Blades in the Dark

>I recommend watching the RollPlay actual play GM'd by John Harper.

Thanks, I'll check it out!

We have 4 players so far, playing a crew of hawkers.

I thought five players would be a good number since it leaves enough people even if someone drops out or misses a session.

my group tried it a couple of times, I just couldn't get into it. I don't necessarily feel like it's a bad system, but it's probably consistently the least fun I've had in a system I've played outside of Shadowrun.

Thematically it seems like the fiction would play out similar to a shadowrun game, what was hard to get into?

He did say he didn't enjoy Shadowrun either. So maybe it was the theme? System wise it's pretty far removed from SR, since it's pretty crunch-lite.

Got a question for you. The different crew types, how many have you seen, and how do they tend to go?

Shadows seem pretty easy to run, it's more or less the default. Assassins, smugglers, or hawkers I can come up with ideas for too.

But it feels like Cult and Bravo are kind of the puzzles don't don't quite fit. How has your experience been?

Well part of it is I'm generally not a fan of systems coming with their own settings, I like the GM making the setting, but that wasn't the core issue.

Blades has this really weird balance of rules-lite and rules heavy. Things are abstracted out on a considerably larger scale than they are in most RPGs, but there are rules for things that would be narrative in a lot of other systems. In general it does a lot of stuff like making you roll once for a scuffle, instead of rolling individual attacks, or you roll once to meet up with your drug dealer and see how that goes. Personally I prefer things to get a bit more into step-by-step detail.

There's also things like how much individual sessions are structured, with the very rigid mission structure and downtime, and the way healing works and things like that, which I'm pretty much as a rule not a fan of. Things like the clocks I thought were a really interesting idea, and in some specific instances worked great, but ultimately I think that most of the time they're just a crutch for mediocre GMs, a good GM should be able to intuit and narratively handle that sort of thing. Like I said, sometimes I think they really did work well, but they got in the way and were too rigid more than I liked them.

There are some other things too, character creation was slightly too rigid for me, I despise the damage/healing system, things like that.

Ultimately it comes down to, I like systems that have a lot of narrative flexibility and flow, rules light for how the larger session is structured. If there's crunch I like it to be on a more micro-scale, how well do specific actions go, managing stats, things like that. Blades in the Dark is just very very much not that.

Shadowrun just has some of the most obnoxious crunch I've played with, it always got in the way of fun, never helped it, and I don't like the setting. Though I admit that a lot of my horrible experience with Shadowrun was just being in a really really really bad party, with a somewhat inexperienced GM.

I'll let you know how the downtime stuff works in practice when I play it, but from my understanding, Blade's downtime system is a direct response to D&D's habit of downtimes really not having much for PCs to do other than go through their shopping list, and then wait for the GM to throw out the next adventure plot hook at them.

I've GM'ed every crew type and played most of them, save Hawkers, actually.

You're right, Shadows are pretty straight forward — thieves and such. However, in my experience and those of others I've spoken with, Bravos are by far the most common: they're basically mercenaries, allowing them to dip into most areas of the criminal underworld fairly easily, 'though they work best as hired goons or Expendables analogues.

Cults are my favourite, personally, 'though I just love that kind of shit. Basically, Call of Cthulhu level stuff, 'though you're the crazies worshipping the eldritch being instead of the investigators tasked with taking them down.

Assassins are, you guessed it: assassins. The people that prefer them tend to be a bit more edgy or try-hardy than most other players, 'though they're just as fun as the other crew types.

Hawkers are cool 'cause, if you're creative enough, they get to sell all sorts of things, not just drugs or magical doodads. A lot of people play them as straight up pushers, however, which is a bit unfortunate. For a bit of advice on how to run them, think about how they acquire their goods or make new contracts with suppliers, not just how they peddle their wares. Those first two often make for interesting scores.

Smugglers are by far the most difficult to run. Or, at least, you'd certainly think so by just how many people complain or ask how to run them on various forums. Personally, they're my second favourite crew type to both run and play as — you just have to think outside the box a little, thinking of them in a more "mobile" fashion.

There's also the Vigilantes written by a close friend of Harper's that worked on the kickstarter. They're basically the "good guys", operating as cops, avengers, or the neighbourhood watch.

