With the conclusion of the 7th Sea game, we’ve started a Blades in the Dark game with the same crew, but I’m a player this time.
We are already in over our heads.
The Blackfingers don’t really view themselves as a GANG, per se. They’re just a group of former university students who got their hands on a press and have found there’s money to be made in pamphleteering and penny sheets. Their little gossip and fashion rag has become tremendously popular in Charterhall, and with that success has come opportunity and attention.
The prominent members of the Blackfingers are:
Jack Fingers – A Skovlan Leech responsible for keeping the press working. He is explicitly neither the source of the gang’s name, nor the leader, but every assumes he is both.
Isadora “Izumi” Stanbury, of those Stanbury’s, the family of Lawyers. With the natural talents of a Slide, she was on the track for success when an indiscretion put her on the fast track for Ironhook. The family stepped in and put all of the blame on her partner, but then washed their hands of her.
Luca Skleros is a cutter from Severos who found her way to Duskvol after some…problems…back home. She was roped in to help the gang when their first pamphlet angered a haberdasher enough to send some folks to rough them up.
Achilles Lynch – Spider and youngest son of a prominent merchant family, he has a deep intellectual interest in the flow of information but must balance this against family obligations.
Their as-yet-unnamed pamphlet is mostly focused on gossip and fashion, but even so has angered the Ink Rakes (and mildly annoyed the University) but they have great support from the citizens of Charterhall who enjoy the colorful rag.
Play began with the gang broke and lacking anything valuable to print. After some discussion, it was brought up that Vinzini had just finished his latest season of hat designs, and was going to be presenting them at the mill to begin production ASAP. If the gang could get a scoop on that, it would sell like mad.
So, the group managed to sneak in, posing as foremen. A distraction by a bomb-throwing associate gave the Slide plenty of time to take notes (and, it turned out, to pinch one of the hats1 and for the Leech to make off with some interesting looking chemicals. In fact, the hard part ended up being the fact that if their distraction caused too much damage, the hats would not go to market, and the scoop would be worthless. Thankfully the Cutter stepped up and ran the fire brigades with military discipline, and everything cleared out well.
In the aftermath, the crew made a few bucks, but generated a little bit more heat than the job might normally cause (what with the stolen hat and OH YES, THE FIRE). Downtime was mostly clearing heat and training.
—
Ok, so since this was episode zero, we went through chargen, a first job and a first round of downtime in one go, so it was all a little condensed. For all that, our GM (not me) did a wonderful job of making sure we hit all the critical mechanical notes to get everyone up to speed on it. The table was largely unfamiliar with Blades so it was all in all a really interesting experience. Some impressions.
There are two ways to do playbook-style chargen: Pick a playbook and build from there, or build an idea then try to find a playbook that matches. I think the second method is better, but it is unquestionably harder (or perhaps more precisely, less well supported).
This really drove home to me how much a crew needs a purpose or a gimmick. The game is so open ended and potentially player driven that it feels like a waste to just be generically criminal. That may be my problem – I suspect the game excels at generically criminal (and drives it to evolve) but it was a bit of a speed bump as we discussed potential crews.
I ended up playing the Spider. I would complain about typecasting, but it was my choice because – in the absence of a strong idea to the contrary – whatever book I play is going to get played like a spider, so I went with it.
But tellingly, now that we’ve played even a little, I have my head around some solid non-masterminds character ideas, so I am totally ready for jail time.
In deciding our relationships we discovered the University was not on the faction list. So we fixed that.
Yet another hands on realization of something I’d previously only gotten intellectually – A job could be driven almost entirely by Devil’s Bargains, and that would be awesome.
The players really, really like the load rules.
They also very much liked devil’s bargains and flashbacks, though they’re a bit skeptical of the XP model as abusable by someone opting to play towards it (and I can’t fault them – that’s 100% true)
I had not realized how effectively the downtime move to reduce heat was. Since my Spider has 3 dots of Consort (yay Hawkers), I cleared out all of our trouble from the night’s job without hassle.
