Blades in the Dark Actual Play

I got the chance to play in an online game of Blades in the Dark last Saturday and had an amazing time! We used Discord for voice comms, and Roll20 to track stuff. I was joining a game already in progress, so I am still finding my footing, but did not really miss a beat. My first post will lay out the basic fiction. I will go into more detail in future posts.

The action takes place in the imperial city of Duskvol, a haunted industrial center known mostly for refining Leviathan Oil, the blood of ancient powerful demons who roam the seas, into ectoplasm - a necessary fuel for much of the technological might of the Imperium, particularly the lightning barriers which keep the restless spirits of the dead at bay. Our game so far has focused on Charhallow, a working class neighborhood that is has a rather large Skovlander refugee community. Skovlanders are a people who were recently brought into the Imperium by force after a rather bloody occupation. Duskvol is a corrupt, crime ridden city, and we'll be doing our part to add to that crime.

The player characters have come together to sell arms and munitions to underserved parts of the community, particularly Skovlanders. We currently have an arrangement with Hoxley, an ethnically Skovlander Imperial Army Quartermaster who provides us with access to surplus caches of weapons. In game terms we are a group of Hawkers. We also do our part to keep the community safe from the real criminal element. We're like a mix of the Sons of Anarchy and the Real IRA.

Here are the player characters:

• Systir Rúna Helsdottir i Hrafning. One of the Wights of Skovlan - The deathlands nomads who refused to surrender and kept the "Unity War" going for 30 years. Rúna lost the war for her home and has come to the streets of Duskvol to fight the enemy where they live. When Runa arrived in Charhallow, she found that there was very little in restarting hostilities. Rúna has decided to protect Charhallow and try to start a new life, but is still at heart a revolutionary. Her Playbook is the Hound, A Deadly Sharpshooter and Tracker.
• Khara D'har. No one really knows much about Khara, except that she knows people and people know her. Khara is Iruvian, a mysterious people that have entered into an alliance with the Imperium. They are known for their elegance, learning, and for being exceptional duelists. Some say their noble houses are ruled over by a set of powerful Demon Princes. Khara is charming, sly, and dangerous. She has a violent streak hidden beneath all her refinement. Her Playbook is the Spider, A Devious Mastermind. She set things in motion to involve the group in the gun trade.
• Candros Slane. Candros grew up on the mean streets of The Crow's Foot neighborhood where he met a young Iruvian girl who would eventually become his wife. Candros lived a storied life, first in the Iruvian Red Sashes gang, and later as an imperial sniper. Candros joined the Imperial Army as part of a deal to avoid time in Iron Hook Prison. While serving he did something to renege on the deal and was sent back to Iron Hook. As play begins Candros has just gotten out of the Hook, found that his wife is missing, and his kids are in the orphanage he grew up in. He can't get them out or provide a life for them without substantial coin. His playbook is the Hound, A Deadly Sharpshooter and Tracker.

There is one more PC, but he was not involved in the session I participated in. I do not feel comfortable commenting on him.

Before I go into more depth about the session, game, and how everything came together I wanted to offer a list of the highlights of play.

• The central question of Blades is - How much are you willing to risk to get what you want? It does so in a number of ways. Heat, Countdown Clocks, Position vs. Effect, Stress. All of these mechanics really coalesce in play in a way that adds minimal overhead, but keeps things extremely tense.
• The structure of play is extremely loose, but adds focus. I always felt like I was working towards something important.
• I love Devil's Bargains. Having the choice to improve your chances at significant fictional costs feels really great in play. I love that any player is allowed to suggest a Devil's Bargain at any moment. The entire first session hinged on a Devil's Bargain I suggested.
• You can really push for the things you want as a player, but there are significant costs. I almost stressed out and gained my first of four traumas during the first session.
• It is extremely smooth in play. We never lost sight of the fiction for a moment.
• Downtime is extremely important. It adds a nice denouemont to the proceedings.
• I love the way experience works. It helps you really reflect on what the session means for your character.
• I absolutely love the way having advancement and a character sheet for your crew keeps the game focused on the group as its own thing, not just a collection of PCs.
• We got our first wanted level. That should really ratchet up the tension going forward. We need to either frame someone or accept that one of us might be spending some time in Iron Hook in the near future.
• The game does an excellent job of helping bring characters in and making them feel like a part of the setting.
• Playing the game has only made me want to run it even more.

