Chris McDonald – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

What would examples of consequences of “fatigue or weakness” be?

What would examples of consequences of “fatigue or weakness” be? IN regards to the leech’s special armor specifically.

Established group just had a player drop out so we have an opening for ONE player. The run down:

We play weekly on roll20 Saturdays 1pm EST and use discord for voice (optional video on r20). We try to keep 4 players attached to the game so that even if someone has something come up we can run with 2-3 people minimum week to week.

This is intended to be a long term campaign, and we’ve just entered into season 2 roughly, while obviously life comes up and there may be weeks you can’t make it we are looking for someone who has the intention and availability to play every week for the long run.

Everyone in the game very communicative and mature. We’re open about discussing everything in the game including how we feel things are proceeding rules interpretations how we interact and affect each others characters and we very much have the desire to keep that level of mature no-drama communication that helps make our group feel special.

We’re playing Bravos, an ancient Severosi mercenary band decimated after a large encounter rebuilding in duskvol. We love complicating the game and taking risks, for an example of just SOME of the things happening in the game currently: Our Cutter/Whisper hybrid is currently entangled in a web of 3 gods/demons/deities all jockeying for ownership/servitude/his soul and he just bound the spirit of Lord Rowan’s traiterous nephew to the bridge of nightmarket likely causing a horrible demon bridge entity to be born into existence. My Hound is currently haunted by the ghost of a former leader of the company who is trying to convince him they were betrayed by the silver nails (our +3 friends!) and my hound also just captured a greycloak hostage in a dramatic boat raid because he wants to sleep with her because he has terrible fetish and vice choices. Our Slide is an amateur actress (who is on vacation for a few weeks) is trying to cultivate her own Keyser Soze-esque underworld gang lord persona while also having been marked by the dimmer sisters and potentially being split across the fabric of multiple planes of reality? Or something else bad. Who knows so far!

The company has like some tenants and stuff to help “structure” the order and also complicate the way we do things (No killing in the lair, no leaving people behind, don’t take charity don’t give charity etc). We as players like to complicate things for ourselves, the group, and each other and that’s a big part of why having someone who is mature and communicates is important.

We go pretty hard on xp triggers like beliefs drives heritage, inner conflict and traumas. We like to role play, we usually spend half a session on downtime at least (4 hour sessions) and do fairly quick scores, but obviously if we ever need to roll over we will.

Everyone in the group has previous Blades experience, Blades GM experience, and GM experience outside, this isn’t a requirement as we want to encourage and welcome new players to hobby, but re also kind of providing a space for peopl who get “stuck” GMing games to have a chance to play. And in the event our regular GM can’t make it it usually means someone else is willing to run a one shot for an alternate system, which lets us keep momentum with the group. People open to dabbling in other things on the rare occasion we can’t get the blades game going is a plus.

If anyone is available and interested or has any questions please feel free to ask here or on the roll20 listing.

https://app.roll20.net/lfg/listing/77894/blades-in-the-dark

Looking for 1 GM to join a blades in the dark campaign.

Looking for 1 GM to join a blades in the dark campaign. Both current players are experienced in Blades in the Dark and with GMing Blades in the past or in other groups and are open and willing to help people learn the system but we are mostly looking for a GM with a basic level of system understanding but most importantly a consistent dedicated GM with a regular availability who is willing to commit to a “long term” campaign.

We are fiction first and narratively character driven players anda re looking for others who are interested in the same type of game play, this doesn’t mean we want to coddle our characters or exclusively play the same ones through out the campaign, characters come and go and live and die, but while they’re around they and their stories matter. Then you push to desperate position and take fatal 4 harm and go out in a blaze of glory cause sometimes that’s just how it goes 😉 Looking for people invested in creating cool characters with lots of potential for narrative arcs and who are invested in creating a world together through their actions and choices. Players should be willing to discuss and be actively involved in their own story other characters stories and the world and NPC’s, this isn’t about just bad guys murder hoboing, this is about scoundrels with flaws and vices and problems and drives and motivations for what they do.

The optimal time is probably Saturday around 1pm EDT time but there may be some flexibility there on time or days so feel free to post your alternate available times and we can discuss.

Alternatively the link to the Roll20 listing is below. https://app.roll20.net/lfg/listing/77894/

EDIT: players full up for now.

https://app.roll20.net/lfg/listing/77894/blades-in-the-dark

Is there a limit on how much desperate XP you can mark in a session?

Is there a limit on how much desperate XP you can mark in a session? I don’t remember ever having seen this anywhere but one of my fellow players says they remember it from an old version and that it’s something like you can only mark up to 2 xp for the same action(or maybe attribute).

I’ve always played it as if you’re willing to risk the desperate consequences XP is your reward no matter what.

TL:DR Established Crew looking for a GM

Time: 7pm UTC Wednesday

Crew Type: Shadows (With a penchant for domestic terrorism?)

Hey gang our GM recently had work changes that have made him unable to GM our game for the next few foreseeable month. As such we’re in need of a new GM. We have several fairly experienced blades players in the group currently so new GM’s who have questions about the rules and play are welcome as well as experienced GM’s looking for a group comfortable with moving at a quick pace. GM would hopefully be comfortable roleplaying all sorts of NPC’s and with players and comfortable allowing for plenty of free play opportunity and for PC’s to role play with each other and develop their characters and plots.

