Blades in the Dark: Discussion – Page 44 – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

Seems this could have some Bladesy possibilities…

Seems this could have some Bladesy possibilities…

With enagegement rolls, can negative factors mean you end up with 0 dice, or is 1 dice the minimum?

With enagegement rolls, can negative factors mean you end up with 0 dice, or is 1 dice the minimum? And if you have 0 dice, do you treat that as a desperate engagement without rolling, or roll 2 and take the lowest as with 0 point action rolls?

We haven’t had a Kickstarter update in four months, since August.

We haven’t had a Kickstarter update in four months, since August. Any chance we can see some news on the various stretch goals soon, and possibly remind some less-attentive backers that the website and SRD are now up?

SETUP ACTIONS FOR SAME CHARACTER?

Have a thought about Setup Actions – could a character setup their own action? Like using Prowl to parkour up to a ledge (setup for position), where Finesse might end the life of a clueless guard quietly and quickly (action).

Something like that?

Okay here’s something for discussion. How does your crew deal with dead bodies?

There’s lots of ways to deal with this. Like don’t kill people, or don’t let the victim know who killed them, or don’t kill people in your hidden headquarters… The crew I run with ritually sacrifices in an ancient arena under their headquarters. The ritual involves one on one combat with the “anointed one.”

The gondoliers are a big faction in our game. So dumping in the canals is a bad idea. Especially since we’ve established ghosts can’t lie. The cultists know they could setup a long term project to deal with this problem, but their short term solution is interesting. They smuggle the body across Silkshore to throw it into the lightning wall. Avoiding spirit wardens and distracting blue coats along the way. They’ve done a lot of sacrificing, and have gone through this rigamorole three times. The last time they decided to cut up the body and smuggle parts across individually. The Cutter decided to eat his portion. That will probably have some interesting side effects later.

Anyways, I’ve setup a clock for this each time. Several dangers manifest and while there have been some interesting complications they’ve never been caught. There’s a collective sigh when it comes time to clean up after a killing. They also have had no time to work on a long term solution. At this point I can’t really think of a more interesting way to slice it and my instinct is to breeze over it. But at the same point I don’t want to walk away from the precedent of the danger of killing somebody.

Anyways love to hear how your crew deals with dead bodies, and any advice for a threat that’s become rote and predictable. The stakes have been raised, the spirit hunters have hulls in the area hunting down the various occulstist factions. Maybe I should just make them do it again with higher stakes. But my instincts are to downplay it and focus game time elsewhere on more interesting things. I’m just unsure how to do that with the set precedent of the danger.

Advice for longer scores?

So I’m running a Blades game (hurray!) though the whole table is still coming to grips with the rules and Doskvol as a setting I’m pretty happy about the start.

The player-proposed second score is an operation that will take several days to play out. Blades seems to be more focused on smaller, more single night type affairs (otherwise the restrictions on DTAs etc. don’t start to fit the fiction so well). Has anyone got any advice for longer span scores? Assume that just now no one aim that has been proposed is significant enough to warrant making an entire score of its own.

Need some ideas / advice for a score (be warned, long post incoming):

So in the last Blades game I ran for this crew, they were attempting to infiltrate Lord Strangford’s favourite Leviathan Hunting ship to gather last bit of dirt they need on him for their allies, The Grey Cloaks, to clear their name and get him arrested.

In our game Strangford was a demon consorter, making deals with a sea demon so that he could become a famous hunter and get rich. Now that he is rich, he is abusing this power and not giving the demon anything in return. Due to the contract, the demon cannot just kill Strangford, so he conspires against him by tempting one of the crew with a deal in order to get Strangford killed. So one of the crew doesnt just want Strangford locked up, he’s pushing to get a death sentence (rest of the crew are against murder, so he’s doing this secretly).

We ended it on a cliffhanger. The Lurk managed to enter the ship but the others have been spotted and are pinned down by Strangfords Leviathan hunters. I then cut away to a man on the ship, smiling evilly, a scar across his eye, and a demon circle on the ship’s bridge. (This is Lord Skurlock, he wants to take Fire Imp out to sea to restore it to a full demon for his own nefarious purposes, and has commandeered the ship from Strangford).

This is the “Season Finale” score, so I wanted a challenge for my group of Shadows. What kind of dangers, clocks, linked clocks, consequences etc can I include to spice things up in the finale? (They’re unaware Skurlock is on the ship, they think its just Strangfords men)

Any cool story ideas I can include? Any cool ways people can think of to get to the dirt they need? Any other ideas or suggestions? What might Skurlock want with a Fire Demon?

Can players push themselves whilst indulging their vices?

At first it sounds like madness, but for a character on 4 stress it removes the risk of overindulging, with the downside that its less likely to remove all stress (in fact you might end up with a point more stress).

Because of an entanglement roll, my players are about to have to make a difficult choice.

Because of an entanglement roll, my players are about to have to make a difficult choice. So tell me: what do you think war with the Sparkwrights looks like?

Hey all!

Hey all! My group had their first proper session of Blades last night. A crew of Hawkers based out of a half-sunken submarine in the North Hook Channel. Their first score involved a sale to a high-class customer in Brightstone, and led to them ‘Hitman-style’ obtaining wait staff outfits and delivering a sample of the drugs to their client as part of a fruit salad.

Needless to say, it was very entertaining.

I had a few questions though, coming out of my first session.

• It seems relatively easy to end up taking a Level 1 Harm, but very hard to get rid of? My crew need to acquire the services of a physicker, and then potentially pay additional coin/multiple downtime activities each to have a good chance of healing before the next score. Am I missing something?

• Any suggestions on how to balance the spotlight different character types – two are suave ‘sway’ types, one is an unstable alchemist and the fourth is an ex-military rifleman. I’m mainly looking for advice on running scores that can give everyone a chance to shine.

• Any advice on getting players to use flashbacks more? The mechanic really clicked for me, but the players seemed reticent to use it during our first score.

Thanks! J