I’m going to run in few weeks a BITD reskin for a fantasy-cyberpunk shadowrun styled setting.

I’m going to run in few weeks a BITD reskin for a fantasy-cyberpunk shadowrun styled setting.

I’m going to run in few weeks a BITD reskin for a fantasy-cyberpunk shadowrun styled setting. I plan to use “secure” for hacking, “tinker” for technology and science related actions that aren’t hacking, and leave the rest of the skills the same. Heritage will be race (humanelftrollect’) and background will be Etiquette (CorporateSecurityGangSocialiteStreetAcademic).

The rules as is are fine by me, but still – does anyone wants to suggest ideas about what else should be changed, modified or added for this kind of setting?

So I’ve been talking about the Hack I’ve been working on for a few weeks now, and I’ve finally had my first session…

So I’ve been talking about the Hack I’ve been working on for a few weeks now, and I’ve finally had my first session…

So I’ve been talking about the Hack I’ve been working on for a few weeks now, and I’ve finally had my first session of play testing, so now I”m ready to post the rules.  Here it is, Desks in the Dark.  It is a game about students sneaking about a mysterious boarding school.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B511-yaR3CdxaDN1c3J2N3R2VHc&authuser=0

The playtest went well though there are a few things I’m on the watch for (like gathering attention too fast).  I also know that I still need to develop my rules for cliques and for staff (other than the headmaster).  Please let me know what you guys think, especially John Harper  if he gets a chance.

Working Title: Desks in the Dark play report

Working Title: Desks in the Dark play report

Working Title: Desks in the Dark play report

So I’ve been dropping hints about the hack of Blades in the Dark that I’ve been building, but have been pretty adamant about not giving too many details until I play tested.  Maybe it was paranoia, but I just wanted to be the first to try out the idea.

Well tonight I had the first session.

Unfortunately we were down a player, but we decided to continue and test the waters of The Ravencliff Academy for for troubling children.

I should back track though.  Desks in the dark takes the rules from John Harper’s quick start and uses them to play a game at a creepy or secretive boarding school.  What makes the school like that is up to the players.  The idea is to build the school communally from scratch and then place students there who will sneak around, discovering secrets, causing trouble, and earning reputation in the school.

My players made a school for students that are just too scary to be in mainstream society.  The headmaster is a man constantly surrounded by cats and is unfathomably nice, but there is a constant presence of heavily armed security personnel.  The students we had tonight were Llewellen, a student who receives fan mail from the future and has memories that have not happened yet, and Joanas, a student who literally hears art talk to him (I hate my players for making me remember difficult names).

The game started with Joanas and Llewellen in the headmaster’s office being confronted with their disturbing behavior.  These two troubling boys decided to explore the mysterious light coming from the channel (over the cliff) in the middle of the night.  To do this, they decided to steal rope from Castle house, the very exclusive dorm house of the soccer players (not ultra soccer) and the ROTC students.  The two successfully scale the side of the building (which is shaped like an actual castle) with their own house, River Brook which is the home of misfits, the ignored, and the unimportant, watching from their windows and cheering.  Joanas decided to steal the flag at the top of Castle House as a prank.  Llewellen made it down ok but was discovered by Amy, a girl from Castle House.  He convinced her not to rat him out, but she became very interested in him.  Probably too interesting.

Joanas had far more trouble getting down and ripped his uniform, a serious offense, but still couldn’t make it down.  Instead he made the flag into a hooded cape (cloak?) and ran throughout the halls of Castle house yelling while carrying a random cat and shaking it so that it made a god awful sound (this is total animal cruelty by the way).  Jonas was able to get out of the building but had a bunch of the residents chasing him (mostly heavily armed ROTC kids).  Llewellen tried to keep the door up to River Brook to let his friend rush in, but Joanas tripped over some rose bushes.  Instead, Llewellen convinced his cheering dorm mates to come out to the rescue, which wasn’t hard given the fact that Joanas was being a total badass.  This included the RA, who hated Castle House enough to take the flag from Joanas and wipe his ass with it (that was an interesting devil’s bargain). The Castle kids pulled out weapons (because the kids in ROTC consider shotguns light arms).  Joanas was able to rile up his dorm so much that the Castle kids had to let him get away.

