In the QS, it references a CC-licensed SRD which hackers could use to create their own work later on.
In the QS, it references a CC-licensed SRD which hackers could use to create their own work later on. Is there a release schedule lined up for this SRD?
Some days our home game is so entertaining.
Some days our home game is so entertaining.
When our Crew went up a tier they set up a bit of an illegal imports milking scenario. They get a cut of all illegal goods that come through the docks. I picked some groups that pay up without question (an Unseen shows up one day, all robe and mask, drops a bag of cash for goods unspecified and leaves). Some don’t (the Hive outright ignores their demands). So the Crew does a mission against them. Steals a very valuable casket of Iruvian Brandy they can’t replace on short notice.
The Hive starts paying. Last session they get robbed. All their cash vanishes. Folks start showing up trying to infiltrate their holdings. Other minor things just start going wrong. They decide that you can’t be solid Thieves if someone steals from you. So they’ve been working on who nicked them.
They realize that their vault was opened via Ghost Key (in our game this has the ability to open paths through the ghost plane a few feet through solid objects). And there are less than 50 ghost keys in town. They’re very hard to make, requiring Essence of Void trawled from the depths of the Never Sea near the Maelstrom. Each key has a signature. Our whisper (Qess Kincaith) traces the signature to a key owned by the Forgotten Gods. Our Lurk and one of their elite shadows infiltrate the cult. They find out exactly who ‘done the deed’ as it were.
They arrange for a meet in neutral grounds. Whitecrown. Flag of truce. Public. Super upscale posh restaurant. They rent a carriage. The cutter (Roberto) and Lady Rivka Gibson dress up. They go to the meet. And ask some plain questions. The Forgotten Gods Whisper drinks tea and is generally snooty and cagey. It’s clear she’s got backers. She assures them it was ‘only business’ and ‘they should understand’. Rivka unloads both pistols out under the table. Stands up calmly and tells Roberto to bring the body.
They walk out amidst screaming upper class people pressing for the exits. Roberto hops up next to their Cabby and screams “drive”. There’s a bit of an escapade as they go careening out of Whitecrown. Inside the carriage they cut off the head, but plasm most of the body. They burst through a barricade of bluecoats, and ride into the worse sections before slowing.
As they get ready to leave, Roberto turns to a cabby and hands him one of the lead coins of the group (they have specific coins made that gang members have, you steal one you get a chance to join) and tell him that if he ever needs anything, he should bring it to their turf and ask. The poor man (wide eyed and terrified) takes it. I roll a die of fate for him, and yeah. He’ll keep quiet.
The crew picks up 4 heat. Flips over to the next wanted level (their reputation is Brutal, you see why). They snag an electrified cage to imprison the ghost from being summoned away. Wait 3 days. Then ask their questions and find out who is after them, and realize they’re caught between a rock (Level 3 faction) and a hard place (they just declared war on the Forgotten Gods).
So the real question is:
What sort of favor would a down on his luck coachman ask for?
After a short hiatus (because I’ve been working on another Kickstarter that you will soon hear about (something…
After a short hiatus (because I’ve been working on another Kickstarter that you will soon hear about (something about vampires)) I am back on the map quest.
Since it seems my group’s previous ongoing game is dead, it has fallen on me to run something, and the group is…
Since it seems my group’s previous ongoing game is dead, it has fallen on me to run something, and the group is really wanting it to be Blades. Any news of the impending Quickstart surfacing? (Would hate to start he game only to be tempted to retool it as soon as the new version came out)
The Tabletop Audio guy made a mixable Dungeon Sound Pad! Check it out!
The Tabletop Audio guy made a mixable Dungeon Sound Pad! Check it out!
Hello again
Hello again,
We’ve had a player probably drop out semi-permanently, so if anyone would be interested in joining our play-by-post game then they would be, at this stage, welcome.
Crew creation is done, so there’s limited scope to make changes there, but if you’re interested, we need a Slide to help out – we’re currently quite social heavy!
I’m not very fussy but ideally someone who could post once or twice for every couple of days would be really, really good!
Thank you!
Totally just heard of the awesomness being created with Blades in the Dark.
Totally just heard of the awesomness being created with Blades in the Dark. I wish I could’ve got on the Kickstarter train. Any word on an “encore” Kickstarter of sorts for all the people who’d still love to support but missed out on the initial word?
I’m in two Blades games at the moment, which is great…The only trouble I’m having is remembering who we betrayed…
I’m in two Blades games at the moment, which is great…The only trouble I’m having is remembering who we betrayed in each game! In one game game we went with the Red Sashes, and the other, the Lampblack’s >.<
Session two!
Session two! This time around, we had one new player, but two other players couldn’t make it for a variety of reasons, so we just stuck to playing with four players. It was a very interesting session, as I decided to create a couple of scenarios that the players could ‘trigger’ by speaking with the correct people, so it gave them freedom to speak to whomever they wanted, but then I already had a preset idea for the person to send them on. It actually worked out really well!
