Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports – Page 93

So I’ve come up with a harebrained scheme!

I’ve made my own Brainstormer wheels for Blades and am gonna get in some solo gaming using them as a GM emulator, plus a magic 8 ball app for more specific stake questions not answered by dice (avoiding the Czege principle as best I can).

I hope to follow the rule as written as a sort of playtest and GMing practice. I’ve made my main protagonist – a Hound (ex Skovish Whaler) named Thorn Egil – primarily because I want to Express my character’s flaws, obsessions, secrets, or shortcomings.

That’s the way I hope to frame scenes… Chasing the Hound XP triggers HARD. Should be fun

http://www.tapnik.com/brainstormer/

First Run Through: Rough.

First Run Through: Rough. The language of the way the rules are written, as well as the organization of the Quick-Start feel like they’re trying to go in all sorts of directions and reigning them in is a little bit of a challenge. However, once everyone understands they way they work, then you can flow a lot better.

The effect dice of set up is a confusing thing. So if the On Point: Set Up move is used, he doesn’t roll his effect dice, right? And does his effect dice have to be the same effect as the player who does follow through? Set up was trick guys into an ambush. Follow Through was murder them dead. Trick should be a Finesse effect, and Murder Force. Does the player on Follow Through get the Finesse Dice from the leader or more Force dice?

Murder and Mayhem seem to be interchangeable, as do several other actions. Consolidation seems to be in favor here.

Set up some clocks, they work fine, but I had to remind myself its not just for the one action, it’s for the scenario of the obstacle. A 4 segment clock on unlocking a rusty old gate didn’t complete the Sneaking In clock, so I introduced a set of slimy stairs to navigate. Filled in the last 2 segments. That sound right?

Dangers are interesting and really lend itself to being great catalysts for stress. I’m interested to see how Trauma would work.

Downtime is GREAT. That’s a super great method of setting up future scores in town. So much potential there for running a game.

I’m gonna try this again, with another group maybe, see if I can’t not only explain this easier to them, but now that I have a better grip, run it without so much fear.

TL;DR

I talk about my group’s Duskwall regarding Whispers and spirit anchors. All of this is just our own personal worldbuilding.

Just a quick update on our campaign – we went from me GM’ing a group last Saturday with 2 PCs to one of the PCs taking over as GM tonight with 3 total PCs participating (myself included).

We spent an hour character building (about 20 minutes) and roleplaying introductions/working the two new players into the crew (about 40 minutes). Then we did a score for 2.5 hours. We ended up just starting development/clean up at the end, but we decided to push it to next session due to time.

I don’t know where I saw it, maybe in the Quickstart, but our group is far more comfortable with the pace of about 1 score per night based upon how long it’s taking us instead of 2 scores per 3-4 hour session. Maybe the time required for a score will go down, but at this point I think we’re relatively comfortable with the mechanics. We’re just adding a ton of flavor in, and we love it. Our GM made a good point that we’re doing a LOT of world building right now and that’s taking up a significant amount of time.

That’s about it for now, but I did want to share a lil bit of our world building. 2 things we came up with that I thought were cool to share: how our Whisper interacts with spirits and some details we fleshed out about spirit anchors.

We added a Whisper to our group and had fun exploring that. He’s an Iruvian noble who has an oil lamp (that you’d probably want to rub for some wishes) as a spirit anchor and his spirit mask is a silk scarf he wraps around his head to cover his face. Side note: the spirits in our world love the smell of peppermint, and it’s like an Iruvian trick-of-the-trade. So his silk scarf is not only enchanted to be a spirit mask, but as a part of that ceremony/manufacturing-process it was soaked in some special peppermint concoction.

Different Whispers or even non-Whispers who have some attunement to spirits will display that connection to spirits differently. Our Lurk who has a point of Attune will have his eyes roll back in his head as he attunes with spirits. Our Iruvian Whisper uses his demonic gift (passed down through his family from a demon patron in Iruvia) to speak Demon’s Tongue. Those mystical words he speaks pass through his enchanted, peppermint-soaked facewrap and become weapons or tools to use against spirits. Anyways, that’s how he compels/commands/interacts with that part of our Duskwall.

Regarding spirit anchors themselves, we sort of settled on 3 different types: spirit trinkets, spirit anchors, and fine spirit anchors. Spirit trinkets are essentially one-time-use spirit anchors. They had some kind of special value to someone, enough to leave a lasting emotional bond which is one of the requirements for spirits to be bound to a physical object. However, these items are mostly mundane and/or have been lost by the original owner. Anything can really be turned into a spirit trinket given the right emotional connection, but after a spirit inside a trinket is released, it would be a feat to get it to return to the same minor vessel.