This is the first mention of Blades of the Dark that I've seen. It sounds vaguely weird fantasy in genre. Is the game heavily influenced by the writing of China Mieville? Regardless, your description makes it sound very cool. I'm intrigued and eager to hear more!

darkbard said:

This is the first mention of Blades of the Dark that I've seen. It sounds vaguely weird fantasy in genre. Is the game heavily influenced by the writing of China Mieville? Regardless, your description makes it sound very cool. I'm intrigued and eager to hear more!

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Hey [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION],

It is definitely heavily inspired by weird fantasy and swords and sorcery. There is a hack for Bag Las being worked on in the excellent Google+ group. It's primary inspirations are Thief, Dishonored, Vlad Taltos, and The Lies of Locke Lamora. There are definitely bits of Lovecraft and Howard in there too. Here's a basic description of the setup:

Blades in the Dark said:

THE GAME

Blades in the Dark is a game about a group of daring scoundrels building a criminal enterprise on the haunted streets of an industrial-fantasy city. There are heists, chases, escapes, dangerous bargains, bloody skirmishes, deceptions, betrayals, victories, and deaths.

We play to find out if the fledgling crew can thrive amidst the teeming threats of rival gangs, powerful noble families, vengeful ghosts, the Bluecoats of the City Watch, and the siren song of the scoundrels’ own vices.

THE SETTING

The game takes place in the cold, foggy city of Doskvol (aka Duskwall or “the Dusk”). It’s industrial in its development. Imagine a world like ours during the second industrial revolution of the 1870s—there are trains, steam-boats, printing presses, simple electrical technology, carriages, and the black smog of chimney smoke everywhere. Doskvol is something like a mashup of Venice, London, and Prague. It’s crowded with row-houses, twisting streets, and criss-crossed with hundreds of little waterways and bridges.

The city is also a fantasy. The world is in perpetual darkness and haunted by ghosts—a result of the cataclysm that shattered the sun and broke the Gates of Death a thousand years ago. The cities of the empire are each encircled by crackling lightning towers to keep out the vengeful spirits and twisted horrors of the deathlands. To power these massive barriers, the titanic metal ships of the leviathan hunters are sent out from Doskvol to extract electroplasmic blood from massive demonic terrors upon the ink-dark Void Sea.

You’re in a haunted Victorian-era city trapped inside a wall of lightning powered by demon blood.

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Wow, that sounds like it's made of pure awesome! I definitely need to investigate more about this! I'm a huge Mieville fan, though the other references are new to me. So glad I clicked on your post, [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION]. Thanks.

Theres a pretty great online play of a blades game run by the creator on Rollplay:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-oTJHKXHicTtCC4rgmFSfZSSQsZmENAz

Let's talk about character and crew creation!

Before I get two in depth with anything, I wanted to provide some commentary on the reference and playbook sheets found here. They really are a thing of beauty. John Harper, the game's designer is also a graphic designer. He designed and iterated on the playbooks, crew sheets, and reference material as part of the game design process. Usability was a clear focus of the design. Everything a player needs to play the game is included in these sheets. The actual text of the game provides meaningful context, but only the GM really needs the text.

Download the sheets if you want to follow along.

Let's carry on!

While I was unable to join the rest of the crew for the first two sessions of actual play, I was there for the short Session Zero where we talked about the game, and did crew and character creation. So, one of the unique features of Blades in the Dark is that player characters are not just a loose collection of individuals who happen to go on adventures together. They are part of a crew trying to rise up the ranks of the criminal underworld of Duskvol and they are trying to accomplish something meaningful that will live beyond what any of them do as individuals. The crew becomes a focus of play, a character in its own right. As such, it gets its own sheet and advances through play. You start at the bottom with no Tier and only 2 Coin between the whole lot. Characters may come and go, but the crew is always there.

