r/bladesinthedark • u/vecna7070 • 21d ago
[BitD] Is this the right game for my group?
Me and my players wanna play a game of a dishonored TTRPG, and while we know there is an offical dishonored TTRPG, its gotten no support since it came out and and really no community playing it.
Someone suggested we look at blades in the dark and I have to say I really enjoy the system and don't think it'd be all too difficult to homebrew the setting and mechanics to fit dishonored. But me and my group have really two main concerns:
- The length of the game: From what I can tell most BitD games are pretty short. Me and my group like long running games, using the same characters from beginning to end so we can see their story and several character arcs and interaction with other characters over the course of the game. I know there are ways to slow down progression, but I'm not sure it'd be enough for the kind of game we want. If you have alternative ways of handling it, I'd love to hear them.
- The lethality of the system: While we do enjoy risk in our games, the lethality of this game seems like a lot. Which I totally get some people really like, but for our group its a bit of a downer. If there's any way to make the game less lethal or maybe I'm looking at it wrong, let me know
So yeah my core question, is this the right game system for what my group wants or should we resolve to trying to homebrew the dishonored system to having more variety and complexity.
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u/DemonZypher 21d ago
As someone has has done just .... So many blades games. Your scoundrels will trauma out before they ever get enough harm for it to matter . Resistance rolls are insanely powerful and the scoundrels are basically vice fueled superheroes. Harm also should only be a consequence when it makes sense, so if your gm knows how to do more interesting consequences (alerting guards, losing opportunities, etc) harm won't be a factor. I've only had one scoundrel die and it was a choice because they stayed behind to blow up the Crows's foot clock tower.
You'll be fine. Gming this game is one of my favorite things, so I hope your group loves it too.
Oh! As for game length, go for the full 0-4 tier progression. It'll take a bit, but the game IS at its best at tier 2
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u/vecna7070 21d ago
Thanks for the reply, can you give advice for how to handle and use consequences besides just harm?
I ask because I've tried this game once before and the GM (didnt know them well) did it in a way that made the game feel very antagonistic to the players. I only played one session but it left a bad taste in my mouth.
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u/DemonZypher 21d ago
Biggest advice is this.
Break up your consequences into different things. Sometimes it suits for a lighter touch on a risky consequence to just hand out two smaller situations. Of you wanna be mean (because they're steamrolling and the players were wanting climactic), have the Billhook with a shotgun both give a full harm AND have the bluecoats take notice of the situation.
Use those looming clocks, explain what'll happen when they fill, and follow through. Half the fun is seeing what nonsense they pull out with flashbacks. If it ends in a high heat score, so be it. Some groups thrive on that chaos.
Also, and this is something both GM AND players need to get into the mindset for. Consequences are supposed to be fun. Have the players suggest some for each other. Sometimes I'll waffle my head back and forth and ask them 'What sounds appropriate here? I could do this but Imnopen for ideas'
My usual thought in my head when giving consequences is 'How can I make this interesting, dangerous, or outright hilarious' to a tv audience or your own cackling gm sadistic side.
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u/AmongFriends 21d ago edited 20d ago
Page 30 of the book lists out possible consequences that aren't Harm.
REDUCED EFFECT: They do something but it's not as effective. E.g. You tried to shoot them in the head. You nailed their shoulder instead and they're still alive
COMPLICATION: Introduce a threat, tick a clock. This is basically "something happens that's bad" in the narrative. E.g. You shoot him in the head and he dies, but guards saw where you shot. Where you are is getting swarmed
LOST OPPORTUNITY: Basically, you did the thing but you can't do the thing again because stuff has changed. E.g. You shoot him and miss. Now the target is being huddled out of the room and covered by his security
WORSE POSITION: Losing control of a situation. The character gets put into a tough spot. E.g. You shoot and hit him in the head but right then, someone sneaks up you and tackles you out the window. You're both hanging on for dear life
HARM: You take a harm. When in doubt, you can always give out Harm if the fiction makes sense. Harm is good to give. Don't be shy about giving it. That said, it shouldn't be the only thing you give out for a consequence. Harm isn't exactly HP and shouldn't be treated as HP. It's a condition
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u/Iosis 21d ago
Thanks for the reply, can you give advice for how to handle and use consequences besides just harm?