Spirit anchors are items of some value or made of a finer material. In order to bind a spirit anchor to a living person, that person has to pour some of their own essence into the anchor. A single person can only have one spirit anchor bound to them because of the emotional and otherwise spiritual toll it takes to bind yourself to the vessel. Touching the spirit anchor is akin to touching the person themselves, and one would never want to be separated from that object that holds some of their essence. It’s pretty heavy to take a spirit anchor, but that’s also what gives it the strength to be a (reusable) vessel to hold a spirit. Capturing a spirit and binding it inside your spirit anchor gives you command over the spirit and makes it your own for you to take out and put back in as often as you can attune with the spirit.

A fine spirit anchor is like a spirit anchor, but made of only the finest materials and requires an extreme effort to craft and bind to a Whisper. Only full Whispers can harness the power of a fine spirit anchor due to the spiritual toll it takes to pour one’s essence into it. Whereas our Lurk who can attune would be able to get a normal spirit anchor when our Whisper finishes crafting it for him. Unlike a normal spirit anchor (or even a spirit trinket) that can only hold 1 spirit maximum, the fine spirit anchor can hold as many spirits as the Whisper is able to control based upon his experience, strength of will, and strength of the fine spirit anchor. It’s not a set number, but our GM basically said if our Whisper tried to put too many in, one risk would be that the fine spirit anchor broke and all of the spirits were released (just for example). But when more than 1 spirit lives inside the fine spirit anchor, they may or may not “get along.” In the event that the spirits grow hostile to each other, they may try to dominate or even consume the weaker spirit, giving the surviving spirit a strength/power/effect boost for some time.

Anyways, that ended up being way longer than I ever intended, and if you made it this far, thank you for reading and I’m sorry it took so long. This kind of stuff is probably why we can only fit 1 score into a session.

Okay, so first proper session of Blades at lunchtime today.

Okay, so first proper session of Blades at lunchtime today. Like most people, we all spent some time trying to find our feet, deciding which action to roll, choosing bonuses, offering bargains, deciding when to roll for effect/resistance and determining segments.

I could waste time recounting the whole thing, but a few tiny things stood out and I was not sure how to react to them.

1. Players spent a lot of time trying to circumvent each other’s decisions by acting on their own impulses. Baz’ patience wore thin with some starting to speak and the others constantly cutting them short to advance their own idea. The running theme of the whole session was people trying to do their own thing, which seems like Taking Point, but isn’t, quite. I know this is a teething thing, but I need to develop more skills to steer them to some degree of unified action.

2. Flashbacks are cool, but give my players access to it and they try to fold a quintuple flash-ception tetrahedron of actions within actions, filling stress and overcomplicating situations.

3. How does a gang of Adepts actually help with the tinkering to create a dragonfly whisper-drone bug? I got the Whisper to roll Tinker to create it in a controlled position, but without being able to charge the gang stress I assumed I shouldn’t give him a bonus die?

Apart from that, we got better at it the longer we played, and accidentally spent 30mins more than we should. They now have all the details they need to get to the Red Sash vault, but they need to get their Slide out of there safely beforehand…and he’s being escorted by armed guards to meet Mylera to audition for a job as Drug Chemist…

Just ran a session for two players (so I dropped in a GM-controlled Hound who’ll fade into the background if I grab…

Just ran a session for two players (so I dropped in a GM-controlled Hound who’ll fade into the background if I grab more players). I’m quite certain I messed up on half the rules – there are a lot of moving parts – but the players had fun, have a nicely atmospheric lair (a haunted barge in the middle of a toxic canal), and most importantly, have set the Lampblacks up for a big fall next session by poisoning their demonic eels (imported as a secret weapon against the Lampblacks).

OMG I finally convinced my co-workers to create a crew for Blades.

OMG I finally convinced my co-workers to create a crew for Blades. We just spent an hour devising the skills, lair and history of the Gentleman Bastards, who have a hidden lair beneath a clock repair shop in the north of Crow’s Foot.

I was concerned that the dense clustering of vague details, especially the factions, would bore or intimidate them, but the stories just started pouring out from the evocative words.

In one hour, we had everything ready for the first score, and instead of waiting until next week, we’ll probably play on Friday.

