Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports – Page 91

Actual play from tonight:

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/blades-in-the-dark-aldo-and-wolfram-session-3-blood/

We had a lot of fun. We had our first non-heist play. First, because we were setting up a heist to take on a Crow underboss (but they decided to pay him off instead.) Second, because they found a creepy new endeavor, and committed murder and arson to take it over. (That part WAS a heist.)

I’m pretty sure I did the rules wrong for at least a quarter of it, and that’s kind of embarrassing, but we had fun and that’s more important. I like how the story of this crew is unfolding, and tonight they went from 2 points of enterprises to 1, and then up to 4. Good for them!

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/blades-in-the-dark-aldo-and-wolfram-session-3-blood

I said I was going to leave an AP days ago, and completely forgot.

I said I was going to leave an AP days ago, and completely forgot. The weekend has been busy (and no, sadly, not at #origins ).

It started, as these things do, with a reading of the inspirations. We then shuffled around playbooks, I loaded up a playlist inspired by the Neko Case song and the True Detective theme, and we set to work making characters.

We ended up with Dekker the Cutter (Thomas Demkey), Tryst the Slide (Delbert Saunders), Weaver the Whisper (Joey Tyne), and Sparrow the Lurk (Nathan Porter). Their gang of thieves, the Minutemen, are based out of an old clock tower. They keep the clock running, having secretly taken over from the old maintenance crew, and the Duskwall officials are happy to save on the costs.

It was in crew creation that we hit our first snag. The turf chart is pretty sweet, but it comes at the cost of the faction chart and the ward boss info, so we printed out the old version, and the team used both, which I suppose may end up being the end result anyway. It’s also unclear if crew effects are still a thing.

We then jump to Bazso Baz’s office, and once the crew confirm that they aren’t there to kill him on behalf of the Red Sashes (who they hate; who, in fact, every one of my playtest groups have instinctively hated, somehow), they hear him out, and accept the job: go rob the Red Sash vault.

They start to chat about where the vault is located. I have no idea how Gather Information works. Is it a roll? A simple action? Doesn’t matter ultimately, because the group tells me that the vault is in the Red Sash headquarters (their temple/training grounds), and we move to planning.

They agree that this is an infiltration plan, though they consider running a deception or occult setup. They decide to go with it, and start to discuss various elements. I stop them, and remind them that their characters have made the plan, and they just need to tell me the entry point. They do: sewer tunnels.

This handily tells me a few things about our Duskwall: it has canals, but it’s not like Venice; it has enough solid ground underneath the city to sustain proper sewers. Probably more like the broad, reinforced banks of the Seine, then. Cool. Since the crew has a bad rep with the Gondoliers, but good with the Cabbies, that allows me to start thinking about what kind of trouble might get stirred up in the future between them.

They roll Engagement and ace it. No complications.

Into the sewers they go, and I decide on the fly that there are primitive magical wards (4), decent guards (6), and confusing navigation (8) to overcome. They approach the rusty outflow grate and there is a setup roll from Sparrow, using secure, then an *attune* roll by Weaver to overpower the wards. Reading the Infiltrator ability now, I realize we used it wrong, but we treated it as bumping up Weaver’s effect by 2, allowing him to easily overcome the wards, though not without a complication: one of the weird wild spirits of the area takes notice. I add a little countdown for “ghosts” at 6, and make a note to start foreshadowing it.

Next, Dekker rolled discern to figure out the scrawled, hand-drawn map of their route (which of course they drew or acquired beforehand; I suppose a flashback action of supply would have made sense, but the map wasn’t worth any bonuses) and they get a 4. It’s not entirely clear who picks from the bad outcomes, but it’s implied that the GM picks. I give them success, but put them into a desperate position.

A rickety wooden bridge that they were meant to cross has rotted away, leaving them twelve feet of fast-moving sewage outflow away from where they need to be. Thing don’t look good. Here’s where we had a bit more confusion.

The crew ultimately decided to roll a teamwork action, with Sparrow leading. He’s rolling prowl, to acrobatically maneuver his way across some pipes to the other side with a rope in tow that he can secure for the rest of them. The rules-as-written seem to imply that everyone else who wants to benefit from the outcome also needs to roll prowl, but not all of them even have that action. Does that mean they just don’t roll? They can benefit from the outcome, but don’t add dice or risk? They can benefit, but only if they “roll” their non-die? Do they have to spend stress to push? I made the call that they could all roll teamwork using whatever action they could justify. Probably what I ought to have done was allow everyone to make individual setup actions. That does seem to leave leading a group action as a less-valuable choice.

Dekker handled rope, securing it; Tryst commanded, to ensure everyone was working together; I don’t remember what Weaver did.

