So Blades in the Dark has exploded in the indie scene. It's spawned a number of games, including now-kickstarted offshoot Trophy, which is itself getting offshoots of its own. Nothing else has had that level of response from the community since Apocalypse World. In fact, Blades is a direct offshoot of the World imprint! So there's a lot of iteration there. Lotta fan love. Just tons!
And I've done just everything in my power to ignore it.
I'll be more than happy to admit this was due to my own snobbish concerns. By nature I do not like jumping on bandwagons. If a whole bunch of people start going in the same direction, really fast? I go the hell the other way. I don't like getting caught up in mass currents. Call it paranoia, but people in mass groups are idiots, by and large. I'd like to say that I look at the thing everyone is obsessing about and see if I like it for my own reasons, but I won't pretend I'm half that rational. Most of my friends would laugh if I claimed that anyway, so why start now??
At any rate, I would have stayed like this for another three or four years, at the earliest, had Andy not intervened. Bloody bastard, always introducing me to new things and whatnot. We'd gotten done with Sabina's Castle and Andy threw out this idea of doing a Blades in the Dark campaign. I kinda figured that if Andy was trying to broach it why not? Could be fun and all.
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| My reaction the instant I did a roll in Blades |
One of the things I'd always disliked about most RPGs is the lack of any real urgency. There is no mechanical hook to make you be economical about what you're doing; there's no mechanical goal cooked into gameplay. There should always be some pushback from the system itself, shaping your choices in the story and the mechanics. After a player is done with a roll there shouldn't be a question of what to do next, because the system should be supplying some ideas. It's part of the reason why I'm usually very particular about sticking with BWHQ games: there's always a large amount of pushback that guides the GM and players, especially in the form of Beliefs and Instincts, if a roll succeeds, but in the form of twists, injuries, and compromises if you failed. There's a sense of a framework that you're standing on, that's helping guide you towards a personal evolution of the character. It is uncompromisingly specific about this experience. I thought I'd never see something focused about action and adventure stuff.
This RPG proves that thought to be a damnable lie and I'd better recant it.
So the way you do a base roll in this game, after deciding what "action" (read: skill) you're rolling, the GM tells you what your position is: desperate, risky (default) and controlled. This tells you how dire the consequences could be, should you fail. The GM then hashes out what the Effect of your action is: limited, standard, or great. If you want, you can ask for a Devil's Bargain, which gets you another dice in exchange for some awful side-effect that gets tacked onto the roll, regardless of success or failure. You can also attempt to get Help, or push the roll by throwing some Stress onto the character. Or upping the Effect with Stress as well!
Are you noticing that Stress is starting to come up a lot? Oh just you wait.
You gather a couple of dice representing the action you want to do, generally between 1-4 dice (read: USUALLY NO MORE THAN TWO. MAYBE THREE) and look at the highest result. No counting, no sitting around and having to decipher what the heck is going on, none of that nonsense! If the highest result is a 1-3 it's horrific failure, which is dependent upon your starting Position. One of the many things a GM can do is he can either start a Clock or fill a portion of it in. Clocks are timers that fill up based upon specific conditions. They're not always bad, but there's nothing more ominous than the GM taking an ominous yet absurdly vague named Clock and checking off yet another section of it if you screw up. If you rolled 4-5 you succeed, but there's some complication, again dependent on your starting Position. Did you roll a 6? You got what you want, no strings attached! Did you get double sixes, which I've not seen yet? You get a crit! Which steps up your Effect!
That's one roll.
It's scary.
It's amazing.
If that was the only thing this game had going for it? I'd still be pretty dang impressed. The rolling system is control. You modulate exactly how much of a chance you're willing to take, before rolling. The failure mechanics also encourage the GM be as evil as he likes, if not moreso, because players have the ability to mitigate consequences. Just declare how you're going to mitigate the consequences. The GM then assigns you 6 stress, which you can then mitigate. Careful, cause you only have so much Stress! You can't mess around here! Max out on Stress and you're removed from the score, which are missions.
Oh, right, Missions.
You didn't think you could dick around, did you?
There are different phases in the game, one of which is The Score, which is you setting out on a criminal job. You don't plan. You just pick a type of Score (Ritual, Killing, etc), fill in the missing detail (which is the thing you need to even attempt the Score) and then just freaking roll to see how well you planned. That determines just how badly off things are. You can then make Flashback rolls to say "No, I planned, Mr. Evil GM! Back off!" Scores are high-octane extended events that make you realize that your pulse can get that high, safely. Don't Stress out. In real life or the game. Just in case I had to make that distinction.
You then go into Downtime, wherein you try and get your dude back up to full strength... except that Downtime usually generates its own complications, which funnel you into a Score to try and get rid of that crap, too, and before you know it the game has substantially changed and you're fighting for your life and asking yourself how the hell you got here when quite frankly it's all your fault because you're the one who decided to do stupid stuff to regain Stress in the first place!
What I'm trying to say is that this game is delicious. I can't wait to play more. The rule book is so clearly laid out, the art is gorgeous, the rules give me an entire world's worth of nonsense to navigate with the slightest of pushes, and it's all wrapped up in darkness and death and frickin' demon blood, which powers your city, by the way.
I mean, what's not to love? Demon blood included?
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