Crossroads in Duskwall

Emma is of two minds, and so is her writer.

Hey gang — a quick off-cycle note to tackle a couple of simmering questions.

First, this week’s reader poll to decide Emma’s course of action from last episode is in a dead heat, with no clear majority for either following the Burnt King’s mandates and attempt to collect poor Chael’s soul, or ignoring Him and going to Nightmarket to help her brothers. If you read late in the week and expected the poll to be closed, it is open, and will remain so for a while yet, so get in there and vote!

My schedule continues to be challenging, so we’ll close this month out on the biweekly schedule — next week will not have a new episode, and Session 3.1 will be published on May 6.

Session Two Check-In

Second, I wanted to take a moment to check it with y’all. We just closed out the second session of the Proper Villains story, and we are heading towards (hopefully) a reunion of the family in Session 3 or 4. And while the number of readers climbs slowly upwards (284 as of yesterday!), there are some signs that the story isn’t landing for folks as hard as Stonetop did. This week’s poll had only eight votes (the average is in the high teens), and we haven’t had much action in the comments section for some time. I don’t think of comments as inherently an important metric, but I do see them as an indicator of folks’ engagement with the storyline, so it seemed reasonable to check in with y’all as to how you’re feeling.

I will confess that Blades in the Dark is a slightly trickier system to work with for the purposes of AP Fiction. The heavy abstraction of time and the highly structured sections of play feel a little cumbersome, and the setting is much more dense, leading to tons of exposition and character intro that sometimes feels like too much, though that might change as I get my hands around the system and setting.

My operating plan was to play the Proper Villains storyline until the family is reunited, and then check in to see if we wanted to revisit Stonetop, continue with the Jesseks, or try out another one of the pilots. Thanks to my slowed cadence, though, this seemed like an opportune time to check in with you folks and adjust that plan as needed.

So, I’d like to invite you—from longtime readers who have followed the whole Stonetop saga to newcomers who arrived for BitD and the Jesseks’ story—to tell me how you are feeling. Is the Jesseks’ story compelling you? Would you prefer to be back at the World’s Edge with Padrig, Anwen, and Vahid? Or would you rather see another one of the pilots?

Hold forth in the comments, and I’ll see you in your inbox soon, with either more Proper Villains, or details of our new plan.