Blades in the Dark

My group is looking for something else to play alongside our D&D sessions when we can't get everyone together.

I'm thinking about trying out Blades in the Dark. I've never GMed before however, but I've heard this game doesn't require a great deal of prep work or encounter balancing, which drew me to it. Would it work well for a first time GM?

Anyone have experience with it in general?

No fans here, apparently.

only experience is the fans being autistic and saying it's the most awesomest bestest game EVAR!!!!!!!!

it looks like pbta trash and it probably is

I've played it before. It does seem like it would be a good system for a starter GM, prep is simple enough and it's easy to eyeball difficulties since the system provides a good structure for sessions already.

Is basically the back of the book the 'campaign'? Like a sort of sandbox that's already built.

pretty much, obviously you don't have to follow the lore about Doskvol exactly, and there's nothing stopping NPCs from giving the PCs jobs if you want to have a central 'story' to your game, but the intended play seems to be building up your gang using the rules provided for you.

So you could blend what's in the book and what the players decide to do with a sort of bigger plot arc tied together? Like an episodic TV show?

I've seen it run that way, just have an important NPC trying to achieve some grand goal (or agree with the players some large-scale goal they want to achieve separate from growing as a gang) and give them jobs which forward that if you want a more traditional narrative arc.

What's wrong with PBtA?

>it looks like pbta trash and it probably is

Not really, no? It's system is very different to PBTA. It's a pretty normal dicepool system.

It's fine as a narrativist system. The book isn't terribly well written, but it's generally understandable.

Just remember that the game is meant to simulate heist movies, right down to their narrative structure. Watch a few and follow that example so you can work in flashbacks, cut past things that don't matter, and so on without it sucking. Watch them with your players so you're all on the same page.

Does this game live up to the hype? I heard a lot about it this year.

boring mechanics and genre simulation

I wonder if the reason why narrativist games aren't discussed much here is that there aren't really builds or stat crunching to think about endlessly. You have to actually play the game.

Its because they tend to lack the mechanical depth that is also -fun-.Its like Tuna without the Mayo.

I feel like this game has some pretty fun mechanics, like with your crew being a character into itself.

I stay away from SJW trash like this. I'd especially stay away from it as a first time GM.

>I stay away from SJW trash like this.

What makes it SJW?

SJW trash?

The """"""""""""""""""""""""""diverse"""""""""""""""""""""""""" character art for starters

One of the co-designers chopped his dick off iirc. There is probably some paragraph about inclusiveness too.

one fucking glance at the title says it's a retarded soyboy rpg so no, it probably sucks 5,000 feminine penises

I guess /pol/ only likes stats and builds and doesn't like storytelling.

What the shit, none of this is accurate.

go away /pol/

>The """"""""""""""""""""""""""diverse"""""""""""""""""""""""""" character art for starters

...what? Seriously, I'm going through the pdf and 90% of it is 'Victorian England Character' with even most of the art there being just black and white outlines so you can't see any features (You know, since it's a game about sneaky characters). The police picture has the most amazing old-school facial hair.

>ITT: People that have never read the game
Including myself, so I can't comment. Been interested in the game for a while though.

>Indiscriminately murdering people for personal gains is SJW trash
Next you'll tell me that Khorne Berzerkers aren't Metal.

Now now. You can also be indiscriminately cheating people for personal gain. Indiscriminately robbing people for personal gain OR doing any of that for the gain of a dark, forgotten and forbidden god!

So I mean... is the game fun?

Oh yeah, check out that diverse as fuck cast.
I mean I can easily argue that the art is generic and that guy in the middle with the pipe looks more like a world of darkness fucker than anything. That and they reused one piece of art with the eyes set to GLOW, DURR
But SJW? Fuck sake man.

If you really want to make a MUH SJW's argument then yeah, evil hat was once involved in a successful attempt to strong arm a competitor out of the market based on ideological lines (The GG cardgame was removed from rpg-drivethru on their pressure)
Use that if you're going to go for bait mate. Do some research, up your game.

I would say that, as with any narrative game, it's either going to be very easy for a first-time GM, or rather difficult.

Narrative games use a different mindset about how things get managed, with more of a focus on improvisation and quick adjudication.

If you're good at those things, then it'll likely go pretty well, If not, it may be more difficult than more rules-based RPGs.

Left to right
>slav
>persianigger
>literal actual tyrone
>persianigger with glowing eyes
>skeleton so okay
>russianigger

Go on, argue how any of these are actually white people

Got my first session of it coming up soon. Should be interesting to find out, though the system looks decently fun (The positioning rules look interesting rather than more static DCs/Effects like a lot of games, have to see how they work in play.)