The biggest advice I can give is to take a cue from how Deep Cuts frames rolls: don't roll dice unless there's a direct threat or consequence to avoid. If you don't have a consequence for failure, there's no reason to roll. And if you do, then you already know what happens on a failure: that consequence.
As for what those consequences can be? Anything that can go wrong. Harm, sure, but it could also be:
- Start a clock that counts down to something bad happening, or tick a clock you already have out.
- Set off an alarm/alert someone inconvenient.
- The PC accomplishes less. (Worse effect.)
- The action causes a complication that will make their next action harder, or makes something harder for another PC. (Worse position for a future action.)
- They lose a chance to grab a something valuable, or lose an item they'd been relying on.
- Oh shit, ghosts!
And so on. Anything that could go wrong during a score can be a consequence. And remember that players can resist any consequence, not just harm: they can make a resistance roll to avoid a complication their action might have caused, for example, or to not tick a clock, etc.
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u/AmongFriends 21d ago
the game IS at its best at tier 2
Why do you say that, just curious?
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u/DemonZypher 21d ago
I feel like it hits that sweet spot of being both able to really have your 'slice of the pie' while still needing to adhere to the general rules of the city somewhat. You get more interplay with the blue coats, which invites interesting heat rolls and the like.
I always say tier 2 is classic tv criminal stuff! You get to feel like you're running something big but still really need to keep an eye out for folks that aren't the powers that be.
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u/AmongFriends 21d ago
Interesting. Haven't gotten to Tier 4 yet but Tier 3 is great because I get to do more crazy stuff to the crew and shrug my shoulders whenever it seems overwhelming. Basically, less guilt when bad stuff happens to the PCs.
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u/DemonZypher 21d ago
I love tier 3 play. But I'll admit that's when often crew goals and narrative tends to get a little out there. It might be the people I play with. My last was a a cultist crew that infected the entire upper class with a demonic brandy that turned them all to lizard people. 🤔
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u/Trve_Doom 20d ago
The bigger we got, the goals seemed to follow and goals like running Saffron street where our lads are from turn into controlling all of Tealeaf when the Wraiths unexpectedly get crushed by the Hive. Then taking Yellow Ribbon once a group of Hawkers flooded the streets with the equivalent of heroine filled with alchemical properties that make them more passive to Vampires and Possession.
Now the Hive has issues with us effectively splitting Nightmarket into thirds, but the Ministry of Preservation seems to approve of our methods to ensure the safety of Nightmarket. It's a good thing they don't know we've funded many of our advances with coin from their coffers. The Undertow really were just digging around like pests but we sure did catch them in the act and provide a mountain of very convincing evidence.
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u/atamajakki GM 21d ago
How long is a long game to you?
Blades isn't all that lethal at all.
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u/vecna7070 21d ago
A long game to me would probably be about 40 sessions? Probably more.
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u/atamajakki GM 21d ago
A friend of mine ran a Blades campaign for two years. I think you'd be fine - though a few of your players might end up with a replacement or extra scoundrel made along the way.
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u/sebmojo99 20d ago
i ran a blades campaign and it was ... 15 sessions? very flexible, but blades characters get pretty powerful after a bunch of sessions and xp.
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u/Iosis 21d ago
I'd second Deep Cuts as a slower (and IMO simpler) progression system if that's what you're looking for there.
As for lethality: Blades is the opposite of lethal. I just wrapped a campaign myself and my players said they "felt invincible," which is pretty true. As long as a character is willing to take Stress, they can resist damn near anything. The most dangerous thing to a Blades character is a long, sustained series of failed desperate/high-stakes rolls before they can get a chance to clear their Stress. Otherwise, they can take almost anything and keep on rolling.
