Any Forged in the Dark tips and pointers for an upcoming campaign?

[innerdude]

So Innerdude finally gets to try a Forged in the Dark game for the very first time with his group (HOORAY! AND THERE WAS MUCH REJOICING! ).

I've got a Court of Blades campaign starting up this Thursday and I'm incredibly excited to try it out.

But I have a few questions after absorbing the whole of the rules, and would also love to solicit any other feedback folks here might think is generally useful for approaching Blades in the Dark / Forged in the Dark play.

Background: I'm very familiar and comfortable with PbtA style play through Ironsworn, Ironsworn: Starforged, and Dungeon World. I have no issues with the general mindset of "Play to Find Out"; keeping background/notes "loosely held" as a GM; using "quantum" scene/setting insertions to account for obstacles/failure/setbacks to characters, etc. All good stuff that I'm very excited to use as relevant techniques for Court of Blades.

Some questions:

• How organic is character advancement? Does it generally work out as designed per the Crew and character playbooks? How much emphasis is placed on advancing characters versus advancing "The Crew" collectively? Do the rules as written generally cause it to play out as expected? Should I be aiming for a particular split between individual versus group/Crew advancement? 50/50 60/40? 40/60?
• How much balance should be given between regular "pre-Score" information gathering and roleplaying versus diving straight to the Score and relying on Flashbacks? Is it all just based on intuition? Pacing? If players get too "turtle-y" in setup, just do a quick scene switch and go?
  • Follow-on --- How difficult is it for players from a largely "traditional" play orientation to adapt to the Flashback mechanic generally?
• Which downtime focuses tend to get the most play? Is healing more important than other aspects? Indulging your vice to remove stress? Or put another way, do I need to prepare my players for the fact that this style of game will expect them to regularly roleplay situations when their character is not 100%, and that's okay because it makes the narrative more interesting?
• Even for someone with some PbtA / Ironsworn experience, what are 2 or 3 non-obvious / hidden / "I didn't know what I didn't know" aspects of GM-ing BitD / FitD that surprised you?

 

[RenleyRenfield]

Character Advancement = You get some XP from Desperate rolls, not failed 6- rolls. So in this, the FitD is trying to use its dice pool mechanic along with its Position and Effect to encourage your character to take on more than they can handle. This is very much a mechanical device, and works as such. You get XP for pbta style stuff too, like embody your playbook, and playbook triggers. All of this is part of roleplay so feels very organic.

Crew versus character advancement 50/50 60/40 = utter nonsense. None of that is applicable or even meaningful in FitD or PBTA. rules as written = Both Playbook and Crew advance under identical terms = did you roleplay its xp trigger? did you take on a risk? did you embody the playbook (crew or character) = they are in practice, the same questions for both. So all you really need to consider is "did I pick a crew sheet that all of the players enjoy playing into?" if you did then every action you take will grant XP for both character and playbook.

You have 3 phases in most any FitD game =

• Freeplay
• Score
• Downtime

The best way to think of this is "Downtime is the second half of a Score, so they are one in the same."
Since downtime can only come after a score, its a mechanic to tell everyone "we did the adventure, now lets resolve how that change the world and what we need because of it"

Everything else is just normal roleplay. Do however much you are having fun with.

If players are getting too wrapped up in preparing for a Score. If they are trying be behave like D&D players, and account for every contingency of a Score, and debate every angle or outcome = shut them down instantly, kick off the score, and flashback to preparations. Bad habits die hard, and players will want to whittle away at the possibility of perfectly planning a Score. yuck, dont do that. Scores are meant to be messy. Stress allows you to get out of bad spots. And flashbacks allow you to handle what you forgot to think of. It is breaking the rules to over plan/debate a Score.

But its perfectly fine to ignore the upcoming Score and just have fun indulging in side roleplay, NPC interactions, intrigue and romance and so on. Never rush that. Let them go to every party and take every drug they want. When Freeplay isn't about the Score, Freeplay is at its best.


Roleplaying Downtime. Typically this is group dependent. Some see the mechanics of Downtime and forget to roleplay at all. Others want to spend 2 hours roleplaying their vice with every detail and kiss. Keep the spotlight moving, make sure everyone stays engaged.

My advice is to "let the players roleplay as they naturally do, and then when they trigger a Downtime action, ask them if they want to use up their Downtime to gain its mechanical benefit. If so, do the Downtime rule, make the roll, whatever. If not, then its just Freeplay in-between downtime actions, and thats fine = even if the Freeplay is indulging in a vice, it may not be what the player wants to spend their Downtime on, so they dont get the benefit. They just get the fiction fun, and move on.