I think the glowy eyes one is supposed to be the same character but possessed (Since there is rules for that)

Also indiscriminately poisoning people with drugs for personal gain!

I had a good time with it. It's somewhat rules light once everyone has learnt the core mechanics.

I've played a short campaign in this- it's a solid system for improvising adventures; the trick is to force the players to do things in flashbacks. If you do that the whole system runs smoothly with everyone improvising, and you don't get bogged down in 2 hour planning sessions. It's a fairly complex system but the factions and gang rules give you a solid framework to build off of, probably not a terrible choice for a 1st time GM.

It's the newest indie darling on the block, but in practice it's not very good. People who like their RPGs to come in a narrative driven storygame flavor probably have a lot to bite into, but our group couldn't find much of substance.

The whole system is based around this conceit that planning and preparation are "the boring part" of a heist game and the players need to be ushered along into "the exciting" part of the game as quickly as possible. The number of free downtime activities are rigidly structured and performing additional rolls to gather information once you've taken a job runs a system-enforced risk of piling continued complications on top of the heist, so players are heavily encouraged to take a heist, choose a method of entry, and immediately jump-cut to the middle of the heist after the GM makes a roll to determine how well the job has gone up to that point.

You're supposed to then abstract all of the planning and legwork into flashbacks that occur during the run: players spend stress to retroactively roll to create advantages on encounters ("Actually, I bribed the man who built this vault for the combination") but I've yet to see it play out elegantly. You're sent stumbling into a high-stakes situation mostly blind until the team retroactively bullshits enough safety nets into existence for the team to figure out what their plan was to begin with, and since the flashback rolls can be failed and retroactively introduce additional complications to the mission, you often end up hitting a wall where you're left wondering why your characters went along with the plan you just invented up to this point if a critical part of the plan that didn't exist until a few minutes ago had actually gone wrong the whole time.

It's a very instant-gratification approach to heist games without any of the satisfaction that comes from planning and preparation that I would want to play a heist game for.

this is my biggest issue. what's the point of a heist if it's just a normal adventure but you make up that you had the key all along because you fucked the security guard's roommate and stole the key while you were there

It's likely designed to emulate the genre where a lot of it is that the characters are unnaturally good at planning. That and it does cost resources to use a flashback, so you're really supposed to only use them for stuff you can't reasonably handle yourself.

I haven't tried it yet, but the reason why heist stories are so good is because... they're narratively constructed stories. I don't know if that translates well into a tabletop game.

Either the GM has to listen to all the planning and take it all into account and then everything goes completely smoothly, or they've already designed it beforehand. That way, stuff will either pop up that wasn't planned for and can't be surpassed, or there will be tons of prep work that was completely pointless.

I get the reasoning for setting it up like this.

Thats part of the fun, improvising when a plan fails. If you had a group of players who accurately cased the joint, built up information regarding their target then formulated a plan based on those details and fellow PCs skill sets.

It's quite the autist thing to do. I'm mostly more with narrative players, and they are all too happy to let me build a plan of action or figure out how to gather intel.

if you want to emulate the genre why not just write a story

because you want to be able to see where the story goes spontaneously due to a combination of multiple people's inputs and random elements, i.e. the reason to use RPGs over another medium in general

I feel like Veeky Forums is pretty anti-narrativist in general, but based on what I've seen here I'm going to give it a shot.

Dude, that last guy is based on the guy who wrote Dungeon World. Still SJW, but not russian.

>I feel like Veeky Forums is pretty anti-narrativist in general
yeah, Veeky Forums tends towards being conservative in some ways oddly enough

I thought that was just /pol/, but I guess it applies to being grognards too.

It's weird how this place went from being fairly liberal/anarchist to extremely right-wing. I guess nerds started blaming others for their issues.

You seem like an insufferable cunt

So is this game basically just Locke Lamora and the Gentleman Bastards in RPG form?

>The whole system is based around this conceit that planning and preparation are "the boring part" of a heist game and the players need to be ushered along into "the exciting" part of the game as quickly as possible
Like 80% of my current shadowrun game has been them getting supplies, intel and recon on the local or target. And eveyone is having a blast. Makes it way more fun when they fuck up and target the wrong safe that has only 15k in it and not 30k. Then dont count they money and give the Johnson the 15k thinking its the full 30k and the Johnson thinks he's getting screwed on purpose and the. Tries to kill them a few sessions later with a different team of runners.

How does the whole "gang has its own character sheet and is a character onto itself" thing work out in play?

It's a heist RPG that lacks both the planning that takes place before, and the spontaneity of events that happen during the heist. Although the book says it can give players several "out"s in a heist, in reality they are only slowly painting themselves into a creative corner.

Setting is great, execution is not.

