Blades in the Dark: Discussion – Page 42 – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

Please allow me to gush at an idea a player and I came up with. :)

Please allow me to gush at an idea a player and I came up with. 🙂

His Cutter is a vigilante Spirit Warden whose spirit was fractured by a demon. Parts of her body have had Sparkcraft installed to harmonize her spiritual energies, keeping her soul from fracturing further. Her memories are also fractured, but not lost. What I thought was a nifty twist is that her Weird vice involves Sawtooth having to literally drain the Stress. Catharsis is impossible for her without the procedure and it manifests as a swirling, black ichor drained through tubes into special vials. Sawtooth studies them in the hopes of both repairing her spirit and, if that’s not possible, at least restoring her lost memories.

And I totally with not ever find a more nefarious use for her vials of liquid Stress! 😉

What factions have you made up for your Blades games?

What factions have you made up for your Blades games? I love the Blades in the Dark factions. Sometimes I just flip through the faction section of the back of the book looking for inspiration for future jobs and intrigues. But there are gaps. I wouldn’t want it any other way. But Duskvol is a city of crime, and the entire place is divided up between different power players, so the fun is in coming up with new organizations to plague your players with.

So far I’ve mainly been focusing on Silkshore, since that’s where my players decided to operate from. I’ve mentioned the Furies before, a gang of ex-performers, artists, prostitutes and actors who came together for protection and ended up as a gang like any other. There’s also the Viceroys, who specialize in the street hustle, low-level gambling halls and fake psychic readings and spiritualism. Very much a quantity over quality bunch. And the book talks about the Silver Stag, the largest casino in Duskvol, but I also made them a faction, since the players will eventually be in direct competition with them. I decided it isn’t just a casino, but an entire pier, with its own chip currency, restaurants and entertainments, places to stay, courtesans and of course, plenty of gambling. I also created another rival casino, the Golden Tide, which is up-and-coming, but carving out a real niche in gambling on contests of sport, physicality and blood.

I’m GMing this for the first time on the 29th.

I have a Smuggler Crew of 2x Whispers, a Spider and a Lurk (Daredevil)

I’m a little nervous because this is such a sideways step from anything I have previously run. I’m concerned about under-stressing and over-stressing. I get the feeling there is a Goldilocks level of stress/consequences.

Does anyone have any good advice for a first-timer?

So the Grinders got their warship.

So the Grinders got their warship. I’m thinking they took it at sea (it was surprisingly easy… I wonder if someone just let them commandeer it?).

Anyway, the warship’s been refit and provisioned at the old North Port just outside the lightning barrier. Now they just need to get the crew aboard and off to Lockport. Logistical & tactical necessity requires this be done all at once rather than the piecemeal preparations that have been done up to this point. More than a three-hundred tasty souls, through the deathlands, aboard and off into the ink before the port authorities know what’s what.

The Grinders are going to ask the crew for help with this dilemma. It’s a good time for it because the city is pretty chaotic right now.

How do your rogues get in and out of the city? How do you get a large number out in short order? Are there ways to circumvent the barrier without endangering Doskvol? What have you seen along these lines?

OK, tonight an iconoclastic and theorical question…

If difficulty level (which are NPC’s competence or the environment’s resistance to PC’s action) are absent from the dice mechanic of BitD (and all PbtA games really) and people are cool with this… then, for coherence, shouldn’t PC’s competence (ie Action ratings) be irrelevant too ? Or to be more precise, not irrelevant, but not providing more dice to roll : they should be taken into account by the GM ONLY to set the Position and Effect. Same for assistance, pushing yourself, Devil’s Bargain.

Then we always shoot two dice only… faster, simpler, and above all more logical.

What do you think?

One thing I, and the other players, in my group have struggled with a bit is the 4th crew xp trigger “express the…

One thing I, and the other players, in my group have struggled with a bit is the 4th crew xp trigger “express the goals, drives, inner conflict, or essential nature of the crew.”

We’re not having much luck coming up with goals or drives. Immediate thoughts seem like things all crews would be doing and not particularly unique. Like taking over more territory or earning respect or something like that.

So I’m curious what sorts of goals, drives, or essential natures people have seen/used in play and what that looked like.

I’m really struggling with the Downtime phases.

I’m really struggling with the Downtime phases. My group doesn’t like boardgames type of play and mechanically driven scenes.

When playing the downtime phase, it feels like a boardgame with limitations: pick an action on the list – play the scene. I know the phases are meant to be played loosely, as indications, but I just fail at providing a smooth rp experience when dealing with it. This really leads to a dealbreaker when everything else works perfectly fine for us. I’m planning to skip the downtime phases from the campaign, but I’m pretty sure I’m missing something.

Anyone would have advices to play it smoothly, not breaking the game too much, or mentions actual play episode where John or anyone deals with that phase after a score?

I’ve just started running a game for a Crew of Shadows (espionage). I’m curious what holding Turf should be like.

Like what kind of “Turf” would a bunch of spies run to generate money, rep, power, etc?

Or should I do it more like they take over the operation of the people they took the turf from? Drugs, Gambling, etc. I’m curious if that will muddy the crew’s theme though.

Anyone have any thoughts or experience from the games you’ve run?

On the first day of Bladesmas my gang gave to me…

On the first day of Bladesmas my gang gave to me…

…a spectre in a dead tree.

Celebrate Bladesmas with the Wobbegong Crew in at 6PM PST. Can we hurt the Hive to get in with the Unseen? All to pay our debts back to the Wardens? Join Judd Karlman, Pete Cornell, Jason Bowell, and me to find out!

https://www.twitch.tv/actualplay

My players are a crew of Shadows and have just announced as the intention of their first self-motivated score to get…

My players are a crew of Shadows and have just announced as the intention of their first self-motivated score to get the “Covert Drop” claim, taking it away from one of their rivals. They want that sweet extra 2 coins from Espionage/Sabotage scores.

I’m having some trouble wrapping my head around exactly what the covert drop is, though. I’m assuming the extra coin comes from clients who appreciate that their dealings are harder to track, but how would it work fictionally?

Is it just a loose cobblestone under which the rival has been exchanging messages? How does the rival prevent the wrong person from grabbing the message, presuming they don’t have a separate drop EVERY time they get a new client? What happens when enough clients know the location and word gets out?

Is it a location with a person who can keep an eye on things? I considered having it be a restaurant with a maitre d’ whom the clients tell a pass code and who has the secret correspondence delivered with the client’s dinner.

I’ve also considered a homing pigeon or delivery owl roost, with some sort of “magic stone” that each bird homes to and from. I imagine these sorts of messengers are common through out the city, just that this one happens to be run by a spy master.

What are your thoughts? Have you used the “Covert Drop” claim in your game? Are any of my ideas any good? Do you have other ideas that could work? Any help would be greatly appreciated.