Archiving some write-ups from our face-to-face games in HK.
Blades in the Dark: Explosão episode 4. (8 April 2017)
The stalwart crew at anarcho-feminist newspaper A Explosão are on the hunt for their next big story. The dockers and the local street gang – the Três Cachos – are now actively hostile, and the monarchist and communist papers are gaining ground.
In this session, I tried out a new standardised "score" for breaking a story. It consists of two stages, each with a 6-segment clock. First is the legwork, getting the facts, quotes/attribution and pictures. Then is the write-up: headline, lede, nutshell, kicker, printing.
I also made a sheet of story leads and events, mostly cribbed from the BitD sheets, for the players to choose from as prompts.
First of all, Maria the lurk comes running into the office, an abandoned warehouse, pursued by police and covered in blood. She didn't stab that policeman but try telling them that. Victor the leech disposes of the knife; Octavia the cutter talks Sergeant Marques round while Maria leads the constables on a wild goose chase. She gives her bloodied clothes to one of the paper's street-urchin gang to dispose of, which will come back to haunt them.
The crew later parlay the connection with the sergeant into a lookouts claim: they're now hooked into the cops' local network of informants. Octavia pulls this off in her inimitably violent way by roughing up Marques, but seems to have fallen for him too and the pair hit the town in a big way that night. She comes to work the next day with a raging hangover.
Over the following days, the crew successfully breaks the story of medical neglect at a city orphanage operated by American missionaries. Maria gets herself into the building undercover as an orphan, while Victor helps to get the photos.
Next they decide to confront the Três Cachos head-on. Maria breaks into the home of the gang's leader, Pica-Pau, and steals his prized navalha (straight razor).
"What first tips you off that Pica-Pau isn't alone here?" "He's blindfolded and his hands are tied to the bed frame."
The next day, the paper runs a front-page challenge, inviting Pica-Pau to a fight on the beach, with his navalha as the prize. He accepts, naturally.
The day of the fight is a big event attracting hundreds of onloookers: Pica-Pau shows up in his white suit with a malacca cane for a weapon. Octavia wears her mother's wedding dress ("I might not get another chance.") and brings a cricket bat.
Thanks to some chemical bat-preparations by Victor, her fighting abilities and pushing herself, Octavia wins the day and embarrasses Pica-Pau. With a roll of 2, 2, 3, 6, it was a close-run thing, and I'd made clear that Pica-Pau would do his best to kill Octavia (4 harm).
The Três Cachos splinter, dropping a tier but going to war with the newspaper crew. The incident gets a glowing review in their own paper. The rest of the popular press goes with MONSTROUS REGIMENT OF WOMEN COMMITS VIOLENT OUTRAGE.
Next session (my players, look away now): war against the remnants of the Três Cachos; the dockers arrange for an eviction order at the warehouse; whatever other trouble the crew create.
Bootleggers
(posted 6 Aug 2016)
Today I ran a one-shot of Bootleggers by +John Harper, for two players. A grand time was had by all.
Rules stuff:
I reduced the level threshold to 4 scores in order to get to more of the good stuff in our single session (the episode concluded with a daring smuggling run to hit level 3), and was forgiving with the "doing more than one job on the boat" rules, to account for the reduced personnel.
AP stuff:
The Butchers were led by impulsive boat guy Finn and aquarium-loving lady gambler Turtle, who made the midnight run, at maximum speed and damn the stealth, by boat from BC to Seattle. They butted heads with rival gang the Dock Hounds, led by the Malloy brothers and their big cousin Moose.
Finn and Turtle's escapades included numerous midnight boat runs, seaborne shootouts with the Hounds, bribing the coastguard, helping their supplier Maggie to round up escaped cows, getting busted and sent to jail for two months, repeatedly betting all their cash at the poker table, trying out new varieties of moonshine (Turtle almost spent a fate point to avoid the hangover) and a dockside showdown with the Hounds that left Dan Malloy with a busted nose (Turtle's baseball bat) and Moose missing his front teeth (Finn's hidden monkey wrench).
Clip show:
"There's nothing to do in Victoria."
"That's why you gotta drink."
"Your milk makes me strong."
"I can't get a hangover, we hafta to do this run, yo!"
"10 weeks in jail is probably better than where we actually live."