FitD has a very strong "boardgame" aspect to its downtime. And it can be crunchy. So feel out your group and ask them to talk in character when they can, but also get the rolls done and move on too.

Which downtime comes up the most? Eh... depends on the Crew activities and Score. But I guess getting Stress back and reducing Heat are most common.

Make it very clear that players will play their characters when they are not at 100% = YES YES Like, so much yes. FitD is a game where you are always doing the strugglebus. Let the players know ahead of time that this is a HBO series style game, where you are expected to suffer, have setbacks, losses, and not always fight at your best.

....

My Lessons learned from Forged in the Dark = Its not PBTA!

Blades in the Dark, and its spawn (such as Court of Blades) don't play anything like Apocalypse World, Apocalypse Keys, Night Witches,

Forged in the Dark has a built in "Action Economy" system. And it limits play in ways that PBTA does not.

Everything is down to points and rules. Stress and Damage in FitD is a set of trackers and sub-rules unto themselves. PBTA has none of that.

Scores and Downtime are a Boardgame you talk over. Sure you can roleplay your vice, but if you don't have a downtime to use up, or its before a Score, you can't get any stress back for your vice. These are hard and fast rules... again, it has Action Economy. meaning that players cant do any action whenever or however much they want. They must spend actions and are limited in how many they can spend.

It's a crunchy game!

Forged in the dark has an order of magnitude more rules than PBTA. Especially when you get into the Faction and Crew stuff.

My suggestion is to first get everyone comfortable with the mechanics. talk them step by step through each stage of the rules. Put them in easy to win situations to learn what the options mean for their characters. It takes time to learn when roleplay fits in and how much fits and in what times it makes no sense to roleplay and to just make a mechanical choice and move on.

 

[innerdude]

Tremendous thanks, @RenleyRenfield , this is a gold mine of good info!

 

[innerdude]

Sending a Bat Signal out to @Manbearcat if he's so inclined to weigh in as well.

(Forgive me, good sir, for intruding.)

 

[zakael19]

I'll note that different FITD games have different ways to advance the "crew" setup. Some are using rep+coin with specific XP triggers for the crew writ large, some have like projects, some are these weird things like Brinkwood with its masks... But generally, the group advance tradeoff is around whatever value item the game provides after scores/missions.

One very important thing that FITD games absolutely need that I think PBTAs let you get lazy about is a very explicit "What are the goal/stakes/risks" of each action the players are taking that's going to get a dice roll + progress an objective. If you haven't seen this short clip from Harper yet, it's IMO the best walkthrough of this. His recent "Deep Cuts" reframe to Threat Rolls is a natural evolution of the way he steps through the play here to better help GMs and players to "do it right." Once you have a clear risk established on the way to achieving a goal, it's very easy to adjudicate the results: the badness happens, do you resist? (1-3); one level down of the badness happens, do you resist? (4-5); you do it, now what? (6)

Forged in the dark has an order of magnitude more rules than PBTA. Especially when you get into the Faction and Crew stuff.

I'd say less "more rules" and more interlocking explicit systems that are more formal in framing. Arguably almost everything on the charsheet around Action Rolls are just either "spend stress to do this for free" / "have a floor on certain things" or "modify the verbs on your Act Under Fire, The Game" that is the core of the Action Roll system. The rest of the game is all the framing for goal & team based play (the downtime systems, factions, etc).

How much balance should be given between regular "pre-Score" information gathering and roleplaying versus diving straight to the Score and relying on Flashbacks? Is it all just based on intuition? Pacing? If players get too "turtle-y" in setup, just do a quick scene switch and go?

Something I saw @Manbearcat do that I've adopted is push players (post-"downtime actions") towards each doing a gather-info roll + fiction to inform objectives for the next score, or longer term goals. Then, once you're working towards an engagement roll & "in the score", gather info is basically PBTA "Read a Sitch/Person" type clarifying stuff if you want to leave it up to a fortune roll vs saying there's a risk/threat associated.

Lots of great references on the BITD subreddit as well.

 

[zakael19]

Oh, and I should note that in the FITD game I'm running we tend to spend an entire session doing downtime since it's got lots of core RP triggers and relationship exploration my players are in to. So yeah, really depends on a) which FITD game you run and b) your table on how much they want to delve into character ramifications and framed out scenes there in downtime or in "free play" vs how much they want to drive towards multiple scores in a session.

 

[hawkeyefan]

First off, glad to hear you’re getting to play a FitD game, @innerdude . Good luck with it all and keep us posted on how it goes, and let us know if any questions come up.

I’ll offer some advice on your questions, but I’ll preface it all by saying that you can and should tailor things to your group and what you all collectively want from play.

