Blades in the Dark: Discussion – Page 180 – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

Is anyone familiar with the game Dark Streets?

Is anyone familiar with the game Dark Streets? It seems like it has a lot of thematic similarities to BitD. The description:

London, 1749: A city of vice, crime and misery. Gangs of ruffians rule the streets, unopposed. Brothels proliferate. Child-beggars starve in filthy gutters. Corrupt night-watchmen and thief-takers turn a blind eye to wrongdoing. And dark creatures lurk in back alleys, called from beyond by the desperate with nothing left to lose.

But there is a new force on the streets of London; for the author and magistrate Henry Fielding has teamed up with his brother John to form the city’s first police force – the Bow Street Runners. The Fieldings have persuaded parliament to fund their crime-fighting endeavour, but they know that there is something behind the vice – for John Fielding’s blind eyes can see things that others cannot – things that man was not meant to know.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/109328/Dark-Streets

Lurker (pun intended) from the kickstarter, first time poster…

One of the things I love in the game is the flashback mechanic, that matches perfectly with the “heist” feeling of the game.

I’m wondering…how do you people manage the flashbacks in the game? Do you allow other PCs to get involved, or just the chareacter calling the flashbacks? How do you avoid contradictions with known “facts” of the game? (for example, the PC gettting hurt “retroactively” during the flashback)

Question regarding a crew of Cultists.

Assume they begin with an Artifact/Supplication, much like in the quick start Thieves starting with a hunting ground?

Anyone have an idea what they can be used for mechanically?

I’m thinking using their quality as teamwork for related occult actions but wouldn’t mind knowing the official slant on it.

When you gain experience from playing well your Background is the point going to playbook blades or to the attribute…

When you gain experience from playing well your Background is the point going to playbook blades or to the attribute blades where you placed you action point?

Hi all, kickstarter backer here but first time poster.

Hi all, kickstarter backer here but first time poster. Been wanting to jump in and start playing this and with v5 thought it was a good time! Anyway reading through the rules I’m still trying to get my head around effects and consequences. Is this system like Dungeon World where enemies will only attack if a player rolls badly? It mentions enemy actions but how to know what enemies can do and how powerful they are, by their Tier rating? Is there some sort of play-by-play of an encounter i can read to get a hang of the flow of the mechanics? Thanks and I look forward to GMing this!

Hey all!

If I don’t take any Stress during a score, do I automatically suffer Overindulgence the next downtime?

So how do you handle resistance when the way the character wants to resist is itself inherently risky? For example:

The PCs have infiltrated a fancy party using fake identities, but after some amount of hijinks the party are recognized by an old enemy who happens to be at the party. One of the PCs would like to resist being recognized, and he resists by saying he knew this enemy was likely to attend the party so they day before they jump him and injure him badly enough that he wouldn’t attend. Now this NPC isn’t somebody to fuck with, and on a good day a fight with him would still leave the PC injured. So do you tell your player this isn’t an option? Does this resistance roll require a flashback scene? Would you say it costs more stress, like 9 stress minus their roll? Would you let it go with the normal rules?

My Hangouts game got through character and crew creation last night with (mostly) success.

My Hangouts game got through character and crew creation last night with (mostly) success. I’ve got 5 players in a crew of Thieves – Whisper, Spider, Cutter, Hound, and Leech. As you might expect, here are my inevitable ramblings on how the session went.

1. We had about a 2-hour session, with maybe 90 minutes of that being actual Blades stuff. Trying to get people set up with Dicestream in the “classic” Hangouts mode, audio checks, toggling in and out of different browsers, all that was expected but it was still cumbersome. If not Hangouts + Dicestream, is there a better option? Roll20? Skype?

2. Trying to name a gang is waaaay harder than naming a starship, you guys. They eventually settled on the Dead Setters over email today. They may have to be based out of Catan Street.

3. Many players jumped for the “ghost” or “weird” options on the character and crew sheets (and if they didn’t, it was a hard choice not to). Kudos to John Harper for such an evocative setting. They took Ghost Echoes for their Thieves ability, with Ghost Mind (Whisper) and Ghost Contract (Spider). They’re planning on specializing in hijacking spirits and making off with the weird shit that other gangs won’t touch.

4. I think we had the most fun choosing the faction relationships. That’s a great way to brainstorm out a starting situation and give players authorship over the setting. Nobody doubled up on any one faction but with 5 players, it’s a fairly nuanced map with a lot of fingers in a lot of pies. We ended up with +1 with the Crows and -1 with both the Lampblacks and the Red Sashes.

5. The 1 contact, 1 rival thing is pretty great too. On paper, I thought having this limited set of choices would feel weird but it cuts out so much creative fatigue. I found myself coming up with plot hooks immediately, instead of worrying about names or skills for these people on their sheets.

I’m excited for next week’s game. I gotta learn the actual rules by then. 🙂

Ideas for city threats from Bas-Lag books-

1) Slake Moths. They feed on sentience (leaving a mindless husk), excrete nightmare (usually over the population they feed on to have their food source despair) and most importantly, they feed their young on the concentrated memories of those they’ve eaten. This can be cut with other material and sold as highly addictive drug called “dreamshit”. Other notable traits – they aren’t 100% in our dimension and suffer less damage from every attack, and their wings have slowly undulating patterns on them that mesmerise sentient races (those able to dream). Merely glancing at them paralyses anyone – but they can be looked at through a reflection. May also be used as a final method of interrogation (victim is fed to a moth that is then milked and the memories, while far from coherent, could be experienced).

2) The Construct Council. Constructs, card programmed clockwork, quasimagical, or chemically powered robots are widespread domestic help. Until a artificial intelligence creating virus, propagated by a cult of construct repairmen, starts changing them all into spies. When their masters sleep, constructs gather at a garbage dump and upload their memories to the Council (an amalgum of discarded thinking machines and constructs that act as a single highly intelligent AI). Only a problem if the Council sees the city’s behaviour (or a Faction’s) as a threat to constructs.

3) Spiral Jacobs. A good natured, often incoherent bum that wanders the streets. Named for his incessant drawing of spirals wherever he goes. He’s actually a somnambulist (golem creator) agent for a city that is currently at war with Duskwall and if he completes the ritual, he turns the entire city (or most of it) into a golem.

4) Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin. Anarchist, free thinker, scientist and inventor. Normally not of interest to anyone. Until he invents a perpetual energy machine. Sure the prototype is fragile, requires someone with know-how to start it and burns out if too much energy goes through its circuits. But with improvements, the sky is the limit. So now him, and his machine are wanted by every power in the city.

Recycling tips for Duskwall: I’ve got one player who wants to play a Whisper with big plans for insuring rich…

Recycling tips for Duskwall: I’ve got one player who wants to play a Whisper with big plans for insuring rich clients’ spirits get spirited away (ahem) and not incinerated by Spirit Wardens. I’ve got another player who wants to play Dr. Frankenstein. Sounds like they’ve got the start of a zero emissions gang here. One gets the ghost, the other gets the meat!