I have a knee jerk sense that if you’re helping on a desperate roll, you should also get XP, since you’re also on the hook for consequences, but I haven’t really thought that through yet.
We spent a lot of time waffling between whether we were Hawkers or Smugglers, since “The News” is a weird sort of product, and not a 100% match with the assumptions of the setting (which skew chemically).
A thing I’ve noticed: The very big fans of BitD conversationally drop the names of gangs and NPCs like they’re common parlance, and it’s clear that buy in is tied very closely to that level of buy in to the setting. It is, in some ways, reminiscent of the Amber DRPG, where the roster of NPCs was a known, shared list but it was built right into the game that these NPCs were different in everyone’s game. That was really powerful in Amber, and it’s good to see that idea (faces – who knew?) built into the setting from the getgo, and I will certainly build on this for some stuff I’m working on.
Anyway, first real session is in 2 weeks. I’m pretty jazzed.
Her vice is fashion, so who can blame her for grabbing a one of a kind design?. ↩︎
My Origins acquisitions, in the order I see them on the table (or they pop into my mind)
Hero Realms and all the class cards – I like Star Realms a lot, but I missed this kickstarter. This is about 85% Star Realms reskin with solid theme and nice tweaks. Have played a few games and enjoyed them. http://www.whitewizardgames.com/herorealms/
Dresden Files Accelerated – Technically got my copy as we left for Origins, but whatever. I have read some of this in PDF, and it’s awesome, but I’ve really been waiting for a physical copy. – http://www.evilhat.com/home/dresden-files-accelerated/
Shahrazad and The Ravens of Thri Sahashri are both co-op games from Osprey because I wanted new co-op and those are the games twitter recommended. They are a total crapshoot. https://ospreypublishing.com/store/osprey-games
Vast: the Crystal Caverns – This is a weird game of tile laying and dragon slaying and other stuff with a million components and somewhat confusing rules, but it looks utterly intriguing and came well recommended, so I took a swing. http://ledergames.com
From the Gamelyn Games booth I picked up Tiny Epic Western and the expansion for Tiny Epic Galaxy. They had the expansion for Heroes too, but that game never clicked for me, and everything else was just promos. I had good luck with these games last year, and they’re a pain in the ass to acquire, so I was happy to scoop them up. http://www.gamelyngames.com/games/tiny-epic-quest/
Gravity Dice – I got a set of these last year and they were one of my favorite things from the Con. This year they had colors and 5 packs, so I picked some up for the family. http://gravitydice.com
Norse Foundry Fate Dice – They had new colors which were AWESOME, and there are some benefits to being the licensor. 🙂 https://metaldice.myshopify.com/collections/metal-fate-dice (Also got to see some of their aluminum dice and they are totally getting acquired at some point)
Fidget Spinners – So, two guys brought 4 duffle bags of high end fidget spinners and sold them out of a booth near the back. I am pretty sure that they made bank.
Pyramid Poker – It’s a stacking game with poker scoring that is two player fun, and there is a full 54 card deck of wooden bricks in the box, so it also begs for re-use and was super reasonably priced – http://rnrgames.com/pyramid-poker
Shadowrun Sixth World Tarot – Last year there was art for this all over the convention, but the deck was not yet out. Seeing that it was available, I scooped it right the hell up. (No link because Catalyst’s website it like a stab in the eye)
A Gencon 2015 Tote So, this was a gift from Jason at IPR upon discovery of what a bag nerd I am. It’s a gorgeous promotional bag with an image of the history of gaming on the side. It’s a goddamned treasure.
S. Petersen’ Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors – Ok, so this was a gorgeous book, and I got it as a gift for a friend I do not see nearly often enough. But here’s a thing: I don’t buy Lovecraftian stuff normally. It’s not my bag. But holy crap if the Chaosium booth was not full of really awesome looking stuff. I am used to it feeling dated and like it’s just riding on the strength of the CoC brand, but not this year – it was well stocked with things that looked exciting enough to push me to maybe reconsider my stance on Lovecraftia. http://www.chaosium.com/s-petersens-field-guide-to-lovecraftian-horrors-hardcover/
Set of Easy Roller Dice – In the absence of chessex the floor was stuffed with companies selling beautiful dice of every variety. I picked up some of the Easy Roller gunmetal ones as a gift, and they’re lovely, but I admit I had a bit of buyer’s remorse when I got the the Norse Foundry ones.
