Blades In The Dark:  Epilogue

Blades In The Dark:  Epilogue

We’ve wrapped up our 4th and final session of BiTD, and it felt good.  The table has finally gotten into the habit of running the plan with very little “overplanning”, and being able to flashback and play with the system in what I believe is the best way.  

Looking it over, I have to say though, the skill set is still bothering me.  Even in the final moments, we were still having times when we sat down and went “what makes this skill more appropriate than that one?” and it definitely caused most of us disquiet.  Choosing the one I had points in always felt like “gaming the system” instead of letting the fiction set the situation.  On top of that, every roll seemed to definitely be a checklist situation:  “ok, how many dice?  do I get any bonus?  check your skills.  What’s the situation?  what’s affecting my potency?  etc”.  After coming from the very fast pace of PbTA hacks, it’s definitely something that gets under my skin.  I’ve played through Lady Blackbird, and Ghost Lines, and I have to say, I felt myself seeing the same thoughts for BiTD as BlackBird, and looking over Ghost Lines playsheets and going “why didn’t he run further with this?”

As for length, 4 sessions at 3-4 hours each is not enough.  This is definitely something where at 16 sessions, depending on play, you may of just scratched the surface.  A full good run of this game may end up taking you a full year to do, and it will be worth it I think.  For the player, the characters take a beating, and like any good Heist style film, you’re always a little worse off than you were before the job, but you’re gonna live it up anyway.  I almost feel like when you end the campaign, you should run “One Last Job” as the epilogue, it fits so nicely in my mind.  And creating/personalizing your gang is a treat, it lets you decide how you want your reputation to be known, as well as adjusting how you plan and run heists.  Hopefully I can play again, with a group that focuses on muscle and mayhem!

My end summary is this:  Blade In The Dark is awesome, I’m looking forward to using it to scratch my itch for this genre of gaming.  I do worry though that it feels very much like steampunk Shadowrun, and that the final design is going to look more like a traditional RPG than I want it too.  Still, kudos to you John Harper , I look forward to getting my hands on a finalized PDF, and more than likely, the physical edition as well.  It may not be what I want, but it will be something I’m excited to play again.

As always, thanks to Russell Benner, parrish warren, Kyle, & Steph for running and covering my ass as I steal yet another gondola, concertina in hand.