Oops, is meant as a reply to

I didn't know about Vigilanttes, I'll have to look for it. I also just found out about the Iruvian city setting detailed in the special edition of the physical book that's not in the pdf.

Tell me more about the Smugglers? What sort of outside the box thinking?

Here's the PDF. As for Smugglers, I'll just copy-paste a short list of the types of alternate scores you can do with them:

>Act as getaway drivers or as a cover-up for another crew.
>Guard a shipment on a train or boat.
>Keep someone or something on the move until certain conditions are satisfied.
>Dispose of an item without anyone the wiser.
>Transfer people into or out of the city.
>Commandeer various goods while they're en route to another location.
>Smuggling especially volatile or dangerous shipments.
>Making a dead drop.
>Smuggling items into a high class party or prison, or other difficult locations.

Cool, thanks.

Any chance you also have the full version of the city write-up for U'duasha?

has there been any word on all the hacks/dlc that were stretch goals of the Kickstarter, there a pretty big list of them that I can't find much mention of anywhere else online?

I have the entire special edition, but the file's too large to upload to Veeky Forums. It's basically just an expanded version of the base PDF that includes U'duasha; there's not a separate file. I'll try to see if I can get another link.

Not really. The fantasy-esque conversion is probably the closest to being done, but then again, it's been close to done for a while now, apparently. Otherwise, people are constantly asking for updates on the other stretch goals, but all they ever get is, "It's being worked on."

How hard would it be to write a fan conversion into a different setting? I'd love to play as scoundrels in Republic City from Korra.

It seems like it would be pretty easy, you might have to rework the classes a bit.

Not hard, I imagine. The game's fairly hackable, as indicated by the many people doing just that. You'd most just have to remove the stuff about ghosts and replace it with bending; maybe create a few custom Bender playbook altogether.

drive.google.com/open?id=0B1H9jVpUCA-IdXRnc1JDSlI5SnM
This google drive has the special edition; should work. Also, here's a PDF with a few third party playbooks specifically for U'duasha, 'though they're mostly just a jumble of the existing ones with a few new abilities.
redboxvancouver.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/alt_iruvian_playbooks_20170330.pdf

Thanks!

If you watch Harper's series of BitD you'll notice that he plays the game like a movie, using movie tropes. So downtime seems to be a couple of small scenes showing what the characters are up to but without many details so you can get to the action, the scores, faster. Same thing with planning, I even remember them talking about imagening a planning and preparation montage and then skipping to the action. It's a different style to what most Veeky Forumsers are used to, I reckon. Yeah, rulewise downtime seems rather rigid.

As for the clocks, I reckon it really depends on how the GM uses them. For long term projects they don't really differ from other game's rules. For stuff like 'enemy awareness' they can be more interesting than a binary 'you fail a test you get caught' or a '3 strikes and you are out' system that many GMs seem to use, since they take degrees of failure into account. Tbh I have started using similar systems in other games, in the background, out of the prying eyes of the players, to keep track of consequences and NPC plans.

However, once you have multiple interacting clocks, like a chase and escape clock aka 'whoever fills their clock first wins' or 2 'gang health' clocks representing a gang fight, then clocks basically start dominating the game instead of being in the background and that feels somewhat weird and gamey.

(Cont.) And I don't fully agree with how Harper uses the clocks either.
> "Your character did what? Well time to start a new clock. Let's call it 'corruption clock'."
> "What happens when it's full?"
> "You'll find out."
That's not good DMing to me. I'd keep the clock in the background, unknown to the player and describe his veins blackening or him having more and more vivid nightmares, voices calling, stuff like that.

Blades is my go-to game. I've run at least half a dozen campaigns (some longer lived than others) of it so far, played in a few more. It's a really smooth system, with a ton of cool ways to play it. Most played group so far is Hawkers, have yet to play Smugglers or Cult.

I converted a bunch of my SR friends into it (we still play SR) and they've all loved it. Best advice I think I can give is let the players call the shots - I've had some GMs that come up with predetermined storylines on their own, and they're not BAD but I wish I was offered more complete control over what we do and why we're doing it. I also recommend doing very little prepwork, touch up on your improv skills a lot, it's more fun when you're not trying to plan everything out.