A buffer Quarterstaff from Forged Foam. The kid had been asking for this for months, and it was stupid expensive, but totally worth it to see his face. https://www.forgedfoam.com/
Fabriano Notebook – These are wonderful notebooks and they are absolutely my weakness when I stop by the Columbus Dick Blick. http://fabriano.com/en/267/ecoqua
I preordered a game called Unearth. Visually, it is very clearly derived from Monument Valley, which was initially off putting, but then I realized it was from the folks who made Boss Monster, so mimicking video game styles is already pretty much on brand for them. I got to play a little in the booth, and I liked it enough to actively talk it up to people. If they’d had it for sale, I’d have bought one. They did not, so preorder ($30, free shipping) was the way to go. http://www.brotherwisegames.com/product/unearth-preorder/
I will fully cop that I was skeptical about War of the Cross, the 7th Sea wargame that kickstarts on the 20th. My love of 7th Sea is well known, but I don’t really pick up war games these days, and war games based off RPG settings have a long history of mediocrity. However, I was entirely sold by the booth pitch. John described it as Cosmic Encounters meets Diplomacy, and while that immediately made me leery, Lenny supplemented the pitch with the explanation that it was “Divorce proof”, which intrigued me. Short form, the nations have some special tricks (that’s the Cosmic Encounters part) but the really interesting part are some tricks to streamline and standardize some diplomacy-style negotiation. I’ll be backing this. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnwickpresents/12387016?token=1d0034c6
I realized as I sat down to write that I never did a writeup for the previous session, so here’s the compressed version.
I started the game with a discussion of whether or not our assassin had actually killed the guild member, since it had happened offscreen. We discussed the corruption mechanic and ultimately included that yes she had and that it was tearing her up.
The heroes had successfully escaped the harbor before the Eisen had locked it down, and were sailing with Red to Costa (a port on the western short of Vesten)
In Costa, they met Red’s contact who she had described as a “The best smuggler on the Trade Sea”, who was revealed to be a Porte adept who could, somewhat critically, get them to the Thane very fast.
The captain and the Doctor accompanied Red and the smuggler through the bloody hellscape to reach the Thane, tell him what had transpired in Vendel and ask him to send men. Red stayed with the Thane, who asked the heroes to return and deliver warnings to his daughter, as the timeline for her wedding to the MacDuff had been accellerated. They returned with he smuggler.
Meanwhile, The Swordsman would have no truck with such dark arts, and so stayed behind. The acrobat (or perhaps I should start saying the Assassin) was not so devout, but was feeling guilty enough to stay as well. They chose to investigate some mysterious men they’d encountered in trying to find Red’s contact (some violence was involved. Tastefully.)
The Swordsman & Acrobat investigated the mystery men’s ship and observed (but could not stop) a delivery of a large supply of Vesten weapons, armor and clothing (extra Vesten-y in fact). They also discovered a badly injured Sir Mandrake in the hold along with evidence that the supplies were going to someone who was planning to attack the MacDuff’s wedding posing as Vesten.
Heroes regrouped, shared information, scuttled the bad guy’s ship and set sail for Kirkwall.
—
Ok, so that lead to the latest session, which we all went into knowing it was the finale. I handed out an extra hero point apiece, because finale. We had a minor logistical problem because the Captain’s sheet was missing. Thankfully we had an old one, and a willingness to fake it, but that was a sour note to start on.
As our heroes sailed to Kirkwall, they encountered a damaged ship sailing for Costa. Wary of an ambush, they took precautions, but this was mostly a chance for me to pass along a warning that ships had been attacked by Vesten wielding lightning.