Imagine being this pathetic.

Seconding this. You really need active players who'll take up some part in defining the setting and you need to be a GM who is fine with your players getting to play author to the world a bit.

The setting is a real big deal though. Dishonored, Thief, Fallen London and Sunless Sea are all strong reference points. If you and your players are into that sort of stuff you'll love it. If not then there's a bunch of hacks out there to utilise it in other settings, but the general framework should probably remain"cunning band of outlaws trying to get up" with all the mechanics that tie into that theme.

It's a pretty good way of making sure that the entire party can do the gang's basic function, so being a group of shadows doesn't mean everyone needs to focus on stealth, letting the PCs still have their specialties

So, worth a read through?

BitD in my Veeky Forums? Nice.

I loved GMing it, and my players loved hesting in it. It was a great change of pace from the usual D&D campign, and it's going to be in my regular rotation from now on.

It's not for everyone, though, especially if you're not into the setting.

Is the whole score part of the game basically thinking on your feet while GMing and coming up with various obstacles?

I want to know more.

Yeah, I keep a running tab of the various gangs and NPC's that the PC's have interacted with to try and tie stuff back into an overarching plot. There's a couple tables in the back of the book to help with generating scores that function ok.

The basic premise of the setting is ~1k years ago, there was a magic cataclysm that destroyed the sun and broke the gates to the land of the dead. So it's always nighttime, people turn into ghosts when they die, and everything is powered by demon-whale oil.

Mechanically, games are split up into Scores, which are various crime-related missions. The intent is to get players into the heists as quickly as possible, as other anons have mentioned. Players can retroactively declare what items they're carrying while on missions, and can flashback to having prepared for x by doing y, in an effort to keep pre-mission planning to a minimum.

Characters are made from a variety of classes, although each class can actually pull abilities from other classes freely, so the only real difference is their XP triggers: Cutters want to fight and intimidate people, Whispers will want to solve problems with magic, etc.

It's pretty neat and helps to make your gang itself feel like as much of a character as the PCs do. Plus it's mostly a tally sheet and you don't bring the sheet up much during gameplay.

It's because Veeky Forums doesn't like narrativism. No, seriously. It (mostly) doesnt' care about the idea of discovering the characters and their inner workings, it wants to perform characters as they are conceived and without reconsidering them during play.
Basically Veeky Forums is simulationist as fuck, but the problem is that they are very creative as well (yes, believe it or not, this board IS brimming with creativity, naive and immature as it might be). Which should be a fucking sweet thing, but it's very difficult to have a decent "simulation" if the GM and every player wants to create something and they have different ideas about what the game is trying to simulate - at least in fantasy, in something like L5R it's probably minor, having a strongly defined setting.

Case in point: worldbuilding. An activity that isn't really defined as gm-only much and it's basically never spelled out as actual "rules"; nontheless, it would be anathema to the vast majority of Veeky Forums to even speak about team worldbuilding.
Funny thing is, not only decent players are almost always decent worldubilders and worldbuilding is perhaps the surest way to have commited players, but even if you went for the "expoloring the setting is the best part of the story" angle... that would mean you would try to emulate any genre. So, you wouldn't do simulationism.

In othe words, Veeky Forums likes The Sprawl but they wouldn't play The Veil... which is perfectly fine, but they mostly don't get that the problems at the table they talk about her (aside from douchebags, entitlet lazy asshole and Those Guys) are intertwined deeply with their playstyle.

That being said, I'm not really sure if BITD is even narrativist and I'm pretty saddened that there is some bullshit like "you can't prepare for the scores!". But what I'd like to ask, having only read the book, is if the "difficulty level" (positioning+effect) is more simple in play than in what appears to be on paper.

Oh, and anyone had experience with the alternate setting (persians and demons)?

Your argument fails. People like the gamey parts of these games and can still roleplay to the level that narrative cucks can play.

Narrative games often tell you to use player input to shape the world and good players can develop the world further by their own actions by improv. and any good GM can use their players to leverage greater stories.

I wouldn't advise building an entire world out of player input, it makes the players feel good, but lacks the true depth that a good GM can put into it.

But I do think Veeky Forums can and does roleplay. I never said anything to the contrary.

I don't know what "narrative" games might be (as opposed to narrativist games) so I can' reply to this one.

Have you ever tried it?

Bullshit, get the fuck out of here shill trash

So many people talking and giving opinions on the quality or lack thereof of the game without even having read or played it.

I've read the book and played in a short (3 session) game. I had fun with it. And it accomplishes the goals it sets out to achieve. Getting the players involved and into the thick of action without the hours of planning. and getting caught up in minutia that inevitably falls apart at first contact with the DM. Your mileage may vary of course. If you enjoy hours of brainstorming, planning and gathering resources. Then you'll probably not like it. If that stuff bores you after twenty minutes then you might like it.