The system itself takes a little getting used to and I've still got some problems with the Position/Effect system. A part of me wishes it was a little more mechanical, but I know that just wouldn't work in the system.

stealing this! will supplement the scores in the book really well.

i hope the bitterroot company is ready for more high risk scores...currently they are at war with the Red Sashes and trying to get the Gondoliers and the Lampblacks to help them....

i have tons of problem with effect and pretty much only using standard effect. i find position is much easier to adjudicate because you get starting position from the encounter roll. from there, as players fuck up the position changes.

i need to remember that harms can affect effect; it is one of the biggest things i forget about. that and armor!

I constantly forget to get to factor player's Harms into dice and Effect, but I think that should be more on them than anything. Still, I agree on the adjudicating of position to the encounter rolls, only problem after that is my players end up roll 4/5 dice (I REALLY poorly managed the early sessions, first time with the system, first time really GMing, gave them a lot of free stuff and I'm finding it hard to walk it back) and they LOVE to abuse the Teamwork system.

I REALLY hate Teamwork rolls, make it so hard for them to fail at anything. There's ALWAYS a six and rarely anything rolls bad enough to warrant Stress.

Well, screwed that reply up.

>BitD takes place in a world that used to be a magical fantasy world, but the sun broke, or the bad guys won or something because it's in perpetual night, the seas are inky black with faint stars buried deep beneath, and everywhere is covered in ghosts of the dead!

That's one of the best descriptions of a setting I've ever read. SOLD!

What do you mean? You forget they had Harm already marked?

Not already marked, just sorta marked period - especially when it comes to affect, so it doesn't get factored in.

You're right, Clocks should be helpful GM mnemonics for keep tracking of background shit, not rigid mechanical systems that dictate what happens to PCs at a specific time.

i disagree about that being bad GMing.

as a GM, there are times i keep clocks private because they help me track hidden downtime details, Devil's Bargains, and similar things. however, telling the players about a clock can have very important advantages. for a racing clock or ritual clock, it helps the players visualize what's going on or get a better idea of how they are interacting with their environment. for clocks with strange meanings ('corruption clock') it acts as a great tool of suspense. the players know something bad is happening but not enough to change their play.

i think each person's mileage may vary wrt clocks but i like putting them forward because i find "time" is a very important factor in the types of stories blades is good for. hell, the whole score can be a clock where each segment is filled based on other smaller clocks! the PCs might know about the smaller clocks but not the big clock.

This is really good. Thanks for the recommendation.

I don't know if I really grok Position and Effect.

How much prep do you guys do before a session versus making stuff up on the fly?

Still looking for players?

Yeah, got room for one more. First session's tomorrow, you wanna hit me up on discord?

Sent you an friend request.

I have a good grasp of the setting and its various factions. Also, I tend to let my players decide what they want to do, 'though I can usually guess what that is going forward into the next session. That said, I don't prep very much: I mostly just keep a few notes on what sort of scores the crew might be interested in and who might be involved. Once you have a good idea of how to run a score, it's fairly easy to set them up at a moment's notice or work with them on the fly, even after the engagement roll has already been rolled. Plus, the downtime phase often gives you more than enough time to consider the angles on your crew's next prospective score, anyhow.

Really liked the setting, really loved the atmosphere and all of the factions. My gripe is with it as a game. In its defense, it may have been the gms fault and since I've only played one campaign I have no way of knowing.

That being said, first off the book is horribly put together, like worse then the 5e players handbook bad. It makes use of a lot of, for lack of a better word, keywords to explain elements of the game. This is completely at odds with the mechanics themselves which could be summed up as "roll a number of dice equal to your skill, only your highest result matters. 1-3 is failure, 4-5 is failure + success, 6 is just success. The tougher it is to succeed, the more successes you will have to roll, the more dangerous, the bigger the consequeces of failure."

This combined with the poor structure of the book made it much harder to teach to any of my less... avid friends. The classes themselves are interesting, but awfully balanced to the point where we all ended up prioritizing the 2-3 skills from outside of out starting tree over every thing else. The item system is almost nonexistent outside of class starting items, which more or less serve as class features.

The core mechanic of filling "clocks" to succeed leaves way to much leeway for players, you will rarely if ever find yourself in a situation where you can't roll whate very skill you'd like. The penalties for rolls being hard are alost nonexistent, and the price of failure is too random.