In Kirkwall, the harbor was filled, with Elaine’s flagship clearly visible (as well as signs of other lightning-damaged ships). The Gates was docked in an out of the way place. They placed Mandrake at church hospital for anonymity, and went to check in with McBride, who was surprised to see them, but brought them up to speed, mostly on things they already knew, including the Vesten lightning raiders, with a sidebar to the Doctor that the current chaos has the fishermen wary, which means the cod futures endeavor is in great danger.
The heroes then proceed to the Palace to see the princess. Along the way they encounter Paolo (the Swordsman’s former pupil, now head of the Princess’s guard) and have some pleasant banter about how horrible the decorations are here and the general Marcher aversion to solid colors. In time Marcela (Princess’s handmaid, spy and friend) ushered them in. There was time before the princess would be free, so Marcela roped in the royal tailors to help the heroes look their best for the wedding. The scene that followed was a fashion montage that ended with each player getting to describe their ideal outfit (which they got because, as Marcela said, she has budget). I suspect this may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it was super fun.
Eventually that concluded, and they were joined by the princess.1
The heroes told their tale and delivered their warning, and there was a lot of (inconclusive) discussion of who could be behind it to what end. The biggest problem was that this disruption could benefit too many people to really narrow it down, but the three likeliest candidates were Avalon (who want to put the kibosh on the Marches getting friendly with the Vendel league) or the Atabean’s or Vodacce (who want to hurt the League). Avalon was mostly ruled out because the wedding was only happening at Elaine’s insistence, but one can never be entirely sure with Elaine.
The princess asked The Captain to share his concerns about an attack with he MacDuff, who promptly tried to use it as an excuse to postpone the wedding and was shot down hard by Sir Lugh, the queen’s….something. Lugh got a briefing from the Captain afterwards, and arranged to have Sir Mandrake transferred to the embassy.
With the clock ticking down to the Wedding, the heroes checked with Sir Mandrake (who was being guarded by Sir Math, the Brian Blessed knight) who mostly told them things they knew, but did inform them that the enemy had lightning weapons that used some sort of device. This was consistent with something that the Princess had said (that there weren’t enough Vesten stormcallers to actually account for the current problem) and lead to the Heroes wondering if the weapons were using Leviathan oil (which had voltaic properties).
To this end, The Doctor and The Acrobat sought out Doctor Benito, the Vodacce biologist whose theories on the Leviathan’s had been critical to their early adventures. Benito’s lab was a slaughterhouse, isolated from the university under a cloud of perpetual stench, which is why the decaying body of Doctor Benito had probably gone unnoticed. He’d been clearly stabbed in the back, and his things had been thoroughly rifled. The acrobat heard faint movement upstairs and headed up the outside of the building as a fwumph of someone starting a fire was heard. The acrobat pursued a fleeing figure across the rooftops and faced a choice of attacking him blind, or letting him get away but seeing who it was. She chose the latter and watches Giuseppe (A fellow “orphan” of Vodacce, last seen trying to assassinate the princess and ‘clearly’ died in the process)
It was also noted that when the fire fully engulfed the lab, the explosion was electric, and it appeared very much like a massive lightning strike. FORESHADOWING!
The Doctor escaped, and she later tracked down Benito’s students and terrified his notes out of them. This was handy since it gave a decent diagram of what leviathan oil explosives might look like. Meanwhile, the Marcella asks if The Swordsman would be willing to walk the Princess down the aisle, since he is on the short list of people she trusts. He agrees and, being a gentleman, also arranges to smuggle some small fighting axes in so that the princess is better able to take care of herself. He also had a conversation with Paolo about duty, with Paolo asking why he was putting himself at risk for these people he owed nothing to.
The wedding starts the next morning, and the search for explosives has been fruitless – the castle is just too big and they have too few searchers, and there is not enough time. The Doctor continues searching while the others return to attend the wedding. The Captain sits by Sir Math, the Acrobat lurks and the Swordsman walks the princess down the aisle. It’s all quite lovely. The chapel is on the edge of the cliff that looks out over the harbor and the ocean, and it’s all wonderfully picturesque, though perhaps slightly marred if you notice the pained, lovelorn looks that the MacDuff is throwing to Elaine. It is noon on the nose when the couple is pronounced and all hell breaks loose.