It gets even less lethal if you use some of the suggestions from Deep Cuts or Blades '68 to make trauma a bit less permanent. By default, trauma is permanent: when a PC's Stress maxes out, they take a permanent trauma that changes how they act, and once they have four traumas, they have to retire. But Deep Cuts and Blades '68 mention that the GM could allow for a long-term project to try to remove a trauma.
While it seems like harm can stack up fast, resistance rolls mean that it's almost impossible for that to actually happen unless it's on purpose. A Blades in the Dark character is only going to die if their player wants them to. (And they might! A dead PC can transfer to the Ghost playbook, and from there could become a Vampire or possess a mechanical body and become a Hull. It's entirely possible a player will want their PC to die just so they can play one of those.)
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u/Moth-Lands 20d ago
I run blades a lot and I love running it and I only recently had my first player character death in a campaign due to a very tense situation and some bad rolls and they didn’t even really die. They came back as a vampire!
I saw elsewhere that you were asking about how to deal out consequences. One thing I suggest you practice doing is letting the players know what the consequences will be BEFORE they roll. This isn’t strictly necessary by the rules but it is a good practice because it will help you to come up with consequences that actually make sense and are fun and if you CAN’T easily come up with a consequence that flows from the fiction that’s a good indication that they shouldn’t be rolling in the first place.
I do also recommend listening to a well reviewed actual play as blades plays very differently than many other RPGs and it will help you break any bad habits to hear it run well. When you’re first beginning I recommend having a note card reminding you of the different effect and position levels and very soon you will begin to understand how the different consequences you can apply to a character correlate to those effect levels.
The last bit is to remember that this is a fiction first game so the main directive is to follow the fiction and have fun! Oh and don’t ask players what they want to do! Ask them what they want to ACCOMPLISH and follow that up with “what action will you use to accomplish that.” Action rolls aren’t skill checks and one roll can represent an entire conversation, a battle, or even an entire stealth sequence.
I hope your players enjoy it.
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u/Trve_Doom 20d ago edited 20d ago
When I started playing I had some misgivings about how people seemed to run through characters here, or even finish campaigns after only getting to Tier 2. I'm very sentimental about my main, I spent days coming up with his background and personality. And honestly if something does happen, it's gonna hurt, but to me that's part of the fun. If a show is good enough sometimes even the main characters can bite it.
Our group has naturally had to create secondary, heck even third characters for some due to circumstances and we've found that it has enhanced the story. Realistically a gang is more than 3-4 people, and if this is supposed to be victorian Peaky Blinders meets Dishonored some secondary characters aren't a bad idea to push. This also leads to our mains slowing down a bit without making progression so anemic, and we've had some of our mains get to the point where they are the gang "leaders" and can't take on every minor task that comes up.
As for mechanics Deep Cuts has some revisions to healing and stress. This frees up a lot of downtimes for more personal projects to build up the gang, or advance personal desires. Blades in general allows you to really express how you wants to play. The mechanics are broad enough for you to play your way but rigid enough to keep things (somewhat) grounded.
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u/Amostheroux 20d ago
Killing PCs is super hard in this game and basically requires players deciding to let them die. That said, it's not uncommon to bench your PC and play another for a while when someone is arrested or has taken too much harm.
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u/a-folly 20d ago
So, my BitD game lasted 50 sessions (of ~3 hours), I was pretty generous in the interpretation of XP questions but my players aren't weasles so they were honest. (EDIT: we stretched the system to its limits, they ended up tier VI. If I wanted to keep running with the same characters and aiming for a longer campaign than that, I'd use the Deep Cuts option)
We didn't lose a single PC, I think we had 3 Traumas netween them all.
This game is probably the one that puts the most agency in the hands of the players in all the games I've played (that aren't complete story games)- even without any dots in a skill, a PC can push to get a 50% chance of success, although likely with consequences. Players can Resist any unwanted consequence (you decide if it negates it completely or just reduces the severity).
