Here’s an image you can all feel free to use in your Blades in the Dark games, on your blog, or anywhere else.

Here’s an image you can all feel free to use in your Blades in the Dark games, on your blog, or anywhere else.

Here’s an image you can all feel free to use in your Blades in the Dark games, on your blog, or anywhere else. It doesn’t have quite the right feel for Duskwall, but hopefully you can put it to good use.

I’ve released it free under a CC-BY license.

Ran the first session today with a full crew (one of each of the base archetypes).

Ran the first session today with a full crew (one of each of the base archetypes).

Ran the first session today with a full crew (one of each of the base archetypes). The crew is based out of a tavern/theatre, and call themselves the Gaffers. They have a sort of low-level connection with the Red Sashes (mostly as friends of friends) but agreed to help Bazso Baz out to score points on that side of the conflict. He had heard the Red Sashes were building up a war chest to hire mercenaries led by Ulf Ironborn, and needed someone not connected to his group to take care of it.

My group really wanted to fight the rules on the planning. They could (and have) planned for days. Finally I wrestled them into going with it.

The group’s plan was to take in some counterfeit coin (a prop from the theater) and swap it out for the real stuff, angering Ulf and destroying the bargain. But they kicked it off as an Arcane plan, letting the Whisper call on her friend the possessor ghost to take over the guard at the Sashes’ back gate to let them in.

I set up the Red Sashes Temple with the following clocks: guards-8 (I figure manpower is their thing), ward-4, lock-6.

I think my big misstep here was not mixing things up. I had it in my head that the wards were at the vault door, so they progressed through all the guards first instead of interspersing them with other things. We had the possession, a Prowl to get up on top of the internal walls to avoid a patrol, a Deceive to steal uniforms and get past some guys inside, and lastly some Mayhem to eliminate the guards at the vault.

There was some rockiness on the early rolls, where we wound up with the Action roll, an Effect roll, and another Effect roll to resist the danger. Rolling Effect twice seemed to be confusing for my players. There was also a perception of a high failure rate, which may have been my fault at establishing danger—I should have gone more orthogonal to the players goal of getting past the guards but I was having trouble coming up with dangers that were not “you get spotted”.

Anyway, the coin switch was made, and several things were stolen to cover up the break-in, and the Gaffers beat feet after implicating the Fog Hounds in the crime. We didn’t get a chance to do downtime or entanglements.

Random thought which occurred to me while listening to the Inception soundtrack on my way home…could Blades In The…

Random thought which occurred to me while listening to the Inception soundtrack on my way home…could Blades In The…

Random thought which occurred to me while listening to the Inception soundtrack on my way home…could Blades In The Dark be hacked to run an Inception-style game?

Uncle Aldo’s Devil’s Bargain Emporium

Uncle Aldo’s Devil’s Bargain Emporium

Uncle Aldo’s Devil’s Bargain Emporium

 

The 847 catalog is out! All the hottest bargains, guaranteed!*

What’s Our Take? – The gang wants a bigger cut of this score. -1d on subsequent Development roll.

Walls Have Ears – Word gets out to a faction your crew is friendly with that you did a job against their ally if the Heat for this score is 2 or more.

 

Hunter or Hunted – So intent on tailing your mark, you fail to notice you yourself are followed by a rival.

 

All Or Nothing – If the danger comes to pass you cannot resist it.

 

Now Or Never – If you don’t overcome the obstacle entirely, you must abandon it forever.

 

*Uncle Aldo’s does not guarantee bargains; bargains may not fit your game.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FJcEBN2ym362NHJljC9QYDw9hUsu3zt1cShEdXh4Lw4/edit?usp=sharing

Tried out the Quickstart the game is sweet!

Tried out the Quickstart the game is sweet!

Tried out the Quickstart the game is sweet! I am now looking to start a short campaign to run over Hangouts using the Quickstart. I am pretty available re: time – some evenings US, some evenings Europe (aka Day US). I have a couple folks interested but we need a few more. Drop me a message or comment here if you’re interested.

So after talking with my primary source of anime and Mech source material, we are getting underway with a mecha team…

So after talking with my primary source of anime and Mech source material, we are getting underway with a mecha team…

So after talking with my primary source of anime and Mech source material, we are getting underway with a mecha team hack. Going to play a little close to the chest about setting and such until it coalesces more, but for those of you who are enthusiasts what source material do you think I should pay special attention to? (Gundam, Votoms, Heavy Gear, Robotech, and MMPR/Sentai Squad shows are already in the discussion)

Sorry, English is not my first language.

Sorry, English is not my first language.

Sorry, English is not my first language.

So, we tried Blades in the Dark in Wastburg.

It’s a free city where magic disappeared two generations ago. A few magical objects still contain a little bit of weird energy. When you’re destroying them, you’re releasing sometimes enough power for a spell, if you’re lucky.

The players were more in a mood for The Wire / The Corner than Ocean’s Eleven, so they chose to embody Hawkers. Their band makes money by using the remains of spellbooks’ pages. These pages still contain some residual magic, so they cut them into small patches that customers apply on their tongue to have a buzz.

When the action begins, the PCs (which call themselves the Rummagers) are in their lair panicking because they just found a dangerous document: the list of Bluecoats who infiltrated the various criminal gangs in the city. They wonder how to handle this hot potato when a detachment of the Bluecoats knocks at their door. Oops.

I will not explain everything in detail, but the list is quickly cut into 4 pieces and scattered among the gang members while everyone is trying to get out of this mess. One PC disguised as a Bluecoat sneaks out of the area, another one is running down the street with guards in pursuit, another PC attempts to spiel off the Bluecoats because he’s an ex-Bluecoat himself … The situation got complicated when one character has lost patience and stabbed to death a Bluecoat. Fortunately, his accomplice got reinforcements from a friendly band by killing the Bluecoat infiltrated in their gang.

The conclusion was a little messy with a PC who was arrested by the Bluecoat who chased him from the beginning of the evening and a Bluecoat who grabbed a piece of the list, but without realizing the nature of the document. At the end of this introduction, the PCs had 2 missions to self-assign for next time: to help their buddy to escape from the cell where he’s languishing and to seep in the house of the Bluecoat to retrieve the list.

The system runs well, even though I fumbled a bit to find the right rhythm and that I was not in full mechanical control of the stress system. The PCs did not act as a team, so some of the game mechanics were not used, and as it was a short one-shot, all campaign rules that make the charm of management band have not been used either. I was sometimes lost in translation, too. But the atmosphere was there. The missed dice rolls that can be retried by increasing the stakes still work well. We created the small world of the PCs in a few minutes, there’s really way to play quickly.

My players got a message for John Harper : “Your game is really fun. We want to play again when the game will be complete, for sure.”