THIS IS MY EXCITED FACE.

Last Saturday I ran my first game of Blades for my group of five.

Last Saturday I ran my first game of Blades for my group of five. It’s rare we can ever all be there so we wanted to play Blades as a drop-in drop-out from week to week but for the beginning we all wanted to be there. None of us have played anything other than 3.5 and Dark Heresy. Warning: a bit long winded.

The crew had a blast with character and crew creation and though I expected the heritage to be glossed over it turned into a great time as this was the first game where we really felt encouraged to paint the world ourselves (never played any –World games). Skovlan turned very Skyrimesque and our Slide, who’s never read or seen Dune, came up with Sand Leviathans that haunt the deserts of Iruvia and have important minerals growing in their bodies. I encouraged the group to learn more through play and it was on.

We started in Bazso’s office as suggested in the QS and immediately hit a snag. Baz is one of the friends listed on the Slide’s sheet, but the crew chose the Red Sashes as the faction that had helped them set up in Crow’s Feet. There was confusion as the group wasn’t sure what to do and had to make a hard choice.

We flashed back to the crew getting two invites, one from each boss and the crew went to the Red Sashes first. They agreed to plant a box of unknown purpose inside the Lampblack HQ and then went to the Lampblacks to gather information while talking to Baszo. He asked them to rob the Red Sash treasury. He’d heard they met with the red sashes but the slide was on point and overcame with deceive–with the Trust Me special ability she passed perfectly and they returned to the Red Sashes under cover of night.

They met up with Mylera (sp) and asked her to pretend to be robbed and give them some items to make it look like the Red Sash had genuinely been robbed. They offered her 1 coin from the Lampblack vault without prompting and supplied half the supplies from their “Packrat” lair: one of the PC’s decrepit ancient family home. With that offer it didn’t seem necessary to make any action roll: agreeing to those terms seemed natural for her so I just let them succeed. Next they asked her to create a ruckus in the morning, and they took the “loot”, mystery box in tow, back to the Lampblacks. The lurk led the group in slipping the bags past the search checkpoint without the box being discovered and took a couple stress covering for the others. In the end they planted the box in the vault, swiped a bit of coin without being seen to pay Mylera and were out scot free.

All in all, I know the group had a ton of fun. I explained to them that early on, with their notoriety being so low and the scales of the jobs relatively small, that smart plans may let them ease through with minimal stress, but things should get more difficult in the future which everyone seemed excited about. They were good about playing into what the NPCs were trying to achieve and focused on the party’s strengths (mask and cloak skills) so they didn’t take much stress or even have to roll very often. They marveled at how much we got done even though it took us four hours to do characters, crew and 1 score. One thing I would really like to see in the future though is option rules for advancing the fiction around the players through the other factions. Anyway, a ton of fun. Will play again next week.

First Session BitD and we were creating our crew and characters within ~3.5hrs.

It was a lot of fun talking about the Capitol of Skovlan, as I had prepared a small city map and some sketches. Everyone had a lot of fun building it all up. 3 out of 5 Players had experiences with DW and AW, as well as Fate. So there were a great agreement on the fact that rolling 4-5 on a risky move will be the most fun rolls and add to narrative play styles. As we didnt yet played a score, they players seemed very enthusiastic to the Flashback Scenes, comparing it to Fiasco and Heist-Genre-Films.

Three Years ago the Capital of Skovlan, Arvead, was under siege by the 17th Legion of the Imperium. It was a locked down situation for many months, but as rumors said, a special force consisting of hightly trained whispers executed a fiendish plan in the city. They may have used an ancient device that was oce used by those who wrecked the gates of death, ages ago, to rip apart a large area of the ink-black starry sea, and summoned leviathanes and crashed them upon the helpless city, destroying the eldritch defence rings and allow demons and ghosts to ravage.

Only the appearance of a mysterious fleet of never before seen airships, who came out of the same void could turn the tide on the terrible massacre. Crews of seasoned airship sailors (some may say pirates) used their arcane technology to ward of the hordes of demons, among them mighty mages of strange powers. The most fearsome was their leader, an elderly woman, who could control the lighting energy of the towers by sheer force of will, her name onyl whispered with respect and slice of fearfull admiration: Lady Blackbird.