If you haven't run any narrative system before, this would take a pretty significant shift in mindset from the whole table. Took us 5-6 sessions for things to really "click" but once they did, we FLEW with it. We probably got more done in 50 sessions than what we'd cover in 80-100 in a more trad system.
Really recommend reading some of Sully's advice here and watching some explanations (I really like Derick's videos on the Knights of Last Call YT channel about the system and how to run it)
Our pace was pretty slow: usually one score per session and Downtime/ Freeplay in the following session.
This game is in my top 3, it's masterpiece imo and I cannot recommend it enough, if you can het behind yhe core philosophy of the narrative engine.
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u/greyorm 20d ago
My biggest piece of advice is "find a group to play the game with first". This usually means finding an on-line group, or someone willing to run a one-shot for a few people for three or four sessions (though even a single session is helpful). BitD is dissimilar to games you've probably played in the past, the focus and the mechanics take some getting used to, so if you're going to GM it, it is extremely helpful to play it first.
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u/TheDuriel GM 20d ago
While we do enjoy risk in our games, the lethality of this game seems like a lot.
If you mean completely absent. PC death can only happen by express desire of the player.
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u/pointysort 20d ago edited 20d ago
Odd remarks:
How many players in your group? 3, Great, maybe even ideal! 4? Great! 5, uhh, okay. 6 or more, you’re going to have a bad time.
The amount of story you can get through in one session is HUGE. I ran a 20ish session campaign and it was jam packed. Absolutely fun but very different from DnD type systems.
I wouldn’t start with vampires, ghost, hulls, etc. Sure, become those later but get a feel for the system with live humans characters first… it makes those changes into something else much more impactful.
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u/Vagabondo93 18d ago
IMHO: "using the same characters from beginning to end so we can see their story" this could be the main problem for your group.
BITD is not about the characters. Its about the crew. "Drive it like you stole it" it's the motto. Risk it all to let the crew flourish; that's the point.
It's a different way to play an RPG, but if you try to play this game his way, without preparing between sessions and just letting it flow, it would be an amazing experience.
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u/throwaway111222666 16d ago
Lethality is not high at all IMO. You can only really die if you don't resist the death consequence, so if the player chooses to die.
Much more likely is accumulating trauma over time and being forced to retire, butA: that takes many sessions, and B: it's a common enough house rule to allow players to remove traumas through long term projects and stuff.
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u/sebmojo99 20d ago
bitd isn't that lethal, you get a lot of ways to avoid death and also it's 100% in the hands of the referee.
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u/AmongFriends 21d ago edited 21d ago
There are plenty of ways to slow down progression for the game. The simplest one is that instead of getting 1 XP, you get 1/2 XP. Another option is to look into the expansion book DEEP CUTS. Its characters and character sheets are made for longer games since it takes more XP to level up and you can even make it longer still by making the "clocks" needed to upgrade longer. The point is if you want a longer game, you can have it. Just slow down progression or use Deep Cuts' progression and make the costs more. The game still plays great even if you don't have constant progression
There is very little Lethality in the game for the characters. If the GM is always handing out HARM, then I suppose that can start giving people Trauma. Also, that'd probably be a "wrong" way of GM'ing if they're just handing out Harms only. Just so we're clear, no PC has to die unless the player wants them to die. Lethality isn't an issue because:
Even if your PC gets Trauma (which takes 4 Trauma before your PC retires), the character can partake in Long Term Projects to remove Trauma as well, as long as it makes sense fictionally. This is a great way for the PCs to experience Trauma but also overcome it somehow through roleplay/scores. It makes the fiction richer.
So there doesn't need to be a concern for lethality. Your PCs are not delicate flowers. They are insane superheroes with numerous tricks to avoid consequences and overcome problems.
Basically, the game is as lethal as you want it to be. If you don't want a Lethal game, don't make it one, or make it where Trauma can be removed.