Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports – Page 88

I played this game for the first time at Gencon and must say that I LOVE it!

I played this game for the first time at Gencon and must say that I LOVE it! Character creation was a blast and I wish I would have heard about this game during the Kickstart. At this point I’m gonna be “hawking” for a campaign to really immerse myself in this creative world.

My AP for #antigencon.

My AP for #antigencon. Was a lot of fun running for Slade Stolar and Jeroen van Lier. So many crazy devil’s bargains! I have to thank my players for coming up with lots of them, as well as setting details and things like that.

GMed my first game with the QSv3 (Gencon draft) yesterday.

GMed my first game with the QSv3 (Gencon draft) yesterday. I may post a more narrative write-up on a blog later; for now, my system-related notes.

– The players struggled with the flow of teamwork at first, in part due to my failure to articulate it. Next time, I may say, “Think of it as ‘initiative for a game with no NPC die-rolling” and see if that helps.

– The act of answering questions to fill in the setting produced some gems! I hope that the final version doesn’t spell out too much more of the city.

(E.g., the Whisper asked, “how does anyone do medical research, if bodies have to be seized and cremated within hours of death?” Our answer: “illegally!”, and the Whisper’s Vice of “dissecting corpses to learn anatomy” was born)

– Both players were familiar with and comfortable with the idea of escalating danger as a drive to narrative. So they took a lot of devil’s bargains and suffered consequences without bothering to resist.

– I’ve seen guidelines elsewhere for how many clocks to give the players to challenge them. For now, I can say that 4 segments per player (e.g., two 4-clocks for two PCs) is a cakewalk, especially if they get one controlled roll.

– For Overindulgence costs, neither player could ever see themselves pawning off every item they own save one as a cost. They were happy to Overindulge and temporarily lose access, as they immediately set out a Long Term Project of finding a new supplier.

(The Cutter’s vice was Obligation: his wife and kids elsewhere in the city. When he got kicked out for coming home with stolen goods – again – his LTP was to get back into his wife’s good graces)

– I struggled to explain resistance under the new rules. “Okay, so you take an action, and it may or may not succeed, and even if it succeeds, you might get reduced effect or suffer a consequence, and if you suffer a consequence, you have the opportunity to resist it …” Eyes glazed shortly before that part.

– I didn’t find the engagement roll useful. They rolled 2d and got a bad result, meaning … the score would be hard? I’d already planned to make the score hard for them; this told me nothing.

– I ran into an issue others have noted, in that the ubiquity of ghosts and electroplasm make Attune very broadly useful. Thinking on ways to bound it.

– Are NPC project clocks meant to be public? Otherwise, I don’t see much point to them.

As for the game itself: our crew took Baszo Baz up on his offer to rob the Red Sashes. The Whisper led the crew into their hideout through a ghost door. The Cutter cracked the safe and looted as much as they could carry. They escaped thanks to their gang of shadows infiltrating the Sashes’ masked membership (a 2-stress flashback) and the Cutter bowling his way through the rest.

After downtime, we had time for one quick score, so the crew smashed up a nearby glazier’s and demanded protection money (+1 hold). They both completed their long-term projects to get back in the good graces of the Vice suppliers they’d tapped out last time.

We ended with an entanglement roll: the Inspectors, who already disliked them, asked them to step off the glaziers or it’d be war. The crew decided to fight it out, having already pissed off the Red Sashes, the Rail Jacks, and the Gondoliers. So that’ll be a fun Session 2.

Played for Antigen Con 2, a quick 2 hour session with a Crow gang.

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/blades-in-the-dark-construction/

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/blades-in-the-dark-construction

The Devilfish Platter!

The Devilfish Platter! A luxury feast indeed, in the shadowed city of Duskwall. In the game last night, one of the characters had bad news to deliver to violent people, so he prefaced his news with a devilfish platter to soften the blow.

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/blades-in-the-dark-a-night-at-the-theater/

The head sac of the devilfish (octopus) was about the size of a human head, with tentacles about six feet long. The head was cut open and stuffed with succulent prawns. The devilfish skin had a light garlic glaze with herbs pressed against the flesh to form pleasing and tasty patterns. The removed beak was replaced by a bowl of crab cheese; not actually cheese, but yellow-orange, and spreadable, and salty/tangy.