Here's How Crew Creation Works

1. Choose a crew type. Here's where we choose what our crew is broadly about. This helps to provide focus to players in the sandbox of Duskvol. You can decide to be Hawkers selling a variety of contraband and taking street corners, Assassins who do murder for hire and ransom jobs, Smugglers who transport that contraband from place to place, Bravos who extort and run protection rackets, amongst other things. This is not like binding. You can always take on scores of any variety. It's there to focus players and GM on the types of things your crew does most often. Each crew type gets its own sheet. What you select affects how your crew advances, the crew upgrades uniquely available to them, turf available, and the suggested contacts available to them. It also affects which crew upgrades are initially set. Each crew types also have a set of suggested abilities, but you are not limited to those belonging to your crew type. Any time you advance you can choose a special ability from another crew. It's just there to keep you focused if you need to.
2. Begin with Tier 0, with strong hold and 0 Rep. You start with 2 Coin. Use them wisely! Your Crew's Tier represents their over all influence and power in Duskvol. You start at the bottom. Your hold is how strongly you have a grasp on your crew's power base. This fluctuates according to the events of play. Your Crew's Rep represents your social currency in the setting. Coin represents actual currency. Keep in eye on Coin. There are various decision points in Crew Creation that affect your Crew's position in setting that make use of it. We are already playing the game!
3. Choose an initial reputation and lair. Choose how the rest of the fictional world sees you. Choices are things like Ambitious, Brutal, Daring, Honorable. Make your own if you want. Look at the map and choose a district to make your lair in. Describe it. Here we are doing important stuff. We are choosing how we are seen, and where we rest between scores. This becomes a fixture of play. We are getting connected to the setting. We have a home now.
4. Establish your hunting grounds. Look at the map and choose where your crew operates out of most of the time. We get certain advantages to operating in that area. Decide how to deal with the faction that controls that area. You can pay them 1 Coin to secure the right to operate in that area, You can pay 2 Coin to secure the right to operate in the area and gain a measure of shared interest (+1 Faction Status), or pay nothing and operate under the noses of the faction that controls the area. You get -1 faction status. We're already paying the faction game and making decisions that will meaningfully shape play. We choose who our enemies and allies are.
5. Choose a special ability. Pick a special ability from your faction sheet.
6. Assign Crew Upgrades. This is stuff like special features of your lair, followers, quality of gear available to your crew, and training advantages. One faction helped with an upgrade. Take +1 status with them or spend one coin to take +2 status with them. One faction suffered as the result of one of your upgrades take -1 faction status or spend 1 Coin to smooth things over with them.
7. Choose a favorite contact. Choose a contact from the list to be an asset to your crew. They have their own enemies and allies. Take +1 status with their ally and -1 status with their enemy. You can choose to be deeper in bed with your contact. Take +2 status with their ally and -2 status with their enemy. We're saying stuff about relationships and make determinations that ground us in the settings.

I'll have more later, but I just wanted to provide some brief commentary on character and crew creation. What I most enjoyed about the process was how it got us thinking about how we fit into the fiction and really provided a context for our characters. At the end of the process our characters felt like they really belonged in Duskvol as vital and integral parts of the setting without having nail everything down exactly. The focus was on the fiction the entire time. I never felt like I was really just dealing with mechanical bits. I absolutely love how crew creation feels like you are already playing the game through positioning your crew against and with other factions, choosing how to spend your Coin, and where your lair and hunting grounds are. It made stepping into our characters' shoes later feel like a natural fit. They were exactly the right size.

Creating characters is also phenomenally quick. I can make a new Blades character in like 2-4 minutes. They also feel like actual characters, not isolated islands of mechanical bits.

I'm glad it plays as well as it reads I backed the Kickstarter, forgot about it for the whole of 2016, and it's now top of my to-run list.
[MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] it just hit drivethrurpg if you're interested in the PDFs.

Neonchameleon said:

[MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] it just hit drivethrurpg if you're interested in the PDFs.

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Thanks for the heads up! I'll be heading there forthwith...