From my admittedly limited experience (though apparently far greater than the majority of people posting in this thread) the thing I had the most difficulty with was that the game seemed too focused on the heists and episodic. And I wanted more downtime RP going on. Of course that is probably more due to the GM and the nature of our games (post-work in a 3-4 hour time slot) than any inherent flaw in the actual system.

kill yourself shill rat

How come there's so many vitriolic assholes nowadays on Veeky Forums...

I'm waiting for null vector probably, whole weird victorian aesthetics are kinda not my thing.

My impression from the book is that you can have "not downtime" playtime aside from heists: you will not do the downtime activities, but you could perfectly Consort with your contacts or whatever.

There's nothing stopping you from roleplaying downtime activities, with the occasional roll thrown in when there could be complications.

John Harper's group on his Youtube channel often roleplays indulging in their Vices, getting new contacts, and hanging out in their Lair. A couple of subplots even arose from their downtime roleplay. It adds a lot of flavor, IMO.

So there's a lot of GM fiat in what goes on in the game and how it's structured, despite the heist -> downtime -> heist -> downtime cycle of the rules?

At least in my experience yeah. I usually have a lead in to the heist at the very least, and if my players are having fun planning for a heist or getting into shit with their downtime like hell I'm going to stop that. A few heists have even come up based on their downtime rolls and how they reacted to them.

I like the system overall, but of course I'm going to tweak things to better suit my tastes.

>counting money in shadowrun

Sign of the times my friend. Politics is the new religion and it has to inhabit every aspect of your life, including your stupid games of pretend.

And it's going to get worse before it gets better.

This game looks pretty interesting. Might take some getting used to from what I've heard here and seen in some reviews, but I'm going to give it a shot.

I homebrewed it a bit into a Rogue Trader game, it's fun so far.
I really like the crew sheet with the faction relations and strategic-level game that goes on, let's you have a sandbox that stays strongly directed without too much work on the GM's side.
It's got a good level of crunch for a narrative game. The gear and injury/stress rules are fun to work with as a player.

I can see how people chaft at the retroactive planning for missions (the gear rules do this too) but it's a stylistic choice. When GMing this sort of game I try to keep the pace going really quick so those rules really help for that.

Narrative games encourage you to come to a 'table consensus' for rulings, so the first few times something isn't specified in the rules the GM should ask the other players what should happen.

Once the GM has a good feel for what sort of ruling the players feel are appropriate they do it without consultation, but can touch base with the players again if they want.

Everyone sort of co-GMs.

Does the book provide enough info on the 'meta-game' setting for the GM to easily create up a score quickly as it happens? I'm a little worried about being able to come up with a reasonable sounding mission with nothing to go off of.

The GM isn't meant to come up with scores, the players are.

To be more exact the players decide what they're trying to get from whom, while the GM comes up with all the obstacles and stuff that goes wrong.

But yes there's a fair bit of setting info though you're expected to flesh it out a bunch during play. Again, not just the GM, but the players too. If they ask a lore/setting-relevant question get them or a different player to answer it.

I meant in terms of the obstacles. Are there a good enough idea about what the players will encounter when they go to a certain location, considering the players decide where they go?

I'm aware of this. Like I said it's more a factor of GM and the format of limited time in which to play. Mostly the latter. There is nothing stopping us form more downtime non-heisty stuff. it just wasn't the focus of our play. Which was sort of disappointing for me.

There is a a score tables, and a bunch of location descriptions but if you are talking about some sort of obstacle monster-manual kind of thing, like:
>Guard patrol
>6 segment cloak
>Small gang
>Weak to: stealth, deception
>Strong against: force, weird shit.
i don't thing there is one.

Why don't you read the book?

It doesn't give example obstacles, but it's all pretty tropey. You do need to be good at improv, though.

It is harder to GM 'directionless' scenes like that. How do you know when to call a close to the hanging out in the drug den scene? How do you keep it interesting for everyone? If I have a good idea about something that could happen I'd probably roleplay it out, otherwise I'd want to keep it moving. It's about reading the table too, I guess. But all that's pretty hard to codify in rules, it's just roleplaying experience.

Red hot opinion: one of the reason Veeky Forums doesn't like narrative games is because they suck unless you're good at roleplaying.

Veeky Forums doesn't like narrative games because Veeky Forums doesn't play games and it's much harder to complain and argue about narrative games as opposed to mechanical ones.

And we've all turned into miserable fucks over the last year and that's not helping.

Veeky Forums was never good, Veeky Forums was never good. But it's all we got