Blades in the Dark: Game Questions – Page 69 – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

On the topic of the church in Duskvol.

On the topic of the church in Duskvol. John, you’ve said that the church is essentially a state religion. Does that make Duskvol monotheistic, are there other churches that are not cults? Is operating a religion acceptable within the law so long as it is not doing something illegal? Most of the old gods and references are pretty extreme cults.

I’d be interested in seeing how others have approached public religion in Duskvol.

So the Slide in our group has decided to embrace the darkness and become a vampire.

So the Slide in our group has decided to embrace the darkness and become a vampire. He had their resident whisper (an NPC) conduct a ritual in which the Slide’s spirit was temporarily removed from his body, his body specially prepared, and then his spirit allowed to posses his hollowed body.

While he was filling in his new playbook, our Slide ran into a couple items that we weren’t sure about:

1.) When you become a vampire do you keep any other special abilities from your former human playbook, or only the ghost ones (i.e.Ghost Voice)?

2.) We noticed that the Vampire playbook has two Traumas listed that are different than the other human playbooks. Secretive instead Soft makes sense, but the new option Ruthless seems to overlap with Vicious. Was that intentional?

I seem to recall a mention of an essay that someone wrote about Duskvol and its history. Is there such a thing?

For mixed results, I recently stopped specifying “you do it but” and instead say “you do something but..” then I…

For mixed results, I recently stopped specifying “you do it but” and instead say “you do something but..” then I look at my options.

Am I misinterpreting this? It seems to me that “You do it, but reduced effect” basically means “you partially did it” or “you don’t quite do it.” Limited effect mentions that success is diminished/a significant obstacle remains; basically, 1 tick on a 2 tick clock for The Thing. I might be overthinking it, but I stopped saying it that way to avoid a disconnect with the language of the 4-5 results, and the fiction I am delivering when I choose reduced effect.

On eliminating 1 person factions:

So this is only relevant for Lord Scurlock and Ulf Ironborn, but it’s relevant in our game and I hope somewhat worthy of discussion in general. I’ll discuss Ulf here, because he doesn’t appear to be undead and that simplifies things a little.

We found ourselves in a situation in which it seemed that we might try to kill Ulf Ironborn, since he had made an appearance during our score. Our GM then notified us that the worst we’d be able to do is harm him a bit – but not kill him – due to him being a Tier 1 faction with Strong hold.

Ulf’s a badass, no doubt. Trying to get into a skirmish to the death with him would be ill-advised, most of the time. It would likely be represented with reduced effect, desperate positions, and a sizable clock, at the very least. But under the ideal fictional circumstances, could a Hound find themselves in a position to shoot him in the head from a distance with a long rifle, effectively ending a faction with a single roll?

In other words: What’s the difference between a badass who leads a faction, like Mylera Klev, and a badass who IS a faction, like Ulf? Should there be any special “rules of engagement,” so to speak?

A couple questions for anyone who can answer them.

1. Does a gang start out with 1 armor or no? It’s unclear to our group if my Cutter has to take the Leader ability for our Thugs to have any armor.

2. “When you send a gang to achieve a goal, roll their Quality to see how it goes. Or, a PC can oversee the gang operation by leading a group action (the PC rolls Command, the gang rolls Quality).”

Can I get some clarification on what this means exactly? When our Loyal, Fearsome, Savage Thugs and I all rush into bloody combat together, it seemed to us that it would make sense for it to be a Skirmish group action to see how well we fight, rather than a Command action to see if they’re willing to do something their nature would imply they’d be eager to do. Am I thinking about this from the wrong angle or misunderstanding the text?

Hey folks

Hey folks,

I’m currently running a campaign of a group of Smugglers, known as the Jawbreakers due to the fact they live above a candy shop. It turns out that their next mission will be an assault plan, likely with multiple cutters, as a kidnap job from Lord Scurlock.

I haven’t run a ton of combats in Blades to date, and I would love any practical advice folks might have. I have a bunch of PBTA combat-administering experience, but I know that Blades in the Dark handles differently.