Everyone rolled decently well, but the best they managed was a 5. Sparrow was in trouble. I chose harm. Dekker chose to face the danger for him, as backup. I’m not 100% sure if this is allowed, since Dekker was participating in the teamwork action, but it made sense in context. One of the rotten wooden pilings that had supported the bridge was also supporting the crew’s rope, and when it broke, the Cutter used his own strength to keep the line taut. He rolled well, took a few stress, and we moved along.

All of that was still in the context of waiting for Sparrow to make a secure action to navigate through the tunnels, having been set-up by Dekker. He succeeded, and they arrived at a ladder, leading up into the Red Sashes’ courtyard.

Tryst disguises himself as a Red Sash initiate, and climbs out, using deceive. He heads over to start chatting up anyone who is up and about in the courtyard. I add another countdown clock called “alertness” and set it at 4. I mark off one section for good measure. Weaver then calls up his friend Hoxan using attune, and sends the rogue spirit off to pester anyone who might be in the watchtowers with minor poltergeist effects (this ticks “ghosts” down one more segment as a complication). Dekker stands watch with discern and Sparrow prowls his way to the Red Sash vault. Again, I treated this as a mixed-action teamwork roll with Sparrow leading, though probably a series of setups would have been the right call.

The vault has a single guard on it, but Tryst says he’s walking right up to her and blowing a handful of trance powder in her face, so she slips into dreams.

It’s starting to get late, so I draw a 4-segment clock for the vault, and let them have at it with attune to dispel any magical protection and secure to crack it open. Inside, they have treasure galore, including the ceremonial sword that the Red Sashes use for their induction rituals. Oops. Should’ve had more security, Sashes! The crew cleans them out.

Weaver then uses Tempest to generate a huge fog bank (magnitude 6… which means what, exactly?) and I rule that it’s enough to thoroughly cover their escape, and they go home and count their loot.

Heat generated is pretty minimal (2), and they fill their 4-coin vault They actually have one spare coin, but they spend it calming down the Skovlander Refugees as a result of rolling a Rivals result on Entanglements. See, the Sashes were going to hire the Refugees as muscle, but suddenly found themselves without the means, so the Refugees were causing trouble in territory the Minutemen wanted for themselves. It costs 1 coin to calm that down.

They roll for their various Vices, and get a variety of results. Weaver chooses to overindulge at whatever weird party the vampire Scurlock takes him to (Weaver’s player decides that vampires have been infected by these massive eels that live inside them in a symbiotic relationship. I later decide to step that up a bit and say that their digestive system is replaced entirely by these parasites, and that the vampire’s tongue is replaced by the parasite’s mouth, like a Cymothoa exigua).

From there, they get their next lead: Scurlock wants them to infiltrate a Noble’s wine cellar and make off with a rare demon-blood-infused vintage. Groovy.

I haven’t yet advanced any faction clocks or finished the downtime actions, because it was getting late. I’m going to try to push someone into starting a project.

So, as stated, that’s how things are going for us. I mostly feel like the rules work, though we could have used some clarifications about different elements. We didn’t use the harm rules at all because of being able to face the danger. I like the way you no longer have to roll separately for action and effect; I think that bogged things down a bit before, especially if you ended up with mixed results on the action roll. I’m a little concerned about the world getting too big, as I start adding dozens of faction clocks and maybe even campaign clocks, but I suppose the whole “only advance the ones you’re interested in” thing works out alright.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and I’d love to hear your feedback.

We played with the new rules last night, and our band of thieves broke into Lord Scurlock’s manor house to steal an…

We played with the new rules last night, and our band of thieves broke into Lord Scurlock’s manor house to steal an antique and sorcerous orb from before the cataclysm. Due to some lucky rolling they pulled it off without an alarm or much heat. But they did all leave with almost full stress tracks, a guardian demon bound to a spirit anchor, and a few bits of evidence that a vary pissed off possible vampire may use to track them down latter for some retribution.

I really like the new QS effect rules, they work so much smoother than the old ones which, there was a lot less handling time and a lot more thieving. We did not miss the crew effects at al which was something I was wondering about.

New harm rules are neat too, the players all spent stress to avoid them so no one took any actual harm but knowing that it was 1-3 levels of harm told the players how severe it was and that the stress was worth it to avoid (our Cutter spent stress twice to avoid serious harm). So the lack of abstract levels really helped anchor the mechanics to the fiction here.

From the player side they really liked the new playbook moves, and had a few hard choices as to what ones to take. The assorted ghost and supernatural effects on the none whisper ones intrigued them especially. They also loved the new vice options. So our Cutter is a collector, the Lurk has obligations and the Whisper has his studies (turns out he is still in the academy

and tuition is insane for an immigrant).