From there the pair used their stolen rope to climb down the cliff and swim down into the light.  What they saw was a dome with rows of 12 ft mechs being inspected.  Deciding they didn’t want to mess with people who had military grade robots they could pilot, the two decided to head back.

Except Joanas still needed a replacement uniform before the school discovered that his was ruined.  The school has some very odd policies when it comes to their dress code, but it is well known that you do not want to damage them.  After failing to switch his out for another student’s dirty uniform, Joanas decided that it was better to just convince somebody else to trade.  This resulted in him owing Rodric a favor and missing that there was something embarrassing in the pocket that he would miss.

Of course the headmaster had something to say about this embarrassing item and called the two into his office (back to where we started).  The students assumed that they were there because of their excursion and tried to cover up the worst of their actions with lies, but basically admitted to breaking curfew.  The headmaster did not care about the dispute between houses and instead was far more concerned with the health issues of male students wearing women’s underwear.  He also suggested that the two should be more discreet about their relationship (since Llewellen’s name was on the panties).  Joanas however earned enough attention points (this syste’s version of stress) to get detention.

This lead to Llewellen checking out Rodric’s dorm room while the pervert was in the Cube of Shame (An empty white room with a speaker that constantly repeats the word shame) for a uniform transgression.  Llewellen found a shrine to himself (mostly consisting of pictures of him when he was older).  Llewellen stole all the items in the shrine for use in one of his classes.

Meanwhile, Joanas was bullied into doing a days training with the ROTC kids as punishment for being a smart ass.  He discovered that Amy is both the student lead of ROTC and is capable of firing an anti tank gun accurately without any stands or supports.

I liked a lot of how this system played.  There were still players having trouble with the results of rolls, but I think that might improve with exposure and with more copies of the rules available (unfortunately due to miscommunication the result chart did not get printed so I was running the results off my tablet).

One concern I have is about how fast students accumulate attention (stress in Bitd).  I decided on the fly to up the critical point from 8 to 12, but in one session the players received 10 and 12.  There are things that could have helped that, both players only had one skill at 2 dots, they were a player down, and they didn’t use teamwork consistently.  They also didn’t roll great, but still that’s pretty fast.  I’ll keep an eye on this, but it does concern me about the system, especially since I think I did a lot of things that are nicer than Blades.  Maybe the players should have accepted more negative effects?  I don’t know, I just feel something is a bit off on that.

At some point I’ll probably post my rules thus far once I make a few updates.

It occurs to me that Duskwall could be tweaked just a bit to have polar day/night cycles instead of just flat-out…

It occurs to me that Duskwall could be tweaked just a bit to have polar day/night cycles instead of just flat-out…

It occurs to me that Duskwall could be tweaked just a bit to have polar day/night cycles instead of just flat-out darkness. Then there would be short summers, where the sun doesn’t set much, and long dark winters where the sun hardly rises. Keep the weather temperate. Have a short frenetic growing season and time of sun, and start your campaign at the beginning of the long dark.

I think it would be helpful to reflect on how to manage a crew getting bigger when it goes up a tier.

I think it would be helpful to reflect on how to manage a crew getting bigger when it goes up a tier.

I think it would be helpful to reflect on how to manage a crew getting bigger when it goes up a tier. The game encourages crews to go up a tier, the idea is they are fighting for advancement in size and power.

However, the manageable number of PCs does not go up when the crew tier does. So, what does that mean? Do your gangs join the crew, and you get more gangs? How do you manage leadership in the crew, and does it still make sense to have “crew” and “gangs” as the two categories? Or do you reach a point where you need middle management? “Leaders” and “made men” and “gangs” for example.

There comes a point where your PCs are directing a more broad operation than you can easily manage with PCs and gangs as the two categories.

I think the crew rules need to address actions taken by the crew that are not undertaken by PCs or by gangs.

I also think it would be useful to have something like the “entanglements” possibilities that are “internal politics” that can cause problems for a crew during each down time. There is a “morale” effect; what else is it for? I think it could be used to suppress internal dissent and dissatisfaction and plotting and theft.

Issues of discipline and the like will come up. Underlings will cause problems that they need the leadership to sort out. Gang leaders will aspire to be crew bosses to come to the attention of the guys running a tier 3 crew.