The tentacles were neatly arrayed on the heavy tray, and in their “clutches” were rows of topbread (mushroom caps, toasted, a bread-like texture) and long-shrimp and crawdads.

There was enough for the crew and their gangs! From the chewy fun of the suckers to the smooth richness of the crab cheese, there was a lot to love on this gourmet dish. Maybe your crew deserves one too.

So, at long last, I held a game of BitD in the game convention of my town, RolEnQuart…

I tried to get up to speed with the modifications of the last qs3.3. I made a translation of the sheets (too rushed) and read the main changes. And so we went ahead…

PREPPING:

-We played the game at night, quite late, and after a long day of work as volunteers in the con by half my players, so most of us were very tired…That resulted in a quite rocky start. There were plenty of jokes, and at first I thought that it was gonna be impossible to play a half serious game… The jokes about the names of some characters or places, and about the sound of “electroplasmic” in spanish were plenty… Somehow, Brynna became Britney Spears… not sure how… We were tired and needed a little bit of fun, but for a little bit I was worried that we were not gonna be able to play properly… But at some point we found balance between the jokes and the seriousnes of the setting…

– It took awhile to create the characters, but it helped me to introduce the setting a little bit, so I think it was worth it. Some of them just rolled a d6 to see their heritage and made things up based on what I told them about the island they got.

– Finally we got to the point of establishing the Score. I used Sean Nittner Gaddoc Rail as a base, because i felt it was quick and quite straightforward to play in a convention. The one in the QS seems too open, and with maybe too many factors to take into account for a first session within a con…

– We didn’t create a crew sheet, mostly for that very same reason. I explained about how the game usually was based around making a name for your gang in the underworld, but just talked a little bit about the gangs when we decided who was the Patron fot the score.

THE SCORE

– I spoke quite a bit about the relevance of ghosts and spirits in this world, and the fact that all the playbooks had some abilities related with ghosts helped a lot. They decided that the score was a she instead of an It. They had been hired by the Crows to kidnap a little girl that arrived to the station aboard the Argonaut. The little girl was the vessel for a very old spirit of noble origin (they compared it to the Queen Elizabeth I of England) that thanks to some magic was still mostly herself, being able to endure for hundred of years inside young girls descended from her original bloodline.The ghost had knowledge that could help to overthrown the empire if it fell in the wrong hands.

– From what they knew, the spirit was contained thanks to an old painting imbued with magic energy that made the spirit dormant if it within eyesight of the girl.

– They decided to approach the station from the canals, by boat, and later getting into the sewer system that would connect to the main station…The entanglement roll was quite good, and they got there without much trouble.

– Eventually the found out that even in the sewers a few security measures had been initiated, and that the the point of the sewers that serve as an entry point to the underbelly of the station had electroplasmatic walls that had been activated recently. They were able to deactivate it, cross it, and activate it again without alarming anyone, apparently.

– Once on the station proper, most of the lights were out, and the ones that were on kept blinking on and off.There were signs of panic everywhere. Luggage spread all over the corridors, stalls taken down… But nobody to be seen.

– They got to the Argonaut. It seemed battered on the outside, and some wagons seemed to have been breached…

– They went inside and found the room in which the girl was supossed to be. The butler/bodyguard of the girl was dead, The eyes somehow imploded, and the mouth stretched and broken… And he had what seemed to be a hole in the chest… alienlike, something had broken out from within…

– They found iron manacles, spread on the floor, near a chair that was facing what used to be a painting, that had been shredded.

– They found bloodied footprints from who they supossed was the little girl. They explored the rest of the train, and found lots of corpses, with the same damage that the butler on their eyes and mouths… but not on their chests.

– Eventually they found the little girl, scared and hidden, in a room used by the railjacks as armoury in the last wagon. She seemed free of all possesion…

– Meanwhile, one of them saw what seemed to be a wave of ghost approaching their wagon. They couldnt go back the way they had arrived, because the ghost wave cut their path…

– Just as in the sewers, an electroplasmatic wall had been activated that made sure that no spirits run out of the station in case of an outbreak…(because.. why not). One of the players decided that it was faster to try to blow out that wall and get out of the station that way that facing the horde of spirits approaching them.. so he took the girl and run out of the train, toward the electroplasmatic field security wall.