For Entanglement the players rolled a 6, which results in no problems. It was suggested at the table that maybe a success or crit gives the players some momentum like a +1 forward in AW. So maybe like a bonus die or effect to the first action they take on the job to represent that. The nothing happens felt a little weak.

There was some question about what tier the crew now starts at. We had assumed 0 like before until we got to development which requires you to roll your tier. Is the crew now supposed to be tier 1 or have one dot in tier? Or do they start with no dots and have to roll 2 dice and keep lowest for development?

All in all one of the smoothest most fun Blades game yet. So nicely done John Harper

So after much discussion, we finally started up what is now going to be our ongoing Blades in the Dark game centered…

So after much discussion, we finally started up what is now going to be our ongoing Blades in the Dark game centered around a wily group of thieves known as the Oath Breakers.

To start off, I had each player present pick a playbook in secret after taking a moment to explain to the completely new players what each one was about and some of the basic mechanics. (We were using the rough draft of the new Quick Starter, so I was upfront that until the full draft was out, some things would feel a bit janky as I filled in the gaps as best I could. When the playbooks were revealed we had a Cutter, a Shrike, and a Lurk. Crew creation fleshed that out to a Shrike who had been an Imperial Scout during the war of Skovlan Unity, a Cutter who had been some sort of soldier but didn’t talk about it, and a Lurk who had worked as a Spy and informant in Iruvia. With that established, they quickly noticed they all had some connection to both the military and breaking trust/promises, so the crew quickly became the Oath Breakers. Finishing up with the factions list, they had a passing good reputation with the Police and inspectors and were generally looked down upon by the various consulates.

After a brief discussion, the Oath Breakers decided that they wanted to be a new and relatively unknown crew looking to capitalize on the turmoil in Crowsfoot. They were out to claim some territory and didn’t care who they pissed off in the process. Yazabay, the Lurk, arranged a meeting with an old friend at the theater to gather some leads on the perfect target. One that was important enough to send a message, but not important enough to bring down the hammer. Her friend didn’t disappoint, and told her about a flop house used by the Red Sashes for some of their low ranking enforcers to call home.

The Oath Breakers retreated to their lair, a hidden section of sequestered sewers (not sure what it is with my players and the sewers), to come up with their perfect plan. After a brief debate, it was decided that they would infiltrate the house through an old servant entrance, incapacitate or murder a good number of the occupants, and ransack the place.

With Yazabay secreted into a delivery of meat (we described this as various cuts of disgusting fish) and the Cutter and Shrike posed as the butchers making the delivery until she opened the door. With the plan made, we rolled for engagement and rolled horribly. The crew elected for the Lose Initiative and Unexpected Threat options. This meant that if the insertion worked, but that the guards locked the delivery in the pantry accidentally, and that an outside force would become involved at some point (at this point I decided the Lampblacks were going to make a move on the same house, but kept it a secret.)

Trying to roll to pick the pantry lock from the inside, Yazaby elected to take the devil’s deal that she would break her picks with the risk being that she might be heard. She rolled well, and made her way to open the door where the rest of the crew was waiting. After letting them in, she took point and lead a group Prowl to find some guys. Another great roll, and the crew found themselves silently sneaking up on a group of four Sashes in a drunken stupor. Seeing the opportunity for what it was, the Shrike took point with the Cutter following behind with their minds set to Murder. Yazaby assisted the Shrike by throwing her vial of silence potion (we decided it would work like a sound muffler for a short time if she smashed it) and away they went. The risky roll quickly led into a desperate roll. Ultimate the Oath Breakers succeeded, but suffered the drawback of the guards from earlier remembering their faces. This was when a small squad of Lampblack decided to burst in, and witness the aftermath of the bloody work. The Cutter steps up to point, covered in viscera, and backed up by the Shrikes bluff that backup is on the way (his assist), to command the Lampblacks to get out of their turf unless they want the same. The Lamblacks back down, but the roll isn’t perfect and the end result is some negative standing toward the Oath Breakers. With the house secured, they have claimed the Turf and the score is over.

Moving on to the fall out from the score, the crew only made the base rep and coin from the job, generated 4 heat due to how loud the job got, and also have a crooked cop (most likely on the Sashes payroll) starting to look into them. To celebrate the crew indulged their various vices, but it seems the Shrike over indulged and got lost (the player will be making a Whisper for the next session)

Overall it was well received. The guy playing the Shrike had been a cutter in my first attempt at the game, and is 100% sold on it. The girl playing the Lurk also had a blast and messaged me this morning to make sure I was aware of that (her husband is also super into it after playing the Hound in my initial game). The Cutter enjoyed himself, but was not as SUPER enthusiastic as the others. Next session we should have another player, and hopefully the full release of this version of the Quickstart.

Tonight I ran a session of Blades in the Dark for my Skype group.