At the beginning of the session, I worked to incorporate how our new character, a very charming, 6′ 10″ hulk of a female Tycheros native. Named Sitre Caedis, the player decided when he sat down with me that a nickname / alias of “Gore” would be the characters nickname. Gore is a Cutter (if you haven’t figured that out) and has quite a drinking problem, and her place of choice is usually the Leaky Bucket. As our Lurk passed by on the way back to the crew headquarters, she noticed people flying out the door and across the street, with whom she soon discovered to be Gore yelling profanities and being kicked out of the tavern for the evening. Pretty commonplace apparently, but Gore was sent by Lyssa to find one of the members of the crew, as Lyssa was hoping she would be a welcoming addition for them in getting up off their feet and building a name for themselves.
So with the four members back at the crew hideout, they all went their different ways for a few. Our Hound and Cutter decided to go speak with the Hound’s bounty hunter connection for any leads she may have (she actually told them to go speak to Lyssa, as it seemed like she had an “itch” that she needed scratched upon their last interaction). The other two characters just sort of went off to a library to do some personal research or whatever they wanted, but after it was all said and done, the four of them met up and decided it would be best to go speak to Lyssa to see if she had a job for them to do.
So, they all headed to the headquarters of the Crows, and after a few friendly shenanigans with the two guards that were on duty at the front door, they head in and find Lyssa, looking like she was ready to murder someone herself, staring thoughtfully out a window. Upon speaking to her, the crew discovered that Lyssa had been constantly wronged by a man named Alexey Mirovich, a deck captain for the Dockers who had mishandled her boats so many times that it was actually beginning to hurt her wallet. She gives them a reference for what she looks like, and very plainly says that she “wanted his skull to be sprayed across the deck” that they found him on, and that she was willing to pay a good amount for the completion of this.
So the group gets together again and decides to do some spotting / information gathering. The Hound and Lurk both head down to the Docks at two separate times, the Hound looking to spot the dock that the target worked on with his pet falcon, although in the end only narrowing down which of the docks he could be located on. After he leaves, the Lurk heads in to sort of deceive (pretending to be a historian / record keeper for a head clerk down in City Hall) her way into finding out the next shipment of a specific boat that, through some rolls, she discovered from a clerk would be handled by Mr. Mirovich. So, after rolling a six, she found out that the next shipment in was due in two days, and that she was more than welcome to come down and “gather the information she needed.”
Now comes the fun part. The group decides to go with an assault plan, as that would make sense for Lyssa’s wants while also using the new Cutter to a greater effect. They all headed on down to the Docks and went up to a booth at the end of the dock that they had discovered the target would be on, speaking to a woman to tell them as to why they were there. She questioned why the Lurk had brought a few other people with her, and she decided to deceive again and state that it was standard practice for a member of City Hall to bring protection and help with her in case of emergency. The worker wasn’t really too skeptical, but by standard practice, sent a hulking guard to escort them to the incoming shipment. The Hound, during all of this, prowled up onto a building across the street with his fine hunting rifle, taking a great position that gave him a full view of the dock (rolled a six).
Low and behold they make a few more rolls to fully discover which of the supervisors present was their target, and the Lurk takes point and asks Mirovich if they could step aside and speak about a couple of questions that she had for him regarding some shipments over the past couple of months. He accepted, but brought another supervisor looking fellow to assist him, and they all stepped off out of the way of everything so that they didn’t interrupt the process of receiving the shipment.
From here, the Hound ends up taking a shot and injuring the main target, while Gore injures him some more and then he proceeds to take another shot to the head to get finished off. While not very quickly, some grunts sort of discover what’s going on, and a panic starts to ensue. The other large guy that came along with Mirovich eventually gets taken down as well, and the group heads down the main deck on their escape, meeting the guard who had escort and engaging him in combat as another grunt comes up to assist him. After some struggle and missed shots, the Cutter ends up landing a 6 on her Mayhem action, and proceeded to roll a crit on her Force effect roll. So she basically went ahead and described how she slammed the sharp side of her hammer-like weapon down through this guys skull, ripped his skull off and then kicked his corpse off the side of the deck and down into the water. At this point as well, the other grunt, through a feat of athleticism from the Lurk, actually got kicked down into the water himself instead of getting killed. The group then made some rolls to make their escape through a smokebomb unseen, and they did so successfully, while the Hound rolled a six and quickly scaled down from the building he was on and headed on his way back to the lair.
From there they just met up with Lyssa, got their rewards, we did some progression and then the session was over. The group had a blast yet again and we finished up (not including the total of about 45 minutes we spent just waiting around for a variety of reasons) in just about 3.5 hours. Overall, was a hell of a session and felt like it went a lot more smoothly than the first session, having a heavy focus on combat instead of sneaking around. I certainly had a blast GMing, as I’m going to be scaling up the difficulty pretty much from session to session, and a lot of the group said that this was the perfect difficulty for the task at hand and really thought that it was more difficult than the first session was.
Will write another post after we complete our third session in two weeks!
