Category: Blades in the Dark: Discussion

Lots of improvisation means lots of NPCs coming and going in the game. How do you keep track of that over multiple sessions in YOUR game?

I was using a Word document, but re-uploading it was onerous. I converted to a Google doc so I could share more easily.

How do you do it for your games? (And if you say “I just remember it all” then break into a maniacal laugh I will pointedly ignore you.)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R5G95LlxlNv80RWBjPWrbRoBwLnOUIXtkA69JKKiw-s/edit#heading=h.5ydd5ptz1i1r

Either I’m doing it wrong, or I really intensely dislike the new resist system.

I had a ghost backhand a guy off a balcony, he fell almost two stories and crashed down on rotted seats. Roll a resist test with Vigor. Rolled a 6. Eh, no big thing.

A ghost attacks from behind, slashing with an electroplasmic machete blade to cut your damn fool head off. Roll a resist test; got a 5? One stress to avoid.

All night it was like this.

There is no way to scale how hard it is to resist the roll. No way to use controlled, risky, or desperate difficulties. No way to apply fine items to help you. And if the dice are kind, it doesn’t matter how desperate the danger was, you shrug and it’s evaded.

I am a big fan of letting players choose between stress and consequence. HOWEVER, there absolutely needs to be a way to scale how much stress it costs to avoid a danger. Absolutely. Some things are a LOT more dangerous or hard to avoid than others.

The session was still great fun, but this is a problem that sticks in my craw.

I am excited about tonight’s Blades in the Dark game with the Unrecommendables. They will add a whisper from Carrow to their crew. They will also purchase a decrepit haunted theater for the price of back taxes. Then they will exorcise a couple ghosts from it.

The ghosts are a cross between the Muppets Statler and Waldorf, and gory menaces spraying blood a la Supernatural. In life, they were savage critics; they were hacked to death by machetes. In death, they are savage ghosts. I wonder how it will go!

If they can get it cleared, they’ll take on a new enterprise that used to belong to the Red Sashes before the recent unpleasantness. Then they’ll be up to Tier 1. Moving up in the world…

Play report!

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/blades-in-the-dark-a-night-at-the-theater/

When I originally planned to run multiple crews and also gangs for one-offs, I had no ambition that all of it would be connected.

As it turns out, in practice, it’s all TOTALLY connected. Because otherwise I have to keep multiple versions straight.

So, what the gangs do for the Crows matters to what the Unrecommendables are proposing, and the Professors act against that backdrop as well. First, it seemed everybody ganged up on the Red Sashes, who are pretty much reduced to the rubble of insignificance now. What’s next?

A theme is emerging from all those divergent threads. A new faction is moving in to Crow’s Foot, and the illegal trade in leviathan blood is in the crosshairs.

I’ve got a Blades in the Dark game with the Unrecommendables tomorrow, and with Crow gangs on Thursday.

I recommend not going to parties with whispers. It doesn’t end well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ip1irYWXck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ip1irYWXck