Tonight I ran a session of Blades in the Dark for my Skype group. The group seemed to have some mixed feelings about the game, which I think can be attributed to me, but from the GM side, it was amazing to run.

So you know how this works. Baszo Baz calls them in, asks them if they are on his side or not, and so on. Baszo Baz says they can get in his good grace if they rob the Red Sashes treasure vault, and he tells them where it is. PCs say yes, lets do it.

There is an abandoned warehouse, and the vault is in a sewer complex that is blocked off below the warehouse. Entrance is through a sewer hatch in the front of the warehouse where sentries make patrol. The way to the vault is maze-like, and once they get there, there is a complex series of locks on the vault.

So the PCs begin by scouting the sentries around the “abandoned” warehouse. One of the PCs uses a discern roll to figure out their timing and rotations in order to best slip past them and set up his teammate. I determined it was risky and that the danger was he was discovered. So he rolls, and gets a 5. Danger manifests, but they clear two notches on the clock. The player who is set up then leads the group to slip by and go down into the sewer hatch. It was a desperate attempt because they are being pursued, and they succeed, but the sentries catch the sewer hatch falling into place just as they round the corner.

In the sewer, the Lurk decides to fake a trail for the sentries to follow. I decide this is risky action, and the character gets a partial success and is cornered at a dead end tunnel. The Cutter uses this opportunity to engage the sentries in some mayhem, which is risky. He gets a 6, and doesn’t press his luck, but his effect roll is enough to take out the sentries.

With the sentries taken care of, the Hound has a flash back of stalking an eccentric tinker who collects maps, in order to find a map of the sewers around the warehouse. I decide it’s controlled, because its a harmless tinker, but the Hound rolls a 5, and decides to take a risky maneuver for full effect. The danger is, some thugs beat him to death and leave him for dead in an ally (random violence). He succeeds but the danger manifests, but he uses his armor to absorb the stress. In the end, he has a map.

Map in hand, they navigate the maze-like sewers, but run afoul when they trigger a portcullis which blocks their way. The Cutter decides he wants to lead the group is using Mayhem to lift the gate with savage force. The danger is someone gets stuck under the gate. They all roll and they succeed, and move on. I offered the cutter a devil’s bargain: +1D if he loses an item of his choice. He chose the spiritbane charm, which was smart because I said n the beginning I wasn’t going to deal with ghosts and other spirits, so next time I will choose the item.

They get to the vault, and the vault is magically trapped with an alarm, as well as being locked. The Hound decides to pick the locks, and I say it’s risky because of the alarm. The danger is the alarm will go off and attract sentries. He rolls and gets a bad roll, a bunch of 2s. So I tell him, he can abandon or make a desperate maneuver. He does the desperate maneuver and I say the danger is the sentries arrive. He gets a 4, and the same scenario. He finally rolls a 6, but I didn’t say the danger (and truth be told he seemed really annoyed at the cascading failure) so I let it go. He made his effect roll and got 2 segments marked off (of 6).

The Cutter wants to engage the four sentries (and looking back, maybe I’m over inflating the number, there doesn’t need to be so many guards, because now the kill total is 8 after this fight). He decides he wants to take on all four of them using mayhem. I say that’s fine, its a desperate maneuver, and the danger is being sworded to death. He rolls really well, takes 2 stress, marks off 2 segments (of 6). The Lurk decides to get into melee as well, and its desperate as well, but he rolls a 6 too and 2 more segments are marked off, 2 stress is taken.

The Hound gives it another try, and its risky, and the danger is that one of the sentries slips through and tries to stab him. He got a 4, and rolled an effect roll well enough to mark off the rest of the clock, and took 2 stress.

Finally, the Cutter takes on the last of the sentries, which has been upgraded to a risky maneuver since its a one on one fight with the Lurk involved, and he rolls a crit! The first one of the night! His effect roll is a 1, but the crit pushes it to 2 segments, and the sentries are defeated. With the vault open and guards defeated, they steal gems and coins and jewels and hightail it back to Baszo Baz.

Obervations:

1) I did not give the players a full quickstart PDF, just the reference sheets, playbooks, and maps. If they had the full PDF, I do not know if they would have read it or not, but they definetly experience frustration at not knowing all the rules or the scope of consequences for their actions. That falls completely on me; but they did have the reference sheets. They also didn’t know that marking off a trauma erases all stress, so they thought they would die if all the stress was marked.

2) It was an absolute joy to run as a GM! The flashbacks, planning and details, teamwork moves, and everything else combined with some creativity and improv allowed for a mostly smooth game. It never got bogged down in the details, and the longest it took me was to decide the danger for various actions.

3) I think there were times where some kills were not inappropriate, like maybe the Cutter should have used murder rather than mayhem when fighting all the sentries en masse, which is something to think about going forward.