Hi all! So I ran my first session of Blades last night, and it was a pretty rousing success. My players really…
Hi all! So I ran my first session of Blades last night, and it was a pretty rousing success. My players really rose to the setting, and we had a lot of good collaborative world building.
The PCs were:
Gord Burko, the Hound. He’s a disgraced former bluecoat from Skovland who fell after developing a deep addiction for ‘g-dust’, a street drug taken via the eye.
Covel, the Slide. He’s an oily, smarmy merchant with an endless stream of get-rich-quick schemes (the Gambling vice, mechanically). He also funs the crew’s front.
Ashbane, the Lurk. She and her sister ran away from a life of rural grind. Ashbane’s got more lovers than days on the calendar, and if she can keep them straight she’ll get something out of them.
Their crew is called the Collectors, for the trove if stuff they always have in their vault (their lair is a converted old bank, hidden behind Covel’s pawn shop.
And some NPCs were ended up with:
Veleris, Ashbane’s younger sister and Gord’s partner in junkie-dom, runs the crew’s gang of Elite Shadows. There’s a good chance she’d make a play for power if it wasn’t for the drugs and Ashbane keeping her in place.
Nyryx the prostitute. He works for the Dimmer Sisters, and is a friend of Covel’s. If you need a body ‘plasmed, go see Nyryx.
Roslyn the noble, Ashbane’s main squeeze and a player in the world of underground fighting events.
Petra, one of Ashbane’s side pieces (but it’s not really a thing). Works for Duskwall’s civic planning office.
Bell, a retired duellist who fell down the same ladder of drugs and dissolution as Gord. Sometimes they hang out. Bell also spends time at the Red Sashes dojo reminiscing and trying to mentor.
The crew ended generation with a positive with the Dimmer Sisters, the Lampblacks (Baszo being a friend of Covel’s and all) and The Inspectors (a gang of ex-bluecoats who run blackmail schemes and protection rackets). Meanwhile, they have a mild feud running with the Fog Hounds (Severosian immigrants who turned to crime and violence to feed themselves) and a serious hate-dom for the Circle of Flame. We bounced some ideas around and decide that the Circle of Flame are a cultish band of redemption preachers (they call themselves Shepards) who love burning people alive for their sins.
The session opened with Baszo tipping the crew to some piece of shiny the Red Sashes just hauled in, and they decided to stick it to those insufferable ponces and make some scratch in the process.
The first step was to figure out where the Red Sashes kept their loot, and Gord decided to Stalk the cash transfers from the RS drug dens. I set it as a four-clock and the players began a night-long trend of terrible Effect rolls. Gord made some progress, eliminated some possible locations but got rumbled by a Red Sash lookout. It turned into a fight and even after Covel and Ashbane came in as backup it was Gord’s fine hunting dog that did the bulk of the Murder. By then, Gord was stressed out and disinclined to keep Stalking. Ashbane took to Prowling and making use of the crew’s Elite Shadows while Covel went to see his friend at the Dimmer Sisters to get help disposing of the dead Red Sash.
Finally, after many shitty Effect rolls, it was Ashbane’s lover Roslyn that confirmed the Sashes had their vault in the basement of their dojo.
The crew picked the Infiltrate plan, and used a flashback to figure out their entry pointed. Gord found out from Bell that city workers had accidentally broken through a sewer wall into the dojo basement, and the place still stank of sewage. The crew figured that meant the breach hadn’t been sealed and in they went.
They got in cleanly, murdered the Red Sash on duty (it was a group effort) and got away with the lucre, and all undetected. However, because of a Devil’s Bargain, the Red Sashes now have a project clock to interpret some evidence and pin the break in on Ashbane personally.
Ashbane, despite that, came through the score pretty relaxed. Gord and Covel, though, both had to sink their cut and overindulge just to get out of the danger zone (more bad Effect rolls). Covel is persona not grata at the Dusk Manor Club for a while (it’s bad form to try and con the nobles too obviously), while Gord disgraced himself at a Circle of Flame event and now the Circle’s out for blood (he pushed them down to -3).
The players loved it, I loved it, it was good times. The collaborative world building is so great. It’s so freeing as the GM to just say, “Hey, tell me about your friend,” or, “What do you think the Dimmer Sisters really do?” because it shares out the fun and the onus of creation equally.
We did stumble over the rules a bit, as to be expected, but we were able to keep moving by rolling more or making house calls to revisit afterwards. All in all, very successful.
The points that did come up I noted down to discuss here:
-We treated favourite friends as a Fine Item for Effect rolls when getting info or whatever. Not sure if that’s as intended.
-When rolling Overcome, I ruled that only the non-point characters take Stress on a low roll. The rule’s wording struck us as ambiguous, but it made more sense to us that the point character wouldn’t take extra stress on top of danger manifesting.
-A new vice idea: “Violence”
-We were really unclear what the “Affiliation” vice meant. We figured it was something like, “you have really shitty friends you won’t stop associating with”.
Beyond that, it was really a matter of talking things out and deciding what felt best to the group. Very refreshing after more formalistic games like PF.