Another strange figure appeared in the aftermath of the siege, an old man, only known as the Magister, fighting the hidden crews of demonic cultists and their minions. Soon, gifted locals joined the fight of the old Magister to cleanse their city of infernal evil. Soem rumors said that he was once imprisioned in the large Bloodstone crystal, in the collection of the University, which was smashed under the weigth of a Leviathan, crashing the city. Of course, no one could ever expect an old man to cut his way through a leviathans body, do we?

There were plenty of other tie ins, like the cult of the palid masks, happy to rebuild the city in their own twisted architecture, very popular on the locals, as they provide cheap labor and quick actions to rebuild the new defence walls.

They like to wear yellow tatters….

More soon, after the first game-sessions.

Now one third of the city still lies in ruins but is slowly rebuild.

Last Saturday, we played our first session of BitD.

Last Saturday, we played our first session of BitD. All veteran roleplayers except for a new friend who had his first experience with tabletop RPGs. Three players plus me as the GM. We’re from Porto, Portugal, where we organize monthly events to try new games and find new players, so we usually feel comfortable learning different RPGs and hosting sessions for people who never played before.

We play in Portuguese but have no problems with the material in English. It was close to a five hour session, which included me explaining everything to the new player and everyone making characters. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to take a photo (which we usually do to keep an album of all the RPGs we play). I essentially printed out the whole quick-start and we had several copies of the pages that need to be used as reference. I normally also use clear acrylic sheets that I set over maps and use whiteboard markers to write on them. This was how we handled progress clocks.

Although I’ve been following John Harper’s work since Agon, this group had never played any of his games before. However, two of the players had some experience with either Apocalypse World or Dungeon World and had supported the BitD’s kickstarter.

Characters created were the Whisperer who used to build steamships before being involved in an accident, the Lurk that was cast out of his noble family for reasons he doesn’t yet know and the Hound that, while smuggling forbidden goods into Duskwall, discovered that he has a knack for making people pay what was agreed for them.

To put all the options on the table, I set it up so that each character spoke with each leader of the three factions and the group went for the score they liked the most: robbing the Red Sashes. Infiltration was the plan and the detail was obtained both by speaking to Mylera Klev when she offered them a score against the Lampblacks and by having a chat with Scurlock, the vampire that the Whisperer considers his best friend. Through conversation, we established that the Red Sashes used to stock vintage wine in a big cellar under their school/temple which has an underground access to and old gate hidden under the nearest bridge. We also talked about an old spirit that is revered by the Red Sashes and that sleeps in that old cellar.

I decided on the following progress clocks: Cellar Security (4), Old Spirit (4), Guards (4) and Treasury Security (8). I didn’t find anything about the recommended number of segments on the quick-start, but I noticed that the examples use a total of 20 segments so that’s what I did.

Progress went smooth up to the old spirit. Even after taking a devil’s bargain that will allow the spirit to find the scoundrels in the future, the danger of it awakening manifested and they had to run. This also raised a ruckus, the guards came running and quiet infiltration was no longer an option. However, the guards were quickly slaughtered by accepting the bargain of only pretending to fight them in a fair duel. On the other hand, this greatly offended a visiting senior swordsman that was at the temple admiring its treasury. This was to be the hardest progress clock to beat, which involved shooting, intimidation, and the Hound getting traumatized because his dog got severely wounded. It was a successful score, but the session ended with no time to do any downtime, heat or development.

A few relevant notes:

1) Turns out we didn’t play teamwork correctly. For some reason, I thought that the character on point only changes through Set Up, but it actually changes on any special move. This led to the Lurk always having point up to the Old Spirit, then the Whisperer up to the Guards and then the Hound for the rest of the score, spending stress for each switch.

2) When going through the dark underground tunnel, we didn’t find any item on the characters that could produce light. This was solved by the Whisperer spending 0 stress on his Channel special ability to create supernatural light, which sounded better than “I guess one you guys brought a lantern?”

3) There was some doubts if a group action can be attempted when one of the characters doesn’t have any dots on that action. I believe it can and that this is how teamwork compensates for the initial lack of dots. Who is on point takes stress to help these characters go through the action.

4) There was a question about Daring being used in a group action. Is it the character on point that needs to have this special ability? The wording of Daring also led a player to ask if the re-roll can be applied to Effect.

5) During teamwork, we always used special moves and I don’t see how you would roll just a normal action. If the team splits and each character faces the progress clocks alone, I guess you would, but why would the characters want to do that? Separating the team sounds like a cool possible danger that the GM can use.