The campaign is still fairly early days we’ve only done 4 or so scores and haven’t directly invested too deeply in our interactions with any particular faction to the point of it overwhelmingly dictating the tone of the campaign there’s still a LOT of room to affect the campaign we’re playing with here and the players are very open to risky devil’s bargains and entanglements for the sake of interesting developments and furthering the plot. We’re wanted level 1 with 1 claim, Tier 0 Weak hold. Characters are fleshed out with separate Google Docs for each us providing reference for the crew at large and their relationships with NPC’s and in some respects each other.

Does the leech (or anyone) need Alchemist to modify Alchemicals?

Does the leech (or anyone) need Alchemist to modify Alchemicals? The description of the ability only specifies “design and produce” not modify existing. and on page 70 (the Alchemicals reference) Modifying Alchemicals different and not included directly with the section on creating a new one.

When you have level 3 (severe harm) and you push yourself because you’re all alone with no one to help you to…

When you have level 3 (severe harm) and you push yourself because you’re all alone with no one to help you to perform the action, can you still push your self additionally (4 stress total) for the extra dice or are you limited to just devils bargains?

I’m considering the idea of building an Adventure Time themed hack using Blades.

I’m considering the idea of building an Adventure Time themed hack using Blades. I’m not sure how it’ll work but right now it’s just ideas in my head and I wanted to probe the community for some balance theme stuff.

What do you guys think about “positive” trauma? Or like transforming your trauma. In Adventure Time transformative growth is a big part of that show and I was thinking about using trauma as a mechanic for that. You would start out taking traditional forms of “negative” trauma (maimed, heart broken, enraged) and then somehow over the course of the story your character could overcome that trauma (maimed becomes whole you may not have your arm back but you’ve come to terms with the loss and the person you are now etc etc) . I’m curious if going after “risks” like traditional negative trauma is too important to creating conflict and balancing stress pools or if you could still balance the game with intermediary negative trauma that moves to positive trauma and encourages more positive solutions and actions.

I know positive and negative aren’t the best ways to describe what I’m talking about and the forms of trauma as they stand but it’s the best way I could think to differentiate them for conversations sake.

I’d love to hear what anyone that’s experienced with modifying the system like that or has delved into balancing stress pools and encouraging conflict heavily thinks. And also anything from anyone who’s also an Adventure Time fan and if you think that’s the right approach in incorporating the elements I’m going for.

Casual Friday thoughts, what are everyone’s different “fill in what this is” roles?

Like the Sentinel or Psychonaut friends in the game? In your games and with your players and characters what are those? I’m interested to hear the different interpretation and creative options people have for this because they’re sometimes ones I struggle with.

Those are the 2 examples that came to mind but any other things where there’s a term in the book and it’s left open to the players to define in the world is also open for inclusion and discussion.

Bone Street Krew Week 2.

Episode 2:

Overall: The players form a vague plan and thanks to one good roll manage to get away with it… kinda.

Mission Summary: The gang decide to go check out the job Bazso has to offer, Bazso has a traitor in his midst, leaking information on their war with the red sashes, and he needs some contractors who aren’t emotionally invested to find proof and make an example of the traitor.

Specifically with this week after week 1 the players were going to have to deal with the idea of just having more mission parameters they have to follow in order to keep “clients” happy and satisfied with their job. I toyed with the idea of just giving them a group with a traitor in it and having them actually suss out the traitor themselves, but after a really long week 1 session I wanted to show them a faster paced mission so I had Bazso tell them who the traitor was and just demand that they get proof as part of the job. In between weeks I decided I’d use the fortune roll to determine what (if any) proof was available, another terrible engagement roll later and the Krew was unknowingly left with no tangible evidence on their target, On a 6 they would have been able to see the Red Sashes ready to give Owens a fake Iruvian passport to start his new life, before having to do anything, 4-5 the Red Sashes would have had the passport on them but they probably would have had to fight or life it off of them, 1-3 (what they rolled) and the Sashes don’t have any proof on them and are changing the terms of their deal forcing Owens to lead them to his team mates homes and help them off Bazso’s A team one by one, which could have ultimately provided its own proof. The players decided in “planning” that they’d just spend some stress flash back to securing some Red Sash paraphernalia and then create evidence if they didn’t find any. They jumped the gun a little on killing Owens and getting Bazso but in the end they managed to get the rolls necessary to forge up some flimsy fake proof and convince Bazso it was enough to work with.

I planted some other character stuff around too, Mattias our “holy weapon” assassin has a personal vendetta with followers of the forgotten gods as he views them as somewhat of Blasphemers, Bazso being a secret member of the forgotten gods cult felt like a really great antagonist in a lot of the scenes here even though I haven’t made up my mind how much of that is just because of the way Whiskey loving charmingly abrassive Bazso plays off of Somber Sober Mattias vs there being a deeper subconcious religion tension between the two, but it ended up working out and being built anyways so that was pretty cool.

Rule fumbles and issues:

* This week I tried to push the use of clocks as consequences a lot more, I feel like I struggle a bit deciding what an appropriate clock size should be for some things as all of the “only relevant this mission” clocks went uncompleted, but that could very much just be because they did well enough.

* Forgot Crew Xp. I did it in between sessions 2 and 3.

* Still do Vice rolls wrong this week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtVCoIF2lzQ