Tag: Nathan Roberts

I’ve been collating GM advice into Vincent Baker style ‘Principles’, and found that John Harper’s GM cheat sheet does a wonderful job of coalescing this information for blades.

One thing I stumbled apon when re-reading the AW Dark Ages Playtest, was the addition of the GM advice to ‘Use your Moves to achieve’….

If you Supplicate GM Moves with ‘Consequences’ or ‘Taking the Initiative’ you get a rather cool little bit of condensed wisdom that is eminently suitable for Blades:

Use Your Fictional Consequences…

• To lay groundwork.

• To reveal a commitment to action.

• To introduce urgency.

• To introduce complications.

• To accelerate, escalate.

• To draw out the inevitable.

• To follow through.

This Week’s GM tip – Scene Transitions.

Strugging to coherantly ‘smashcut’ between your scoundrels assaulting the Dimmer Sisters Stronghold and a flashback of the Leech to brewing potions of forgetfulness? Is Adam Koebel haunting your thoughts with his explicit use of ‘whiplash transitions’ and ‘Hip-hop montages’? Struggling to find a narrative connection between the handouts at the completion of a score and the PC’s downtime?

Then read this article and ponder a little on how you can use re-incorporation, the explicit passing of initiative betwixt the PCs and the GM, and using cinematics in your play during the oft neglected art of scene transitions.

http://borgus.com/film/?p=5

Just scouring the Lady Blackbird extension – ‘Lord Scurlock’ and discovered this little gem, which I will add to by GM best practices index card to reference in play. I mean, I almost do it automatically now, but it doesn’t hurt to be reminded, scan about at all the cool information we have generated right there on the table in front of us and then explicitly do the thing:

“Part of the job of the GM is listening to what the players say, catching it, turning it around, and seeing if there’s anything else to be done with it… reincorporate, play NPCs with gusto, look for interesting obstacles, impose consequences as events warrant.”

John Harper Gold.

http://onesevendesign.com/ladyblackbird/lord_scurlock.pdf

Because I had NO IDEA. and now thanks to Jez Gordon & +Jack Shear I do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2kzgIxM4pQ

The prep continues!

So to encourage the players to go for bigger and more desperate heists, they now get tattoos as a rep ‘counter’. Take down Lord Scurlock? Grab yourself a trio of Tatts to display your street cred with the gutter trash of Doskvol.

The skulls are for stress, the players string them on a thong of leather. Get 8 and trauma comes a knocking (the bottle caps).

Just re-watching Black Sails and amongst all of its scoundrel-y goodness was a gem from Captain Flint’s awareness on the price of this path:

‘Our own darkest motives will conceal themselves from us… Cloak them in whatever masks they must in order to move us into action.’

Damn fine description of a Devil’s Bargain if ever I head one.