What I'll take away from it are the ideas of faction clocks and interwoven reputations with factions. They need a bit of work, but they are pretty cool ideas and we're the only mechanical saving grace. In my opinion I would just run the Doskovol setting using a different system.

Well if you just like the setting, Ghost Lines is in the same setting.

Definitely sounds like your GM had some problems utilizing some of the mechanics properly. Like a lot of PbtA games, which BitD started as, it's entirely on the GM to decide to what degree they penalize their players for failed rolls, if at all. In the same manner, it's also up to the GM to decide how hard or easy each clock is to fill, regardless of its role as a detriment or boon, as well as what the position and effect is for each action roll. Someone that understands the system better isn't going to let the Cutter skirmish their way through every obstacle without spending a crap load of stress, which very quickly catches up with a player once things start going not so perfectly.

Just a question, but did you guys play with more than four crew members? The stress economy gets thrown out of whack once you have five or more players, making things much easier to accomplish with even just one more character above the suggested four. The GM can adjust their scores accordingly, of course, but if there's one downside to the book and the game itself (and trust me, there's a lot more problems than just the one), it's that it doesn't tell you this at all or how work around it, assuming at all times that you're running with four crew members without even mentioning that premise.

We did, in fact, have 5 players. Though he didnt aware any extra coin, so while assists were easier to hand out and stress more managable during the heists, downtime was pretty tight and training/aquisition opportunities were limited.

On the subject of success and failure, I was referring to resisting consequences and position/effect. Resisting became trivial because with just 3 dice, you have a, what 45%, chance of taking no stress? And as to effect, daredevil (?) Broke that situation wide open. We would always take a desprate position for added effect for the xp anyway, with a bonus die it just became irresistible. I played a lurk and our gang was a cult, so between the mistcloak or whatever it was called, and the fact that an ally could assist from anywhere, I was looking at +2 dice and +3 effect on a risky prowl check.

Oh, now you tell me. :( I just recruited a 5th player for my game.

What's a good suggested way to work around this?

I mostly just jot down a rough outline and some NPCs before going in. Honestly I wing quite a bit and like how the system makes it really easy to do so.

Here's some notes from one of my sessions. We're playing in my group's homebrew setting instead of the one in the book, but it's not that hard to separate the system from the setting.

It's not a deal breaker or anything. Like I said, it just makes things easier since there's quite a bit more stress to go around in general. Effectively, it just makes it more difficult or less likely to trauma out. That's not a bad thing in and of itself, especially if you're the type of GM that tends to pull their punches or doesn't like to see their players fail without due cause, but it definitely goes against the written experience.

The easiest way around this is to set your crew up against factions with a higher (or even higher) tier than usual. This will naturally (but not always and not in all circumstances) decrease both the position and effect of many action rolls, making the players generally have to spend more stress to either push themselves or assist others. However, you do have to be a bit careful of this since you can easily TPK your entire crew if they're not prepared to be taking on higher tier threats.

Another easy way around this is to make your scores a bit longer, stretching their stress reserves that much thinner. However, that also not always easy to accomplish since there's the session time to consider, and you really don't want to short change your players on the downtime phase if you can help it. Obviously, this works better for those groups that can go for a long time and can often get two or more scores done each session. Generally speaking, most session, including the score and downtime phase take, on average, three to four hours to really get the full experience, 'though things will speed up as the players and the GM becomes more comfortable and knowledgeable with the system.

I'm trying to figure out why the stress economy becomes messed up and how to fix it with 5 players.

I would assume it's cause teamwork is easier? An extra player means 9 extra stress boxes that can translate into bonus dice on many rolls?

I'm not sure how to adjust for it though, since you don't really get the chance to directly just put stress on the players, it's always at their option. Just keep putting conditions on them to tempt them to resist using stress? Or maybe just bump the teamwork dice cost up to 2?

Exactly. It also makes it easier to pass around resistance rolls by defending each other. The fact that there are even abilities that incentivize this and are easy to synergize make the whole thing even easier.

I included some suggestions above, and while ramping up the number of obstacles or threats works as well, I definitely wouldn't increase the stress cost to assist another player. I had a GM that tries this and it really didn't work well at all. Plus, you actually want your players to help each other, not dissuade them. Teamwork is a big part of Blades as a whole, and is often a large contributor to what makes it so fun to play after everything is said and done.