In short, I think there needs to be more granularity for Tier 2 and up.

I’ve got another question about how people interpret something.

I’ve got another question about how people interpret something.

I’ve got another question about how people interpret something. Was looking at the Whisper special abilities (i.e. Summon, Channel, Compel, etc). Much of the stuff described there is stuff that I would have already assumed the Whisper could do just using Attune. So my question is do folks see those abilities as not being available using Attune or some other skill until you take the special ability, or do you see the special abilities as basically allowing you to do the various things by spending stress instead of rolling?

Here are some reflections on how I used mechanics in the most recent session of Blades in the Dark.

Here are some reflections on how I used mechanics in the most recent session of Blades in the Dark.

Here are some reflections on how I used mechanics in the most recent session of Blades in the Dark. Maybe some suggestions for clarification too.

I gave myself the freedom to pay less attention to how the mechanical pieces hook together, and to use the ones I wanted when I wanted to use them. Examples! (From this session: https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/more-blades-in-the-dark/)

I used an effect roll without an action roll. One character was struggling with a magical trap, it was in him and growing, and he used Will to resist it without bothering with an action. Meanwhile, his fellow scoundrel finished out the clock, stepping into the challenge and addressing the needed effect roll while the trap victim did a resist roll.

I used one action roll followed by both an effect roll, and a resistance roll, both informed by the action roll. A character was standing on a table fending off a bunch of knife fighters; we rolled his murder, because that’s how he likes to fight, then had an effect roll to reduce the segments in the clock for the will of the attackers to continue. And also a resistance roll because they were trying to pull him down and pin him.

I let fine items add 1d to both the action and the effect roll.

I let an unusual weapon count as a fine weapon because it was more interesting that way.

Because the flashback was to controlled planning, one flashback handled the crew coming up with and discarding five plans, and escalating a sixth out of frustration. So after coming up with lots of ideas for using their adepts (all rolled 3 or less on Command) they abandoned those plans, then ended up deciding to hit up Baz to borrow some really tough Lampblack thugs. They rolled poorly on those, too, and escalated to risky by having the thugs drinking with the guys they were going to distract/beat up. It worked out in the end. I let all that happen in a single 0 stress flashback; of course they knew they’d need to screen the reinforcements somehow.

I let heat 8 stand and not tip over to Wanted 1, because I wasn’t sure what “Wanted” does besides escalate the fiction. And I wasn’t sure if the 9th point was what tipped it over. I didn’t stop to look that stuff up.

Anyway, with this group the heists continue to revolve around 3-5 challenges supported by back story and prep. Straightforward single-location challenges on a very modest scale, more “crime” than “heist.” But, that lets me do two of ’em and two down times in a single three hour session, and that’s SATISFYING. There is also room to escalate to bigger, more dramatic actions in a single session, so that’s good; always have room to grow, right?

I also continued to interpret the “danger manifests” as it “becomes apparent” not “it costs them stress or effects.” So, several times when they overreached they got away with it; other times, they escalated and still didn’t succeed and got hit way harder. Your mileage may vary, but I think it works just fine that way, and they still didn’t succeed all the time. (In fact, escalation got them thrown off a roof.)

I still love running the improv, running the cool setting, and playing with all the shiny toys in the sandbox. I also still have an ambiguous relationship with the rules, and still struggle a bit for the mechanical balance to really make the game shine it’s best lights. This was a fun session, though, and we want to play again.

One final note–the entanglements are GREAT. They usually provide something to base the next heist around, but you can also evade them or buy them off. That is a necessary fuel to keep the group from looking at each other and wondering what heist to do next; it flows, from one to the next.

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/more-blades-in-the-dark

One of my players drew a Critical Success on an action roll, to get +1 level on the effect roll.

One of my players drew a Critical Success on an action roll, to get +1 level on the effect roll.

One of my players drew a Critical Success on an action roll, to get +1 level on the effect roll. Great news so far. Then, on the effect roll, they also rolled a Critical Success.

How have others handled this event (if they’ve seen it – the odds of this happening are less than 1%)? I treated it as 6 segments of an action clock, and also getting an extra detail that they wouldn’t have got from the clock.