Blades In The Dark - Victorian Crime shenanigans

John Harper and Evil Hat Productions have created this wonderful tabletop rpg called Blades in the Dark. It's essentially a Industral Revolution-ish tabletop rpg focused on urban crime in a fantasy world of its own, in the vein of Thief and Gangs of New York. Has anybody ever played it? I'm contemplating starting a table.

I haven't played Blades specifically, but I had a short-lived but fun campaign using the sci-fi spinoff, Scum and Villainy.

Nice. I'm staying with the original I think due a fondness for 19th century crime. I'm finding the system very simple and easy to undestand, so far, very instinctive. I'm hoping it's the same in play.

Victorian Gang Warfare, the Tabletop Game?

The factional stuff is important, but the focus in play is on individual crime jobs, which, depending on the kind of gang you've gone for, could be anything from burgling the house of a nobleman who may or may not be a vampire, to attempting to assassinate a powerful politician, to establishing a new drug-running route.

(In my S&V game, there was one job where the goal was to steal genetic data from a research lab for a cult that was obsessed with bloodlines.)

In essence. From the book the feeling it gives me is a mix of Gangs of New York with Dishonored (the latter being a very obvious inspiration for the general "industrial revolution fantasy port town" feel).

I'm contemplating doing my own setting, so the factions game will be a trickier part of it.

I've been trying to hack out a new crew type, but procrastination and my general lack of homebrewing skill has been screwing up the Seekers. C'est la vie.

Took a few months but we did have our first session of Blades in the Dark. It was fun, though the naturally wishy-washy barrier between skills and actions led to some confusion at first, but we worked it out. Flashbacks, Devil's Bargains and the obstacle clocks are the main things we are struggling with (namely the last one, to be honest, former two is mostly the players forgetting they can do that).

I've been running a game for a little over a month now for two friends. So far their Bravos, consisting of a coldly emotionless Skovlander Hound and a moderately possessed Cutter from the Dagger Isles have apparently formed a resolution to solve every problem in as absurdly excessive a manner as possible.

Like, their gang war with a mercenary company named the Black Hands I invented because I could was started with grimdark Home Alone shenanigans, and wrapped up because they first stole mining explosives from a trading ship while it was being attacked by a leviathan, then used them to stage a fake attack on multiple Bluecoat barracks while wearing the Black Hands' distinctive uniform.

Meanwhile, I've just been going, "eff it, that sounds like fun, roll for it" because that's how I like to GM.

"eff that sounds like fun, roll for it" is basically my DM creed as well. My party so far consists of five characters (a Mad Bomber Leech, a Mad Oracle Whisper, a Pint-Sized Powerhouse Cutter, a The Casanova Lurk and a Defrosting Ice Queen Slide) and given we only had a single session they're just thugs for hire for another Diabolical Mastermind type and we'll see how long before they form into an actual gang between them.

"Grimdark home alone shenanigans" sounds like a barrel of fun. Might steal that premise (but make it moreso Assault on Precint 13 than Home Alone).

I also did go ahead with using a custom setting.

Edited by Gaon on Mar 5th 2021 at 9:41:20 AM

I mean, it was kind of a mixture of the two: I'd established that Mylera Klev had a secret sister who was the teacher at a really posh private school, and they were employed to protect her from a mercenary company that Bazso Baz had hired to kidnap her for hostage-taking purposes.

This ended in Shenanigans, including at least one electrocution, some salvaging parts from mercenary Hulls, and the school greenhouse turning out to have some flowers in it that, shall we say, the teachers were growing for their known stress-relieving properties, leading to them lobbing a gas bomb that sent an entire squad of mercenaries off dancing the Mushroom Samba.

Thread necromancy feels very appropriate for Blades in the Dark...

Anyway... my shiny new copy of Girl by Moonlight, the new Evil Hat game using the same Forged in the Dark system has arrived. Very different setting, a definite anime influence, and could be anything from Sailor Moon to Neon Genesis Evangelion.

But what it also does is revisit the system with a couple of twists that may work for Blades:

• Consequences are much more structured now. There are clear categories (Harm, Lost Opportunity etc.), with a few suggestions for each. Not a rules change, just a presentation change, I think. Brainstorming consequences is one of the most draining things about running Blades, so I like the extra GM support there.

• Stress and Trauma becomes Stress and Eclipse. Eclipse is largely setting-specific, but this model doesn't temporarily take a character out of play when they overload their stress. Instead their negative attributes take hold, they're running on fumes, and the Stress they've built up is all that's keeping them going. Actions that would gain stress now lose it, and if they run out before the Eclipse is resolved (e.g. by another character intervening to help them stabilise), they're gone. Dead, broken or corrupted into an antagonist. Fewer lasting effects if it is resolved (no permanent Trauma), but it feels like there's potential for a sleeker Blades model in there.