foot and has the potential for taking over the shop next door, adding an escape route to either the park or the canal. Although we are up to session 3 we still haven’t identified ourselves by name yet although we’ve dealt the Red Sashes grievous blows and made it to Tier 1. We’re now looking at acquiring a fence from Ulf Ironborn’s turf and engaging in a war with the remaining Sashes. Thanks to Phil Garrad for running the game.

Things sure evolve in Duskwall.

Things sure evolve in Duskwall.

Things sure evolve in Duskwall.

In my game, the Eels have been smacked around like redheaded stepchildren, half of the gang have joined the players gang, The Spooks.

The Crows are trying to the Crow’s Foot to settle down after they took the side of the Lampblacks, to claim the high-end drug trade from the Sashes. That culminated on a party that pretty much was a Red Wedding, just as a social party.

The Lampblacks are doing okay, but someone decided to use a weaponized gas made of aetharized leviathan blood to blow/poison up the Coalworks, as they were trying to kill Basso Baz. Unfortunately, the entire ruin was so toxic that not even the Wardens could enter, so Basso is now a vampire in his own charred/dissolved corpse.He has resumed running his gang, although, things are being problematic as of right now.

The Bluecoats are desperately trying to find the people responsible for blowing up the Coalworks, while the Inspectors knows that the Imperial Guard was the ones who lost five flagons of surplus nervetoxin from the Skovlan War to a bunch of mooks that looked like the Spooks.

Oh yeah, The Red Sashes are pretty much wiped out, but Mylera and her Inner Circle are haunting the old Fencing School, a fact that the Spooks realized yesterday.

Mylera murdered a bunch of guys from the gang, and then made a deal with the Slide. Baszo Baz. Lyssa. Captain Dunvil.

They must die.

Great fun!

I played session #2 with the crew referenced here: https://plus.google.com/109896206941346348750/posts/11JSxdSVw26…

I played session #2 with the crew referenced here: https://plus.google.com/109896206941346348750/posts/11JSxdSVw26…

I played session #2 with the crew referenced here: https://plus.google.com/109896206941346348750/posts/11JSxdSVw26  We were using the GenCon draft still, since I didn’t want to spend time re-allocating everyone’s Action dots.

Notes and feedback:

* It feels like a lot of the Entanglement options repeat. Twice in the last session, we rolled some variant of “someone you know got nabbed; they either spill details to the Bluecoats or you pay 2 Coin”. On one of those occasions, I substituted “The Inspectors” instead of “The Bluecoats,” since the crew was already at war with the Inspectors.

* The abstraction of Effect and the factors that weigh in on it is handy, but takes some getting used to, and a lot of trust between players and GM. Our Cutter had a habit of wading into mobs with his big leviathan maul. With a successful roll, there’d be some quick tallying, followed by an “eh,” and a number of wedges filled. “Well, you’re brutal, and it’s a fine heavy weapon, but you’re outnumbered, so the heaviness doesn’t really matter, so … three wedges? Yeah, three wedges.”

(Thankfully, the Cutter took whatever ability lets him ignore mob scale with his advancement, so that’s one less factor I need to worry about)

* Realizing the “Controlled / Risky / Desperate” spectrum was my easiest way of dialing difficulty up or down was the biggest eye-opener for me.

* I couldn’t find anywhere in my version of the QS that explicitly says “when a crew’s Heat fills up, erase it all and give them a level of Wanted.” Is that how it works? Some other way?

* I still love Devil’s Bargains. “Half of your notes are Devil’s Bargains and complications!” one player lamented.

* There’s no Stitch in the latest version of the rules, which led our players to wonder how the Whisper could help the Cutter recover from his severe harm. We settled on Tinker (stitching is stitching, right?).

As for the actual events of the session:

– To prevent the Inspectors from burning down the glazier they were extorting, the Blackstone Outfit brawled them in the streets, summoning a demon in the process. That demon later showed up (Entanglement: Demonic Pact), asking the Whisper to get it a child, since apparently demonic possession ages a body unnaturally fast. The Whisper snuck a child out of an insane asylum (“it’s no WORSE off!”) and led it back to the demon secretly, since the Cutter and the rest of the gang would have nothing to do with it.

– To ease off the coming war with the Inspectors, the crew decided to break into the house of the corrupt Inspector who was hounding them and steal something personal – her heirloom saber. A series of escalations too numerous to list led to the Whisper going catatonic through ghostly hallucination (severe harm), the Cutter murdering the Inspector he meant to merely stun (serious complication), and her house being set on fire (serious complication).

– The Blackstone Outfit tiered up (tier 0 to tier 1). While laying low from their misadventures with the corrupt Inspector, a lot of local thugs and miscreants were talking them up in the street. They emerged from hiding to find a few more young toughs at their disposal. Nothing helps you keep a low profile like thugs who want to murder more cops.

