Blades in the Dark: Discussion – Page 153 – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

Hey everybody.

Hey everybody. Id love some of your thoughts on the Ghost Mind ability. Specifically what are its limits, and what would you count as an “Arcane Force?”

It’s been a loooong day of crime-ing so Ulf Ironborn is settling down to a nice peaty whiskey and pipe.

It’s been a loooong day of crime-ing so Ulf Ironborn is settling down to a nice peaty whiskey and pipe.

Post Ettin Con, the orders are starting to come in… Prop porn for blades!

Post Ettin Con, the orders are starting to come in… Prop porn for blades!

Can you take action to stop the effects of an Entanglement? Say for Show of Force? I believe so, but others disagree.

Is there a large high quality image of the city map? I am having trouble finding one for print for my test game.

I’ve been trying out www.kumu.io to visualize all relationships (listed in v6) between the Duskwall factions.

I’ve been trying out www.kumu.io to visualize all relationships (listed in v6) between the Duskwall factions. I’ve never used anything like it before but think it’ll be a useful tool…

Here’s a link to the spreadsheet I imported… https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jfPrwvizbKkhIN9MVGCJSYno75X3vCLiY8cJd-67dnk

I’ve been collating GM advice into Vincent Baker style ‘Principles’, and found that John Harper’s GM cheat sheet…

I’ve been collating GM advice into Vincent Baker style ‘Principles’, and found that John Harper’s GM cheat sheet does a wonderful job of coalescing this information for blades.

One thing I stumbled apon when re-reading the AW Dark Ages Playtest, was the addition of the GM advice to ‘Use your Moves to achieve’….

If you Supplicate GM Moves with ‘Consequences’ or ‘Taking the Initiative’ you get a rather cool little bit of condensed wisdom that is eminently suitable for Blades:

Use Your Fictional Consequences…

• To lay groundwork.

• To reveal a commitment to action.

• To introduce urgency.

• To introduce complications.

• To accelerate, escalate.

• To draw out the inevitable.

• To follow through.

This Week’s GM tip – Scene Transitions.

This Week’s GM tip – Scene Transitions.

Strugging to coherantly ‘smashcut’ between your scoundrels assaulting the Dimmer Sisters Stronghold and a flashback of the Leech to brewing potions of forgetfulness? Is Adam Koebel haunting your thoughts with his explicit use of ‘whiplash transitions’ and ‘Hip-hop montages’? Struggling to find a narrative connection between the handouts at the completion of a score and the PC’s downtime?

Then read this article and ponder a little on how you can use re-incorporation, the explicit passing of initiative betwixt the PCs and the GM, and using cinematics in your play during the oft neglected art of scene transitions.

http://borgus.com/film/?p=5

I recently ran a campaign for a group of ~15 rotating players.

I recently ran a campaign for a group of ~15 rotating players. On any given night 3-5 players would show up and they were all bought into a frame story which has the players aligned as part of a faction.

I’m leaning toward to BitD for our next campaign as the faction system seems perfect for this style of play. Any thoughts on the pros / cons of using BitD for our next campaign? Any suggested hacks?

Other consideration – we’re thinking of having two GMs and are considering having two main factions that are diegetically aligned (perhaps sister organizations) with players either having a different character for each GM or the ability to temporarily switch factions.

There’s been a lot of interest in the call that I put out last week, and a lot of it from quarters I wouldn’t have…

There’s been a lot of interest in the call that I put out last week, and a lot of it from quarters I wouldn’t have immediately thought would have responded, such as the indies and a huge number of people wanting specifically to teach women and children, and while unexpected, that’s been a great source of joy to me over the last week.

I’ve had offers of articles, programs, youtube videos and even turning up at conventions to impart knowledge to those who are just learning, and that got me to thinking…

For me, GMing is a skill best taught by another GM who’s already done their time in the trenches, you can’t teach surprise, and you certainly don’t want people looking through the how to guide when they first take the step to running a game, doesn’t inspire confidence in them or the game they’re running if they’re still looking things up.

The format of the program that’s been put together has all the different aspects to it, from written word to live display, but I wanted everyone’s thoughts on how they think it best to impart the knowledge?

For me, having run a games team for years, it’s starting the new GM as a player and working them up from there.