"Jayzus, my feckin nose, she broke my feckin nose!"
More thoughts on Bootleggers: (19 Aug 2016)
1) Next time I will bring Monopoly money for the gang's cash. There's a lot of erasing and rewriting otherwise.
2) Interesting abstraction is at work in this game: the text explicitly calls out your thugs' "wages", but there's also your booze-buying overheads and, we can infer, some or perhaps most of your smuggling activities. Your lifestyle improves with your gang's Wanted Level, which goes up with Scores - and you can keep losing money while bringing in Scores. It can feel like you're "losing" but if you keep making those runs, you'll get there.
from Stuart Chaplin: posted 3 Jun 2017
Monsterhearts Mid-Season Finale: Burning Desire/Falling Angels
Part 2: Veronika Played by +Tom McGrenery
Athena and Veronika don't start the episode happy with each other and each manages to egg the other on. This seems to be smoothed over when Veronika comes up with the idea with using Athena's new found immortality to make rad internet videos.
Veronika leads Athena (and Clio) to Bradbury's Abandoned Amusement Park to get Athena to jump off a tilt-a-whirl - which is the perfect way to make a quick buck off her friend's situation. At first Athena is cool with the idea but seems to back out at the last minute.
Veronika turns her charms (apparently she has were-pheromones) on Clio who seems to be whammied into making the jump instead. This prompts Athena to launch herself (literally) at Veronika, which in turn, causes V's wolf to come out to play.
Only, instead of just turning into a wolf as happened previously, she turns into a weird wolf-woman with two heads (one human and one wolf) and blue fur. She then wakes up covered in blood and tattered clothing at school with no memory after wolfing out. She also discovers that her hair (all of it) is blue and the hair on her head is growing swiftly.
After raiding the theatre costume wardrobe for acceptable clothes, she heads into school - still very early and finds her way to the library (occupied only by the librarian Raymond, Esmearalda and Robyn). After checking the web to make sure there were no photos of her misdeeds, she tries to untangle her new form.
Raymond, apparently a walking encyclopaedia, hypothesises that perhaps, a conjoined twin where only one had lycanthrope might result in a two-headed wolf monster but really, who knows. Veronika, suspecting this is the result of being body-swapped with Athena still, entreats Esmeralda for a solution.
Esme, however, has her own problems - as Veronika quickly discovers when a news bulletin alerts her that Frank - a fellow lacrosse player - was murdered in his bed. Esme suspects it might have been Stacy, but Veronika is worried she may have done the deed - so both head over to Frank's to find out.
At Frank's house, they talk their way in and then Veronika heads upstairs (having to put the whammy on a cop) and discovers that whilst it wasn't her, the psycho-werewolf gym teacher Mr. Lockley's presence is all over the room.
Veronika gets a cryptic text from Athena as they head back to school where she hears the fire alarm ringing. Veronika and Esme head into the school, via the Principal's office and whilst Esme tries to play Good Samaritan, Veronika plays thief, stealing a strange scroll from the Principal's Office.
Back at the Sanctum, Veronika shows Esme the scroll - explaining that the Principal is actually Baba Yaga (famous child-eating witch) and then they read the scroll. Veronika learns that it's tough to pull a fast one on a witch that flies about on a mortar and pestle and that she's in trouble for the stealing (and also, the drugs)....
TM note: This is Veronika Lovec:
Blades in the Dark thoughts. (Posted 13 Mar 2017)
We've played two sessions now with a crew of Hawkers: the staff of O Explosão, an anarcho-feminist newspaper publishing from a warehouse in Rio's docklands in the year 189-.
So far most of the screen time has gone more on heist-like break-ins than actual journalism. That's partly my fault and perhaps a reflection of the way that if this were a TV series, we'd probably be seeing more of that sort of stuff too.
Players have noted that you have to make an effort to insert the actual roleplaying and that the PCs don't interact much with each other. This is true, although you could say that about D&D^H^H^H a lot of games.
There are lots of dials and switches to play with in the system. This is a known thing about Blades. The reference sheets are not ideal for coping with this, as I discovered in session 1 having made the mistake of assuming they would be.. Firstly, they are 65pp long (I didn't print everything), which is nuts. Secondly, they don't include the engagement roll -- the most important thing in the game -- or a number of things more important than the ghost rules.
