itmeJP Community


itmeJP Community

[RollPlay: Blades Q&A] Episode 3: Lady Clave

RollPlay: General & Archives RollPlay®: Blades
,
#18

They’re a Tier Zero crew with no significant assets, authority, or connections. They’re very, very far away from the endgame. If I had to guess… maybe 50 sessions away? Could be more. (For comparison, my other group on YouTube, The Bloodletters, are Tier II after 13 sessions, and they are very good at crew development.)

There’s no “leveling too fast” in Blades. The range of power is very compressed, unlike some other RPGs. People are people in Blades. A “top level” character and a beginning PC aren’t as far apart as, say, a level 1 and level 20 D&D character are. Both characters can be killed by a knife to the spine, or get taken out of play by too much Trauma. You never reach a point where you’re a 100 HP juggernaut.

3 Likes
#19

I meant “leveling” more as a character progression and not a stats progression, if that makes sense. I mean, there is a finite number of things a player can put experience in to. Every PC has theirs expiration date. And when you get between 4 and 8 exp every session, what is the “shelf life” of a Blades character?

#20

hoooooooly shit what

10 Likes
#21

10 playbook advances: 80 xp
Your four favorite actions to 3 dots: 60 xp
[Unlock Mastery*]
Your favorite actions to 4 dots*: 24 xp.

164 xp total. Assume 5 xp per session as a rough average (that may be a little high). So, about 33 sessions to get there.

If you get only 1 Trauma per 10 sessions, you will just squeak by.

* Unlocking Mastery for the crew: 16 crew xp.

2 Likes
#22

yup … frankly you all got away unharmed from going after a tier 4 target … I ve only played Blades once, but we had a hell of a time just dealing with the Lampblacks (tier 2 iirc)

1 Like
#23

John, can you please explain downtime actions a bit more in detail?

I understand that the rules say each person gets 2 and can buy 1 more.

Is the ruling for a free extra downtime action to organise the score a new thing?

I didn’t think that doing actions to go towards the next score required a downtime action (prep work I thought was just worked into the score itself).

Then what is to stop the group doing their downtime actions and then they have no more actions to do prep work for the score which then would require the DM to provide some leniency (give them an extra downtime action even if it is not warranted by the rules) or the game may come to a halt.

Of course I could be overthinking this but I am a little confused. I figured it was easiest to count prep work as part of the score itself and keeping downtime actions as ‘bonus actions’ to help the individual or crew.

#24

During downtime, you may perform two activities from the downtime list for free. After that, if you do another activity that’s on the list, you have to pay for it with coin or rep.

You can do normal actions (not on the list) as much as you need to. “Gather Information” is a little confusing, since it’s both on the list and also a normal action. I’m clarifying this in the final version (the downtime activity is now called Investigate, and is a special version of getting info for a score).

In v7.1 each crew has Hunting Grounds (or equivalent). See page 48. When you prepare for a score on your hunting grounds that matches one of its feature types, you get a free downtime activity to prep for the operation (investigate, acquire an asset, etc.—whatever makes sense).

So, to sum up:

  • Each PC gets two activities from the downtime list for free.
  • Additional downtime activities on the list cost 1 coin or 1 rep each.
  • You can do as many normal actions and scenes as you like otherwise.
#25

I noticed that in the session but forgot to mention. I had always interpreted it as a “quick start bonus”, rather than all crews “getting 1 to start for free”… which probably sounds weird but that is just how my brain wrapped around that. :worried:

I was going to ask about how the starting hunting grounds (Quality… 0?) conversation can work when creating a crew and being entirely sure what everyone is about it. Obviously some of it can be viewed as “territory” (though not Turf) they can freely operate in. Others are a bit more interesting (smuggling routes for instance).

I guess a final thought about Hunting Grounds, is that I had always attached that to the “tithe” concept you have in the Coin Payoff section. Like “if you have hunting grounds in someone’s Turf, you generally pay a tithe to that faction”. However, I’m beginning to realize I might be insinuating way more rules than are necessarily “RAW”. (Or just lingering thoughts from your pre-v7.1 stuff)

Thanks for the clarifications!

1 Like
#26

Thanks for that John. Makes it much clearer.

I haven’t run anything yet but am planning to. I suspect that it is much more ‘fluid’ when you get to it and you can roll with what feels best for what they can do and cant do as an action.

Loving the system.

1 Like
#27

Great episode. Great work by all cast members.

I am really enjoying the rapid pace with which this show is progressing: every episode has included exciting, interesting events. I credit this both to your system’s excellent planning mechanics, which eliminate a great deal of tedium, and to Geoff’s eagerness for the crew to get things done.

#28

Well, we got a month to cool down!


But I agree, everyone is doing awesome. And you miss Cattaby, I haven’t complimented recently, are very pretty.
1 Like
[Re-Tweet] Blades on a little break - till Dec 9 (ish)
#29

Killing literally everyone in Duskvol: Priceless.

5 Likes
#30

Would it be an appropriate thought path to think of the game as crew progression rather than character progression? I mean, granted the characters are important and colorful and vital, but unless there’s a team wipe while there are no cohorts, the crew should(hopefully) live on. There’s even a mechanic to temporarily play someone else while your main PC is incarcerated or “lost”.

#31

Yep. That’s how I think of it.

#32

Thanks for the reply and explanation as well.

I was hoping I wasn’t being too rude with the question, I was sincerely curious at perhaps the ‘threat level’ of the encounters and rolls so far, without knowing a whole lot about the ruleset as a whole.

#33

So I love this setting, it reminds of dishonored except in a sort of Stygian underdark kinda world.
What inspired the setting?

Clocks are amazing I will be experimenting with them when I gm next.
Any advice for hacking them into a system? (Stars without number)

#34

Aren’t they kind of in the system already, on the faction turn? You give a faction a goal and time timer for when this goal is completed, no? Might have misunderstood this… never played/gm’ed SWN myself.

I’d suggest to open a new topic for this. Feels a little off-topic :itmejpgg: /me hides from the mods

#35

I mean, I guess? If you really think about it, the clocks function like checkpoints. “Once you fill in this tick, you’ve reached this point in the mission.” But they also serve other purposes, like countdowns until reinforcements show up, or your wanted status goes away. So on the one hand, they do already exist, just as “so many turns until this happens” or “it should only take this many sessions to do something”. Kind of like training in DnD.

#36

in Blades, a 1-3 is bad, doesn’t matter if it’s a 1, 2, or 3 and fatalities are extremely rare in blades, because you can always resist the harm to lower the effect.

#37

To paraphrase from the book on inspirations:
Books: The Vlad Taltos novels (Jhereg, etc.). The stories of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. The Lies of Locke. Best Served Cold.
Video Games: Thief: The Dark Project and its sequels. Dishonored. Dark Souls and Bloodborne.
TV: The Wire. Spartacus (particularly season two) Peaky Blinders.
it’s in page 3 of the v7_1 quickstart

1 Like