Thomas Berton – Blades in the Dark G+ Archives

Has anybody made Faction Tracking sheets?

Has anybody made Faction Tracking sheets? It occured to me the other day that this would be really useful. Essentially, I’m thinking of a blank sheet with sections for Faction name, Tier, Important NPCs, Assets and Turf, Enemies and Allies, Downtime Actions and a few blank clocks.

Has somebody made these before?

Stras Acimovic and anybody else familiar with Scum & Villainy: do you use the same engagement roll questions as in…

Stras Acimovic and anybody else familiar with Scum & Villainy: do you use the same engagement roll questions as in core Blades? I assume yes, because the quickstart doesn’t mention anything, but wanted to check with others.

Just noticed that the note about gaining Stash when the crew advances is wrong on the Roll20 sheet.

Just noticed that the note about gaining Stash when the crew advances is wrong on the Roll20 sheet. It reads “+2 Stash (+1 per Tier)”, but it should read “+1 Stash (+2 per Tier)”

Here’s a small hack/house-rule that came up in my game last week that I wanted to run by all of you.

So the Lurk in my party had recently taken Ghost Veil as a special ability. He wanted to use it during an interrogation to freak out his captive. “Cool!” I thought, especially since I had a sweet Devil’s Bargain in mind and it would give him his first point of trauma, which everyone was excited about. Only problem was that he was at 8/9 Stress already, and Ghost Veil takes 2 Stress to activate. However, the crew’s Whisper was in the room and had plenty of stress to spare, so I thought of an alternative. The Lurk could take 1 Stress and the Whisper could take 1 Stress to project some of her ghost field power onto him to finish activating the ability. Essentially, she would Assist, except instead of giving +1d, she would let the Lurk activate an ability he couldn’t otherwise activate.

Obviously, there’s no provision for this within the game already, but what do you all think of this hack? It seems within the spirit of the game, for certain abilities at least. I probably won’t suggest it super often, but in situations like this, where a character doesn’t have the Stress to spare to activate an ability for a cool effect, it seems reasonable.

Thoughts?

I want to commend John Harper on the amazing Forgotten Gods tables.

I want to commend John Harper on the amazing Forgotten Gods tables. Yesterday, a new player joined our group an decided to play a Spider with faith as his vice. I suggested we roll to see which forgotten god he worships. We got “The Web of Pain” and the cult practice was “Acquisition: Properties aligned with sacred geometry or attuned by mystical events.” So we ended up with a Spider who’s searching out the nodes of the Web of Pain throughout Doskvol. Perfect. Incredible work.

How do you all handle Resistance?

How do you all handle Resistance? I’m thinking especially of consequences that are not internal to the PC. Like, it makes perfect sense how you resist a punch to the gut, but it’s less clear how you resist the person your threatening deciding to shout for help. Do you demand fictional justification for Resistance or just gloss over it?

Also, do you remind your players that they can resist? I’ve been doing that for pretty much every consequence, but it’s becoming tiresome. I think I’m gonna just remind them at the beginning of the session that they can also resist a consequence and then let them pipe up if they want to.

Is anyone looking to add a player to their group?

Is anyone looking to add a player to their group? I’m running two games of Blades right now, but I’d love to get some experience on the other side of the table. I’m on EDT and mostly work mornings, if that helps at all.

I’m running my second session tomorrow and I’ve got some questions and clarifications before going into it.

I’m running my second session tomorrow and I’ve got some questions and clarifications before going into it. Thought I’d bundle them here:

The first couple have to do with items:

-The rules state that the Tinker’s alchemicals recharge every downtime, but what about the consumable items that other characters have. Does the Cutter’s vial of Rage Essence get restored in downtime, for instance? My gut says yes, as long as they have reasonable access to a workshop or supplier (like the Tinker), but I thought I’d ask anyway.

-On p. 226, there’s a list of “Sample Creations” , which are explicitly called out as being well-known and thus not requiring a Invention long-term project before crafting them. On the next page, 227, there are “Sample Special Formulas” and “Sample Gadgets & Special Plans”. Are these also meant to be well-known, or should they require Invention before crafting them?