GMing it is not easy, in certain respects. There is a unified dice mechanic (roll d6s, take the highest) but there is no universal application of it. I.e. there's no systematic way to know that you roll a trait for this move but an action for that one, or that the GM should give increased effect here rather than a bonus die there. And so on.
But there are places where the game just runs itself. Several players have noted that maybe we don't need a GM to play Blades. I think this is almost true: the cycle of downtime actions is robust and comprehensive -- but you would need to invent something similar for the scores.
Considered as a foam building block, Blades is like the orange bridge in the attached photo. The solid part of the rectangle is downtime and claims and factions; the empty arch is the score.
There's an image in the book of someone jumping off a building, tethered by a single rope. When a score begins, that's how I feel as the GM. There is literally no guidance on, say, how many segments a standard mission clock "should" have. (I think there was in the beta docs, though? Not sure. They all started to blur together after a while and I checked out.)
There is some discussion of how the GM has total freedom to make things easy or hard, and one player has noticed this, pointing out that I have not been making things incredibly difficult for them so far. What they have perhaps not realised is that by doing this I am steadily driving down their relationships with a number of factions -- Lord Monteiro the bigshot merchant, the monarchist press, the communist press, the dockers... They're all due to start actively working against our heroes next session.
Malandros episode 2 of 3
Session report (posted 2 Mar 2017)
PCs:
Julio, a pacifist capoeirista
Carolina, a widowed(?) florist
Meredith, crafty owner of the Cafe Luz Estelar
Beatriz, an aristocratic musician
Julio meets up with Faisca and kind-of sort-of promises to join his Sao Jose gang.
Tucano approaches Carolina and she agrees to help out with a break-in. She'll steal a key from the Monteiro mansion when she goes to deliver flowers. And get it back there without anyone noticing it's gone, after Tucano's guys make a copy.
Beatriz talks to Julio. She's worried she doesn't have the life skills to get a proper job. He reassures her that she'll manage something.
Julio, in his first errand for Faisca's gang, goes to Carolina's shop to dissuade her from helping Tucano's crew, who are allied with the Guaiamuns nation. She is not dissuaded.
Next morning, Carolina goes further into the Monteiro house than she's supposed to and gets away with the all-important key without complications.
Julio meets Faisca at the dusty old cafe where he marshals his gang. He announces that he's quitting the gang, which makes Faisca feel compelled to make an example of him. Through force of personality, Julio persuades Faisca to let it go - for now - without a fight.
Meredith is holding auditions for musical acts at his bar. Beatriz enters and gets the gig.
Beatriz bumps into her brother on the Rua Carioca and reluctantly promises to return to the family home.
Meredith wants to know why Carolina has been "nosing around" in the neighbourhood. Carolina tells Meredith she found out her husband is alive after all. (I think the implication is she was trying to corroborate the story? Not sure.)
At night on a lonely street, Julio is menaced by a bunch of Faisca's Nagoas. He makes his escape through a row of backyards, but not before spotting a familiar face in the gang - a guy called Porco, whom he happens to know is a cop.
Performing at the Cafe Luz Estelar, Beatriz makes quite the impression on Meredith. No one else really gets her avant-garde stuff, but Meredith is entranced. (2 hold on Meredith)
Tucano comes to visit Carolina and try to persuade her to back out of the criminal world - she ought to stay in Rio and keep her head down. Carolina is unpersuaded.
Beatriz asks Carolina if she thinks her music has improved. Carolina starts off being rather mean, but ends up asking if Beatriz will come on her trip to the Azores to find her missing husband. (She won't.) the pair go on drinking long into the night.
Carolina wakes up, hungover and mortified, on the couch at Beatriz's bohemian apartment. Julio shows up to make breakfast, and Carolina tells him her plan to visit the Azores. He agrees to look after her shop while she's away.
Meredith meets up with Julio and asks about the previous night's set-to with the Nagoas. Julio tells Meredith to mind his own business.
Stuart's Maccabees-inspired game that I've forgotten the name of The Hammer to Fall
(posted 18 Dec 2016)
(Of course we could: there's aleph, bet, the one that looks like a 7, Stonehenge, shin, Chinese 8, the other one that looks like a 7... all the letters.)
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