Category: Blades in the Dark: Discussion

These are some of my thoughts in general about how the game might be run, and I’m wondering how other people’s thoughts/experiences compare. This started as a response to Mark Griffin’s post, but quickly became almost irrelevant.

I can’t say that this is universally true, but in my HIGHLY limited experience, John is easier and better as a GM for the Bloodletters than other GMs might be in their games.

I can’t really point to any one thing and say “here is conclusive evidence” but for instance:

1. How often does John actually threaten to inflict harm? I’d guess he’s at least one standard deviation below the mean in this regard. I think he’s right to threaten harm as often as he does, to clarify.

2. The rules say that armor allows you to ignore or reduce consequences. My GM says it reduces harm by one. John said in this episode it allows you to ignore it.

3. Have you noticed how rarely the Devil’s Bargains are “Someone notices: Take +1 heat?” They usually are so much more narratively interesting and less mechanically (or immediately) disadvantageous, like demons or factions taking interest or changing relations with the PC crew. He (and Sean) offer some on almost every roll too. He could have told Stras “I don’t think there’s a Devil’s Bargain to help you Attune here. Sorry.” But he didn’t. Instead he made up something interesting out of left field, and they spent a good few minutes discussing the fiction surrounding that thing.

4. I feel that some GMs are going to struggle with playing fiction first. They’ll play the game more mechanically, moving from one die result or downtime action to the next without much discussion of the fiction in order to get a certain amount of “progression” out of the game. They’ll try to get planning, execution, and downtime all in a session. The Bloodletters don’t do this, and it’s definitely for the best. If a GM runs the game as a checklist, the players will probably gravitate in that direction as well, and the fiction will wither.

4.5. My GM seems to have a tendency to “balance” the game. For instance, he’ll refer to the rules to evaluate the fiction, rather than the fiction to evaluate the mechanical outcome. This is the death of “fiction first.” It also doesn’t “give the players what they earn” when the game is being adjusted (consciously or unconsciously) to remain a consistent challenge for the players/characters. For instance, when a PC gets a crit to acquire an asset in the form of a gang of thugs, the gang leader they were going to attack might be surrounded by his own gang of competent thugs, whereas he wouldn’t have otherwise.

There’s lots of other things I wanted to point out, but my brain is going a mile a minute now. For those who are watching the Bloodletters game, I’m curious what differences you might have noticed between how games of BitD are run for (or by) you and how John runs the game.