4) For infiltration type scores, finesse and forceful were used the most. It was almost always appropriate. The only time they used something else was insight when they made the initial scouting action at the beginning.

5) I just woke up before running and I didn’t ask their names so I didn’t call the players by their character’s names or here. That was my bad.

6) I didn’t bother with the crew creation or downtime stuff because I haven’t fully learned it, and if we run another session, we will deal with it then.

All in all, I’m very pleased. I think they enjoyed it, but they were also a bit frustrated as well. They seem open to a 2nd session, so maybe it isn’t as dire as I imagine it.

I started a play by forum here if anyone wants to follow (full Dishonored).

I started a play by forum here if anyone wants to follow (full Dishonored). There will be a small break for the weekend because a couple of guys are at a convention, but moves should be posted again regularly from Monday.

http://rpggeek.com/article/19349110#19349110

Some days our home game is so entertaining.

When our Crew went up a tier they set up a bit of an illegal imports milking scenario. They get a cut of all illegal goods that come through the docks. I picked some groups that pay up without question (an Unseen shows up one day, all robe and mask, drops a bag of cash for goods unspecified and leaves). Some don’t (the Hive outright ignores their demands). So the Crew does a mission against them. Steals a very valuable casket of Iruvian Brandy they can’t replace on short notice.

The Hive starts paying. Last session they get robbed. All their cash vanishes. Folks start showing up trying to infiltrate their holdings. Other minor things just start going wrong. They decide that you can’t be solid Thieves if someone steals from you. So they’ve been working on who nicked them.

They realize that their vault was opened via Ghost Key (in our game this has the ability to open paths through the ghost plane a few feet through solid objects). And there are less than 50 ghost keys in town. They’re very hard to make, requiring Essence of Void trawled from the depths of the Never Sea near the Maelstrom. Each key has a signature. Our whisper (Qess Kincaith) traces the signature to a key owned by the Forgotten Gods. Our Lurk and one of their elite shadows infiltrate the cult. They find out exactly who ‘done the deed’ as it were.

They arrange for a meet in neutral grounds. Whitecrown. Flag of truce. Public. Super upscale posh restaurant. They rent a carriage. The cutter (Roberto) and Lady Rivka Gibson dress up. They go to the meet. And ask some plain questions. The Forgotten Gods Whisper drinks tea and is generally snooty and cagey. It’s clear she’s got backers. She assures them it was ‘only business’ and ‘they should understand’. Rivka unloads both pistols out under the table. Stands up calmly and tells Roberto to bring the body.

They walk out amidst screaming upper class people pressing for the exits. Roberto hops up next to their Cabby and screams “drive”. There’s a bit of an escapade as they go careening out of Whitecrown. Inside the carriage they cut off the head, but plasm most of the body. They burst through a barricade of bluecoats, and ride into the worse sections before slowing.

As they get ready to leave, Roberto turns to a cabby and hands him one of the lead coins of the group (they have specific coins made that gang members have, you steal one you get a chance to join) and tell him that if he ever needs anything, he should bring it to their turf and ask. The poor man (wide eyed and terrified) takes it. I roll a die of fate for him, and yeah. He’ll keep quiet.

The crew picks up 4 heat. Flips over to the next wanted level (their reputation is Brutal, you see why). They snag an electrified cage to imprison the ghost from being summoned away. Wait 3 days. Then ask their questions and find out who is after them, and realize they’re caught between a rock (Level 3 faction) and a hard place (they just declared war on the Forgotten Gods).

So the real question is:

What sort of favor would a down on his luck coachman ask for?

Session two!

Session two! This time around, we had one new player, but two other players couldn’t make it for a variety of reasons, so we just stuck to playing with four players. It was a very interesting session, as I decided to create a couple of scenarios that the players could ‘trigger’ by speaking with the correct people, so it gave them freedom to speak to whomever they wanted, but then I already had a preset idea for the person to send them on. It actually worked out really well!

At the beginning of the session, I worked to incorporate how our new character, a very charming, 6′ 10″ hulk of a female Tycheros native. Named Sitre Caedis, the player decided when he sat down with me that a nickname / alias of “Gore” would be the characters nickname. Gore is a Cutter (if you haven’t figured that out) and has quite a drinking problem, and her place of choice is usually the Leaky Bucket. As our Lurk passed by on the way back to the crew headquarters, she noticed people flying out the door and across the street, with whom she soon discovered to be Gore yelling profanities and being kicked out of the tavern for the evening. Pretty commonplace apparently, but Gore was sent by Lyssa to find one of the members of the crew, as Lyssa was hoping she would be a welcoming addition for them in getting up off their feet and building a name for themselves.