Cutting away for the moment, the Doctor has pulled of some economist-savant stuff and traced certain casks of wine to a vineyard financed by an Eisen holding company that was Reece toy bought out by an Avalonian trader who is a front for Macbride. OBVIOUSLY, that’s where the bombs will be, and as she goes to investigate, she finds rather a lot of toughs hanging around that room. She loosens her axe, and goes to “negotiate”.
At roughly the same time, there’s an explosion and the back wall blows in with a crash of thunder and lighting and horn-helmed Vesten rush in. Violence ensues.
So, practically this was one scene, but spent cutting across 4 threads. That was…interesting. It actually worked less well than I’d expected, but it turned out ok. But that split also will make it a little convoluted to explain, so bear with me.
The Swordsman assessed the threat, grabbed the princess (queen, now) and headed out the back. He expected Paolo to follow, but he did not. The swordsman did not stop until he got the new queen to safety, at which point she implored him to return and find Marcela, and he did so.
Meanwhile, The Captain saw that Sir Lugh had ushered Elaine out with great speed, so he and Sir Math turned to face the horde. It was glorious, but at the moment when The Captain called upon his luck, he had a momentary view down to the harbor where he saw MacBride’s ship setting sail, so he did the only thing he could: Had Math throw him.
The Acrobat immediately realized this attack was coming from a stupid direction, and so looked for the hidden thing. She spotted someone watching from the kitchen doors and made a dramatic leap, then slide, throwing her knife as she kicked the door open, and coming to a halt only to realize he knife was buried in Giuseppe’s chest, and with his dying breath he croaks “I was…trying…to…warn you” before hands made of shadow envelop him.
The Doctor’s scene was not described so much as presented as a montage of violence. The Doctor has every brute fighting advantage in the book, and the simple truth is that she walks through them like death incarnate. There is a certain amount of chasing and disarming, but the bomb threat is dealt with efficiently and brutally.
The Acrobat leapt into shadows after Giuseppe, and found herself in darkness. Using sorte threads like a spider, she took her bearings and realized there were two people here (besides Giuseppe), the one who had grabbed him and a not-really-human figure who had apparently noticed her, but said nothing. While on each previous encounter, her enemy in the shadows had an advantage of surprise and position, this time it was more of a fair fight, and it turned out he was not good at those. The Acrobat cut him to ribbons with blade and fate, and as he came to his end he cursed the other figure and demanded aid. It asked if he was requesting his seventh favor, and upon agreement the darkness vanishes. THe inhuman figure he stitched the mans wounds with shadows, smiled at the Acrobat, then walked off through a wall, declaring “Our business is concluded”. The Acrobat finished her job, this time out of pity, for it was clear the shadow stitching was having a fairly horror-movie effect on the man.
Meanwhile, the Captain was being thrown from the docks, which would be utterly preposterous under any other circumstance, but at this moment had the strongest knight of Avalon doing the Throwing and the toughest knight of Avalon being thrown. And even so, it depended on a liberal interpretation of some glamours, but that’s what finale’s are for. Having crashed into the docks, The Captain was a walking dead man, with bones poking out and things at odd angles as he walked onto the deck of The Gates and started barking orders. I could pretend it was a dramatic fight, but it was a hardy privateer vessel vs a fat, fleeing merchantman. The Gates got off a broadside before Macbride even ran out the guns, and the ensuing explosion(full of lightning as it was) badly damaged The Gates as it washed over it. When the smoke cleared, The Captain was nowhere to be seen.
When The Swordsman returned to the chapel, the fight was still in progress. The MacDuff had not fled, but was surrounded by his men – or mostly surrounded. The ones in front of him were engaged with the faux Vesten, but the ones behind him had been quietly cut down, and the assassin was advancing on the MacDuff’s exposed back. It was, of course, Paolo.
