Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

I Done Fucked Up. (<---That's the TLDR; WARNING Long post ahead)

So, Saturday I ran my first game of Blades.  Boy was it disastrous.  90 to 95% of that was my fault. We started with character creation, but a lot of the players were so excited they already brought characters to the table. Mistake number 1. I relented and let some of the folk get a jump start at character creation, rather than force everyone to do it together at session 0. The result? People came in with very different expectations of play style. The end result was a chaotic mess. Characters that really shouldn’t have been in a crew were suddenly found working together.  Ok, so that’s not too big of a problem, goof on my part. Talked to everyone, there’s a bit of retconning/tinkering that’s gonna go on so our official session 1 will run a lot smoother.  Now for the real major fuck-ups.

Remember I said this was Session 0? Well 50% of the time was spent on Crew Creation (expected) and the rest was spent running through a light prologue section. My intentions were 1) Introduce the characters to the other players, the world, and myself; 2) Give everyone some practice with the Action-Effect mechanics. Let them see how the dice-pools are constructed and how the results are put into play. Sounds noble and pure right? Good thing to get people to learn before they’re in a high pressure environment no? WRONG!

So, I opened up with the PCs being rounded up by Inspectors. I basically stole the opening scene for The Wire Season 5, complete with Bunk’s speech about how staying silent don’t work unless you some kind of criminal mastermind. Then I went around and had him throw baseless accusations at each of the PCs to see how they would react and then give them a moment to tell everyone about their character, what they look like, etc etc. So, the PCs find out they’re being falsely accused; someone was witnessing on them having been in an area doing some illegal spirit snatching and also murdering a civilian who wasn’t in the game. How did this go wrong? Well at it’s core, from what I can tell, Blades is a resource management game. What I should have said was, “Hey guys, this is just a prologue. We’re doing this just to introduce characters and give you a chance to show us a bit of what they’re like.” Instead I said, “Ok, we’re just gonna do a little prologue.”  Since I didn’t include the last bit there, the PCs (understandably) began to work up ways to get outta that situation. Literally, my next move was going to be, Inspector leaves, your lawyer shows up and gets you released (cause ya know, of course they’d have a “criminal” lawyer).

The end result? Plenty of unnecessary shenanigans were put into effect. Dice were thrown around like it was a back-alley craps game, and quite honestly, none of this was important enough for us to waste our time on it.  What wooould have been better is if I said, “Ok, I can tell you guys are about to try some shennanigans to get out of this mess, would you like to make a teamwork action out of this?”  Then I could have got a bit of narration from everyone of how they work as a unit and then it could have all been handled in one roll. But noooo, i wanted to teach them how the dice mechanics work right? So like a fucking idiot I have them roll for everything under the sun.  “Oh you’d like to do some Magnitude 1 channeling would you? Ok, roll a bunch of bullshit. Oh yeah, the danger here isn’t enough to actually warrant a roll, but i feel like i need more virtual dice in my life, so lets just hit that macro.”  That was me.  Bad me.   After the fact I went through the QS and reread the section on handling inconsequential moments with one blanket roll, did a facepalm and drank my sorrows away.

The end result of all this foolishness is everyone (myself included) felt like we wasted our time on something that I should have said, “Yo, let me see what your characters are like. Put the dice away, enjoy getting in the skin of this other person, and I’ll hook you up with your first score. After which point, we’ll open up the board to the players and you guys take the steering wheel.”  Basically, I ran the game like a traditional RPG.  Which it is not.  It is something different entirely. Works in a different way. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, I’m saying it’s very different to other kinds of games I’ve run. I’ve been told it follows a similar thematic philosophy as Hillfolk. In terms of how it is to be GM’d i mean.

In conclusion, what did I learn:

1) STICK TO THE SCORE — DOWNTIME – SCORE paradigm.

You can roleplay those moments in between, that’s cool. But unless they are absolutely critical to what’s happening, just let things be. Save the rolls for stuff that truly matters. And given the way things are in blades, let the players know upfront “Hey guys, this is just going to be a characterization scene so you can present your character to us and we can all get a better understanding of what they’re like and the group dynamic.”

2) If the player doesn’t give a damn about the obstacle.. let it all happen.  One of my players wanted to snatch something off the detective’s cork board in the inspector’s station. I told him, “Ya know, there are a lot of folk around here. If you just try to snatch something off the board, they’re gonna try to stop you.” To which he said, ok cool. But then I did a bit of GM trickery and got him into thinking he shouldn’t be cool with that outcome. Bad me. I should have said, “Ok, you grab the notecard that has a bit of info about yourself on it. And then an inspector notices and stops you being like ‘Hey! What do you think you’re doing, keep your hands to yourself scumbag!'”  If he was cool w/ being caught, who am I to stop it?  SO LET THINGS RIDE!

After Session 0, here’s what the Crow’s Foot looks like now.