– he got quiclky surrounded by the horde, but it seemed that none of them wanted to get too close to the girl. The other pcs took a little bit to decide to go along with them, so when they finally did, they had to cross a wall of howling ghosts.

– The pc that run with the girl had just one arm (because he thought it was cool), and after trying to keep hold of the very nervous little girl and fighting the ghosts at the same time, he decided to first knock out the girl, and then make a path toward the electroplasmatic wall, with the hope that once it was down the ghost would run havok on the city and leave them alone…(open the pandora box!!)

– But once the girl was knocked out, most of the ghost spread away, except an old and dangeorus looking one, that attacked the pcs, especially the one that had hit the girl, of course…

– Eventually they made the ghost to posses the girl again, and knocked her out. That was the moment when a team of rail jacks along with bluecoats started coming toward their position, making a sweep of the station and hunting and destroying any ghost they encountered. – One of the pcs used a flashback to establish that she was ready to look as one of the travelers in the argonaut, another one was able to get back into the sewers with the knocked out possesed girl. and the last two had to run from the bluecoats toward some office buildings inside the station, where they finally got away from the station after blowing up some outside wall, not before being identified and blamed for all that had happened on the station…

ABOUT THE RULES

– I liked the original effect system, but I’ve to admit that the new version is more streamlined and works quite well. It was really easy for the players to grab the action and effect system now.

– They suffered a few consequences, took advantage of the devils bargain, and realized how fast they could lose the pc if they played too loose with the stress system. It was just a one shot, but they spend a lot of stress.

– I never got to the point of asking for Resistance rolls. Didnt feel like I needed them, but I will check the rules again to see when should i have used them.

– I also noticed, almost at the last minute before starting, that teamwork had been changed as well… I waited a little bit before explaining both this and the flashbacks.But they got them pretty fast and used them a couple of times.

– I explained quickly the concepts of Heat and Hold, but barely,and just regarding to the fiction. In case we ever play again maybe we can pick up where we left and see the consequences of what happened, mechanically speaking…

– In general they enjoyed the game, and thought that the system was fun to play.

– One thing I usually do when playing games about tension and scary situations… While they talk about their next move i start to knock on the table, no very loudly, the beat of the master from Doctor Who. Sometimes they dont even notice… But most of the times, when I do this, there’s always someone who starts to get nervous.. I found out that it helps to build up the tension… I let them speak a bit and try to decide what to do, but the beat it’s a reminder that something wicked it’s coming…

We had our first play with v3.3 last night and it was awesome!

The new harm rules have really hit a sweet spot I think. The choice between taking stress and taking harm felt quite strategic and the narrative harm mechanic worked very well for us.

The new tables and layout felt very easy to use. Downtime was quick and no fuss, but still punctuated with interesting choices. The new action table results felt just right. The listed consequences and opportunities for escalation all worked really well.

Can’t wait to play again!

So after a way to many week hiatus, I finally got to run another session of Desks in the Dark (my hack of bitd).

So after a way to many week hiatus, I finally got to run another session of Desks in the Dark (my hack of bitd). The thing is I completely forgot about resistance rolls for like half the session (I know they have been changed in v3 but for various reasons I’m not using the updates, at least at this time). Instead PC’s just took consequences as they came at them, AND. IT. WAS. FANTASTIC. Screw resisting effects, it’s way more fun for PC’s to take what’s coming at them, and it flows way better. I totally want to cut resisting consequences out of my game now, but I’ll need to think about what to do with traits and stress. I think the count down to PC’s being forced out of the game is important, but why give up the awesomeness I stumbled upon. Also, were tiger prep school students who blow up mech bays as an eyeless guy removes a fight between rotc students and giant spiked mechanics worms who spit liquid gummy candy from existence., because these thing happen.

Running a game now after the PCs made a huge mess of succeeding in their heist last time by summoning a lot of…

Running a game now after the PCs made a huge mess of succeeding in their heist last time by summoning a lot of ghosts and setting a house on fire.