How much balance should be given between regular "pre-Score" information gathering and roleplaying versus diving straight to the Score and relying on Flashbacks? Is it all just based on intuition? Pacing? If players get too "turtle-y" in setup, just do a quick scene switch and go?

I generally have each player do a Gather Info move before we get to the score phase. As @zakael19 says, this is something @Manbearcat does, as well. I don’t recall if I got his advice from him when I first ran Blades, but it’s very possible. I became a player in a game of his later on, and I think one Gather Info per player works well. There may be circumstances that increase this (such as Hunting Grounds in Blades and possible some Playbook or Crew abilities); when that’s the case you just let whoever makes the most sense take it.

Early in the game, Gather Info moves may be where you generate a lot of fiction. A lot of potential Scores (I forget offhand what their called in Court of Blades). I think they become less broad and more targeted as the game moves along. Once you have a good foundation of fiction in play, you’ll find the players will likely have scores in mind already.

• Follow-on --- How difficult is it for players from a largely "traditional" play orientation to adapt to the Flashback mechanic generally?

Honestly, it’s not that hard. Despite how adamant opponents of such mechanics may be, in my experience most groups do this kind of thing all the time. Small little revisions applied retroactively. Something like “I meant to buy some rope before we left town… is it cool if I add it and deduct the cost?”

Flashbacks are just a more formalized version of that. Most players will grasp it early on, though most tend to be pretty simple at first.

Which downtime focuses tend to get the most play? Is healing more important than other aspects? Indulging your vice to remove stress? Or put another way, do I need to prepare my players for the fact that this style of game will expect them to regularly roleplay situations when their character is not 100%, and that's okay because it makes the narrative more interesting?

I think Indulging Vice is probably the most important of the bunch. It happens frequently (often for each character at least once after every score) and it tells us something about them. It establishes a connection between the character and the world. They go to this specific place or person for this specific reason. That can be really fertile ground to mine.

Related, the Crew Contact and Friends and Rivals. Don’t hesitate to bring them into things. Don’t “save them for later”. Bring them into play and complicate the characters’ lives. Again, these are connections to the world and including them can lead to really interesting circumstances. Remember… you can always add others from the list, or introduce new ones through play.

Even for someone with some PbtA / Ironsworn experience, what are 2 or 3 non-obvious / hidden / "I didn't know what I didn't know" aspects of GM-ing BitD / FitD that surprised you?

1) One of the things I struggled with early on was relying too much on Harm as a consequence. It’s easy to do and is often an obvious choice… but try to spread things around a bit. Introduce consequences that can’t just be healed. The most interesting consequences I’ve seen in play are ones that either make things very difficult for the character immediately, or the ones that complicate their lives over the long term.

2) DO NOT SOFTBALL THEM. With the Resistance and Stress mechanic, the characters are incredibly durable. The players can mitigate a lot of blowback. So don’t hold back. If an NPC has a gun to the PCs head and they make a move and roll a 1-3, tell them “You go to make your move and then there is a bright light followed by darkness. Take Level 4 Harm, shot in the head.” Then ask them if they want to Resist.

3) Don’t be afraid to ease into all the different elements of play. There’s nothing wrong with starting simple and then expanding to include more rules elements as you go. There’s also nothing wrong with correcting things as you go. Allow yourself and your players time to learn the game and its nuances. Don’t be afraid to revise things when needed.

Good luck, Dude! Have fun! I hope at least a little of my ramblings help,

 

[Manbearcat]

Sending a Bat Signal out to @Manbearcat if he's so inclined to weigh in as well.

(Forgive me, good sir, for intruding.)

Hey buddy. Just finished running a 1KA session and I'm just seeing this now (so been preoccupied and it is late!). Consequently, I'm not going to be able to read the thread, digest things, and post any thoughts that I might have that might be in addition to what others have posted. I see you already have a lot of input from creative folks who are also quite well-versed on the subject, so I may not have anything to add beyond what they've written.

I'm busy tomorrow and tomorrow evening as well, but I'll give this a thorough look-at on Saturday and, should I have anything useful to say to supplement, I'll hit you with some thoughts/advice.

 

[zakael19]

Also: get creative with harm! Tell them they’re resisting mental and emotional effects, or social exposure or whatever. In what looks like a courtly intrigue game like Court of Blades, that’s genre appropriate and interesting. See the Blades SRD examples of like Seduced as L2 harm, Panicked as L3 harm etc.

 

[Joshua Randall]

(1) It is a procedural game, always. Everything has a procedure. Do not skip procedures. Do not "free play". You want to do a thing? There's a procedure for it.

(2) Going to prison is an expected part of the game, not a punishment. Welcome it.