I was already expecting some fiddling about the details, so despite the learning curve, I enjoyed the session. I can see how some people may struggle with playing BitD rules-as-written, but I like the game as it’s presented, specially in the way teamwork includes tension. A bit too much tension if you play it wrong like we did 🙂 but I’m eager to have another go next month.

GM’d my first game of Blades last night, and my group finished a barely successful score. They loved the setting…

GM’d my first game of Blades last night, and my group finished a barely successful score. They loved the setting and the dark and gloomy weirdness, loved the idea of sitting down to play a fledgling gang of thieves, and whipped up a really interesting trio of scum — but ended the night frustrated with the system. Of three characters, we had one take a level of Trauma and the other two at 7 Stress.

Feedback from our evening, apologies for the length:

1. Alas, my players complained nonstop about needing a six to get a full success – i.e. since danger manifested on a 4/5 it felt like they weren’t ‘really’ succeeding. They really, really wanted more dice to begin with, instead of grasping at Bargains and spending stress on Backup/Assist. (My comment: They are powergamers who are used to playing PCs who come out of the box Awesome, so maybe a little culture shock; their dice were a little below average on the evening which contributed to the grumpiness; I think a few more good rolls would have turned their attitude around. As it is they rolled mostly 4/5s all night which ate up a lot of stress, and we saw zero crit successes. All this contributed to their moodiness.)

2. The players were highly frustrated with the size of the stress track given the number of things that ‘require’ stress to function: acting as backup (to give +1D), triggering many flashbacks, group actions, and of course buying off effects. Especially since that 8th point isn’t one you can safely spend – it knocks you out of the score and gives you Trauma, right then right there. (My comment: I can understand their frustration; they got into stress trouble early. Maybe if that 8th box was usable? Also contributing to their frustration was that none of them carried Armor and their dice were not firing well)

3. They didn’t really ‘get’ Flashbacks and didn’t use them effectively. When we did use them, I think I may have made a mistake. You pay your stress do to a Flashback, then make your Action roll. If it’s Risky, there’s a danger, right? – so my players were frustrated at possibly failing that roll and suffering stress/effects/whatever during a Flashback, making their present situation worse rather than better. Should the danger for a flashback action almost always be simply, “And you failed at that, paid your stress for nothing, moving on back to the present”?

4. Shining moments where the system was working as it should be were the two times they used the Lead a Group Action mechanic. Everyone was really happy with that, although (in line with their complaining about stress) they griped that the bigger the group, the quicker you’d stress out your point man. Also, my question for those group actions – do you offer each PC a separate Devil’s Bargain, or one that (if accepted) gives +1D to the whole group, or something else?

5. Something I found a little ambiguous about the team Overcome action: if you roll something other than a 6 as the point man, do YOU ALSO take a point of Stress, on top of whatever you’ll need to use to deal with the danger that manifests? The rule sentence clearly states “all members” take the extra stress, but the flavor text immediately after states it’s hard to watch someone else fail – implying it’s everyone else.

6. I found it difficult as the GM to come up with a ‘danger’ that could manifest on a successful OR unsuccessful roll before the fact. Are you supposed to be speaking the name of the danger before the action roll or waiting until the table sees the dice result? Because if you’re trying to Prowl past a sentry and the danger is ‘he spots you’, that doesn’t work on a 4/5 roll at all.

7. Can acting solo affect task clocks for the entire team? I was confused on this – it seems to make sense in the fiction that the most physical git on the team can sneak forward alone and gut a couple of guards, allowing everyone to progress. However, since the whole team benefits from that – is it actually a Team Overcome action regardless?

8. As a GM I struggled a little bit with abstracting the amount of hazards based on the countdown clock. i.e. you find and successfully unlock the back entrance to the building, BUT since you rolled a crappy Effect roll, there are ticks on the Locks clock — so now I have to place a couple other locked barriers later in the heist that wouldn’t have been there otherwise? Was I doing it wrong –should clocks only represent a single fictional obstacle ever, rather than an abstraction of ‘there are this many locks/guards/wards/whatever in the place’?

9. If you have your gang do something offscreen, must you roll Command? None of my 3 PCs had a dot in Command and therefore they didn’t bother using the Thugs they bought during character creation, at all. The idea of rolling 2D-take-lowest for anything had them seething.

10. You’re abducting someone at knifepoint quickly, quietly — dragging them off to be interrogated. Murder, Mayhem, or something else? It seems like the precision-violence of Murder applies, but it’s clearly nothing like an actual bloody murder given that nobody is being cut. I was torn on this when my group did it.