A demon has now taken an interest and they’re deciding if they want to work with it or not.

Should be fun. I’ll post more as they go.

I thought it might be useful to dig a bit more into how I was using the mechanics for combat in the latest session.

I thought it might be useful to dig a bit more into how I was using the mechanics for combat in the latest session. I share this for two reasons. One is it might help others come up with ways to handle combat, and the other is so people can identify ways I could use the system better. (I’ve found out several times I was handling the system in unhelpful or unintended ways.)

THE AMBUSH

There was a cutter, a hound, and two whispers in a trainer’s box down by the edge of the hagfish racing pool. (That’s every bit as unpleasant as it sounds.) It was a slow Thursday afternoon. Suddenly plasm weapons are firing with big gusting bangs! A dozen attackers are sweeping down at them, six to a side, closing in on their location.

I made a six segment clock called “attacking hollows” because the whispers could see they were hollows without having to roll or anything, they’re just that good. I also told them that every “round” that went by where there were still segments on the clock, they would all suffer a consequence.

Since the hound had charged shot, he opened up on one flank. He got a 1-3 result modified +1 effect by his fine pistols, filling 2 segments but with a complication. I upgraded the situation from risky to desperate as the attackers raced up towards melee range. (However, we got to see the charged shot actually burn the ghosts out of the hollows he hit, so that was fun.)

I decided the cutter could ignore the desperate situation, keeping it at risky, because he had a special ability that allowed him to engage bigger groups. He rolled 4-5 and filled 2 segments, and the remaining hollows were leaping into the box in melee range now.

The whispers wanted to have started a ritual at the beginning of the round; fine. They pulled down one of the hagfish nets, and one used his electroplasm to charge it while the other weaponized it to eject ghosts from their hollows. The casting whisper took 2 stress, I think, to make the ritual work. The other whisper took stress to give +1d to the other, and the roll was a 6, finishing out the clock by the end of the round so there were no consequences for the group to take. I did not add effect to the roll for using the electroplasm vial; instead, that made the ritual possible.

THE MOB HIT

The cutter saw a group of a dozen raggedy hollows hefting out the strong boxes from the gambling counter. He wanted to stop them from escaping and knock them all down.

Since he could ignore scale issues, he got to tackle the group as a risky situation. I made a 6 segment clock for “Contain the Rags.” Each round the clock was not full he would take a consequence. He had quality melee weapons. He used mayhem.

I offered him a devil’s bargain if he lost his weapons, stuck in foes. He took it, and ended up with a 4-5, so he filled 2 segments +1 for the weapons. I don’t remember the complication; maybe some of them were trying to escape? Anyway, he rammed his sword and shield into a couple of them, warning them he’d be back for them. (The hollows drove the bodies like they stole them, heedless of harm, making them more dangerous.)

For the consequence, a pile of them tried to grapple him and shiv him; he took the damage on his armor.

Round two, the hound fired on the group and knocked 2 segments off, running out of shot until he reloaded. Since there was only one segment left and most of the group was now available, they took a couple wretches captive without having to roll.

FUN DEVIL’S BARGAINS

They used a rook gang in the second heist. I offered the devil’s bargain when they tried to palm the amulet that whether they succeeded or not, they’d be ejected from the tavern; the group didn’t take it, wanting to keep them on hand.

Then when the rooks caused a distraction for them, I offered a bargain that however it ended a fight would break out. They DID take that one. (If they succeeded, they could slip out of the fight; if not, the rook gang would take a pounding and get ejected and the distraction would not make much ripple.)

After that when one of the characters wanted to make a distraction above and beyond the bar brawl, I offered a bargain that there would be at least one casualty in the fight; they took that one.

The distracting character also was offered a devil’s bargain to be spotted, his face remembered at the scene; he took it. =) The Lampblacks will be VERY interested.

When a whisper was using a ghost to intimidate potential attackers, I offered a bargain that the ghost would come out and scare them, but then it would want to stretch its legs. =) He took the bargain!

As a whisper was trying to pull a spirit out of a body, however it turned out, he would leave “fingerprints” another whisper could see. He took the bargain, but fed the corpse to a hagfish pool.

Anyway, we had a good time and I look forward to playing again.