So with the four members back at the crew hideout, they all went their different ways for a few. Our Hound and Cutter decided to go speak with the Hound’s bounty hunter connection for any leads she may have (she actually told them to go speak to Lyssa, as it seemed like she had an “itch” that she needed scratched upon their last interaction). The other two characters just sort of went off to a library to do some personal research or whatever they wanted, but after it was all said and done, the four of them met up and decided it would be best to go speak to Lyssa to see if she had a job for them to do.

So, they all headed to the headquarters of the Crows, and after a few friendly shenanigans with the two guards that were on duty at the front door, they head in and find Lyssa, looking like she was ready to murder someone herself, staring thoughtfully out a window. Upon speaking to her, the crew discovered that Lyssa had been constantly wronged by a man named Alexey Mirovich, a deck captain for the Dockers who had mishandled her boats so many times that it was actually beginning to hurt her wallet. She gives them a reference for what she looks like, and very plainly says that she “wanted his skull to be sprayed across the deck” that they found him on, and that she was willing to pay a good amount for the completion of this.

So the group gets together again and decides to do some spotting / information gathering. The Hound and Lurk both head down to the Docks at two separate times, the Hound looking to spot the dock that the target worked on with his pet falcon, although in the end only narrowing down which of the docks he could be located on. After he leaves, the Lurk heads in to sort of deceive (pretending to be a historian / record keeper for a head clerk down in City Hall) her way into finding out the next shipment of a specific boat that, through some rolls, she discovered from a clerk would be handled by Mr. Mirovich. So, after rolling a six, she found out that the next shipment in was due in two days, and that she was more than welcome to come down and “gather the information she needed.”

Now comes the fun part. The group decides to go with an assault plan, as that would make sense for Lyssa’s wants while also using the new Cutter to a greater effect. They all headed on down to the Docks and went up to a booth at the end of the dock that they had discovered the target would be on, speaking to a woman to tell them as to why they were there. She questioned why the Lurk had brought a few other people with her, and she decided to deceive again and state that it was standard practice for a member of City Hall to bring protection and help with her in case of emergency. The worker wasn’t really too skeptical, but by standard practice, sent a hulking guard to escort them to the incoming shipment. The Hound, during all of this, prowled up onto a building across the street with his fine hunting rifle, taking a great position that gave him a full view of the dock (rolled a six).

Low and behold they make a few more rolls to fully discover which of the supervisors present was their target, and the Lurk takes point and asks Mirovich if they could step aside and speak about a couple of questions that she had for him regarding some shipments over the past couple of months. He accepted, but brought another supervisor looking fellow to assist him, and they all stepped off out of the way of everything so that they didn’t interrupt the process of receiving the shipment.

From here, the Hound ends up taking a shot and injuring the main target, while Gore injures him some more and then he proceeds to take another shot to the head to get finished off. While not very quickly, some grunts sort of discover what’s going on, and a panic starts to ensue. The other large guy that came along with Mirovich eventually gets taken down as well, and the group heads down the main deck on their escape, meeting the guard who had escort and engaging him in combat as another grunt comes up to assist him. After some struggle and missed shots, the Cutter ends up landing a 6 on her Mayhem action, and proceeded to roll a crit on her Force effect roll. So she basically went ahead and described how she slammed the sharp side of her hammer-like weapon down through this guys skull, ripped his skull off and then kicked his corpse off the side of the deck and down into the water. At this point as well, the other grunt, through a feat of athleticism from the Lurk, actually got kicked down into the water himself instead of getting killed. The group then made some rolls to make their escape through a smokebomb unseen, and they did so successfully, while the Hound rolled a six and quickly scaled down from the building he was on and headed on his way back to the lair.

From there they just met up with Lyssa, got their rewards, we did some progression and then the session was over. The group had a blast yet again and we finished up (not including the total of about 45 minutes we spent just waiting around for a variety of reasons) in just about 3.5 hours. Overall, was a hell of a session and felt like it went a lot more smoothly than the first session, having a heavy focus on combat instead of sneaking around. I certainly had a blast GMing, as I’m going to be scaling up the difficulty pretty much from session to session, and a lot of the group said that this was the perfect difficulty for the task at hand and really thought that it was more difficult than the first session was.

Will write another post after we complete our third session in two weeks!

Hi all! So I ran my first session of Blades last night, and it was a pretty rousing success. My players really…

Hi all! So I ran my first session of Blades last night, and it was a pretty rousing success. My players really rose to the setting, and we had a lot of good collaborative world building.

The PCs were:

Gord Burko, the Hound. He’s a disgraced former bluecoat from Skovland who fell after developing a deep addiction for ‘g-dust’, a street drug taken via the eye.

Covel, the Slide. He’s an oily, smarmy merchant with an endless stream of get-rich-quick schemes (the Gambling vice, mechanically). He also funs the crew’s front.

