Blades in the Dark Ep 1: New Kids on the Dock

MDMann says:

June 5, 2018 at 3:38 pm

I enjoyed that. I do like a good bad guys story.
Arvandus says:

June 5, 2018 at 3:48 pm

I prefer Morally Ambiguous. : )
Jaiden0 says:

June 14, 2018 at 10:10 am

0d means roll two and take the lowest, so the resist discussion around 1:11 was inaccurate. Still listening, not sure if you fix that later
Dave says:

June 15, 2018 at 10:16 am

I think we fixed that when we discussed having a secured lair. Thanks for the catch, though! We were really glad that the book made a point to say we were probably going to get some stuff wrong the first few games and I’m sure we stumbled a few other times. Let us know what you thought of the game when you’re done, I’m curious how people liked it.
Jaiden0 says:

June 16, 2018 at 12:44 pm

Absolutely! I am no expert, just started running a game myself, so I am invested in learning it and I totally understand the weird completely and layering of rules. Anything I say here is simply my interpretation of my reading, and I hope to be corrected if you disagree.

Around 3:21 there is a discussion of “+1 to result level” which means the roll for how many clock ticks are cleared. A critical clears 5 so an alchemist can roll a 6 which would normally be 3 ticks and instead clear 5. Pp155

With no physicker, healing can be done by using the”aquire an asset” activity. This results in rolling tier (can add +1d to use an ally for help). Then the NPC physicker rolls to attempt to clear the healing clock, as above. Pretty complicated but may result in some interesting narratives. Since re-aquiring the same asset adds +1d to the roll, having a recurring NPC physicker makes sense. Also note that the cohort crew upgrade could be used similarly without burning the aquire asset action each downtime. In either case once you have a healer they can roll to heal everyone.

Worst case, the character should start a healing clock and roll 0d (lowest of two) to start clearing it via natural healing.

Around 3:26 it’s said that you can only train once per downtime, but the rule is that you can only train a given track once. So you could use an action to train different tracks. Pp155
Jaiden0 says:

June 16, 2018 at 1:11 pm

Ok finally finished it , so time for general feedback. again note that I am no expert.

The chargen was great, and I like how the stories came together. I thought the 9 lashers was a well thought-out enemy. Most of all I really enjoyed the detailed setting and action descriptions! Really felt immersed in the world.

Only overall suggestion for next session is to be more clear before a roll on “what do you want to accomplish” and on “what consequences will follow”. Not that you were bad about it, but this seems to be one important mechanism. So for the 4-5 results I think the consequences should have been greater than they were, followed immediately with the opportunity to resist. This puts the players more in control of the action but forces them to spend stress.

Minor note: “the crows” are a pre existing faction, but of course it’s trivial to rename or ignore them. In other games I run I do a lot of world building so I am trying to take the easier path here and stick to the Canon as much as possible to save myself the work. That said I love how flexible it is, where most descriptions are stated as examples rather than definitions. “Ok, how does that look?”is a real enabler for collaborative story telling.

Definitely enjoyed it and look forward to the next one.
Razze says:

June 22, 2018 at 11:21 pm

Alchemist: +1 result level means a roll of 1-3 produces tier level quality 4-5 is Tier +1 and 6 is Tier+2. Usually a roll of 1-3 is Tier-1 4-5 is Tier and 6 is Tier+1. So it isn’t quality +1 the way the Workshop is. You can look at the crafting roll on p.227 and the Special ability itself on p.70 which shows what result level means in parenthesis.
CallmeIshma3l says:

July 19, 2018 at 9:09 pm

Shamed that it took me this long to get this game, freaking love it 🙂
Magicite says:

August 2, 2018 at 8:12 pm

This sounds amazing and I’m glad you ran through the mechanics of building your gang.