The Swordsman knocked the blade aside, and Paolo’s face is that of a crushed man, as they engaged. After a few exchanges, Paolo cursed and asked why the damn fool old man had not left. The fight grew more brutal, and when MacDuff and his men finally turned and noticed what had happened, Paolo was dead on the floor with a sword of the Hierophant’s Guard left in his body, and The Swordsman nowhere to be found.
So, the queen was saved. The assassins were not in position to silence any surviving Vesten, so the conspiracy was unwound. MacBride was scattered across the trade sea in pieces. So we cut to a few scenes of aftermath.
The first was a funeral. A statue of the Captain had gone up above his Cenotaph, with the remaining heroes and allies in attendance. There is much mourning, save from the Fate Witch who was The Captain’s first love of the game, who is beatific.
The second is a rooftop farewell between Marcella and The Acrobat, who is returning to Vodacce to finish the Orphanage once and for all. There is a fleeting kiss, then a whoosh.
The third is of the Guildhall in Vesten. The Doctor (who quite shamelessly took advantage of the disruption of MacBride’s death) is taking her seat on the council.
Roll Credits.
Of course, there’s a stinger. Halfway through the credits, we cut back to the Captain’s statue, then pull back to see a figure standing before it. We pull back a little bit further and realize the figure is urinating on the cenotaph. He finishes, turns and the Captain adjusts his hat and strides back towards the sea.
Continue Credits.
Final scene pans over a monastery on the mountains between Castille and Montaigne. A lone figure is walking up the long stairs up the mountains. He carries no sword, and his clothes are simple, but we recognize him as the Swordsman before he steps through the gates, and the screen fades to black.
It was a fun campaign. We’ll be doing Blades in the Dark next (the Swordsman’s player will be GMing), so I’m now turning over my experience with the game in my head. I am, I fear, dwelling more on the rough edges than on the parts that worked well. That’s no reflection on the game, just the way my brain works.
All in all, the flavor was right. This absolutely supported a swashbuckling game where the heroes were not just second bananas to the real movers and shakers of the setting. It still allowed space for powerful and important NPCs, but did so without demanding that the players need to be shackled by it. That alone makes for 80% win.
So the difficulties in the remaining 20% are irksome, but not a real problem. I’ll be frank, even after running it, I feel like there’s still something I don’t get about the system. There’s a flow and cadence to the Raise system which is amazing when the situation lines up, but feels off when it does not (and it is usually off). This is more frustrating that it would be because it feels Iike the solution is just around the corner – that just a bit of tuning would nail it down.
I dunno. The problem may be me. Maybe I’ll watch some actual play and see.
Beyond that I will say that I was not satisfied with the Hero Point economy. The system is full of hooks where it’s theoretically possible for players to earn more Hero Points, but they all felt a little bit too fiddly for me. I am, obviously, a big proponent of point economies, so there was no hesitation on my part.
Ironically, I think the answer to all of this is to think of this as an anti-indie game. A lot of these problems go away (or diminish) if I decide to take a much looser view of the rules and apply much stronger fiat. And that would make for a pretty good game. But I’ve been trying to play more “by the book” to push myself out of my comfort zones, and maybe this was not the right game to do that with.
Which is, I note, not a criticism. If the game is better suited to a strong, entertaining GM (which, I should note, definitely aligns with Wick’s advice) with the rules as guidelines, then that’s great, and the only issue is communicating that.
Anyway, I’m glad I ran this. It was a fun campaign and a return to a game I love. But I’m also glad to be taking a break. It’ll give time for the line to mature (we have so many wonderful maps yet to come) and I’ll be curious to see what it looks like when the whole world is spread out before us.
This was a fun scene because both NPCs are serious folks in a serious situation, but the heroes are people they can actually relax in front of, and that was obvious in their interactions. This is a small thing, but I really like it when NPC interactions can convey those notes of actual friendship – it goes a long way towards letting the NPCs be competent and important but not overshadow the heroes, because that’s your bud, and their success is in some way your success. ↩︎
That is, I should not, entirely how we played it. As a table, we’re comfortable with switching to cinematic language to describe play, sometimes very literally. ↩︎