Ashbane, the Lurk. She and her sister ran away from a life of rural grind. Ashbane’s got more lovers than days on the calendar, and if she can keep them straight she’ll get something out of them.

Their crew is called the Collectors, for the trove if stuff they always have in their vault (their lair is a converted old bank, hidden behind Covel’s pawn shop.

And some NPCs were ended up with:

Veleris, Ashbane’s younger sister and Gord’s partner in junkie-dom, runs the crew’s gang of Elite Shadows. There’s a good chance she’d make a play for power if it wasn’t for the drugs and Ashbane keeping her in place.

Nyryx the prostitute. He works for the Dimmer Sisters, and is a friend of Covel’s. If you need a body ‘plasmed, go see Nyryx.

Roslyn the noble, Ashbane’s main squeeze and a player in the world of underground fighting events.

Petra, one of Ashbane’s side pieces (but it’s not really a thing). Works for Duskwall’s civic planning office.

Bell, a retired duellist who fell down the same ladder of drugs and dissolution as Gord. Sometimes they hang out. Bell also spends time at the Red Sashes dojo reminiscing and trying to mentor.

The crew ended generation with a positive with the Dimmer Sisters, the Lampblacks (Baszo being a friend of Covel’s and all) and The Inspectors (a gang of ex-bluecoats who run blackmail schemes and protection rackets). Meanwhile, they have a mild feud running with the Fog Hounds (Severosian immigrants who turned to crime and violence to feed themselves) and a serious hate-dom for the Circle of Flame. We bounced some ideas around and decide that the Circle of Flame are a cultish band of redemption preachers (they call themselves Shepards) who love burning people alive for their sins.

The session opened with Baszo tipping the crew to some piece of shiny the Red Sashes just hauled in, and they decided to stick it to those insufferable ponces and make some scratch in the process.

The first step was to figure out where the Red Sashes kept their loot, and Gord decided to Stalk the cash transfers from the RS drug dens. I set it as a four-clock and the players began a night-long trend of terrible Effect rolls. Gord made some progress, eliminated some possible locations but got rumbled by a Red Sash lookout. It turned into a fight and even after Covel and Ashbane came in as backup it was Gord’s fine hunting dog that did the bulk of the Murder. By then, Gord was stressed out and disinclined to keep Stalking. Ashbane took to Prowling and making use of the crew’s Elite Shadows while Covel went to see his friend at the Dimmer Sisters to get help disposing of the dead Red Sash.

Finally, after many shitty Effect rolls, it was Ashbane’s lover Roslyn that confirmed the Sashes had their vault in the basement of their dojo.

The crew picked the Infiltrate plan, and used a flashback to figure out their entry pointed. Gord found out from Bell that city workers had accidentally broken through a sewer wall into the dojo basement, and the place still stank of sewage. The crew figured that meant the breach hadn’t been sealed and in they went.

They got in cleanly, murdered the Red Sash on duty (it was a group effort) and got away with the lucre, and all undetected. However, because of a Devil’s Bargain, the Red Sashes now have a project clock to interpret some evidence and pin the break in on Ashbane personally.

Ashbane, despite that, came through the score pretty relaxed. Gord and Covel, though, both had to sink their cut and overindulge just to get out of the danger zone (more bad Effect rolls). Covel is persona not grata at the Dusk Manor Club for a while (it’s bad form to try and con the nobles too obviously), while Gord disgraced himself at a Circle of Flame event and now the Circle’s out for blood (he pushed them down to -3).

The players loved it, I loved it, it was good times. The collaborative world building is so great. It’s so freeing as the GM to just say, “Hey, tell me about your friend,” or, “What do you think the Dimmer Sisters really do?” because it shares out the fun and the onus of creation equally.

We did stumble over the rules a bit, as to be expected, but we were able to keep moving by rolling more or making house calls to revisit afterwards. All in all, very successful.

The points that did come up I noted down to discuss here:

-We treated favourite friends as a Fine Item for Effect rolls when getting info or whatever. Not sure if that’s as intended.

-When rolling Overcome, I ruled that only the non-point characters take Stress on a low roll. The rule’s wording struck us as ambiguous, but it made more sense to us that the point character wouldn’t take extra stress on top of danger manifesting.

-A new vice idea: “Violence”

-We were really unclear what the “Affiliation” vice meant. We figured it was something like, “you have really shitty friends you won’t stop associating with”.

Beyond that, it was really a matter of talking things out and deciding what felt best to the group. Very refreshing after more formalistic games like PF.

Working Title: Desks in the Dark play report

So I’ve been dropping hints about the hack of Blades in the Dark that I’ve been building, but have been pretty adamant about not giving too many details until I play tested. Maybe it was paranoia, but I just wanted to be the first to try out the idea.

Well tonight I had the first session.

