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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 9199531" data-attributes="member: 70468">I’m trimming this down because I wanted to focus on this part, but I want to say thank you for the detailed post.The thing about PbtA games, or at least Apocalypse World and those that work similarly (because not all PbtA games work the same), is that it should play like your DayZ and Ark stories (particularly the Ark one). The GM is not supposed to be making a plot happen. Apocalypse World is emphatic about that when discussing the MC’s agenda.Everything you say, you should do it to accomplish these three, and no other. It’s not, for instance, your agenda to make the players lose, or to deny them what they want, or to punish them, or to control them, or to get them through your pre-planned storyline (DO NOT pre-plan a storyline, and I’m not f—— around). It’s not your job to put their characters in double-binds or dead ends, or to yank the rug out from under their feet. Go chasing after any of those, you’ll wind up with a boring game that makes Apocalypse World seem contrived, and you’ll be pre-deciding what happens by yourself, not playing to find out.What the MC would be doing is framing the scene: you’re in your base, and then someone gets headshot. It’s the damn hackers, and they’re head-shotting people left and right. What do you do? So you respond, and shenanigans ensue. Eventually you gather the whole posse, pursue them to a cave, and then finally clear them out.[HR][/HR]That was basically all of our Blades in the Dark sessions. My favorite one was when I got word that the Silver Nails were making a play to recruit a group of cultists just outside of Duskvol. Their plan was to send a champion to fight the cultists’ champion and take over the cult. I had had my sights on taking over the Silver Nails, so that wasn’t going to do.At this point, our gang was pretty connected. I think we were at least tier III if not IV. I talked to the Gondoliers to find out when and where they were departing, and then I hid. Their champion was a young kid. He got onto the boat, and it departed. He never stood a chance.My character was a leech, which is really good at alchemicals. I’d booby-trapped where I knew he’d sit. I wanted this to be a quiet kill, so I used standstill, a poison that causes temporary paralysis. One boot to the chest, and over the side of the boat he went without a struggle. We then proceeded to the island.If you don’t know anything about Blades in the Dark and Duskvol, the Silver Nails are a Severosi gang. My character was also Severosi. The cult wasn’t going to know the difference. They just knew a Severosi was coming.The actual fight against the leader was pretty intense. He was vile and secreted something nasty, but that didn’t affect me (because of an expert advancement I’d taken). I rigged up bombs and tried to do whatever I could to outsmart him. Eventually, I drew my sword. It was a gamble. I’d never drawn it up until that point (so we learned something new about Beaker, my character). As he came lunging at me for a final blow, I stepped out of the way and put my sword through him.This was a relief to the cult because their leader had actually taken it over. (This was established earlier in the session as part of the original framing. The contest was to replace the usurper with a Silver Nails champion.) However, there was a twist. The ghost of their former leader needed laid to rest. I ended up having to fight him too. The GM asked if I wanted to use any of my leech stuff, but I said no. I was going to fight the ghost with my sword. It seemed like the honorable thing he’d want. Fortunately, I didn’t die (and actually won).None of that was planned. During the initial framing, the GM made a guess at my tactic for framing the initial scene, but what happened was based on the actions I took. He thought I would assault the champion on the way down from the Mustang Inn to the waterway, but I wanted to be more discrete than that (because holy crap fighting the Silver Nails by myself would have been rough and probably suicidal). That lead to my rolling Connections to see if the Gondoliers to help, and they did.Out of that, we managed to prevent the Silver Nails from going up a tier, and I got a gang of red witch cultists. That was pretty awesome. There were a lot of awesome moments in our BitD game. Other favorites include the time I suckered my rival into going to prison just by playing cards with his nephew and reminiscing about the good old days back in college (we were trying to convince him a particular faction had betrayed him, so this was a social score); and our final score where we had been contracted to kill the former head of the city watch. In a way we failed because we didn’t do the deed. While we were assaulting his house, we found his family. I went to his wife and showed her incriminating (and damning) evidence regarding her husband I had kept from our previous score and suggested she should give herself to She Who Slays in Darkness. I handed her my sword, and she ended up being the one to kill her husband. Good stuff.</blockquote>

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