– Coming up: the Red Sashes’ “Find The Blackstone Outfit’s Secret Hideout” clock is one wedge short of completion, the Inspectors look for a subtler way to deal with this murderous new gang, and that bone carving in the shape of a cresting leviathan that the Cutter nicked has to come up somehow …

Hey there

Hey there

Hey there,

I am the GM of our livestream of Blades in the Dark; you can find it here at : http://www.twitch.tv/henley/v/18848637 . Play starts at about 5:30 

We had the token weird whisper, but both of the other players wanted to go heavy on alchemy despite the lack of rules. I hope someone here can help inform me the mechanics behind this, or advice on how to handle the Leech: Venomous and Leech: Alchemist move.

We had a bit of a rules pile up and I am afraid I may have butchered John’s system, but the players had fun and the audience participated in the Vznorp.

Here is the adventure report from my last open table outing with the quick start.

Here is the adventure report from my last open table outing with the quick start.

Here is the adventure report from my last open table outing with the quick start. Thanks to a great gang made of Ганс Андроид, Slade Stolar, Nigel Clarke, Jacob Leavens, and Christopher Meid!

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/09/26/blades-in-the-dark-soul-food/

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/09/26/blades-in-the-dark-soul-food

Random fun question:  There are a lot of different factions in Duskwall.

Random fun question:  There are a lot of different factions in Duskwall.

Random fun question:  There are a lot of different factions in Duskwall.  I expect most of us will have the Redsashes, Bluecoats, LampBlacks, and the Crows in our games.  What other factions have shown up in your games?  What other factions have you created?  What are they like?

The Hive is setting up a combine in 6 towers (The 7th Tower).  Ulf is dead but his people are still around, the Beserkers.  There’s something like a weird wandering acting troupe or something like that called the Midnight Players if I’m not mistaken.  And we have Mr. Higgins, the devil who is taking over the city, has given us jobs, and who we recently realized has been playing us all along.   Of course, we’ve seen others, but not as much.

I have way too much fun with food in Duskwall. An excerpt from the play report:

I have way too much fun with food in Duskwall. An excerpt from the play report:

I have way too much fun with food in Duskwall. An excerpt from the play report:

So, Wolfram went to a baker and ordered him to make a fantastic black cake with off-white frosting as a gift for the Dimmer Sisters. The baker did not make the cake black enough, so Wolfram beat him up and dragged him to another bakery, so his failure would be instructive. The second baker did a fantastic job, now the top of the list for all Wolfram’s baking needs.

They went to dinner the following night, meeting Marcy once more as they passed the guardian hellhounds. The sisters were dressed one black one white, and greeted them warmly in an intimate dining environment. A dolphin was put on the table with flaps cut in the side with their portions of fantastically cooked dinner in compartments in the body. After a hearty meal, they enjoyed the cake, which oozed red filling that was just delicious with a hint of copper in the “cherry” flavor.

I have wanted to play this game since I saw an early draft.

I have wanted to play this game since I saw an early draft.

I have wanted to play this game since I saw an early draft. As I currently GMing a Dungeon World campaign, I saw it as impossible. But then the players decided to return to the thief’s home city and he started to describe it as a grim city oppressed by a corrupted Governor using criminal gangs and the city watch to keep the population in check. So I decided to turn my campaign in a DW/BitD hack. It was really a success, but I have several questions I hope you can help answer:

1. The crew is not a thief one, more like a group of rebels, so I am suffering with special abilities.

2. How do the Item Quality upgrades work? I am struggling mainly with documents. What benefits does it gives? How can I show it in the fiction?

3. How do you tipically give missions to the players? For last session, I had the thief contact his criminal fellows and give them two random missions rolled in the scores tables to choose. But in future sessions, that trick will grow old. Do I let them know about rumors? Do I ask them what they plan to do?

4. How many flashbacks can a player use? One of my players kind of spam flashbacks to solve problems. I didn’t realize it causes stress so it was partially my fault too, but I don’t know if I should set a limit per score or per player.

5. Speaking about stress, do you have any idea to translate it to DW? Could I hit their HP? Or create a stress track?

6. When they rolled the engagement roll, should I put them in the middle of the action? I kind of put them in the beginning of the score (going through the sewers to one of the city watch post), but it felt sluggish.

7. Also, during the score, do you roleplay every detail? Or cut it in scenes? In my case, I opted for the first one and had a difficult time establishing a satisfying pace: after the entered the post, they walked through the courtyard in the shadows, found a locked door, opened it, killed a sleeping guard, stole the keys to the cells, found the criminal they were trying to rescue, opened his cell and left. Maybe I should have put more obstacles?

Thank a lot! This game looks amazing but I am waiting foe my next session to find more about the struggles of Radiant Edge to throw the Governor out of office!