Unfortunately we were down a player, but we decided to continue and test the waters of The Ravencliff Academy for for troubling children.

I should back track though. Desks in the dark takes the rules from John Harper’s quick start and uses them to play a game at a creepy or secretive boarding school. What makes the school like that is up to the players. The idea is to build the school communally from scratch and then place students there who will sneak around, discovering secrets, causing trouble, and earning reputation in the school.

My players made a school for students that are just too scary to be in mainstream society. The headmaster is a man constantly surrounded by cats and is unfathomably nice, but there is a constant presence of heavily armed security personnel. The students we had tonight were Llewellen, a student who receives fan mail from the future and has memories that have not happened yet, and Joanas, a student who literally hears art talk to him (I hate my players for making me remember difficult names).

The game started with Joanas and Llewellen in the headmaster’s office being confronted with their disturbing behavior. These two troubling boys decided to explore the mysterious light coming from the channel (over the cliff) in the middle of the night. To do this, they decided to steal rope from Castle house, the very exclusive dorm house of the soccer players (not ultra soccer) and the ROTC students. The two successfully scale the side of the building (which is shaped like an actual castle) with their own house, River Brook which is the home of misfits, the ignored, and the unimportant, watching from their windows and cheering. Joanas decided to steal the flag at the top of Castle House as a prank. Llewellen made it down ok but was discovered by Amy, a girl from Castle House. He convinced her not to rat him out, but she became very interested in him. Probably too interesting.

Joanas had far more trouble getting down and ripped his uniform, a serious offense, but still couldn’t make it down. Instead he made the flag into a hooded cape (cloak?) and ran throughout the halls of Castle house yelling while carrying a random cat and shaking it so that it made a god awful sound (this is total animal cruelty by the way). Jonas was able to get out of the building but had a bunch of the residents chasing him (mostly heavily armed ROTC kids). Llewellen tried to keep the door up to River Brook to let his friend rush in, but Joanas tripped over some rose bushes. Instead, Llewellen convinced his cheering dorm mates to come out to the rescue, which wasn’t hard given the fact that Joanas was being a total badass. This included the RA, who hated Castle House enough to take the flag from Joanas and wipe his ass with it (that was an interesting devil’s bargain). The Castle kids pulled out weapons (because the kids in ROTC consider shotguns light arms). Joanas was able to rile up his dorm so much that the Castle kids had to let him get away.

From there the pair used their stolen rope to climb down the cliff and swim down into the light. What they saw was a dome with rows of 12 ft mechs being inspected. Deciding they didn’t want to mess with people who had military grade robots they could pilot, the two decided to head back.

Except Joanas still needed a replacement uniform before the school discovered that his was ruined. The school has some very odd policies when it comes to their dress code, but it is well known that you do not want to damage them. After failing to switch his out for another student’s dirty uniform, Joanas decided that it was better to just convince somebody else to trade. This resulted in him owing Rodric a favor and missing that there was something embarrassing in the pocket that he would miss.

Of course the headmaster had something to say about this embarrassing item and called the two into his office (back to where we started). The students assumed that they were there because of their excursion and tried to cover up the worst of their actions with lies, but basically admitted to breaking curfew. The headmaster did not care about the dispute between houses and instead was far more concerned with the health issues of male students wearing women’s underwear. He also suggested that the two should be more discreet about their relationship (since Llewellen’s name was on the panties). Joanas however earned enough attention points (this syste’s version of stress) to get detention.

This lead to Llewellen checking out Rodric’s dorm room while the pervert was in the Cube of Shame (An empty white room with a speaker that constantly repeats the word shame) for a uniform transgression. Llewellen found a shrine to himself (mostly consisting of pictures of him when he was older). Llewellen stole all the items in the shrine for use in one of his classes.

Meanwhile, Joanas was bullied into doing a days training with the ROTC kids as punishment for being a smart ass. He discovered that Amy is both the student lead of ROTC and is capable of firing an anti tank gun accurately without any stands or supports.

I liked a lot of how this system played. There were still players having trouble with the results of rolls, but I think that might improve with exposure and with more copies of the rules available (unfortunately due to miscommunication the result chart did not get printed so I was running the results off my tablet).

One concern I have is about how fast students accumulate attention (stress in Bitd). I decided on the fly to up the critical point from 8 to 12, but in one session the players received 10 and 12. There are things that could have helped that, both players only had one skill at 2 dots, they were a player down, and they didn’t use teamwork consistently. They also didn’t roll great, but still that’s pretty fast. I’ll keep an eye on this, but it does concern me about the system, especially since I think I did a lot of things that are nicer than Blades. Maybe the players should have accepted more negative effects? I don’t know, I just feel something is a bit off on that.

At some point I’ll probably post my rules thus far once I make a few updates.