Alright, I'll keep that in mind while I run.

This is helpful, thank u

How does the tier contribute to more stress? Wouldn't it just decrease the potency of their roll?

Reduced effect often means that players will want / have to either push themselves /or take a devil's bargain in order to get their effect back up to "acceptable" margins, the previous of which costs stress. Reduced position often means that the players will have to push even harder, perhaps into "deadly" territory, which in turn twists the arm of the players' to want to increase their action roll through other means, which makes the previous statement doubly true, but can also be done by assisting each other, which also costs one stress.

For the gms, how often are you guys offering Devils bargains?

Whenever I can come up with a good or appropriate one, which is true in most situations, but not always. I even let my players suggest bargains for themselves or others. And while I also let them know that I'm under no obligation to accept their suggestions, I often do if it's fun or interesting. Blades is definitely more fun when played collaboratively.

Couple times a session. Usually I'll throw them out when the stakes are high or the situation is really tense. Sometimes my players ask for them, and most of the time I'll oblige.

i always say "...or you could accept a devil's bargain" when a player is setting up a roll. if the player wants examples i think briefly or ask the group for ideas. i have players who won't even entertain a devil's bargain to those that have tons of ideas of how i could "punish" them. the standard is tick up an enemy clock.

What are some good examples of bargains you've used before?

Here are two memorable ones from my sessions.

>If you fail to swat away the grenade with this roll you'll instantly die.
>If you fail to quickdraw your gun and kill the guy holding the other PC's wife and daughter hostage he'll have enough time to kill them both.

First guy managed to crit success and there was much rejoicing since no one got remotely hurt from the grenade. Second guy was able to shoot quick enough to save the wife but lost the daughter. For some reason my Shadowrun and Blades in the Dark games usually take a one way trip to tragedy town.

One my group at the time really liked involved a small gang and the crew's Spider. The crew was hitting up a club in Crow's Foot owned by the Lampblacks in order to seize it as a claim. By way of a small connection to one of the guards outside, the Slide was able to convince the guards to take off with their bones and internal organs still intact while the crew ransacked the club and their fellow gang members inside.

The aforementioned Spider was posted outside as a lookout since he had very limited combat options at the time. However, while the rest of the crew was inside dealing with the remaining Lampblacks, a complication arose as a few of the guards returned to the scene. Assailed on both sides, the Spider was unable to escape via conventional means, so he instead elected to force open a ghost door using his ghost key and a desperate Attune roll.

He succeeded, but with the bargain that he'd have no idea where the door would lead him. With that in mind, the crew had yet to discover that this particular club was home to an illegal bear fighting ring. So, as you can probably guess, the Spider ended up smack dab in the middle of a caged match between a grizzly bear and a black bear just as the rest of the crew were making their way into the basement where said match was taking place.

I bump this thread for 1 stress.

No, it costs 2 stress.

Or you can take a Devil's Bargain.

Another user interested, still looking for folks?

We're full up now. Going to start the first session tonight. Feel free to add me on discord though and if space opens up I'll let you know.

We did have one person miss the first session. Not sure if they're really committed.

That sucks, 'though it's good you had at least four players by the sounds of it. (Not that the game can't be run with less.) What playbooks did they settle on? Also, the obvious question: did you and/or your players have fun?

Still mad that the friend who was supposed to back this on ks forgot to. (Before someone bitches we were all going to pay, he just volunteered to actually do it.)

I'm not the GM of that game, just one of the players. I had a lot of fun and I hope the rest of the crew did too. We had a Slide, Hound, Spider and Leech. Basically we're a Hawker crew trying to sell drugs around.

Our first score was trying to figure out what to do about a nearby piece of territory that was being disputed between the Lampblacks and the Red Sashes. We decided to side with Red Sashes and the score basically involved us talking with them and performing some Flashback actions to convince them they could use us.

It all turned out quite well as we ended up getting control of the turf under their watchful eyes.

GM here, feel free to message me on discord if you're curious. I've started up a clock for the "Player Missed Session" and I can let you know when it fills.

Any other hacks of this out there?

What are you looking for in a hack of this?