My other question has to do with Faction Status. P. 45 says that operations against another faction should result in -1 or -2 status with them. But say you’re already at -2 status with a faction – according to the description, they expect you to attack them, as long as it doesn’t cause you serious problems. So should acting as expected cause further negative status?

Thanks for any responses!

Ran my first session of Blades last night over Roll20! It went super well.

More time was spent on Character and Crew Creation than I thought it would be, because my player’s had really cool ideas for characters and had to spend some time getting their heads around the rules. But we still got to the start of our first score and did the engagement roll and everything.

The characters are as follows:

Clave “Cleave” Skelkallan: Cutter, son of Skovlan refugees, born and raised in Doskvol. Used to be a Bluecoat, but got let go for unseemly behaviour on the job (he took Not To Be Trifled With as his special ability, so we figured his propensity to hulk out is what lost him his job). His Vice is getting the shit kicked out of him in the fighting pits.

Arthur “Coil” Nightingale: Leech, former academic from Imperial City, come to Doskvol to start a new life. He’s got some controversial opinions about natural philosophy, which has put him in conflict with some of the more academic factions of the city, most notably the Sparkwrights. His Vice is hobnobbing with the elite in the fancy clubs and restaurants of the city. The special ability he took was Ghost Ward – his player is very excited about being a Ghostbuster.

Therren Telvar: Hound, from Severos. He was part of a nomadic tribe that roamed the Deathlands, but they’re all gone now and he’s come to Doskvol because he’s out of options. Appropriately, he picked Survivor as his special ability. His Vice is drugs, probably Spark, but I don’t think he settled on that.

They decided to be a crew of Shadows, specializing in burglary. They picked Daring as their reputation, the idea being that they are going to be known for pulling off crazy heists. Second Story was their special ability, and for upgrades they took Underground Maps and Passkeys and a Workshop (for the Leech). They picked the Docks as their Hunting Grounds and I used that to tie them into the starting situation, giving them negative status with the Red Sashes, who didn’t appreciate them horning in on their turf.

Actual play started in Baszo’s office. Fitz, the crew’s contact, goes way back with Baszo and so he brought the crew in for the job Baszo most needed doing: steal the Red Sashes war treasury. Apparently, the Lampblacks had discovered that the Iruvian Consulate was keeping the treasury safe for the Sashes and so Baszo needed somebody to take it out. The crew agreed. (I used such a big target specifically because they had picked the Daring rep. Otherwise, I might have gone with a simple safe house, but they really seemed in a go big or go home mood.)

They quickly came up with a plan to get Arthur into the embassy and have him start a fire so that Cleave and Therren could use the opportunity to sneak in through the basement (making use of their underground maps). Arthur reached out to a friend from Imperial City who worked as a clerk at the Imperial Consulate and invited himself over for tea. He rolled Consort and failed, so I made the situation Desperate: turns out, this friendship really wasn’t that close and the clerk rushed Arthur out. So he ran to the bathroom and shoved some Fire Oil into a a stack of papers on the way, rolling 5 on a Desperate Wreck. The fire was started, but the panic occurred too quickly: now Arthur’s stuck in the mob with no easy way out of the building!

Then we moved to the Engagement roll and the Crew nailed it with a 6! So Therren and Cleave got in through the basement, no problem and found the corridors completely empty, as everyone rushed upstairs to leave the building. That’s where we ended the session and next time will probably start with them trying to find the war chest.

Overall, I was ecstatic with how things went and I think the players were happy too. I think they characters they picked were awesome and I’m especially happy that they seem so willing to throw themselves into danger. We played Dungeon World before this and while it was fun, people felt a bit cautious, so I think it’s a testament to the design of Blades that they jumped in head first.

As for myself, I think I need to move a bit more slowly – I was rushing at the end because I wanted to get to the engagement roll before we ran out of time. Next time, I’ll make sure to describe things more deliberately so everyone’s clear on what’s happening.