I ran my first session yesterday! I have some thoughts!
I played with Chelsey Eaton Kevin Farnworth Andrea Gardner and Mark George. Also adding Jason Pitre, because he might find this interesting.
Other than Kevin and myself, the group is fairly new to role-playing games. Mark has some DnD background, Chelsey has been playing light-weight story games with us for about a year and Andrea’s almost brand new to the hobby.
Also important to note, I introduce new games to a lot of people. Spreading new indie games is my thing. My comments mostly concern teaching and learning how to play, and how new players interact with the rules.
I had read the rules cover to cover twice, Kevin and Andrea skimmed them.
Here are some observations:
Character and crew creation
This took longer than expected. I was expecting something along the lines of Apocalypse World, but there are a lot more options to consider. I found myself wishing the character creation rules were integrated to each character sheet. The heritage and background bit gave some pause to the less improvisational players. I feel like more examples under each category would help out a lot.
I think using heritage and background as a starting point for actions is great.
Another little note, the name list is way too big. It’s fine for a list of npc names, but my players agonized over the list. It might be more effective to have a series of shorter lists split by island of origin.
Crew creation is great, but again, there are so many options for upgrades that it took forever for them to pick two. Opting for a less democratic approach might speed things up a lot(First player chooses social ability, next one reputation, next one first upgrade and so on). It’s how it’s done for the faction relation sheet and it works really well.
The faction relationship sheet is great and building it is fast and effective. I’m a fan. It got all the players curious about the different groups, got them asking questions about NPCs and their place in Duskwall.
In short, character creation is cool and evocative, but kind of sluggish and heavy. The sheets are on the overwhelming side.
They created The Pilfering Players, a troupe of street performers and actors/thieves made of Usher (a crow defector and adopted son of late Rorric), Stev (a lusty Iruvian circus performer), Sil (a mysterious and magnetic Thycherosi expat) and Whisper(who’s name is subject to change, an Iruvian apprentice sorcerer, who’s master has disappeared)
The mechanics
Blades is a little deceptive. It seems like a fairly light game on the surface, but there is a lot of mechanics. Actions, effects, resistance, stress, harm, many experience tracks to keep an eye on, faction relations, and so on. It’s a lot to keep track of for newer players. I feel like a less tightly packed character sheet which integrates more rules explanations might help a lot with that. Or maybe a more robust player reference sheet.
The players got confused about how resistance worked every time it was brought up. I feel like there’s a way to get around it through layout.
The actions are ask great, evocative and clear. We didn’t really feel like one was used more than others. We did, however, notice that specialization early on can discourage the more shy players to take point and use their actions creatively. I would love to see something more structured for deciding who’s on point than “choose as a group”. This slows down the game and discourages characters who are out of their element to get involved.
A solution might be to discourage specialization at character creation so that every character has a wider array of skills, or a enforce specific order for deciding who’s on point.
I really love the devil’s bargain mechanic, but it seemed easy to forget on the players’ side. The newer players weren’t really coming up with them either. Stronger guidelines for creating them might help. Examples of bargains on the player reference sheet would be great too.
The effect system felt a little sluggish. Whenever a roll was made, we has to stop and analyze the circumstances. It seemed really cool on paper but ended up breaking up the action. This may change with better familiar with the rules, but on our first game, it felt like it slowed things down significantly.
I also wished consequences were on the GM reference sheet.
Flashback mechanics weren’t really engaged, I’m assuming because the players weren’t clear about what they could and couldn’t do with it. I don’t think that the writings fault. Just new players, playing a new game without knowing exactly where the boundaries are.
Conclusion
I really like this game, but it feels like a gamer’s game. There’s a lot of information that needs to be absorbed upfront, it plays significantly better if the people at the table have some level of rule mastery before the game starts. It made me think of Burning Wheel a lot, that way. A lot of mechanics, a lot of upfront information, a focus on advancement. It felt hard to teach, for me.
I’m totally on board for more mechanically heavy games, but I didn’t feel like I had the tools I would’ve liked to make the other players “get” Blades quickly.
The game relies on momentum a lot (you do a thing, sweet, this happens, who’s on point next) but has a couple of breaks in the action that distract from that.
I’m really looking forward to getting another session or three in to see if these issues float away and I’m just a crazy person.
I encourage the players to share their side of the story. Especially the newer ones. I figure your perspective is an important one.
Questions
Does everybody get effect from a group action? Does that mean that if they sneak as a group of four, they get four times the effect? Do they just get bonus effect for scale?